A Canadian military veteran who served in Bosnia and Afghanistan before volunteering to fight for Ukraine will spend Canada Day lying badly injured in a hospital, hoping an online campaign will raise enough money for him to raise enough money. in Ottawa. JT, as the 50-year-old career soldier is known, escaped serious injury with two tours in the Balkans and four in Afghanistan, where he served in both Kabul and Kandahar. But on May 15, his good fortune ended. His unit of 12 foreign volunteers – nicknamed “Wolverines” – was on a mission in southeastern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, clearing anti-tank mines so that Ukrainian troops could advance on a Russian position. They operated in pairs. JT – the unit’s mine clearance specialist – and an American set off through a wooded valley, using hand-held hooks to pull mines off the path of the planned Ukrainian attack. Then came the radio that would change many lives forever. Another Wolverine member – U.S. Army veteran Stephen Zabielski – had touched a travel cable and detonated a mine. The 52-year-old was killed on the spot, the second U.S. fighter to die in that war. Another American was seriously injured. The blast probably alerted neighboring Russian forces to their presence. JT and his companion called for their release vehicle – a truck – to collect them so that the Wolverines could evacuate their victims and withdraw before the Russians could enter. JT was injured by an anti-tank mine while on a mission in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine. But the unit’s misfortunes began to multiply. The Ukrainian driver of the pickup wedged the vehicle on the railway lines that cross the forest of Zaporizhia. JT, a retired combat engineer, took over and told the others to proceed to the appointment while he and his American colleague tried to disengage the truck. That’s when JT made a “bad call”. The only way to free the vehicle was to put it on the rails. In battle, he threw the truck backwards without first checking that the rails were not trapped. That was when the truck landed on top of an anti-tank mine. He does not remember what happened next. “What they told me was that the truck was on fire and one of the men told me that I got out of the truck. “This is some kind of automatic operation or something like that because I do not remember doing that,” he told The Globe and Mail. The next thing he knew was that he would come to the hospital, unable to see and afraid that his eyes had been closed with glue, before collapsing again without his senses. JT’s eyes were good, but he had shrapnel in his face and a severe concussion. His left arm was broken and much of his left triceps had melted. His legs and buttocks also had severe burns, requiring skin and tissue grafts from the front of his thighs. The first-line trauma center where JT woke up was the first of six Ukrainian hospitals from which he would be transported quickly in succession, as local doctors stabilized him and treated his various injuries. Today, the Calgary-born Ottawa resident who grew up and attended a community college in Edmonton is in serious but stable condition in a hospital in a medium-sized city in western Ukraine, not far from the Polish border. JT was seriously injured in the blast, suffered a broken arm, concussion and severe burns. He is the third Canadian to be wounded in the war – and the most seriously injured. The Globe does not use his family name, nor does it name the city where he is receiving treatment until he leaves the country. Prolonged concussion results mean that you will need long-term medical care. He speaks slowly and says he sometimes finds it difficult – lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by Ukrainian-speaking doctors and nurses – to understand what is real and what is a dream. “It’s hard for me to say that this is really happening. “I do not know that the explosion did not kill me,” he said, pausing several times to search for words. “I did not know that until you showed up at the door [interview] it was true. “Until I change the bandage, I do not know that I will change the bandage.” He said the only reality he could focus on was when he would return home to Canada to hug his girlfriend Erika, who is running the GoFundMe campaign to get him out of Ukraine. In its current state, it would need specialized transport to Poland and then some sort of medical flight to Canada. So far, the Get JT home from Ukraine campaign has raised just over 10 percent of its $ 200,000 target. JT said it decided to take part in the fight for Ukraine in March after deciding it “could not get away” from what it saw happening in the country. He had retired as an active-duty soldier in September, so there was no obstacle to his volunteering – at least legally. He applied for and received a one-year leave of absence from his government post in Ottawa. Upon his arrival in Ukraine, he joined the International Legion, a loosely organized group of volunteers formed on February 27 after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on foreign fighters to help his country. At a training center in western Ukraine, JT connected with other English-speaking military veterans and decided they had enough compatible training and skill sets to build their own unit – nine Americans, two British and JT. They adopted the nickname “Wolverines” without ever acknowledging out loud that they had borrowed it from red dawna 1980s film about a group of American teenagers who gather to face a Russian invasion. They spent several weeks training – focusing mainly on civil war tactics, waiting for street-to-street battles over control of Ukrainian cities – then moving to Kyiv, where they were asked to help train less experienced foreign volunteers. With the war largely centered in the east and south of the country, JT says the unit was frustrated because it was so far from the race they had come to participate in. Eventually, they developed in Zaporizhzhia, where they found the action they longed for. But the battle with the Russian military – which has a 10-to-one artillery advantage along the front line – has proven to be very different from fighting the lightly armed Taliban in Afghanistan or serving in peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. Despite the seriousness of his injuries and not knowing how and when he will go home, JT does not regret his decision to volunteer. “I do not regret it. I may have checked the ground before picking up the truck, but I would still have come,” he said, grimacing as he moved to his bed. “Canadians really want to help people. As for me, I just could not see it on TV anymore. I could not do anything.” The Morning and Afternoon Newsletters are compiled by Globe editors, giving you a brief overview of the day’s most important headlines. Register today.
