It crossed Louis Giroux’s mind as he stepped down from his tractor on a September day in 1979 that he should turn off the power take-off.
But it was harvest, time was of the essence and he was confident that unplugging his pull-type combine would take just a few seconds.
Those few seconds are ones Louis wishes he had back.
“That one second can be the difference between life or death,” said the farmer from Montmartre, Sask.
In an instant, he found himself sucked into the header of his combine.
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“I unplugged it and all of a sudden it just took off and caught my pant leg.”
The only thing that prevented Louis, who was 29 at the time, from being swept into the combine was the hard heel of his cowboy boot that caught under the centre strand of the feeder chain.
He was trapped under the auger with three metal prongs through his leg and his body inching toward the combine intake. His boot had momentarily stopped him from being pulled to his inevitable death, but the header was still engaged. “I thought, ‘I’m too young to die.’ ” Fortunately, the clutch overheated
and kicked out, giving Louis about five minutes to breathe and regain his strength. But when the mechanism cooled, it kicked in again with force, dragging him another inch or more toward the intake.
He hung on, holding with all his might to the bottom of the auger while keeping his leg braced against the combine.
While his leg had been punctured all the way through three times, twice in the thigh and once in the calf, he didn’t feel pain.
“When you’re going to die, there isn’t much feeling in your body. It’s more of a mental thing.”
Hope returned when Louis heard his neighbours in the next field shutting down for the night. Though he could hear their voices, his screams for help could not be heard over the noise of his running tractor.
The neighbours left, not knowing that their neighbour was slowly being pulled into his combine, inch by inch.
“I talked to the Lord a lot and hoped that things were going to turn out.”
Back at the farm, Louis’s wife, Gina, was bathing their young children, Tanya, 5, and Kevin, 3.
She had dropped off supper to her husband in the field around 6:30 p.m. and knew he probably wouldn’t get back to the house until around 10 p.m.
As 10 p.m. approached and there was no sign of Louis, she thought he probably stopped at a neighbour’s house for coffee, which wouldn’t have been unusual.
The registered nurse laid down, only to wake up at 11 p.m. with an uneasy feeling.
“I just left the kids and went.”
When Gina saw the combine still running in the field, her instinct told her that something was terribly wrong.
“I was sure something must have happened because if he had had a breakdown, he would have come home.”
Her worst fears were realized when she saw her husband lying beneath the combine. By this time, Louis had been fighting for nearly four hours, the heel of his cowboy boot the only difference between life and death.
Gina knew she had to turn off the tractor, but she wasn’t experienced with equipment and feared the worst.
“I was panicking and I knew if I did the wrong thing, it would suck him into the combine.”
Louis explained to his wife how to shut off the fuel switch and the combine died.
The trapped farmer doesn’t remember anything after that. He assumes he passed out from sheer exhaustion and mental anguish.
“I ran to the neighbours and I was just screaming, ‘Louis is caught in the combine,’ ” recalled Gina, tears welling in her eyes at the thought.
It took several neighbours an hour to remove the young farmer from his combine, after which time he was transported to the hospital.
The physical wounds in his leg were quickly healed, but the nightmare of fighting for his life for four hours took its toll.
He couldn’t keep food or water down for days and was hospitalized and put on intravenous for a week before he was able to go home.
By the next harvest, Louis had a new self-propelled combine and his work habits and attitude had changed forever.
“You learn to appreciate life a lot more because not many people that get caught like that have an opportunity to come out of it.”
With Kevin now farming alongside his father and Kevin’s four-year-old son, Sebastian, on the scene, safety is always a priority, whether it’s dealing with power take-offs and moving equipment or working around electricity and augers.
“When it comes to fixing safety things on your equipment, we take time to do it because an accident happens in a split second and it’s pretty hard to explain to a spouse that someone is gone because you didn’t take the time to repair something,” Louis said.
“Nobody moves a piece of equipment on this farm without walking around it and checking it first.”
Gina said she is vigilant about remaining in contact with Kevin and Louis whenever they are in the field, always tracking their whereabouts and the times when they are expected back at the house.
“Now we have radios in every piece of equipment and we all have cell phones.”
If someone misses their estimated arrival time by even 10 or 15 minutes, she jumps in her vehicle to check out why they’re late.
Louis’s message to farmers is simple.
“Slow down. Life is more precious than dollars.”
