On May 7, 2007, Lt. Col. Greg Gadson was with the Second Battalion and 32nd Field Artillery on his way back from a memorial service for two soldiers from his brigade when they hit a roadside bomb in Baghdad. He lost both his legs.

Gadson’s courage and perseverance have become a source of inspiration for many, even the New York Giants, for whom he is an honorary co-captain. Gadson hopes to extend this inspiration to the fire service when he delivers the keynote address at Fire-Rescue International in Dallas on Thursday, Aug. 27.

FireRescue Editor-In-Chief Tim Sendelbach recently had the privilege to speak with Gadson about his experiences.

Listen to the Interview Here:

Tim Sendelbach: Colonel, thanks for taking the time for to speak to us today, and on behalf of FireRescue magazine and all of ourreaders, we greatly appreciate you taking the time today, and certainly we appreciate your dedication to service to our country. If you would, just tell us briefly about your story.

Greg Gadson: Thanks Tim, and again thank you and your organization for reaching out to me. I’m forever humbled by the curiosity or just interest in my story. I like to say that I really just represent one of many thousands of soldiers and service members who have been injured and those that have paid the ultimate price, and I’m very appreciative that you guys are allowing me to share my message.

On May 7, 2007, I was returning to my headquarters. I had just attended a memorial service for two soldiers killed in a sister battalion, or sister unit, when my four-vehicle convoy was struck by a roadside bomb, and my vehicle was the one that was hit directly. And I was severely wounded.

One of the things that really made talking to you all appealing is that on many levels, the military and particularly fire-rescue work together. Special Forces medics spend a lot of their time in fire departments getting on-the-job training for the kinds of life-saving techniques that they’re going to have to learn. And that’s a program that’s been around for a while, because when you’re not in war, you can’t replicate the kind of injuries that you all see on a regular basis. So we’ve put medics with paramedics. Oddly enough, the young man that saved my life or that gave me a fighting chance to live took a 2-week EMT course at Kansas State because we didn’t have enough medics to go around in my battalion. And this young man was responsible for getting the tourniquets on my legs in a timely manner and assisting in getting me e-vacced to high-level medical care within an hour of being struck. Those were the first critical steps, as you know, early on in trauma that give patients a chance to live.

And then something that’s maybe a little less publicized—I didn’t lose my legs right away. Again, I was hit on May 7, and I arrived at Walter Reed on May 11, and over the next couple weeks, I would lose my legs about a week apart, as the remaining tissue in my legs was no longer able to support blood flow. They had to take my legs to save my life, and that’s essentially when I began this part of my life as a double above-the-knee amputee.

TS: Do you see a correlation between the dangerous work a brigade faces on the battlefield and the work a fire crew does, and if so, what are some of the top lessons you learned in the Army that you think apply to the fire service?

GG: Yes. First, it’s a different kind of danger. In the military, we do all our reconnaissance and define the problem and understand what we’re dealing with, and after that analysis is done, you’re dealing with unpredictability. When you fight fires, there’s always the potential for hazardous materials that could explode and structures that are not to standard or whatever. My brother-in-law is a firefighter, so I have a little understanding of the specifics through him. It’s just dangerous work. The real commonality that I see between the career paths is really about training and teamwork. Your training is what gets you through the tough times. Your training is what allows you to accomplish your mission in a professional manner. You’ve gotta keep that edge up, that edge of training up—dedicated training. I imagine at times that you can go through spurts where there’s not a lot going on, not a lot of life-threatening calls, but then you get that call and you always gotta be prepared. It requires a heck of a lot of dedication to training and making sure that you’re prepared for those situations. I think that is really one of the very key similarities.

And then teamwork. I believe that teamwork must exist in any organization. There’s a teamwork within your immediate team and then there’s the teamwork that’s external to your organization that’s working with other fire departments. And then there’s that overall teamwork when you get integrated with the police and even the military at times, perhaps the National Guard when you have larger disasters. The military has had to work with the FBI and other nation’s forces. It’s just a realization that you can’t do it all and you have to fuse together. You have to have a professional ethic and understand that the mission comes first and it’s not about your own personal recognition or glory but working to get the mission done.

TS: Since you’ll be speaking mainly to chiefs and company officers, how does the officer or team leader’s role differ from that of the team members? What special role do they play in pulling the team together behind one goal?

GG: My leadership philosophy is really simple. It’s about taking care of your people. Sometimes people misread that or mistake that as being easy on them, and I think that’s quite the opposite; it’s about being tough and demanding on them, but also respecting them and allowing them to grow and learn from their mistakes and creating an environment where people want to come to work, they want to learn and excel and reach their potential. That’s what leadership’s about. I try to never really worry so much about the mission but know that my people were prepared, trained and resourced and properly motivated to accomplish the mission. If I knew those elements were in place, then I have trust that they’re going to accomplish the mission. I think for this audience, that’s important. You have an environment where people want to come to work, they’re trained, resourced and prepared to do their job. That’s what leaders do, appropriate to their level.

TS: What would you say to people who feel that, given the tough economic times and stress on all fire departments, they just want to hunker down and stay beneath the radar and try not to shake things up. Is this an effective strategy for a team leader?

GG: In these tough economic times, I’m sure that a lot of things are coming under scrutiny; everybody questions every expense. I think you have to be creative. I think as a leader, my mission doesn’t change whether we’re living in great times with a lot of resources or times are tight as we’re experiencing. The mission is that we have to be prepared to do the things we’re trained to do. You’ve gotta be creative. As a leader you can’t let that mission go. Be creative, be open to new ideas and really just don’t accept failure as a course of action because when you’re dealing with life and death, that’s just not an acceptable solution.

TS: I think that’s very much in line with what we’re hoping people will look at from the perspective of the mission. The mission doesn’t change. We still have to provide the service in a quality manner.

TS: You more than likely had a guy in your squadron, or knew someone in the service, who took risks unnecessarily or more for sport than anything else. The fire service has what we would term “sport firefighters” as well—those who disregard safety or take unnecessary risks. What advice, warnings or information would you share with someone who takes unneccessary risks?

GG: I’m sure you all have an effective chain of command. As leaders, it’s easy to identify the ones who maybe don’t take prudent risk. So some strategies—perhaps putting a stronger personality and more experienced people with someone who may be inclined to take more risk because as a leader, you’re trying to mitigate risk. That’s the art of what we do in accomplishing the mission is mitigating risk. You can mitigate risk by training, by personnel, and I would say you can do it through standards. Standards level the playing field. If you’ve got people who don’t meet the standards, then you have provocation to take action—and that can be written, oral or whatever. If these unnecessary risks violate standards, there’s cause to take action.

TS: Fire service safety gurus and organizations try to impress upon firefighters the importance of fireground safety, not only for the lives of the firefighters, but for their families. Can you speak a bit about your family’s reaction to your injuries, and how they have dealt with them?

GG: Tim, I gotta really say that I’m so very blessed and proud about how my family has dealt with my injuries. They never wavered at all in terms of their support of me, and it was important especially early on that I didn’t ever feel any of that concern. I’m sure they were concerned, but they never let that become an issue to me. Communication has ultimately been the strength of what’s gotten us through this. Whenever a family goes through trauma, sometimes people want things to get back to normal—the way they were. What you have to recognize is that things will never be that way again. You find that new normal. And the way you find that new normal is you communicate honestly and effectively, and you come to a new equilibrium—a new normal. What you’re kind of doing is resetting your expectations. My life has changed significantly forever, and so are the lives of those people who are close to me, but it doesn’t mean we can’t live a rich, enjoyable, challenging life that we continue to enjoy. We just understand that it’s different and we accept that.

TS: The fire service has a para-military structure, meaning there are likely many similarities between soldiers, firefighters and how they work together as teams and even how they deal with trauma—both physical and emotional. How can we learn to push through the pain of the LODD of a friend or crewmember—or even a significant injury to ourselves?

GG: It starts with grieving and going through the stages—I can’t quote them specifically, the stages of grief. Most important is accepting it. I think that’s been one of the most important steps for me in my recovery. I’ve truly accepted and embraced what has happened to me and made a decision that I’m going to continue and move on. But you have to grieve. I didn’t take any shortcuts, and when I thought I was taking shortcuts, I ultimately had to go through the stages of recovering. Those who aren’t injured, they are traumatized, too. Counseling, communication, sharing what’s on your mind, having an outlet are important factors to dealing with that grief. The worst thing I think an organization can do is not talk about who got hurt or injured, or pretend it didn’t exist or not remember that person. Those are bad situations, and as a leader you have to be aware of that. If the organization isn’t grieving—doesn’t have to be in a completely public way, but I think to a degree you have to share that grief. People do memorials and fundraisers—there’s a lot of ways to direct that energy and I think it’s important to find a way to direct that energy; but to bury it and not speak about it isn’t a healthy way.

TS: What is the most important message you would like to convey to the fire service?

GG: My message is that they are a special breed of people, because they put others first before themselves. Ultimately, it’s about teamwork, service; they are part of something that’s bigger than they are. The unique thing about organizations such as firefighters and the military is that no matter who goes down, the organization, the mission continues on. There’s no one single point of failure. That’s the true power in what we do. There’s something special about someone who’s here to serve. It’s not for the pay, none of us are getting rich, none of us are getting famous, we don’t operate that way and it’s really noble in a way; it’s for the love of doing what we do.

TS: Colonel, unquestionably you’re an inspiration to everybody in the fire service, and we greatly appreciate your time and your continued service to our country, so thank you very much for everything you’ve done and everything you continue to do. We greatly appreciate it.

GG: Thank you Tim. I look forward to meeting you in person at the event in Dallas.

TS: I look forward to that as well. Thank you.

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