According to Life, one of his closest shaves was not by electric, straight, or disposable razor, but by a NATO missile battery....
"There was a character called Arndt Krupp von Bohlen und Halback, whose name I remember because he was the gaily painted heir to the Krupp millions, and a degenerate even by my standards....he may have been in the car during one of the most terrifying moments I've had in a motorcar and one of my closest shaves with mortality....."We'd gone on a trip to Fez in a rented peugeot, and left at night to go back to Marrakech, across the Atlas Mountains. I was driving. Up there among the hairpin bends, halfway down, round the corner right in front of me, without any by-your-leave-, coming at us there were these two motorcycles, military I realized by the uniforms, and they were covering all the road. So he managed to swerve there, I managed to get round here, but down below is half a mile of forget-about-it."So I pull back in and swerve around, and in front of me now is this huge truck, with more motorcycle outriders, and I ain't going over, so I clipped one of the motorcyclists and I went right by the thing. They went bananas."And as we were passing by it, there's a huge missile, a rocket on the truck. We're going round the bend and we've just made it--I've got one wheel over the abyss; I just managed to save us. What the f^ck is this doing in the middle of the road? And seconds later, boooom. It went over. We hear this huge crash and explosion. It was so fast I don't think they knew what happened."This was a long, big M-----F-er, an articulated truck.
"But how we got away with it I don't really know. Just drove on. Foot down. Deal with the hairpins. My night driving abilities were famous at that time. We changed cars when we got down to Meknes. I went to the garage and said, 'This car isn't working very well. Can we rent another one?' We just got the hell out of there. I was expecting NATO on my tail or something, at least an immediate military response, helicopters and searchlights. The next day we're looking in the papers. Not a mention...."
pp. 231-232