However, he is there – a Canadian military volunteer in Ukraine who has won the chance. The former military battle engineer fought through the bloody Kandahar grapes during Canada’s war on Afghanistan. He first got a mustache of death in 2006, when he and his fellow soldiers were accidentally hit by a US A-10 ground attack aircraft. Involuntarily he left the middle at the last moment. One of the bullets from the jet cannon broke in a fuel tank behind him. Just a few weeks ago, JT cheated death a second time. JT is a Ottawa veteran who participated in reconnaissance missions with the Ukrainian army before being injured in mid-May. (Jean Delisle / Radio Canada) This time the occasion was a cool, clear night in mid-May in southern Ukraine. He said he and a group of Ukrainian soldiers – with artillery thundering in the background – were trying to set up an observatory on the outskirts of a Russian-occupied city in the hotly contested Zaporizhia region. He said he barely survived driving over an anti-tank mine while trying to save two comrades – one seriously injured, the other already dead. The 50-year-old Ottawa resident spoke to CBC News by telephone from a hospital bed at an unknown location in western Ukraine. He said he hoped to be evacuated back to Canada. CBC News has agreed not to use his full name for security reasons as friends at home try to raise money for his medical transfer. A Ukrainian police officer records the devastation in one of Europe’s largest clothing markets, known as Barabashovo, in Kharkov in May. The area was destroyed by bombing. (Sergei Bobok / AFP / Getty Images) When he was wounded, JT was in the country for several weeks – he was attracted to Ukraine by President Volodomyr Zelensky last winter’s appeal to foreign military veterans to help thwart the Russian invasion. A member of a reconnaissance team, he and other experienced foreign fighters spent their days wandering around Russian trenches on burned farms in southern Ukraine. Their mission that night in May, he said, was to set up the observation post, while battle engineers quietly cleaned up the mines that had been stuck along the route that Ukrainian troops would use to carry out an attack the next morning. As he was moving in their place, he said, one of the many hit a staff mine, killing the group’s sniper and seriously injuring another soldier.
A rescue under fire
As commander of the reconnaissance unit, JT requested a mining vehicle – an old truck. A bent sliding plate caused the truck to hang on some nearby train tracks. He ordered a young Ukrainian captain to walk and reach the survivor, who was bleeding and trying to give himself first aid. They only had a few minutes to leave before the Russians nearby realized exactly where they were. JT managed to free the truck. It was resting on a liner, unable to move forward because the bent plate was stuck in the ground. He said he knew he had to close the gap between himself and the victims if the export was to work. “So I jumped into the driver’s seat and started stepping back on the train tracks, next to the train tracks, to get to a point where they could just make a straight line at the back of the truck,” JT said. “And that was the last thing I remember.” The pick-up hit a powerful anti-tank mine. Designed to strike the thick shield, it shredded the vehicle’s weak metal.
‘[I] hit very well “
Miraculously, the shrapnel that spread from the cone-shaped explosion lost him. “Obviously [it] “I set the vehicle on fire and had a lot of burns,” he told CBC News. “My left side and my face and head were hit quite well.” JT heard the rest of the story from his friends. “My kids told me I got out of the car. I do not remember that,” he said. “It’s just one of those automatic functions you hear about … where people do things without even thinking about it … I could not think of it because I was a very zombie or something. I can not even understand how it was done. this”. A Ukrainian soldier guards as emergency workers inspect a damaged bridge near the village of Kuznetsovka in the Zaporizhzhya region on January 21. (Reuters) He woke up in the hospital several days later with his leg and back “cut and burned”, as he said. His left arm was badly broken from elbow to shoulder and he had to reattach it with bolts and pins. There are shrapnel wounds to his face and he suffered a severe concussion from the explosion. Friends at home launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover the cost of an ambulance flight from a neighboring country. JT is not the only Canadian injured while volunteering in Ukraine. A man from New Brunswick, also a former member of the military, was wounded this spring when a Ukrainian military base near the country’s western border was hit by Russian missiles. Hunter Francis, from Eel Ground First Nation, suffered minor injuries to his nose, right hand and eardrum.
“I miss the team”
JT’s team has gone to other battles without him. Sometimes, he said, he sits awake at night feeling guilty that he is not there. Stay in touch via text message. “Surprisingly, I have a lot of ‘I miss you,’” JT said. “And I miss the team too.” But he said he knows his time there is over and he has a long way to go before he can recover. “I have no regrets,” he said. “You can not go to such a race thinking you will stay safe. The people of this country are not safe. “If you came here with any illusions that you will come out clean, then these are infantile thoughts for me.”
