POMTSM Tas Koutsoukis climbs through the escape tunnel onboard HMAS Farncomb.

Photo: CPL Jeremy Patten

PO Koutsoukis back in the engine room.

By Rachel Irving

Despite having his leg amputated in 1998, POMTSM Tas Koutsoukis doesn’t subscribe to the ‘can’t do’ attitude.

The submariner has overcome the toughest of odds to be posted back to sea in HMAS Farncomb. “People give up and say that ‘they can’t’ do things.

It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they won’t.

You always can and if you fail, well you just try again,” Tas said.
He was struck by an F100 in Safety Bay Western Australia in September 1998.

He suffered broken hips, broken ribs, a broken hand and a badly injured leg, where the bone was shattered and the main artery cut in half.

PO recovers to make Sub-perb comeback

Tas was left hospitalised in Perth’s St John of God hospital for 10 weeks.

It was during that time that doctors amputated the lower half of his leg.

The blood loss had been too severe to sustain any regeneration or growth. Intensive rehabilitation followed with Tas learning to walk again with the use of a prosthetic leg.

He readily admits that his biggest frustration throughout his ordeal was learning to walk.

“The first leg I got was in June of 1999, a type of prosthetic they give all amputees to learn on,” he said.

This was an often-painful time for Tas whose stump was still tender and the new skin would often rip.

“They gave me another leg which was a little bit better and gradually over time with the change of legs, things just got better.

It took about eighteen months to actually learn to walk again.”

Tas, a devoted father of three, said his motivation for learning to walk was simple.

“I wanted to get up and walk my kids to school.

“All the blokes who came down to see me in hospital, the submariners in particular, kept telling me I could make it and I believed them.”

It took a long time to build back up to covering any sort of a distance and to achieve this Tas would walk down Currie Street in Warnbro, WA where there are bus shelters every couple of hundred yards.

“This was handy for taking a rest and helped me to get a little bit further each time,” he said.

“I started off with two crutches, then I went down to one crutch and then I used to just carry one crutch that I would use when I got sore. I finally gave the crutch away in 2000.”

It has been a time of hard work and determination to get Tas back at sea, including many hours of physiotherapy.

He will soon learn to swim at HMAS Stirling to pass the RAN fitness test. “Some people told me I should give up and that I would never make it, but that just made me more determined,” he said.

“I had to have a lot of physio to build the muscles back up. I have also gone through about half a dozen legs to try and get the right fit for me.

“I don’t go to physio any more but I have to keep in my mind all the time everything they have told me. “Sometimes you get lazy, and you limp, and that’s no good for your back.

So I have to try and walk properly, they way they taught me.”

For several months, Tas underwent daily oxygen therapy with the clearance divers using the recompression chambers at Stirling.

The increased oxygen flow helps the body to recover and heal quicker than it would without the intense treatment.

To display his willingness to remain in the RAN, Tas completed the smoke walk in the mock Collins Class engine room at the School of Ship’s Safety and Survivability at Stirling each time he was medically reviewed.

Then last year, with the help of medical officer LCDR Jodi Bailey, a new leg was ordered and Tas went on to complete escape training at SETF (Submarine Escape Training Facility) and fire ground training, neither of them easy courses in the best circumstances.

Earlier, he passed a two-month trial in Farncomb in 2002 while the boat remained at sea within Australian waters to assess his suitability for life on board.

“It was good, really good to get back to sea,” he said.

“People now come up to me and sayhow good it is to see me and have me back and it feels great to be back, to be one of the boys again.

It makes you feel like you really belong. That’s the thing about submariners.”

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