For a pilot, ejecting mid-flight is always a bad scenario.
Lt. Kegan "Smurf" Gill narrowly escaped from a fighter jet traveling 695 miles per hour, approaching the speed of sound. It’s the fastest survived ejection in naval aviation history.
“I have a very clear linear memory, right up to the point where I pulled the ejection handle, and after that I have no linear memory,” he said about the experience. “But over the course of the years, I'd gotten a lot back in flashbacks, which were often night terrors. So maybe not the most pleasant way to remember something, but that gave me some insights into what had happened.”
A former Naval fighter pilot, Gill flew a training exercise off the east coast in 2014 when his F/A-18E ran into trouble. His subsequent injuries, including head trauma, changed his life forever.
Gill wrote about the experience and aftermath in his new book “Phoenix Revival: The Aftermath of Naval Aviation's Fastest Ejection.”
Although the plane was nearly pulverized, and several bones in his upper body and legs were shattered, Gill managed to stay alive despite the parachute, which was made to save him, but it almost drowned him. He spent a harrowing two hours fighting for air and life.
"Fortunately, I had what's called an LP, a life preserver unit that inflated around my neck automatically, and the buoyancy of that allowed me to get some breaths of air. However, I also had an equipment malfunction...And while a parachute is great when you're in the sky and you want to slow down, it's not so great once that gets pulled under the ocean currents and starts to drown you."
After two weeks in a coma, doctors told Gill that he would never walk again. But he was determined to prove them wrong.
"I found this spark of hope, which was primarily. 'What if I can prove them wrong?' You know, I'd always been someone who had been a bit of an underdog, an undersized guy, always kind of felt that I had to prove myself. And so this struck a nerve with that part of me that was like, screw you guys. I'm going to show you what I can do."
The journey to recovery has not been easy. Not only the physical side of it, but also the traumatic brain injury.
“I found myself really struggling with the most basic things in life. Personality changes, hypervigilance, paranoia, even starting to have visual and auditory hallucinations as I slipped into psychosis from the chronic sleep deprivation.”
Gill goes on to mention how he turned to alcohol and medication to deal with the “darkness” overtaking his life. Besides severe damage to his extremities, he had an undiagnosed brain injury that medication and PTSD masked, he said.
But Gill credits that experience and his persistence for becoming the person he is today.
“In a way, I'm grateful for the experiences and challenges that I've confronted, because when you get pushed into the darkness, you really discover who you are at your core,” he said.
Gill will speak at an event in Traverse City at The Alluvion on June 26 at 7 p.m. The room is sold out, but virtual tickets are still available.
“I think more people need to hear stories like this because we all go through our own challenges, and if we don't ever get to hear people talk about it, we can oftentimes feel alone,” he said. “But I think the medicine is to expose it and talk about it and reconnect.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to a loved one or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
