Hit by a Suicide Bomber

We were about nine days from coming home so we were at the end of the tour and we were driving to our last mayor meeting within that district that we were patrolling and we were going down, it was called Green Route, it was a few kilometres from the camp where we stayed. And we slowed down to take this bump where a bus stop was, a big bump in the road and a suicide bomber came out of the crowd, we didn’t know. He just had his hands in his pocket and detonated about four feet from the right side of my jeep instantly killing my signaller, Corporal Jamie Murphy who was in the back seat on rear security and wounding the three other people that were in the vehicle. But as I said before we travel in two’s so my boss at the time, my officer commanding was in the first vehicle and they stopped and we took care of the situation at that time. But I sustained wounds to the right side of my body. Very fortunate I wasn’t sitting a centimetre to the right or I wouldn’t be doing this interview here today. And I lost vision in my right eye and shrapnel wounds through my neck, my shoulder, my leg, my knee and then my lower leg were the major ones. But I remained conscious through the event and we instantly kind of secured the area and medevacked everybody out back to the camp.

From there I was flown by helicopter to the next rural hospital which was north end Kabul in the city where they kind of looked at me and decide what they want to do and when they decided they needed to stabilize the shrapnel that was in my eye and make sure I didn’t have any brain damage they flew me to Germany to Bon University where I underwent many surgeries because I had different, I had head trauma, I had eye, I had shrapnel all through my body so I went through many surgeries there and they flew my parents over which was really nice so I could be reunited with my family. But when I was in Germany, I never slept a wink. The hospital I was in was Bon University which is I guess one of the best in the world for what they needed to do but they didn’t believe in private rooms so I was in a room with head trauma, other head trauma patients so it was loud. Like it was loud. I didn’t sleep much but when they flew me home when I got into Ottawa and they rolled in the TV and put on a hockey game for me I had a good night sleep that night. But I went through more operations in Ottawa and they were ongoing for the next few years.