You ever hear the phrase “between a rock and a hard place”? Well, Barry Lynch found himself between 10 tons of metal and a hard-packed dirt field. His tractor had just crushed his leg, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere. No phone in hand, no one for kilometers around. It was early morning, he was supposed to finish work that night in time to go to a memorial for his late mother. But suddenly, that plan changed—Lynch was in his own life-or-death struggle. His only tool? His dad’s old pocket knife.

It started like any other workday for the Australian sugarcane farmer. Lynch had set out to spray herbicide on a far-off paddock, pulling a tanker full of chemicals behind his tractor. He’d lived and worked on farms all his life. The guy knew his way around big machines. But on this fateful day in October 2013, things went sideways—literally. A snap echoed through the quiet fields as the tractor’s drawbar broke, sending the massive trailer crashing down.

As Lynch crawled underneath the rig to fix it, the wheel chocks slipped and nearly 10 tons of machinery slammed onto his leg. “It took me clean out,” he said to Australian Canegrower. He screamed, but there was nobody around to hear him. His leg, pinned beneath the trailer, started swelling instantly—he could feel it expanding. He managed to rip off his boot, but there was no escaping the crushing weight on his knee. “There was a lot of pain. I thought I’d blackout, but I never did.”

With no phone on him, he was truly trapped. The crushing force was turning his leg black as blood pooled. He tried yelling for help, but the cane fields were silent. In a grim bid to calm down, Lynch lit a cigarette and assessed his options. That’s when it hit him: he had his father’s trusty pocket knife in his pocket. If he couldn’t move the trailer, he had two options. Maybe he could dig his leg out. And if that failed, he could try amputating his own leg to survive. Grabbing the knife, he chipped at the hard-packed dirt beneath his leg, one desperate stab at a time.

Hours dragged on, the tropical day climbed to 90 degrees, the sun blazed overhead, and sweat stung his eyes as he kept digging. “The frustration was good—it gave me adrenaline to keep going,” Lynch said. He hadn’t given up yet, not with the anniversary of his mom’s passing that same day. He swore he’d make it to her memorial, no matter what. As he slowly loosened the dirt around his leg, he felt a shift. Was it possible? Could he actually pull his leg free?

Six hours later, with blood pouring from his cracked skin, Lynch managed to wriggle his knee out from under the trailer. “The leg was just flapping,” he recalled. Using his remaining strength, he dragged himself 500 meters to his truck. It took every ounce of willpower, but he got there, grabbed his phone, and dialed emergency services. By the time the ambulance arrived, Lynch was nearly unconscious, but he was alive.

Though Lynch survived, the aftermath was brutal—22 surgeries and months in the hospital. He’s learned to walk again, albeit with constant pain and the help of a brace. Still, he never returned to farming. “I shouldn’t be here,” he said, reflecting on the odds he’d beaten that day. It’s a miracle he’s alive. But for the rest of us, Lynch’s story serves as a reminder. It only takes a split second for routine work to turn into a life-or-death struggle. Double-check your wheel chocks.