U.S. Army Veteran and Double Amputee Shares His Experience From Warrior Getaway

Jay Fondren – Veteran US Army
My, my niece recently asked me that. She’d asked me about serving and would I do it over again. I said yes because when we went and fought we went and fought and we sacrificed because we loved what was behind us. Because she was worth fighting for. Because if you’re watching this video, you are worth fighting for.

It’s not the hate for our enemy, but it’s the love for our families and our communities and our nation.

I’d met my wife and we were in college, and I was having a lot of fun playing soccer and rodeoing and not so much going to class. And I met my wife. I knew I wanted to get married, and I needed to kind of grow up, but not always wanted to be in the military. My family has a long history of serving our country.

And, and I went and enlisted. She and I prayed about it before I joined. And then I went in enlisted in the Army in January of 2000.

Anne Fondren
The Lord somehow let us have a conversation in the car. I had been seeing and reading articles about soldiers losing their limbs, and we just happened to have just one of those off shoot conversations.

And I was like, you know what Jay if you lose a limb, know that I’m okay with that. Just come home. And that was the extent of our conversation.

Jay
We had gotten word that this convoy was coming through on the north side, and that we had needed to go up and secure their out and clear it for them.

We were the second vehicle in the convoy, and the first ID went off, and it was a big ball bearing IED trying to think of it like a big shotgun blast. It was ball bearings packed into a coffee can full of explosives, and it disabled the vehicle. But just seconds after the penetrating round ran off. The guys behind me reported that they could see it skip off the ground before it hit my truck and came through and hit my door.

And I looked down and I can see the cargo pockets on my pants, and there wasn’t anything below it and wound up taking my legs completely off. My last memory of Iraq was kind of like the closing scenes in MASH, right? So I can remember getting put on the helicopter. I can remember seeing the flight medic right here working on me, and as it took off, I could remember seeing out the window as the guys on the ground got smaller.

Anne
Jay was supposed to have a massive surgery in Iraq. and they were like, if he has a surgery here, he will die, almost guaranteed. So we need him stable enough so we can transfer him to to Germany.

Jay
48 hours to get me out of Iraq. And then I got to Germany and then 48 hours to get out of Germany to get back stateside.

The family theme was that I hadn’t died yet. They just needed to send me out.

Anne
So I walked in, and the only part of gee, I could touch was this part on the team.

So everything else unpacked or two. He was incubated.

He didn’t look like Jay. He was really bloated and swollen.

And they told us just to let him know that he was home, that he was safe, and just repeat that.

Jay
I spent nine months at Walter Reed. And then when I came back, I spent another next couple of years trying to. Just to figure out how to be me.

Anne
You mourn, you grieve. In fact, I always say I had more in common with the widows in our church than I did the young moms, because I had I had to grieve the man I lost, and then I had to accept the man that came home.

I went through a period of jealousy of my friends. I know this sounds very morbid, but I have friends who actually lost their spouse and then got to start over. They got to grieve like they were allowed to grieve. I felt like a lot of women who have, husbands who were injured, they kept getting, oh, why are you so grateful your spouse lived?

Yes. But I’m allowed to grieve the man that I lost. And they didn’t see the fact that we lost the person we married. And that was probably the most difficult thing, is not being allowed publicly to grieve. The early years were a lot harder to care for children. And as a disabled spouse, when when you have young children that require a lot of lifting and physically moving, and you also have a spouse that requires the same amount, you never have a day off.

Lane Benfield – Retired, US Air Force, Joni and Friends Volunteers
Where you get away it’s an opportunity for not only the warrior to come and learn about combat, injury, and moral injury, how it impacts our family, but also the caregivers as well, to understand how trauma has impacted their stress, their roles, their emotions. And also it involves the children.

Becky Ellis – Joni and Friends Texas
And so we see an opportunity to serve the entire family, to provide them with a week of Christ centred care, love, while sharing the hope of the gospel through volunteers who are willing to serve as the hands and feet of Jesus.

Lane
What we’re doing here at the Warrior Getaway is y’all are providing opportunities for warriors to come in with their families and make shared, meaningful, positive experiences that otherwise might not have had the resources or the capability or the capacity to do it.

Becky
It makes such a big difference in their lives and in their relationship with their father. They get to break away from normal stress of everyday living, and they get to reconnect with their dad.

Lane
A lot of the families are they’re here. they’re at the point of breaking their families here that that if they didn’t have some sort of intervention or people pouring into them, they would still be together. And there’s families that come here that we have. They’re living in hotel rooms or not have stable housing.

They could not afford to invest in their relationship with your spouse and their kids. The way that we’re able to do here. What what’s the dollar amount on on restoring a marriage? What’s the dollar amount on being able to keep a veteran from committing suicide so that they maintain a relationship with their spouse and their kids, the positive outcomes they’re going to happen in our communities and in our society, from maintaining these spousal and family, these biblical family relationships you can’t put a dollar amount on that.

Story Provided By:
Joni and Friends

Producing Organization
Joni and Friends – www.joniandfriends.org

Recording Location
USA

Organization featured in this Story
Joni and Friends – www.joniandfriends.org

People Interviewed and their Titles
Jay Fondren – Veteran US Army
Anne Fondren
Lane Benfield – Retired, US Air Force, Joni and Friends Volunteers
Becky Ellis – Joni and Friends Texas