The axe came down on my head like I was a log, and the man who swung it was just a kid. He walked up behind me during a council meeting with village elders in Shinkay, pulled an axe from under his robe, and sank it into the back of my skull. I should have died. The soldier to my left fired two rounds into the kid before he could strike again.
My platoon brothers thought I was dead. The medic bandaged me up and saved my life, and an American Black Hawk medevaced me out. Three inches deeper and the axe would have been in my brain. I was a medic too.
In war, you learn that no matter how fast the helicopter flies, there’s a 15-minute window between the battlefield and the operating room at Kandahar airfield. My job was to keep people alive in that window. Package them up, make sure they were still breathing and not bleeding, then send them off to surgery. The choppers flew low and hard and fast, twisting and turning to avoid getting locked on.
I’d be working on a patient while the heat cooked us inside the cabin, sweat pouring out of me under the body armor, the deafening thump of the blades pounding through my chest, and I’d be thinking, are we there yet? Every minute we spent airborne, their chances of survival dropped. On 2006, two weeks before the end of our tour, I was driving in through the city gates. My co-driver, Jeff, called out, “car right,” and in that exact moment, I swerved as hard as I could left.
The suicide bomber detonated on our axle. The blast lifted our vehicle up through the air, tumbling. I popped out with my left leg ripped off instantly, my right leg destroyed, hands and face on fire. I flew through the air and hit the ground sitting up against a wall.
I looked down and saw my leg five feet away. I knew I was in deep trouble. The patrol back at base heard the explosion. The building moved to the left.
We knew immediately it was one of our patrols, and it was bad. I reached for my tourniquet, but it was attached to the leg that was lying on the ground five feet away. I couldn’t get to it. As soon as I was injured, I knew I had to make it home.
I had a wife and a son. I remember thinking about worst case scenarios. I’d be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. But Rick Hansen went around the world in a wheelchair.
If he could do that, I could go shopping in a wheelchair. It wasn’t a big deal. My name is Master Corporal Paul Franklin. When I came in on that stretcher, I was bleeding significantly and missing a leg.
The doctor and physician’s assistant took care of me immediately. Then someone handed one of the medics a black garbage bag. That was my leg. When you’re treating someone you know well, the stakes are different.
You think about their family. You think, I have to send him home. His wife is out there waiting. I was dating a woman named Debbie.
We met in 2001, just before the World Trade Center bombings. She was living in Germany at one point, because when things went very wrong for me, they flew her and my parents over to say goodbye. That’s how bad it was. I was in an induced coma for a couple of weeks.
My first memory after waking up was bagpipes. My regiment had come to the hospital to serve as an honor guard, my entire platoon. Then the doctors tell me the prognosis: probably death. And if I survived, I’d be a vegetable for the rest of my life.
I didn’t know that. Debbie knew. But she didn’t give up on me. Most women would have run away.
Some of them did. I understood. There was a moment in the hospital when my son walked in the room. I was battered and beaten, not looking good at all.
He looked at me and asked, “Can you still play video games? ” I said, “Yeah. ” He said, “Okay, don’t worry about that. ” I laughed.
It was such a silly question, but it made me smile. I couldn’t play soccer, skateboard, or ride a bike anymore. But for whatever reason, he chose to ask that question, and I’ve been smiling ever since because of it. Later, when they were working on my right leg, the doctor said, “If we cut above the knee, your chances of walking are pretty much slim to none.
We want to wait, not finish this surgery yet. We’ll talk to you about your future and your plans first. ” I told him, “No. If you see infection in there, get rid of it.
Cut it off. I already know the outcome. I’m going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. ” He said, “You realize what the outcome will be?
” I told him yes, I knew exactly what the outcome would be. It was the same one I’d known from the beginning. There was a funny moment early on, around the leg they sent to the hospital in Germany. It was delayed in transit, and when it finally arrived, they discovered it wasn’t even my leg.
My real leg came from Kandahar to Dubai and then Landstuhl. I pictured those poor pilots flying around with all these legs in the cargo hold, thinking, there goes Franklin’s leg again. I married Debbie in 2010. I was not going to be married standing in a wheelchair.
So I practiced standing up long enough to say my vows. It was like a couple practicing their first dance. We practiced for our first stand. That was our dance.
Debbie’s story is different from mine. Her husband, Bryce Keller, was with the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Bryce was slated for the seven-month deployment that followed mine. I came back from Afghanistan in the second week of February 2006, and he flew out eight days later.
Were those eight days good? Oh, yeah. But I came home thinking, why did I ever say you could go? Because as a military family, you listen to the radio constantly.
You check the headlines constantly. You get home and the news goes on the TV and stays on. Military families listen to the news a lot. One morning, I left for work and heard on the radio while driving that they’d released the name of a soldier who had died earlier that day.
Corporal Chris Reed. I knew it was bad immediately because Chris was my husband’s driver. If Chris was dead, what about the people who were with him? The report said four were injured and four were dead.
I called my friend Amy, who had deployed with me. She said, “Just get to work. Just get to work. ” So I was actually notified of Bryce’s death at work.
I hope you never have to know what that’s like. That’s what happens when you’re treating someone you know. I don’t want their families to have to know that either. I served as the national repatriation officer for the Canadian Forces from 2008 onward, toward the end of the mission.
From the moment of death to internment, and sometimes after, my job was to make sure everything went right. I was proud of what the Canadian Forces did. We heard a lot about how the Americans and the British brought their fallen home at night. Canadian families were involved.
The nation involved itself. Nobody organized it. We lost two Canadian medics on my rotation, Corporal Mike Starker and Corporal Wilmot. I escorted Mike’s casket all the way back to Calgary.
All the fears were with me. What am I going to say to his wife? What am I going to see when I get home? I’d lost my friend, and I was trying to grieve through that.
I had to ride down the Highway of Heroes in the front of the hearse, watching the 50 bridges lined with flags between Trenton and Toronto. I broke down right then in the car. At every bridge, there was a line of Canadians standing silent, and every overpass was crowded. The police had the 401 blocked off completely.
There were ambulances and fire trucks everywhere. To those Canadians who came out to the bridges and lined the 401, you’ll never know the solace you brought to the families. To know that the nation shared their grief. The pilot announced as we flew into Calgary that there were two military personnel on the flight carrying a fallen Canadian soldier home.
The whole plane went quiet. I think it was the first time I’d been on an airplane where the entire cabin was dead silent on landing. People were crying. When we got up, they clapped.
As a military member, you’re not used to that kind of pride being shown to you, but you could see the sorrow. Every Canadian felt the loss of this soldier. November 11th is the day for the fallen. But the rest of the year, think about the wounded.
They’re facing huge challenges in this country right now. Injured Canadian soldiers are well treated by the Department of National Defence. For three years after you’re wounded, they cover you. Absolutely brilliant.
World’s best. But as soon as you leave the Department of National Defence, you fall under Veterans Affairs, and everything falls apart. Post-June 2006, we have two standards of veterans: the haves and the have-nots. We already have homeless veterans.
I use Veterans Affairs benefits for nursing, shopping, and house cleaning. They asked me to prove that I have no legs so I could get those benefits. And I have to prove it every single year. I have to prove I have no legs every year.
Sure enough, they stepped up and said, “Okay, he doesn’t have to prove it every year. He only has to prove it every three years. ” It should simply ask, “Are you permanently disabled? Yes or no.
” That’s it. I had bad PTSD episodes in Edmonton. Memories, flashbacks, everything. I couldn’t read a book about Afghanistan or watch anything on TV.
I was terrified of uniforms. Of course, my friends all visited me in uniform to make me feel good, but I was just howling at Abby. I remember screaming foul things at her. She would hide her daughter, Grace, away in the basement.
I remember thinking, this is what it’s like to be insane. I could feel it coming on, and I was powerless to resist it. At Halloween, I had a bad go because the fireworks sounded like RPGs. They triggered my PTSD.
But I came home and put my son, Noah, to bed, and that calmed me down. When I got out of the hospital the day after spring break ended, my son Simon was walking to school. I said, “I’m going to walk you to school and maybe do show and tell. ” I ended up walking to school.
It was only half a kilometer, but man oh man, it was a really difficult thing to do. My son was looking down at the ground the whole way, watching for cracks in the sidewalk, making sure I didn’t trip. People ask, was the Afghan mission worth it? I think the only ones who can truly answer that are the loved ones of the fallen.
I have regrets, of a personal nature. But it’s what my husband and I wanted to do. We wanted to be soldiers, and soldiers deploy. I don’t see our time there as wasted.
We brought our fallen home with poise and dignity. We involved the families. The nation involved itself. Nobody organized it.
Maybe the Highway of Heroes will stand as a lesson for Canadians and particularly for Canadian politicians as they cheer. There is no good outcome to war. But we looked after each other.
