NCO fights back from 3-seconds of devastation - Airman's World - Brief Article

Airman, Feb, 2002 by Jason Tudor

LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. - The flip, slide and face-first smash into the jagged stone wall took, by Staff Sgt. Paul Poplawski's recollection, a little less than three seconds to complete.

Rocks cored the Wisconsin native's face like an apple, splitting his jaw in two and destroying his front teeth. Military surgeons performed three surgeries to repair it, including one, "the worst of his life," that lasted more than 11 hours. The impact disintegrated his left ankle, fractured his right leg, snapped his collarbone and ripped the muscles and nerves in his left arm.

With the May 1999 accident, the vacation taken with comrades from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, to Mallorca Island, Spain, came to an abrupt end. The event was triggered by two anxious drivers on a blind curve as he and friend Senior Airman Jason Johns toured the island on rented mopeds. Those brief moments temporarily halted a promising career in the Air Force and immobilized his dream of finishing a bachelor's degree.

Johns didn't see his friend collide with the wall, but was first to help.

"I was freaking out, hollering his name," recalled Johns, now stationed at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. "I was getting queasy just looking at him. Eventually, I pulled it together but realized there wasn't a lot I could do."

Johns found help, but at a cost. The Spanish ambulance crew wouldn't hand the injured airman to airlifting medical officials until it got paid. Eventually, Poplawski's vacationing friends gathered enough cash to pay for the ambulance and the wrecked moped. Then he was med evaced to the regional medical facility in Landstuhl, Germany.

Poplawski remembered nothing until two days later. "I couldn't talk because I had this tube in my throat, and I was confused," he remembered. "I had broken almost every bone in my face. My lip was just sort of hanging down. I just wanted to know what had happened."

But the challenges of the situation weren't over. There was pain, and the road to recovery was rough. His rehabilitation from the injuries that nearly killed him has lasted more than two years. With the help of swimming pool therapy three times a week, eventually, he progressed from a wheelchair to walking.

And the financial management journeyman, first-time testing staff-sergeant promotee and below-the-zone recipient, eventually got his life back on track and returned to school.

"That was pretty tough emotionally," he said. "I was going back to school on crutches and without front teeth, and everyone was seeing that. It was weird."

Johns spoke to him often through his rehabilitation and knew his friend, now more like a brother, had a rough time accepting his fate.

"Any faith in God he had after the accident was almost gone," Johns said. "I spent a lot of time telling him to pick up and move on. He seems to be doing better, but I still think he questions it and gets down on himself sometimes."

Still fighting pain, back at work and back in school, Poplawski said he probably didn't return to "normal" until recently. He's learned a few things from the three seconds that changed his life.

"I learned to look at things a different way, he said. "You get a whole new perspective on things -- like walking. You don't think about walking until you can't do it anymore. You really get a different view."