Surviving to thriving
From helicopter crash to Invictus Games
The pain was terrible, the guilt just as bad, but now life as part of something bigger is like being burnt up and reborn.
Left injured and alone on the side of a cloud-shrouded hill nine years ago, Stevin Creeggan is the phoenix rising from the ashes of his own past.
The lone survivor of a New Zealand air force helicopter crash has revealed his struggles since the accident, and how becoming part of the New Zealand Invictus Games team changed everything.
In 2010, Creeggan was in an Iroquois, heading to an Anzac Day service in Wellington for a fly-past, when the helicopter crashed into a Pukerua Bay hill, north of Wellington.
New Zealand Defence Force members Hayden Madsen, 33, Dan Gregory, 28, and Ben Carson, 25, were killed.
Creeggan survived but suffered terrible injuries. Now the 46-year-old takes a breath before quietly listing off the damage, measured out in bolts, metal plates, vanished bone, shortened limbs, fused vertebrae, arthritis, damaged eyesight, lost memory.
Oh, and there was the shortened collar bone, the painful breathing from his damaged lung.
The mental toll was about equal, he said. ‘‘The injuries you can see and the injuries you can’t see – both have such an impact on everything you do.’’
It was in hospital after the crash that the guilt sank in.
‘‘You question everything. You question: why me? They call it survivor’s guilt. You wonder why you survived and everyone else died.’’
When Creeggan got the call from the team manager in July this year telling him he was selected for the Invictus Games, he was ‘‘dumbfounded’’.
‘‘It took a few days for it to sink in. And it was not till I saw it on the news that it really sank in.’’
Founded in 2014 by Prince Harry, the games are an international sports event for current and former service people, who are wounded, injured or ill.
Creeggan said he had changed since starting his own Invictus journey. People were telling him he was starting to go back to the person he was before the accident. It was similar to a phoenix, he said – you are burnt and reborn. ‘‘I was a completely different person back then; from the accident, I am a completely different person now.’’
Never give up, he said, even if in the beginning the hardest thing is just getting off the couch.
He will represent New Zealand in wheelchair basketball, archery and cycling in the May 2020 games in The Hague, in the Netherlands.
Since July, Creeggan has been training hard – maybe a little too hard at the start – and has made huge progress on the court, the range and the road.
The man who received a medical discharge from service in 2014 has shed 5 kilograms and his resting heart rate has dropped to about 65 beats a minute.
‘‘It is not just about your body – it is about the support from the other guys and the encouragement, too. You don’t want to let your team down.’’
That team will support him in return: Just competing in front of the crowds at the stadium will be a challenge.
‘‘I also suffer from PTSD [posttraumatic stress disorder] and anxiety around crowds. So they are the things that make it difficult for me being in front of a crowd of people I don’t know.’’
It would be easy with teammates, he said. It was good to be part of a team again without feeling he was a burden. The first time he took to his local court for wheelchair basketball he was knocked over twice. But that was a good thing. It just brings you into the team a lot closer.’’
Head of mission Commodore Mat Williams, deputy chief of the navy, said the changes for some in the games had been ‘‘almost palpable’’.
‘‘Their whole demeanour has changed – it is almost like they are home. They are not rejoining but they are reconnecting.’’
Creeggan said the games, and the team-mates he had met, were helping both body and mind to recover.
‘‘When something like this happens, you don’t forget about everything. But you are able to move forward and find yourself again, or actually meet the new you.’’