Start reading 100 Ways I Almost Died by Bram Connolly

An extract from 100 Ways I Almost Died by Bram Connolly.

For over two decades, my life in the Australian Army and special forces more broadly was an unrelenting journey through some of the most dangerous landscapes and training iterations imaginable. From patrolling the streets of Somalia and navigating Afghanistan’s green zones to traversing the snow-capped mountains of Victoria and New South Wales, danger was a constant companion. Yet it wasn’t always the obvious threats that posed the greatest risk. Often, it was the unseen, the unexpected, the unplanned that came closest to ending my life. The biggest risk is usually the one we don’t see.

One skill, you will note, stands out above all others: situational awareness. This can be described as the ability to notice either the absence of normality or the presence of abnormality. I’m still not sure if it is something you are born with or something that can be taught. Having situational awareness can mean the difference between life and death. It can be knowing not to go through an open door, or not to shoot at the person emerging out of the dark—or it might be shooting before the threat even becomes obvious. It might be sensing that a piece of equipment is missing, or paying attention to a blacked-out Toyota Corolla sitting low on its shock absorbers in a crowded marketplace. The smell of foreign cigarette smoke in the crisp mountain air instead of the usual Afghan cigarettes might signal danger. Recognising these subtle clues and acting decisively was crucial for me.

Survival often depends on a mixture of knowledge, training, experience and luck.

Sometimes, meticulous planning and risk management saved my life. At other times, it was sheer luck or the actions of teammates. This is in the nature of high-performing teams.

There’s another thing I’ve come to appreciate over the years: what I call the ‘hinge factor’. This refers to that critical, often uncontrollable element that can tip the scales between your plan and the enemy’s. A hinge factor can be subtle—a moment of hesitation, a sudden shift in the weather or an overlooked minute detail.

One vivid memory demonstrates the hinge factor clearly. I was standing on a small wooden stool in a dark room so that I could look out a tiny window. As I peered out into the distance, the stool leg broke and I fell, crashing to the floor from my observation point—at the very same time that a round cracked through the window and slammed into the wall behind me. My platoon sergeant, who had been there talking to me at the time, looked at me in half in shock and half in disbelief. The hinge factor had kept me alive.

This mixture of luck, preparation, adaptability and chance has shown me time and again that while we train to control every variable, some outcomes are simply beyond our influence. Luck, when it appears, must be recognised and appreciated.

While this book is titled 100 Ways I Almost Died, it doesn’t contain exactly 100 incidents. Instead, it’s a curated selection of moments where death was a tangible possibility. I’m no more special than my peers in the Australian Defence Force. In many cases I was simply lucky, and in others my training enabled me to react effectively. My hope is that these stories will entertain and inform, and perhaps help newcomers to a life of service understand some of the risks they face. Reflecting on those risks pulled me back to something more personal: my father’s life. He never travelled beyond Australia, spent most of his years in South Australia and died of cancer in his early seventies. He’d been a butcher early on, a fireman for much of his career and a mechanic for most of his life. He was someone with an engineer’s mind who took genuine satisfaction in understanding how things worked and fixing what was broken.

If you’d asked Dad, he would’ve said he had a good life, and he probably did. But I’ve come to think many of us drift into a kind of quiet simulation. That is to say, we are trapped in a routine that is disguised as certainty, and we measure life by mortgages, deadlines, birthdays and Christmases, mistaking these for meaning. Unless you’ve felt real vulnerability, those moments when your very survival is in the balance, it’s hard to explain the difference between existing and being alive.

I’ve had enough close calls to know that the parts of life worth keeping aren’t the big announcements; they’re the small, sharp details: the crisp dawn air when you weren’t sure you’d see another sunrise, your first breath after fighting not to drown under a sinking kayak, the relief you feel when your reserve parachute finally opens, the sleep you enjoy after experiencing complete exhaustion, the food you eat after days of scarcity. Those moments taught me to value life as something to be lived, not merely processed.

This book, then, is more than a collection of near-death experiences. It is a cautionary tale about the importance of appreciating your short life, understanding the importance of situational aware- ness, being aware of the value of preparing and operating safely, and recognising when it was just dumb luck that was on your side. It’s a reminder that while we cannot always control our circumstances, we can learn from every close call.

 As you turn these pages, I also hope you gain a deeper appreciation for the unseen risks faced by the men and women of the military. This book honours the resilience required to navigate a dangerous world and encourages us to develop the wisdom to learn from every close call.

Extracted from 100 Ways I Almost Died by Bram Connolly available August 4 from your bookstore of choice.

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100 Ways I Almost Died

by Bram Connolly

Incredible stories of combat and survival from over twenty years in the Army and Special Forces.

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