A new way for veterans to soldier on

VANCOUVER — Corporal Jesse Melnyck's tour of duty in Afghanistan ended during a late-night ambush on a treacherous road outside of Kandahar in August, when a bullet clipped his helmet, shattered his skull and destroyed his right eye.

Bleeding but still conscious on the floor of an armoured personnel carrier, the 25-year-old signal operator wondered if his career as a soldier was over, if he could continue to play softball with his unit and whether he would see again.

"The blood was flowing down my face, and so much went through my head," Cpl. Melnyck recalled yesterday.

He returned to Canada for extensive surgery. His head was reconstructed and he was given a desk job at CFB Petawawa, but a lack of depth perception made much of his life, including playing softball, much more difficult.

That's when he heard about Soldier On, a new program to be offered by the Canadian military that will use sports to rehabilitate injured soldiers.

The best of them will be sent to the 2010 Paralympic Games in Vancouver.

The idea for the program came in November, when the Canadian Paralympic Committee, which manages high-level sport for disabled athletes in Canada, approached the Defence Department with a reminder of the higher number of injuries suffered by Canadian Forces fighting in Afghanistan since they moved from Kabul to Kandahar last year.

In Afghanistan, 75 Canadian soldiers were wounded in action in the four years before August, 2006. Once Canadians moved into Kandahar, that number increased to 117.

And injuries outside combat also increased, with 44 before August of 2006 and 92 since.

The Canadian Forces agreed that more needed to be done to rehabilitate the injured, and promised to recruit soldiers wounded after 2000 for sports, and provide a grant for training and for the equipment that is often custom-built and costs thousands of dollars.

A competitive-level sledge-hockey sledge costs about $3,000; a track and field wheelchair is $15,000; and a competitive-level prosthetic leg for running can cost as much as $40,000.

The precise details of the grant have yet to be worked out between the CPC and the military, Mr. MacPherson said.

Soldiers have the mindset that will give them a competitive edge, he said.

"They're young, they're fit, and they have a mentality about being competitive and about making serious commitments and being dedicated," he said.

"We're hoping to have 45 athletes go to the 2010 Games," Mr. MacPherson said. "If two to four of those are soldiers with disabilities, we'd be ecstatic."

The program comes on the heels of a U.S. veteran rehabilitation program called Wounded Warriors, which started to promote recovery through sport two years ago after U.S. injuries in Iraq mounted. Organizers hope to send as many as 30 U.S. athletes to the Summer Paralympic Games in Beijing in 2008.

The Paralympic movement was started by disabled veterans of the Second World War who found that sport was an excellent way to bring normalcy to their lives, Mr. MacPherson said.

"Normally, we haven't had the casualties that would cause us to launch this program," said Lieutenant-Colonel Gerry Blais, the director of casualty support for the Canadian Forces, who is overseeing the program from the side of the military.

A summit will be held at Ottawa's Carleton University in May, where the military can explore the interest in the programs for disabled athletes. "We're going to pave the way for a lot of people to participate in a number of sports," Col. Blais said. "We're hoping that this leads into something greater."

Sergeant Karen McCoy, an aviation technician at CFB Gagetown who ran 16 kilometres a day before she lost her leg to cancer, said she'll be at the May summit, hoping to begin training.

Equipped with a number of prosthetic legs for standing and running, and even a hollow one for swimming, Sgt. McCoy has set her sights on competing in a Paralympic circuit.

"It's a dream of mine, as soon as I get a perfect [prosthetic] leg, I'm going to train," she said. "I love any kind of sports and this is a way to say, 'No leg, who cares!'

"Who knows how many people in Afghanistan will come back as amputees, disabled in some way. I want to encourage them," she said. "It's not over. We can still do the job that we love, and the sports we were born to do."

Special to The Globe and Mail