Ex-bomb tech rebuilds life after losing sight, hearing

PENSACOLA — Army Sgt. Aaron Hale rendered one improvised explosive device safe. He was returning to gather evidence from the first bomb on Dec. 8, 2011, in Afghanistan, when a second undetected device blew.

The blast did not cause him to lose consciousness.

“I first thought my helmet was over my face. I started doing a systems check for my fingers and toes, and then I tapped on my head and realized my helmet was gone,” Hale said. “I knew something was really wrong with my eyes.”

But the veteran military bomb tech and explosive ordnance disposal team leader was more worried about the safety of those around him and whether more undetected pressure-plate IEDs could go off and hurt those trying to help.

“I didn’t want to put anyone else in danger,” he said.

Just 14 minutes after the blast, he was en route to a Kandahar medical station. Within 24 hours he was at a U.S. military medical hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. A day later, he arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Md.

The blast, which came from his right side, fused his eyelids together, perforated his eardrums and cracked his skull. Spinal fluid was leaking from his nose.

“I began to suspect that my eyesight was lost,” Hale said.

After multiple surgeries, his suspicions were confirmed.

Hale’s right eardrum never healed, but he was able to hear out of his left ear.

He slowly began to adapt to a life without sight.

“It is not about what you don’t have, it’s about the tools you do have in your kit — my creativity, my senses, my patience,” he said.

He eventually returned to Navy’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal School at Eglin Air Force Base, where he instructed others on how to rid war zones of deadly bombs. His presence at the school was a sobering reminder of the seriousness of the job.

“The first thing we tell [students] is all of the ways any device can hurt them and what can set it off. The first thing I told them about was how this IED got me. It’s not something I wanted to be machismo about,” he said.

Hale started rebuilding his physical strength through running, climbing and kayaking. He ran marathons. He reunited with a longtime family friend who later became his wife.

And then Hale became deathly ill.

He contracted bacterial meningitis likely related to his extensive facial and head injuries. It happened in 2015, four years after the blast that took his sight.

“Through the tons of antibiotics or the bacteria, my hearing was being erased,” said Hale, who woke up in the hospital hearing only faint, muffled sounds.

He eventually lost all of his hearing.

His then-girlfriend, McKayla, stayed at his side, communicating with him by writing on his palm with her finger. She moved into his Destin-area home and helped him negotiate life without his hearing or sight.