Greene insists that during his rehab in Ponoka he could sense his brain was healing and compensating. “I’ve even felt it when I was studying Spanish online,” he says. “I felt the neurons growing in my brain. It felt like a caterpillar crawling across the top of my skull.” The actual limits of a brain’s ability to recover are among the great unanswered questions, Gray says. “There are neuroscientists who suggest that we don’t have the brain capacity to understand our own brains.”
There is a part of Peace Warrior, early in his rehabilitation in Ponoka, where Ridout asks Greene what he dreams about. Afghanistan, the village meeting, and his assailant, he replies. “We are friends.” The answer stunned Ridout and the film crew. “It was very moving. It was very unexpected,” Ridout says. Asked today if he has forgiven his attacker, Greene stares out the window. “To move on I had to forgive him,” he says. “It was self-preservation.” Later he returns to the subject. “I was engaged with the elders. He saw me as a Canadian spokesman and I was his target. He didn’t know me. I didn’t know him. Nothing personal there.”
There are emotional as well as physical aspects to Greene’s healing. His sporadic bouts of depression, which only lifted this February, were compounded by post-traumatic stress, or what the military now calls “operational stress injury” (OSI). He could not watch anything about Afghanistan on television, nor could he handle the sight of military uniforms. He describes a visit by a contingent led by his commanding officer. “They wore uniforms because they thought I would be comfortable,” he says. “I was terrified.” He took anti-anxiety medication and worked with a psychologist at the centre, as well as a new OSI unit created under former chief of defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier.
Both Greene and Lepore say they’ve had exceptional support from the Canadian Forces. Last Christmas in Ponoka they were given a specially equipped van that was jointly paid for by the Department of National Defence and the Military Casualty Support Foundation (MCFS), a new charity for injured veterans started by Ontario-based military contractor IMT. The van was the charity’s first major donation, says Theresa Hacking, the founder and president of MCFS. “I was really happy we could do that,” she says, “it makes such a difference in their lives.”
Financing from DND and from a trust fund created by Greene’s legion of friends has helped convert their Nanaimo home into a rehab centre. Technicians created what is essentially an elevated railroad, a lift that starts above their bed and can carry Greene right into the bath. A second hoist can move him from his easy chair into a wheelchair. His latest project, in fact, is gaining the ability to use a standard arm-propelled wheelchair, something that would have been unthinkable even a few months ago.
Much of the credit goes to Lepore, his drill sergeant, who helped convert the family garage into a gymnasium where Greene begins each day. There are weights, and a series of rubber bands hanging from the ceiling. Two wooden poles—equipped for traction at one end with a pair of Grace’s rubber boots—are used to work his shoulders and arms, as is a bicycle-style hand crank. He wears for his workout the pair of military-issue black gloves he had in Afghanistan. Look closely and you notice the index finger on the right glove is cut away—his trigger finger.
That afternoon includes a tough session with occupational therapist Lila Mandziuk, assisted by Lepore and her stepfather, Bill Inglis. “This guy just doesn’t quit,” Inglis says in a quiet aside. “This lady,” he says of Lepore, “has said, ‘The word quit doesn’t exist in our household.’ ” Greene is straining with an eight-pound dumbbell, additional weights strapped on his wrists. How does this compare to basic training, he is asked. “Easier,” he grunts. Mandziuk’s hands go to her hips. “I’m not impressed with that statement,” she says. “After Christmas, the honeymoon is over.”
It was less than three years ago that Greene wrote his “last letter” to Lepore. It went something like this: “Mourn me and move on. Don’t shackle yourself to a dead man. I died performing a mission I was proud of.” It was just 2½ years ago that a doctor quietly advised Lepore to place Greene in a long-term care facility so he, and she, could get on with their lives. And it was a bleak day in Ponoka a year ago when he wondered aloud if he wasn’t supposed to be dead.
Capt. Greene has come to realize a few things since then, now that the black dog of depression has slunk away and his arms can reach for the future. He didn’t die, quite simply, because he was meant to live. And the soldier’s mate didn’t move on—and this he never doubted—because she isn’t one for running away.
