Canadian forces:End of combat not the end of battle

July 02, 2011, EDT.
End of combat not the end of battle for soldiers wounded in Afghanistan
Dene Moore, The Canadian Press

Bombardier Matt Coles, who was injured in Afghanistan, is seen through camouflage netting as he poses for a photograph at the 15th Field Regiment unit in Vancouver, B.C., on Tuesday April 5, 2011. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck"

VANCOUVER - Bombardier Matt Coles remembers thinking the bullets had missed him.

In the frenzied moments after he and his sergeant were sprayed by a volley of accidental fire as they prepared to go out on patrol in Kandahar city, Coles lay in the dust and thought maybe he hadn't been hit at all.

Then he remembers pulling his hands away from his leg to see it covered in blood. The bullet had hit him above his left knee, ricocheted off the bone, and ripped an exit through the other side of his leg. En route, it broke his femur and tore through a vein.

Beside Coles lay the sergeant, his legs and abdomen riddled with bullets, bleeding from his femoral arteries.

"Right away, you do think you're going to die — I mean, when someone gets shot in a movie they die, right? Everybody knows that," said Coles, a wise-cracking soldier from Chilliwack, B.C., whose life experiences belie his 20 years of life.

But the realization soon dawned that help was close at hand, since the two soldiers were still inside the confines of the Canadian base at Camp Nathan Smith, with medics and a field hospital close at hand.

"At first, you know — 'OK, all right, I'm not going to die, I'm just going to lose my leg,' and then you try and cope with that," Coles said. Had they not been on the base, the sergeant would likely not have survived, he added.

Coles and his sergeant — the two of them are still recovering from the "friendly fire" incident in February 2010 that nearly took their lives — were among the more than 1,800 Canadian soldiers wounded in Afghanistan as of the end of last year.

By the time the combat mission ends next month, that number will surely be higher.

Of those, 615 troops were wounded in action by improvised explosive devices, mines, rocket attacks and direct fire, as well as friendly fire related to combat action and "acute psychological trauma directly attributable to combat action that required medical intervention."

Another 1,244 suffered unspecified "non-battle injuries."

Not all wounds are easy to see.
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End of combat not the end of battle