Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you!

Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you! is the final entry Pfc. Clay Othic added to the diary he kept during the mission. Written after combat had left him wounded, the saying compresses the reversal of fortune into a blunt pair of opposing outcomes: sometimes a person prevails, and sometimes the danger prevails over them.

The Diary Entry

By October 14, the day Mike Durant was released, most of the wounded men who had fought with him had already been flown home. Othic, a turret gunner shot in the right arm, added his last line to the mission diary in that aftermath. Unable to write with his injured right hand, he scratched out the words with his left.

Meaning and Context

The expression’s two balanced clauses make victory and defeat inseparable possibilities rather than permanent conditions. As the diary’s closing entry, it gives a compact form to the uncertainty of the men’s combat experience: the bear may be hunted, but it may also turn on the hunter. The book presents the line as Othic’s final written reflection, not as a claim that either outcome was assured.