Disabled and back from Iraq in Poland

Robert Szmigielski of the Krakow Post in Poland investigates the lives of Polish soldiers who have returned from Iraq in an in-depth story Sept. 2. Here's part of the story:

Chief Master Corporal Janusz Raczy was a member of Poland's second tour of duty in Iraq during 2004, based at Camp Lima, near Karbala. On that day, Janusz was part of a unit that was required to set up a checkpoint monitoring traffic on a road between Baghdad and Karbala.

"I remember everything, even the smallest details - as if it was today." He takes a deep breath before continuing. "After many hours at the checkpoint, we were nearing the end of our shift. We were about to hand over to another unit, but we were unlucky."

A vehicle coming towards them failed to stop, and ploughed straight through the checkpoint. Janusz didn't have a chance to react.

"It was a bus, one of many that went through that day, so it didn't arouse much suspicion. It was dark, and it was difficult to see that there were no passengers aboard, only a driver," he recollects."I remember it all; the policeman who bounced off the bus like a rag doll, the impact, and a noise - like something cracking. Only later I realised they were my bones snapping."

The rest of the unit opened fire and the bus stopped, but his body had taken a battering. Not only was he hit, he was practically crushed. The injuries he suffered were horrific. He lists them, as if reciting a stanza from a poem of the macabre:

"Shattered shoulder, broken collar bone, broken shoulder blades, two broken ribs, punctured lungs, shattered pelvis, severed nerve in one arm, two broken fingers, severed nerve in my left leg, and a double fracture of my right leg - which was nearly torn off. It was hanging on by a piece of flesh, where thankfully the artery was still intact," he says matter-of-factly. Amazingly, his right leg wasn't amputated, and given the severity of his injuries even the doctors were astonished he was able to walk again. But the journey he took to get back on his feet was agonisingly difficult.

Following the attack, he was transported by helicopter to a hospital in Baghdad and when his condition was stable enough, he was flown to Germany. After three weeks in intensive care, he regained consciousness. Two months passed before he returned home to Poland.

"I spent six months lying down on a bed, then six in a wheelchair. Then it was time to learn how to walk again." He stops momentarily, gathering his thoughts. "The first year was difficult. I seemed to be taking two steps forward, and one step back; whenever the doctors managed to solve a problem, they would find another."

Back in Poland, the help that Janusz received put him on the road to recovery but, as with most Polish roads, it was rocky and full of potholes.

"When I returned to Poland, well - put it this way: no one is interested in a dog with a dud leg. But that was the beginning," he says. "I was one of the first, and as everything in the army, there are regulations. Although that changed when they opened the centre for injured soldiers in Warsaw. Since then, everything has been working better," he says optimistically.