Sacrifices on the Frontlines: An Unsung Hero's Steadfast Resolve

Michael “Monty” Montoya, a volunteer demining professional, is lying in his hospital bed in Warsaw, Poland, his right foot elevated, or rather what’s left of his right foot is elevated. He lost three quarters of it after stepping on a Russian anti-personnel mine in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine.

The 55 grams of explosives were enough to blow his foot off up to the ankle and heel bones. He was also left with dozens of lacerations and shrapnel damage.

“I’ve had a couple of weeks of down time to think about things,” he says over a Zoom call. “I think of why I do what I do, and more than anything, I’m trying to figure out how I can get back, as fast as I can, to clearing mines in Ukraine.”

Even the day of his injury–it was Wednesday, June 7th–he didn’t want to leave Ukraine and he tried to persuade his colleagues to let him stay. “I don’t have to stand to do the job. I can lay on my belly to clear mines,” he told them.

They of course would have none of it. Although tourniquets assured that he wouldn’t bleed out, his mangled foot bones were visible, and there was an open wound three inches wide on his left thigh, as well as multiple lacerations and burns. With an exposed wound that large, he was up against the all-too-real threat of life-threatening infections. 

The accident happened when he and his colleagues, Stu Miller and Ryan Hendrickson, of Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal Group, were working on clearing mines from an agricultural community in Eastern Ukraine.  

The Russian mines were keeping the farmers there from earning a living and also, from providing for their families. Montoya and his colleagues came to help. 

On that fateful Wednesday, he and the others had been marking the safe lanes on the farm. Then, the unthinkable happened. Montoya stumbled. He ended up stepping just outside the safe lane. “It’s a game of inches,” he said and those couple of inches cost him his right foot.

Montoya knows there was an explosion, but he clearly remembers that he didn’t hear it. He also remembers not feeling pain at the moment the explosion took place.

However, his visual systems were totally intact. “I see the dirt from the explosion falling down around me. I look at my foot and see that it’s mangled. But then, all my training kicked in. I felt cool and professional. I reached for the torniquet that I carried with me and was starting to put it on. But I’m also hearing Ryan calling out: ‘Torniquet, torniquet, torniquet!’”

His friend rushed over to him and applied a tourniquet to Montoya’s thigh, where it was cranked down. The bleeding was now under control.

However, Hendrickson and Miller now faced a harrowing problem. They knew they had to get Monty help as soon as possible, but to do so they had to make it through a semi-cleared minefield. If that wasn’t enough, the area was barely wide enough to accommodate the three of them going single file. 

The extraction through the mine field took a full hour. Fortunately, members of the Ukrainian National Police had called for an ambulance and members of a mine-clearance organization, the HALO Trust, immediately came to the site to assist in the post-extraction care of Monty. Hendrickson had applied a different tourniquet before the team moved Monty 1500 meters to the road where the ambulance waited.

The ambulance took Montoya to a hospital in Kharkiv, where the wound was cleaned and bandaged. The Doctors in Kharkiv determined that he needed the capabilities of a larger hospital in Kyiv, and from there he was sent to the hospital in Warsaw, Poland. He’s now waiting medical decision on what operations he’ll need.

Meanwhile, he’s thinking again about his career in explosive ordnance disposal. “I’ve heard that amputees take time to come to terms with their situation, but in my case, I reached acceptance within seconds of its happening. I looked at my foot, and realized that it’s gone, and I felt, ‘No big deal,’ I can still do mine clearing.”

Montoya still holds to the values he learned as an Explosives Ordnance Disposal technician with the Marines: “I willfully accept the danger of my chosen profession,” and “I adapt to every situation and will overcome all obstacles. I will never fail those who depend upon me.”

The world is fortunate that men and women like Michael Montoya are risking their lives to help people and countries recover from the scourge of land mines.