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Healthy body, dumb luck spared Canadian wounded in suicide strike
PETAWAWA, Ont. (CP) - Long hours at the gym and dumb luck saved a Canadian paratrooper nearly blinded by a Jan. 27 suicide bombing in Kabul.
A month after the blast that killed a member of his platoon, Lieut. Jay Feyko can‘t see out of his right eye, he‘s peppered with scars and he walks with a pronounced limp.
But Feyko, a plain-speaking 30-year-old from Parry Sound, Ont., says Lady Luck was on his side when a bearded man in a green camouflage jacket and a brown pakool hat detonated a mortar shell right next to his jeep, killing himself, an Afghan bystander and Cpl. Jamie Murphy.
Three others were wounded, Feyko among them.
A piece of shrapnel the size of a peanut entered Feyko‘s head just below his right eye, cutting his eyeball. It hit his skull and lodged between it and his eye, blinding it. "My skull did its job," he said.
Another piece angled into the side of his head just above and behind his left ear, but didn‘t penetrate his skull.
Yet another took a chunk out of the right side of his neck, and more went clean through his shoulder. Feyko‘s right arm and leg are a mass of scars, some the size of baseballs, and his leg is still full of shrapnel - most of which will likely remain inside him for the rest of his life.
There‘s a puncture wound below his eye and a long scar running back below his right temple where German doctors went in with lasers to extract the shrapnel. His neck is a mass of scar tissue.
The nightmares and cold sweats that woke him from his restless sleeps at a hospital in Bonn are fading, but the physical scars will be with him forever.
Yet Feyko, who rose from the enlisted ranks into the officer corps, said he can live with the bodily reminders of that horrific day, or even without his eye; he‘s just happy - and humbled - to be alive.
"There are lots of people out there with lots worse injuries than I have doing exceptional things. If I lose vision in my eye, that‘s not bad at all. My heart‘s still tickin‘."
If he had been positioned a centimetre or two in any direction, he said, he would not likely have survived. "It‘s a wonder how things work that way."
The mortar that was strapped to the bomber‘s chest was designed to spread death and destruction over a wide area. How it didn‘t kill all four Canadian soldiers in an open jeep just a metre or two away is something of a miracle.
Doctors told the quiet, reflective soldier that the density of the muscle mass he had developed at the gym stopped some of the shrapnel before it shattered bones or destroyed joints.
Once a strapping, barrel-chested athlete, Feyko has lost weight but not his spirit, saying he wants to continue his 10-year-old military career, leading the rare men of Para Company and adding to his total of 15 jumps.
Feyko‘s operations area in Afghanistan was originally rural. Before two Canadians were killed by up to three anti-tank mines Oct. 2, he spent most of his Iltis patrols on dusty tracks watching out for telltale signs of looming disaster lying buried beneath brown, ankle-deep talcum powder.
After the mine strike, armoured patrols took over the rural areas and Feyko‘s 2 Platoon was dispatched to crowded city streets, alleys and markets.
Suddenly the threat had changed, and they were looking for suicide bombers.
Feyko, with two weeks left in his second overseas tour, saw the bomber stepping into the crowded street as they approached that frosty morning, the second vehicle in a two-jeep patrol headed to the weekly assembly of area leaders known as waqils.
"He had his hands in his pockets," Feyko recalls with crystal clarity. "He didn‘t look any bulkier; he just looked like he was crossing the road as he came to our vehicle.
"He didn‘t look like what we were told a suicide bomber was supposed to look like. He didn‘t look any different than anyone else."
Feyko guesses he was in his late thirties.
Feyko passed him when suddenly he heard a deafening explosion. He and Cpl. Richard Newman, the driver, were thrown forward into the dashboard. Feyko said he knew right away it was a suicide bombing
Cpl. Jeremy MacDonald, sitting behind Feyko facing forward, was knocked unconscious for a few seconds after he was thrown into the rollbar.
Murphy, a Newfoundlander who was just nine days from going home, was in the left back seat of the Iltis, facing the blast.
"I realized that I was still alive and my first instinct was to check on the rest of the guys," said Feyko. "I jumped out and looked back and saw Cpl. Murphy; he was bleeding very bad.
"He was the worst off of all of us, so I went around and immediately checked on him, and he was done right there."
MacDonald also checked Murphy and Feyko checked him again, but he had been killed instantly. "There‘s nothing we could have done."
Feyko had no idea how badly he‘d been hurt. He helped Newman, who was in intense pain, even though he could see out of only one eye.
Leaping from the lead Iltis 50 metres ahead, the company commander, Maj. John Vass, made a quick check of the wounded, then tried to secure the chaotic area and calling in back-up.
The lead driver, Cpl. Doug Van Tassel, applied first aid to Newman, wounded in the neck and shoulder, while Feyko went back to check on Murphy one more time.
Blood and the bomber‘s body parts were strewn everywhere.
Finally, his eardrums bleeding from the concussion of the blast, Feyko returned to the lead vehicle to monitor the radio and to take stock of himself.
"That‘s when I realized that I had a lot of wounds."
He looked in the mirror, thinking something was blocking his eye. What he saw wasn‘t pretty; his face was covered in blood and his eye was moving back and forth involuntarily.
Feyko was losing a lot of blood and starting to slip into shock. He lay down on the road next to the vehicle, maintaining consciousness all the while as Van Tassel started applying first aid.
Once stabilized at the base hospital a kilometre or so away, Feyko was sent to Germany, where some of the best eye surgeons in the world gave him a 70 per cent chance for full recovery.
He‘s had further surgeries in Ottawa, including skin grafts, and still has at least one more eye operation that will likely decide whether he will regain its sight.
He‘s matter-of-fact about his injuries, calling them a product of the job he does. He says Murphy‘s death was devastating, but he is coming to accept the fact it was his comrade‘s time, not his.
"I‘m not the one who says it‘s your turn to go. It was his time to go. It‘s unfortunate that it happened, but I can‘t explain why three of us walked away and he didn‘t."
Feyko says the unarmoured, much-maligned Iltis was not a factor in the attack, nor does he grouse about rules of engagement that prevented the Canadians from traveling with readied weapons.
"There is nothing we could have done to prevent it," said Feyko. "If a man is willing to take his life to kill another, it‘s very hard to defend against that.
"My wounds are the result of what I did and what I believed in. The government gave us the tools to do the job and that‘s what we did. We helped a lot of people out in Afghanistan - no question."
© The Canadian Press, 2004
print this page
Healthy body, dumb luck spared Canadian wounded in suicide strike
PETAWAWA, Ont. (CP) - Long hours at the gym and dumb luck saved a Canadian paratrooper nearly blinded by a Jan. 27 suicide bombing in Kabul.
A month after the blast that killed a member of his platoon, Lieut. Jay Feyko can‘t see out of his right eye, he‘s peppered with scars and he walks with a pronounced limp.
But Feyko, a plain-speaking 30-year-old from Parry Sound, Ont., says Lady Luck was on his side when a bearded man in a green camouflage jacket and a brown pakool hat detonated a mortar shell right next to his jeep, killing himself, an Afghan bystander and Cpl. Jamie Murphy.
Three others were wounded, Feyko among them.
A piece of shrapnel the size of a peanut entered Feyko‘s head just below his right eye, cutting his eyeball. It hit his skull and lodged between it and his eye, blinding it. "My skull did its job," he said.
Another piece angled into the side of his head just above and behind his left ear, but didn‘t penetrate his skull.
Yet another took a chunk out of the right side of his neck, and more went clean through his shoulder. Feyko‘s right arm and leg are a mass of scars, some the size of baseballs, and his leg is still full of shrapnel - most of which will likely remain inside him for the rest of his life.
There‘s a puncture wound below his eye and a long scar running back below his right temple where German doctors went in with lasers to extract the shrapnel. His neck is a mass of scar tissue.
The nightmares and cold sweats that woke him from his restless sleeps at a hospital in Bonn are fading, but the physical scars will be with him forever.
Yet Feyko, who rose from the enlisted ranks into the officer corps, said he can live with the bodily reminders of that horrific day, or even without his eye; he‘s just happy - and humbled - to be alive.
"There are lots of people out there with lots worse injuries than I have doing exceptional things. If I lose vision in my eye, that‘s not bad at all. My heart‘s still tickin‘."
If he had been positioned a centimetre or two in any direction, he said, he would not likely have survived. "It‘s a wonder how things work that way."
The mortar that was strapped to the bomber‘s chest was designed to spread death and destruction over a wide area. How it didn‘t kill all four Canadian soldiers in an open jeep just a metre or two away is something of a miracle.
Doctors told the quiet, reflective soldier that the density of the muscle mass he had developed at the gym stopped some of the shrapnel before it shattered bones or destroyed joints.
Once a strapping, barrel-chested athlete, Feyko has lost weight but not his spirit, saying he wants to continue his 10-year-old military career, leading the rare men of Para Company and adding to his total of 15 jumps.
Feyko‘s operations area in Afghanistan was originally rural. Before two Canadians were killed by up to three anti-tank mines Oct. 2, he spent most of his Iltis patrols on dusty tracks watching out for telltale signs of looming disaster lying buried beneath brown, ankle-deep talcum powder.
After the mine strike, armoured patrols took over the rural areas and Feyko‘s 2 Platoon was dispatched to crowded city streets, alleys and markets.
Suddenly the threat had changed, and they were looking for suicide bombers.
Feyko, with two weeks left in his second overseas tour, saw the bomber stepping into the crowded street as they approached that frosty morning, the second vehicle in a two-jeep patrol headed to the weekly assembly of area leaders known as waqils.
"He had his hands in his pockets," Feyko recalls with crystal clarity. "He didn‘t look any bulkier; he just looked like he was crossing the road as he came to our vehicle.
"He didn‘t look like what we were told a suicide bomber was supposed to look like. He didn‘t look any different than anyone else."
Feyko guesses he was in his late thirties.
Feyko passed him when suddenly he heard a deafening explosion. He and Cpl. Richard Newman, the driver, were thrown forward into the dashboard. Feyko said he knew right away it was a suicide bombing
Cpl. Jeremy MacDonald, sitting behind Feyko facing forward, was knocked unconscious for a few seconds after he was thrown into the rollbar.
Murphy, a Newfoundlander who was just nine days from going home, was in the left back seat of the Iltis, facing the blast.
"I realized that I was still alive and my first instinct was to check on the rest of the guys," said Feyko. "I jumped out and looked back and saw Cpl. Murphy; he was bleeding very bad.
"He was the worst off of all of us, so I went around and immediately checked on him, and he was done right there."
MacDonald also checked Murphy and Feyko checked him again, but he had been killed instantly. "There‘s nothing we could have done."
Feyko had no idea how badly he‘d been hurt. He helped Newman, who was in intense pain, even though he could see out of only one eye.
Leaping from the lead Iltis 50 metres ahead, the company commander, Maj. John Vass, made a quick check of the wounded, then tried to secure the chaotic area and calling in back-up.
The lead driver, Cpl. Doug Van Tassel, applied first aid to Newman, wounded in the neck and shoulder, while Feyko went back to check on Murphy one more time.
Blood and the bomber‘s body parts were strewn everywhere.
Finally, his eardrums bleeding from the concussion of the blast, Feyko returned to the lead vehicle to monitor the radio and to take stock of himself.
"That‘s when I realized that I had a lot of wounds."
He looked in the mirror, thinking something was blocking his eye. What he saw wasn‘t pretty; his face was covered in blood and his eye was moving back and forth involuntarily.
Feyko was losing a lot of blood and starting to slip into shock. He lay down on the road next to the vehicle, maintaining consciousness all the while as Van Tassel started applying first aid.
Once stabilized at the base hospital a kilometre or so away, Feyko was sent to Germany, where some of the best eye surgeons in the world gave him a 70 per cent chance for full recovery.
He‘s had further surgeries in Ottawa, including skin grafts, and still has at least one more eye operation that will likely decide whether he will regain its sight.
He‘s matter-of-fact about his injuries, calling them a product of the job he does. He says Murphy‘s death was devastating, but he is coming to accept the fact it was his comrade‘s time, not his.
"I‘m not the one who says it‘s your turn to go. It was his time to go. It‘s unfortunate that it happened, but I can‘t explain why three of us walked away and he didn‘t."
Feyko says the unarmoured, much-maligned Iltis was not a factor in the attack, nor does he grouse about rules of engagement that prevented the Canadians from traveling with readied weapons.
"There is nothing we could have done to prevent it," said Feyko. "If a man is willing to take his life to kill another, it‘s very hard to defend against that.
"My wounds are the result of what I did and what I believed in. The government gave us the tools to do the job and that‘s what we did. We helped a lot of people out in Afghanistan - no question."
© The Canadian Press, 2004
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