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For Army veteran Aaron Bailey, it’s a service-related injury and significant PTSD.

For Marine Corps veteran Jeffery Combs, it’s a motorcycle accident that broke his back and put him in a wheelchair.

But when they’re underwater, unconstricted by the forces of gravity, both men find relief from their pain.

On Thursday, they got their chance, scuba diving among sharks, rays and colorful ocean fish at the Wonders of Wildlife aquarium’s Open Ocean tank.

“I’ve got eight plates and 64 screws holding my ribcage together, so I’m always dealing with pain,” said Bailey, of St. Jacob, Illinois. “There’s something amazing when you get underwater — you just don’t have any pain. You can move around freer. It’s just an amazing feeling.”

“For me, diving is completely freeing, to get out of the wheelchair, to get into the water,” said Combs, of St. Louis. “The only time I’m pain-free is when I’m in the water. You get that weightlessness and all the pain goes away. It’s magic. It’s peaceful.”

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Combs and Bailey were among six divers with disabilities who swam in the WOW aquarium through a St. Louis-based program called LifeWaters. The nonprofit organization helps people with severe injuries overcome their disabilities by learning to scuba dive.

LifeWaters takes many of its clients, most of whom are injured veterans, on open-ocean dives to Cozumel or Bonaire or other warm-water diving destinations. Its motto: “The ocean is our lifeline.”

The program relies on donations and some small government grants for training to provide diving opportunities for disabled veterans.

LifeWaters executive director Gary Bufalo said he appreciated Bass Pro Shops and Wonders of Wildlife opening its aquarium to its disabled divers.

“This is an absolutely amazing opportunity for many of our vets — guys in wheelchairs, amputees, people with PTSD — to get an escape from their life and scuba dive,” Bufalo said. “Scuba diving literally changes their lives. It’s absolutely amazing to see the transformation in our LifeWaters adaptive divers. It makes my heart happy to be a piece of this organization.”

Wonders of Wildlife aquarium welcomed the LifeWaters divers, and it will be a continuing program, said WOW spokeswoman Shelby Stephenson.

She said the relatively warm, 74-degree water in its Open Ocean aquarium is ideal for some of the divers who have difficulty controlling their body temperatures because of spinal cord injuries.

“Some of these guys can’t dive in fresh water because of the cold temperatures,” Stephenson said. “This way they can.”

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Using dive gear and wetsuits provided by LifeWaters, the veterans slipped into the Open Oceans tank, each accompanied by a certified guide. Visitors viewing the fish through the huge aquarium at first assumed the divers were WOW employees in to clean the tank.

They were surprised and appreciative when they learned about the LifeWaters program, and WOW’s participation.

“That is so great they’re doing this for the veterans,” said visitor Agnes Weatherly, as one of the disabled divers swam past at eye-level view. “They’re braver than me to go in there with sharks.”

Most of the sea life ignored the passing divers and their streams of bubbles. However, an inquisitive four-foot zebra shark swam with some of the divers and apparently didn’t mind being touched.

“I was one of the guys playing with the sharks,” Combs said. “The sharks were awesome, and then the big ray that was hanging out on the bottom. That one was a lot of fun, too.”

Because of his motorcycle crash, Combs said he has metal rods down his back, from just below his neck to his tailbone. 

“Just the bending and the moving and all that, as the day goes on, the pain just kind of increases,” he said. “Then I get shooting pain throughout my legs. But when I’m in the water and I get that initial buoyancy, all that pressure from outside is taken off. It’s incredible. I love it.”

Bailey said the “calmness of diving” that he discovered through LifeWaters has been a lifesaver for him as he struggled to deal with PTSD. He appreciated WOW opening its aquarium to veterans like him.

“Oh, it’s amazing, it’s absolutely amazing,” he said. “Them reaching out to veterans to do this, you can’t thank ’em enough.”

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