Aaron Hale started his military career as a cook in the Navy, working his way up to serving Admirals and high-ranking officers. Although he enjoyed the work he also felt that something was missing, and after 9/11 he met several Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) technicians that set him on course for the next step in his military career.
It wasn't all smooth sailing though, as the Navy refused to allow him to reclass to a new rate or Navy job specialty. Instead, he had to leave the military and enlist in the Army to begin his EOD training. The course was intense, over forty weeks long and had weekly testing to ensure that students know how to disarm a bewildering array of military (and improvised) munitions that they may encounter on the battlefield.
Hale's first deployment as an EOD tech was to Iraq where he helped bundle IED evidence and ship it forward for the military to further study, analyze, and catalogue. By his third deployment, he had worked his way up to EOD team leader and led a small element of EOD techs in a very hot area.
"It felt like I was in Tombstone," Hale said in a recent interview. "There were just IEDs everywhere." On one mission he used a robot to partially disarm an IED remotely, but then crept forward to finish the job. While doing so, he stepped on pressure plate, triggering a second IED.
"The lights went out, I got kicked into the air and landed on my knees and elbows," he described. Hale couldn't see anything but felt that his limbs were intact. "I could taste explosive and he dirt," he said. But when he tried to move his helmet back so he could see he realized that his helmet had actually been blown off his head.
His face was severely injured, one eyeball was gone and the other was seriously damaged. Since the mission took place close to Kabul, a medivac helicopter arrived in just minutes. This began a long road to recovery, one that came to include marathon running with a guide holding a tether to help him stay on course.
Another result of his injuries was a cracked skull. Just as the blind, but now thriving veteran, was hitting his stride he came down with a bacterial infection that seeped into his brain and left him completely deaf. It was another terrible blow that Hale has to learn to live with. Eventually, a cochlear implant helped him begin hearing again.
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"It was awful. Man, I was just hitting my stride. I was on my way to mastering this blind thing," when he lost his hearing which also caused a form of vertigo. "I came home in a wheelchair, and man was I pissed."
However, Hale reacquainted himself with his early love of the culinary arts and began cooking fudge, which piled up around the house and eventually turned into a small business.
A family man, Hale realized that his life doesn't just belong to him but that he needs to be there for his kids as well. Over time, he learned to live with his disabilities and lectured at speaking events about his life. In time, he was also back at it running both marathons and ultra-marathons.
Today, Hale is also an ambassador for Building Homes for Heroes which builds homes for disabled veterans.
Reach Jack Murphy: jack@connectingvets.com or @JackMurphyRGR.
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