PASHMUL, Afghanistan - It's 15 seconds of his life that Sgt. Deryk McGougan will never get back.
McGougan is commander of a police sub-station in the volatile Pashmul district and one of the Canadian mentors of what is now known as the Afghan Uniformed Police in the Zhari district west of Kandahar.
The area remains a haven for Taliban supporters - firefights, encounters with improvised explosive devices (IEDS) and attacks on Canadian and Afghan security forces are an almost daily occurrence.
Just ask McGougan.
Last month, he and his Canadian soldiers, along with a group of Afghan police officers, had finished clearing one compound in a search for Taliban fighters and were just beginning a search of a second.
"We crossed a small wall about three feet high. Once they had a foothold, I went over the wall and buttonhooked to the left and took up a fire position to wave the rest in," he said.
"Cpl. Kerr was right behind me and landed right on top of the IED. It was a monster blast which went off under Cpl. Kerr and about four to five feet to my left."
McGougan was hit by flying rock, debris and shrapnel which penetrated his left arm and blew him through a mud wall. That's when the Taliban fighters they'd been looking for showed up.
"All hell broke loose at that point - there was contact coming from both the west and the north. Our guys performed admirably. We had incoming rounds from two different directions. I was able to get back on my feet and was still in the game," he said, rubbing the still-healing wounds visible on his left forearm.
"I told the guys to hang in there - medics were on their way. I placed a tourniquet on my arm because of my bleeding and within three to five minutes we had medics on the scene."
One hour later, McGougan and another sergeant were in the hospital at Kandahar Airfield, while Kerr - who also survived the blast - was on his way to hospital in Germany.
Two weeks after the incident, McGougan was back at work in the Zhari district. Most of what happened, however, is still a blur.
"The first thing I thought was, 'That was it,' because it went off so close - there's about a 15 second gap that I don't remember," McGougan recalled.
"I thought it was over. Then it kind of kicks in - a switch goes on and says, 'No, I got something to do here.' The other two were down. I was the only one still operational at the time."
The fact that McGougan was back to his police sub-station two weeks after being wounded doesn't surprise the commander of Task Force Kandahar.
"They're all like that," said Brig.-Gen. Denis Thompson.
"There's a feeling of guilt that's associated with leaving your troops. He was giving direction to them right up to the time he was put on the helicopter. They had to tell him to be quiet."
McGougan said he agrees guilt and a sense of responsibility had a lot to do with his return to the job so soon. It's not right to call them family, he added, but there is a remarkable bond forged between soldiers who risk their lives for one another.
"In all honesty, when you come that close with a group of people, you take it as a personal responsibility to do everything you can to assure their safety - and if I'm not there, I'm not assuring their safety."
Meanwhile, those missing 15 seconds remain a mystery, he added.
"Everybody's seen the movie "(Saving) Private Ryan," where he gets blown up and there's this sort of whistling sound and there's a kind of a blur and everything slowly comes back into focus," McGougan said.
"It's kind of like that, but it happens a lot quicker."
