I Became Injured
Heroes Remember
In ’95 the Airborne Regiment was disbanded so
we ended up being back to Edmonton to form
the para company and then ’96 was the year
that I went and did a year with the parachute team,
the SkyHawks. So I did that for the
25th Anniversary of the SkyHawks in 1996 and
then found myself in ’97 down on Ranger School
so I did the US Army Ranger School and came back.
And at that time I’d figured I was far enough
along in my career that I wanted to go into really
what I wanted to do and go Search and Rescue.
So I applied and did the PT testing and the
physical testing and all that for Search and Rescue
and had been selected to go on the course
starting the next year and then that’s when I
ended up getting injured. We were doing a
daytime no equipment jump and then we were
doing an evening night time full equipment jump.
The jump went off fine, we were ready for our
night jump and it was coming in for landing
waiting for the landing to come in and a young
guy still had a problem with his parachute and
it hit mine and mine collapsed and it never
reopened so I hit the ground.
The doctors figure from about 75 feet, ya,
in the end of November in Alberta so the
ground wasn’t too soft at that time of the year.
So I ended up breaking nine bones from my
waist down. So my pelvis was open five
centimetres, my right wing sacrum was broken,
all my lower ab muscles were torn from my pelvis.
My left leg was shattered and I hadn’t had a
chance to remove my rifle from the jump so
when I landed and I tried to roll as best I could,
my rifle barrel went through my right foot so
shattered my right foot into a lot of pieces and
then I was conscious the whole time.
It never knocked me out so I was laying there
and it was at night and the doctors came and
took me and put me on a stretcher and
ended up taking me to the hospital.
And that’s when I found out the extent because
that night they just saw that my leg was broken
because of the compound fracture and that’s
all they thought that happened but when I started
doing the X-rays and the CT scans and stuff
they found out what the damage was and
it was a lot more than I had thought.
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