obviously, with the amount of medication and things
that I was on whilst I was in there,
it took a while for me to comprehend
the severity of the injuries that I'd suffered.
And one of the hardest things that I remember was,
because of my level of injuries,
was my inability to communicate with people.
Literally my whole upper body was in traction
because of the injuries.
So I couldn't use my hands to communicate with people.
And also the machine gun that was mounted
on the vehicle that we were traveling in,
when the device came off,
the machine gun dislodged from the mount
and hit me in the face.
So not only did I have everything else to deal with,
the machine gun had fractured my jaw,
it had knocked teeth out, and things like that.
So waking up with no hands to communicate with,
they'd also, for my own good, had wired my jaw shut
to try and help it to heal better,
so I couldn't verbally communicate with people either.
And obviously, waking up and realizing I'm in a bad way
but I wasn't worried about what happened to me,
all I wanted to do is,
obviously I'd seen my wife and I'd seen my son,
that they'd been there by my side
for the last six weeks,
I wanted to tell them, "Look, don't worry about it,
"we're fine, like, we can move on from this."
But I couldn't even communicate with them,
I couldn't tell them this.
So that was probably the hardest thing to deal with.
