- 13 hours ago
In 2019, an improvised explosive device ripped through a US Army patrol in Afghanistan, leaving combat cameraman Ian Ives with life-changing injuries. Now a civilian public affairs officer, Ives walks us through the mission he was documenting, the blast, the lifesaving work of his teammates, and his long road to recovery at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Ives received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his service.
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00:00This 2019 footage of an enemy firefight in Afghanistan was captured by US Army combat
00:09cameraman Ian Ives. Combat camera soldiers document combat situations that can be used
00:19for operational or historical purposes. Later in his deployment, an improvised explosive device
00:29struck Ives, causing serious injuries. This is Ives Today.
00:39My name is Ian Ives. I'm a former public affairs non-commissioned officer with the US Army,
00:45sometimes referred to as combat camera. I served for about 12 years until I had an injury in 2019,
00:52which caused me to be medically retired. You have a very interesting job as a public affairs
00:57sergeant. Half of the job is safeguarding information, but the other half that you fall
01:02into when you're working in a special operations environment is the documentation portion. A lot
01:07of things in special operations and even in regular combat missions, they need to be documented.
01:13That night, October 5th, we all kind of mutually expressed how we thought this was kind of had a
01:24weird feeling about this mission. I think the last thing I got what I was saying was whether or not I
01:30thought that this white flag hanging up was an ISIS flag and then I was flat on my back and I was
01:36wondering what what the hell just happened to me. You essentially stepped on an IUD. So there's some
01:42debate whether it was from me stepping on it. One of the procedures that the Taliban had liked to do at
01:48the time was they would do pressure plates a good ways away from the actual IED because they understood
01:56that when we as special operations to travel with our Afghan partner force and then we would be in
02:02the back. So their intentions are for the Afghan National Army to actually detonate the IED and then
02:08the IED only hit the American soldiers. And the other one was potentially by cell phone. My first thought
02:15was is I'm in heaven. And then everything started to hurt and I started hearing my buddies you know
02:21screaming asking if they're all right and me attempting to answer them and and then thinking
02:26oh I'm not in heaven I'm in hell. The very next thing I remember is one of my best friends who just
02:33happened to be right in front of me and he was talking to me and he kept saying I'm so sorry man
02:37I'm so sorry I I've got to crike you I'm so sorry. A crike is creating an airway in your throat and
02:43the way you do that is you take a scalpel and you cut right underneath the Adam's apple and then you
02:50insert a tube that helps facilitate breathing. I was I was messed up but I understood what he meant
02:56when he said he was going to crike me and I was not very happy about that. However then shortly after
03:02he did crike me he gave me some medicine and a month later I woke up and I was in Washington
03:08Washington DC at Walter Reed. This is a majority of the combat kit that I wore on most of my missions
03:16in Afghanistan. This helmet also very much saved my life. In fact if you look into it you can see where
03:22some of the shrapnel came up into my helmet and gave me some superficial wounds on the top of my head.
03:28The plate carrier very much did its job and saved all my vital organs from being immediately damaged.
03:34As you can tell there a lot of damage ended up going right to the plate carrier thank God.
03:40In combat situations whenever people are wounded they do not care how expensive your gear was or
03:45how nice it was. It all gets the same treatment and it gets cut off.
03:49As far as surgeries go there there are a lot of surgical interventions that had to happen due to
04:00the injuries on my face airway traumatic amputation in my arm and then I'm missing about half my quadricep
04:08in my right leg. What was even more devastating with the blast was the bacteria from the dirt in
04:14Afghanistan that I was infected with. That is almost what took me out was the infection from the
04:21bacteria over there. Fun fact if I had not gone to Walter Reed and gotten the exact doctor that I had
04:28gotten there's a very strong chance I would not be alive because the doctor that was assigned to me
04:33at Walter Reed just happened to be the go-to doctor on that specific infection I had gotten.
04:37Honestly that being in the hospital was the worst part of everything. I mean getting people ask if like
04:49the trauma of actually being blown up is what gives you bad dreams or you know you've got PTSD from and
04:58it's it's not because all the way leading up to that I was just doing my job and I loved my job.
05:05Even the injury portion of it it felt like it happened so quickly and I mean really it was
05:11just pain and I mean pain sucks but as I learned in the hospital there are worse things than pain
05:18such as being immobile and not being able to move or not being able to speak which I wasn't able to do
05:25for about a month or so. Sometimes when I'm laying in bed and I get a little too comfortable it brings me
05:32back to that headspace of when I was in the hospital and it kind of freaks me out a bit.
05:35When did you receive your prosthetic like when did that like how did that all happen?
05:39So that that happened pretty quick I mean a lot of my surgical interventions were solely to help me
05:45get fitted with a prosthetic or you know get me teeth but get me back up and running right
05:50since I'm missing some pieces now. See I got to Walter Reed in October so by about March is when
05:58they're starting to look at fitting me for my first prosthetic and it was very basic body powered
06:03prosthetic but I mean for someone who's just gone five months without an arm like oh I was I was just
06:09ecstatic to have anything back. I have a couple different Purple Hearts that were awarded to me
06:15for various reasons by when I say that I mean same award presented at different times so there's the
06:22one that was publicized with First Special Forces Group on their social media where I was awarded the
06:29Bronze Star and Purple Heart however this one right here is the one that was given to me immediately in
06:35Kandahar after my injury which is why the case is beat up because it's had a pretty big journey
06:41um and this one this is the one that I kind of you know keep hidden away uh from other people
06:48funny story about that one of the things I do vaguely remember is after getting on the Blackhawk was
06:54asking our flight medic whether or not I was going to get a Purple Heart and him just kind of looking at
06:58me going yeah dude I think you're going to get a Purple Heart and then uh I was awarded a Bronze Star
07:05but not because I got blown up I was awarded a Bronze Star because I was a Public Affairs Sergeant
07:11out running and keeping up with Green Berets and executing the mission not that I was a Green
07:18Beret or that I can do what they do but I understand how to support them I understand how to integrate
07:23with them and that's what I tried to be a master at the warrior part of me does not like that I have
07:29a Purple Heart because that means the enemy got me I didn't I didn't get the enemy and it's it's a
07:37constant reminder that I had to cut my military career short of what I wanted it to be so a little
07:45little bit of hard feelings with it but I try to take the good with the bad and you know even though
07:50I have those feelings about the Purple Heart I also like I said I do have pride in it so they kind of
07:56level each other out I've always kind of had an affinity for the army I grew up playing with
08:02superheroes uh action figures watching you know Batman Superman on TV so I've always had this sense
08:09of wanting to go out and do the right thing and then I think that passion was further boosted by
08:16the attacks on 9-11 so by the time I was in high school the military service was very much on my mind
08:23I contracted with the army in 2010 and then the summer of 2011 after I graduated from high school
08:29I went to basic training AIT and was a medical soldier but I didn't want to be in the hospital
08:37I didn't I didn't have any desire to be doing anything other than field craft and you know
08:44going out and doing army stuff like you would imagine the army does so after about two and a
08:50half almost three years of working at the hospital I was talking to my retention NCO how can I change my
08:56career path and the career path presented to me was public affairs I'm very much a I kind of want to
09:03be a jack of all trades I want to see all the things so I signed myself up for a you know public
09:08affairs school and got booted and suited and got out to the 25th infantry division for my first
09:14assignment is public affairs and then after three years of being in what was actual army army still
09:22wasn't really scratching the itch for what I was wanting to get out of the military and they had an
09:27opening at first special forces group and I threw my name into the hat and I got I got chosen to take
09:34that assignment and I spent the rest of my career as a Polk Affairs sergeant at a at first special forces
09:41group when you looked at my entire gear setup from my injury the the IED blast everything was
09:52jacked up except for the Canon camera that I had with me the lens was cracked and that was it my
10:01team was playing with it afterwards and taking pictures it was fully operational but luckily since
10:06it wasn't a blast they were able to do the proper paperwork in order to release this camera and put it
10:12on a plaque and give it to me as a present I guess they love this quote of me continuing to say that this
10:18camera cost me an arm and an eye to get from the army from what I understood about the idea is it
10:23was supposed to be meant for a ump armored vehicle and I got to eat all that with my face but that
10:30camera that camera held strong tougher than me you have very interesting job as a public affairs sergeant
10:36in a special operations and specifically with the special forces unit you can kind of break it up into
10:43two different two different sections you have very much a very public domain where you're doing media
10:50relations you know facilitating media to come check out your unit or answering questions to the media but
10:57also the big portion of that half of the job is safeguarding information ensuring that our special
11:04special operations forces soldiers are not put in any harm's way regarding their identity or any
11:12information about operations they could be on but the other half that you fall into when you're
11:17working in a special operations environment is the documentation portion a lot of things in special
11:24operations and even in regular combat missions they need to be documented such as we we have a procedure
11:30called SSE or sensitive site exploitation it's done after you clear a compound of all you know enemy
11:37combatants and now you're going through and you're you're digging for anything you're digging for
11:41information you know you're trying to find weapons caches and all that stuff has to be documented
11:47why is it important to document all the parts of the mission so a lot of it's for historical purposes but
11:54uh and this is just one scenario why documentation would be important but if something goes extremely
12:02wrong or extremely good with that mission if I've documented that mission well now we can look back and
12:08uh you know actually have physical proof of what we did and how we did it this innocuous piece of chain
12:14is actually something very near and dear to my heart uh and it didn't start off that way one of the
12:21missions that uh my team did in Afghanistan was is we did a prison raid where we were uh freeing some of
12:27these uh political prisoners that the Taliban had imprisoned well we go into this uh about 30 foot
12:34in diameter room and there's about 20 guys in there all chained up in the middle of uh me switching
12:40between helping take chains off and uh filming the entire mission uh a buddy come up he started stuffing
12:46chain in my cargo pocket and I'm immediately like dude don't put the trash in my pocket man like come on
12:53and uh he said something very profound to me uh and he explained it once we got back off mission um
12:58so the special forces motto is uh de presso liber which means to free the oppress I think this is
13:05probably about like the most symbolic thing you can bring back of you of you know freeing the
13:10oppress this this is a lock and chain that was literally on somebody that me and my team got to
13:15free within the year leading up until the the end of 2021 when I decided to retire a lot of things
13:24became evident that made me decide to get out uh one of them was being advised that I shouldn't jump
13:31and jump anymore I was a airborne qualified public affairs sergeant and then from there we were me and
13:41my team that I was in Afghanistan with we had planned a trip to Nepal to go do uh some training
13:47now the issue we had was and mind you they were doing the right thing but the army was very concerned
13:55making sure you know are you physically ready to go you know do all this mountain training uh you know
14:01are you gonna get hurt can you still hang and the answer is is I can't hang like I used to and that's
14:10just a fact I'm missing an arm I'm missing one of the primary components to you know providing combat
14:16support and doing my job in a way that it's not going to make myself a liability or you know
14:22potentially hurt somebody so I sat down and my wife and I had this discussion we I I brought up all
14:30the points about the army the only option I felt like I had was to leave them and go to the schoolhouse
14:35and teach I I couldn't I couldn't bear to do that I would much rather just have a break from the army
14:41than go and continue to try to serve in a capacity that I didn't feel like I was doing the doing it the
14:49way that I wanted to so I talked to my wife and I told her you followed me around for the last 10 years
14:56where do you want to go what do you want to do balls in your court and she uh also being public
15:05affairs trained she found a job working for a fifth court here at Fort Knox Kentucky and we got
15:12everything lined up logistically she moved out here I made sure our house up in Washington got sold and
15:17by the end of 2021 I was retired and out here in Kentucky I saw an opportunity to come and work at
15:27a US Army cadet command as the media relations officer I had the experience I had the drive and luckily I
15:35had the competencies to get selected for the job and we're just moving full steam ahead from here
15:41I love the attitude you didn't quit he lost his ride on he lost his ride on he lost his ride on
15:55god damn that sounds familiar during my time in the army I learned there are two things I absolutely
16:03love one of them is combat I love being a warrior I love going out kicking indoors shooting guns
16:11being with a small group of like-minded individuals who are trying to accomplish mission the other
16:19part I learned is I love to mentor people I love to be I love to teach I love to motivate so even
16:28though it's not necessarily part of the job description part of you know being in cadet command is being
16:34around these cadets who are about to lead the next generation of soldier I want cadets I want this next
16:41generation of soldier to feel like they have that support I want them to see how leaders are you
16:51know being empathetic and compassionate and mission driven more than anything and I want them to take
16:57then I want them to run with that as they become officers in the United States Army you sacrifice a lot
17:06more than most for this country what does that mean to someone had to do it there's this term I think
17:12that kind of coincides with you know people who have lost it physically lost parts of themselves it's
17:20called sin eater you you go out and you're doing the things that other people aren't doing in order
17:26for them to have a better life right you're eating the sin that they aren't going to eat I I would go out
17:32and lose my arm 10 out of 10 times if it means that we get to keep our country the way it is keep my
17:41brothers and sisters who are beside me fighting keep them safe if I can be a part of that cause to make
17:48sure that the rest of America you know the rest of the country doesn't have to put themselves in that
17:52situation I will
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