Airman, Wife Hope to Help Others
(July 25, 2009) |
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July 16, 2009 -
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Matthew Slaydon – an explosive ordinance disposal technician who was severely wounded in Iraq – and his wife, Annette, hope to use their experience to help servicemembers and their families cope with deployment and injuries.
U.S. Air Force photo� |
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WASHINGTON, July 22, 2009
A wounded
airman and his wife plan to use the lessons they've learned
about marriage and friendship through military service and
adversity to help servicemembers who might be struggling
after deployment or injury.
Air Force Tech. Sgt. Matthew Slaydon was wounded Oct. 24,
2007, while inspecting an improvised explosive device in
Kirkuk, Iraq. He and his wife, Annette, spent 15 months at
Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio while he recovered
from his injuries and figured out what life after the Air
Force would mean.
“Fire can either burn you up or temper you,” Slaydon said.
“Luckily, ... it tempered us. We've seen a lot of couples that
it's burned up, and ate away. They've divorced and gone
their own ways, and nobody's better for it.”
The issues the couple has faced while working with the
medical system and the government, as well as Slaydon's own
personal struggles, have given them a new direction in life:
to serve those who face the same problems.
“What makes our country great is the concept of the
servant-leader,” he said. “Since my injury, I've truly,
truly learned the greatest thing I can do is serve my fellow
man. And to serve those who wear the uniform is a
blessing.” |
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Slaydon saikd he began a “love affair”
with aircraft at a young age, and as he grew older, it
brought him to the Air Force. Though his father had served
in the Navy – Slaydon was born on a naval base in Kenitra,
Morrocco – it was his desire to work with aircraft that
brought him to the military.
“I wanted to work on aircraft and be a part of the Air
Force,” he said. “As I grew up, I developed a sense of
patriotism, and I wanted to be a good [noncommissioned
officer].”
Slaydon began his career as an aircraft armament technician,
loading and unloading weaponry from planes. He saw a unique
opportunity to learn and lead in explosive ordnance disposal
– the bomb squad. He was drawn to EOD while working on F-16s
at Luke Air Force Base, Ariz.
“Any time we had a munitions difficulty ... EOD would come out
and take possession of any damaged munitions,” Slaydon said.
“I learned about who they were, and I got a tour of the
shop, and from that point on, I was in love with the idea of
being an EOD technician.”
EOD isn't for everyone; the squad's job is to get up-close
and personal with bombs. By collecting evidence and samples,
a squad can determine the materials and techniques used to
build the explosive and, ideally, pinpoint its source.
“Anybody can blow something up,” Slaydon said. “If we do
everything right, there will still be an explosion. But it's
going to happen when I want it to happen, and not before. We
defuse danger.”
Walking the Long Walk
During a patrol in Iraq, Slaydon stared fate in the face, as
he had many times before. He'd been on more than 200 calls
and disarmed more than 100 IEDs, and this one was routine;
in fact, his team was familiar with the site, an
intersection near a village known to be hostile.
Slaydon never thought he would be the one to get hurt. In
fact, he insists, the people who assume they will get hurt
are a danger to themselves and, most importantly, those
around them.
"I wouldn't want to be with somebody who's fatalistic," he
said. "In reality, if I had a team member or team leader
who's fatalistic, I'd probably run it up the chain and try
to get them out of the field. We're smarter than the
bombers. ... You have to step out of the truck with confidence
in what you're doing. Otherwise, you'll just be paralyzed
with fear."
After sweeping the area with a robot from inside the truck
the day he was hurt, Slaydon and his team were preparing to
leave when something caught his eye. He directed his team to
stay in their vehicles as he went on what EOD technicians
call “the long walk,” when a leader scouts a site before
putting his team in danger.
“The idea behind that is, one, if something happens to you –
there's a detonation or you get shot, whatever – your team
members are safe and sound,” he said. “And two, you have
somebody there to pull your fat out of the fire.”
The weapons intelligence officer got out of the vehicle to
take pictures, and Slaydon yelled at him to stay behind the
truck.
“That was probably the last good decision I made as an EOD
technician,” he said. “I don't think I could have forgiven
myself if I had hurt him, also.”
Slaydon approached the suspect item, which was buried. He
knelt over it and inserted his mine probe. That's when the
IED – about 15 pounds of homemade explosives – exploded two
feet from his face, throwing him about 30 feet.
“The blast mangled my left arm. ... [It] shattered my face, it
broke my jaw, it destroyed my left eye,” he said.
The blast also severely damaged his right eye, collapsed his
left lung, knocked out a tooth and punctured both of his
eardrums. As a result, he's lost his eyesight.
“I did have safety glasses on, but they don't make safety
glasses for that kind of impact,” he said.
As it turned out, Slaydon said, a second 15-pound IED was
stacked under the one that detonated.
“The top one did more than enough to knock me out of the
fight,” he said. “If the second one had detonated, I'm sure
it would have scattered me all over the road. I guess it was
a mixture of some really bad luck and some good luck that I
managed to survive that.”
The Journey to Recovery
The first step in Slaydon's journey to recovery was an
airlift to Balad, Iraq, where Air Force Senior Airman Larry
Miller, a friend on a different team with whom he had
deployed from Luke Air Force Base, met him. Miller requested
a helicopter from Baghdad, where he was stationed at the
time, to stay with Slaydon at the hospital.
“They didn't know if I was going to live; I was very badly
injured,” Slaydon said. “Larry sat by my bed for three days.
I guess people would bring him food, because he wouldn't
leave my bedside.”
In Balad, Slaydon underwent nearly 11 hours of surgery to
stabilize him for travel to the Landstuhl Regional Medical
Center in Germany. This meant removing his damaged eye,
stabilizing his jaw and facial bones, and ensuring what
remained of his left arm could be saved. As it turned out,
the medical team had to remove most of the arm.
The Air Force flew Miller to Landstuhl to stay with Slaydon
before returning him to the front lines in Baghdad.
“Larry is one of the finest people I have ever met,” Slaydon
said. “He is one incredible human being, and a ferocious
warrior. I feel privileged to be able to call him my
friend.”
After only a day and a half, Slaydon was moved from Germany
to Walter Reed Army Medical Center here, where his wife met
him.
The flight to Walter Reed is probably the hardest flight any
spouse has to make, Annette Slaydon said. When she arrived,
she found her husband unrecognizable.
Though she was suffering emotionally through Slaydon's
recovery, Annette said, she stuck to advice given by one of
her husband's friends: to be “steely-eyed” and keep her
tears to herself. She said she would keep her sadness
inside, letting it out only during private moments, such as
while taking a shower before bed.
“I wanted him to focus only on him getting better,” she
said. “I didn't want him to worry.”
After Slaydon had spent a few days in Walter Reed's
intensive care unit, the Air Force flew the couple to Brooke
Army Medical Center.
“[The caregivers there] told my wife I don't know how many
times ... [that] all of them consider it an honor to be able
to work on and to help the wounded warriors to recover,” he
said. “They don't make words big enough to allow me to thank
them.”
Slaydon spent the next 15 months recovering at Brooke, his
wife guiding him through the difficult healing and
rehabilitation process. She quickly learned how important
she was going to be in her husband's recovery.
“One of the most important things you can do is [to] be an
advocate for your wounded spouse,” she said. “Things will go
much smoother, and you'll have a better experience. It's so
important that you do that. People won't get angry if you
ask questions; the doctors want you to get involved. Don't
just drop your spouse off at therapy. Go through therapy
with them. The recovery time is shorter, the recovery is
better, and I think the intimacy you can have in going
through something like that is so important.”
Coming to terms with his injuries and understanding what had
happened when he first woke up, Slaydon said, was the
hardest part of the healing process. He had lost memory of
about 24 hours prior to his injury, so when he woke up in
Texas three weeks later, he was confused, to say the least.
“I remember [Annette] telling me my left arm had been
traumatically amputated, and I knew what that meant,” he
said. “My left eye had been removed, and they were trying to
save the vision in my right eye. That's when I figured out I
couldn't see. ... I had bandages on my eyes, but that's not
why I couldn't see. That's when reality slowly started to
sink in.”
Slaydon said Annette really “took the bull by the horns”
when it came to his medical care. Anything that needed
doing, he explained, she not only did, but wanted to do.
“Feeling her hands on my shoulders as she slowly sponged me
off -- I knew I was going to be safe,” he said. “I was
physically, emotionally and mentally just wrecked --
devastated. I'd feel her hand on me and hear her voice, and
I knew she wasn't going to let me fall. It was such an
amazing moment. I didn't know you could have a moment like
that.”
The Future, a “Joint Venture”
Following his injury, Slaydon wasn't sure how to move
forward. His injuries made it impossible for him to resume
his duties in the Air Force, so he had to find something new
to do.
“Early on, I had a great loss of purpose. I knew my career
was over. I couldn't be an EOD technician any more,” he
said. “[Your job] is who you are, down to your DNA.”
Annette recalled a remark made by former prisoner of war
Sen. John McCain during his acceptance speech for the
nomination as Republican presidential candidate. He said he
had been “blessed by misfortune.”
“I felt like he was talking to me when he said that,” she
said. “Although I would give anything for my husband to have
his vision back, and his arm back, and be able to continue
with his career, we have been blessed by the love and caring
of so many people, that it's been a positive experience, and
we've both grown a great deal.”
One thing stood out to Slaydon: he wanted to pursue a
doctorate in psychology and counsel wounded warriors.
Because he's lived through traumatic injury and knows it
doesn't have to mean total defeat, he said, he's in a unique
position to help others who have been hurt in the line of
duty.
“I want to help them either get back to the battlefield
where they want to be, or headed in another direction doing
something else,” Slaydon said. “But we'll get them doing it
with their head screwed on right.”
Slaydon said he wants servicemembers to know, even if
they're wounded, they can still win the fight. If they lose
hope, they're giving the enemy exactly what he wants: an
American trooper who has been defeated physically and
spiritually.
“You're not retreating [by seeking treatment], you're
attacking in another direction,” he said. The only way
wounded warriors can retreat, he explained, is by giving up
on themselves.
Because Slaydon now is considered 100 percent disabled,
Annette is eligible for veterans' benefits, and will join
him in returning to school. Like her husband, she wants to
use the lessons she's learned to help others who have to
follow the same path.
“What has become really clear to me is that I want to be
able to give back to the thousands of people who have given
to us as we've gone through this experience,” she said. “I'm
considering getting a counseling degree, maybe working in
the family support center at the VA. I haven't made a
decision, but I'm going to pursue that in some way.”
What the Slaydons learned is that all tragedies don't
require a negative consequence. Slaydon has found a new
purpose after losing his Air Force career, and Annette is
moving on to a new career. They've been able to make their
future something it would never have been.
Annette recently was hired as a recovery care coordinator at
Luke, where she will help wounded, ill and injured troops
and their families.
“What we realized is we're still going to have a fantastic
life together, and we're both dedicated to making sure that
happens,” she said. “It's just going to be different than we
thought it would be.”
The Slaydons renewed their wedding vows April 13, 2008, and
now they celebrate that day as their anniversary. That
renewal, they explained, symbolizes a fusion of their goals
together and the start of their new life.
“When we renewed our vows, he told me it was all worth it --
everything he'd gone through,” she said. “For us to have the
love and everything he felt at that moment, it was all worth
it.”
Slaydon officially retires from the Air Force on Aug. 28. |
By Ian Graham
Emerging Media, Defense Media Activity
Special to American Forces Press Service
Copyright 2009 |
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