Former police officer home after week helping defend Ukraine
By J.D. Miles
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DALLAS (KTVT) — He’s a North Texan and one of the few Americans who volunteered for combat duty to defend Ukraine.
On Sunday, his unit composed of foreign mercenaries became the target of Russian missiles and sustained massive casualties.
The 46-year-old Dallas attorney who is also a former Dallas Police officer found himself last week in a military bunker on the western side of Ukraine.
CBS 11 first reported on him last week when he left his family in Texas to join a foreign legion of mercenaries.
He didn’t want his name revealed but he agreed to document and share his experience that took a turn for the worse on his first night.
That’s when he and two other soldiers fell into a hidden ditch during an air raid and suffered serious knee injuries.
“I couldn’t walk with any weight,” he says.
He had to seek medical treatment and leave behind his unit of 15 volunteers, that included three other Americans, a Canadian, several Europeans and even a Russian woman.
“My experiences on the base, my experiences with Team Whiskey, they did not want me to go. I did not want to leave them.”
But there would be more tears when he learned that his base was attacked the following night, as this video captured, killing at least half of his fellow soldiers.
“I’ve reached out to the team members I’ve contacted before and not one has reached out back to me,” he says.
Numb over the certain loss of his friends and how close he came to death, the focus of this Dallas resident turned to getting help for his painful injury and finding a quiet way out of the country after being told Russian spies were hunting for Americans.
On Monday, he was able to cross the border and on Wednesday his family drove him home from DFW Airport after a week in the war zone that he was fortunate to live through.
“It’s good to be in Texas. I miss my buddies, but I did as much as I could do,” he says.
He hasn’t ruled out going back if the country reassembles its foreign legion which was decimated in that Sunday missile attack.
He also believes now more than ever that the U.S. should be offering Ukraine more help.
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