How to Rise When Life Changes Overnight with Laurel Burkel

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
Have you ever wondered what it truly takes to rebuild your life after everything changes in an instant? Today's guest, retired US Air Force Colonel— Colonel, that's an English word for me that is always like, I read the Colonel and it's Colonel— Laurell Buff Burkell faced the unimaginable. And man, you guys gonna have fun with this story. You experienced a devastating helicopter crash in Afghanistan that changed your life forever. But Buff's journey did not end with survival. It became a powerful story of resilience, transformation, and the courage to let others in. In today's episode, you'll hear how Buff navigated the darkest moment of recovery. Part of that also in Germany. We're going to have more fun with that one too.
Discovered unexpected strength in vulnerability and learned to trust in the support of those around her. Your story is a testament to the power of resilience. How it is built, how it is tested, and how it can be shared. If you have ever felt overwhelmed by life's challenges or wondered how to rise after a fall, Bob's experience will inspire you to see adversity in a new light and remind you that you are never alone on the journey. Stay tuned, as this conversation is one you don't want to miss.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:35]:
So let me officially introduce you to Colonel Laurel "Buff" Berkeley. Berkeley, Burkel, Berkeley. I swear, we are already having the tongue twisters, which means we're gonna have a good episode.

Laurel Burkel [00:01:47]:
Excellent.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:47]:
And you retired U.S. Air Force in December 2018, right?

Laurel Burkel [00:01:53]:
As of November. November. We're getting the dates right. November 30th.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:59]:
27 plus. 27 plus years of service. A distinguished University of Michigan ROTC, got those letters right too. We are winning for the German today. Graduated Michigan. My audience knows it's like I have regular tongue twisters and all the things. We always keep them.

Laurel Burkel [00:02:19]:
Now we're talking military where there's a lot of tongue twisters with acronyms.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:23]:
You hold a bachelor's degree in biology and 3 master's degrees in human resource management, national security Affairs and Strategic Studies. Got all of those right. Yes, I'm winning today. And you were also a senior navigator with over 2,100 flight hours, including 285, 285 combat hours. And you commanded an operational C-130 squadron and served in senior leadership roles worldwide.

Laurel Burkel [00:02:54]:
Yep, I was a commander of the 40th Airlift Squadron, the best airlift squadron in the United States. Air Force, hands down.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:01]:
Now I'm a little biased, which means anybody that knows me a little bit offline too already knows I'm, I'm an, I'm not an aviation geek. I don't, I don't know my planes. I don't, I'm not that geeky. However, I feel home at them. Like I'm itching. I haven't been up in ages. I'm only student pilot, which is one of the reasons I need to get my records updated. I'm like, I'm a US citizen now.
Um, but yeah, I'm like hearing your story, and for, for anybody listening that hasn't heard your story yet, do me a favor, tell me the story of you going down and then actually ending up in Germany, because there's a whole bunch of stuff happens.

Laurel Burkel [00:03:47]:
Yeah.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:47]:
Um, her head is still attached, fortunately, but I don't have to worry about it.

Laurel Burkel [00:03:52]:
Yes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:53]:
That story is one for the books.

Laurel Burkel [00:03:56]:
If you have the ability to, I can show you some of the pictures of my x-rays. Those are pretty stark. I can show you the crash. We can put those up or however best to do that when we— when the time is appropriate. Yeah, we'll get the pictures to you guys because that's really part of the story because that's literally what I do now that I retired. I share this story because I heal every single time. So you are giving me an opportunity to continue my healing. That's a lifelong journey.
And I talk about how resilience is not an individual sport. It is literally not an individual sport. So to the beginning. So I was happily an exchange officer serving in Canada, serving with the Canadian Forces, and my tour was up. And the Air Force Colonels Group said, hey, we've got this great opportunity to spend a year as an Afghan air advisor. In Kabul. Wasn't really at the top of my list of things I wanted to do, but if I had declined that, that deployment for a year, I would have had to retire. And since I had not worn the rank of colonel long enough, I would have retired as a lieutenant colonel.

Laurel Burkel [00:05:01]:
So I weighed all my different feelings and options and decided to take that deployment. So I had to get ready for that, did all the things to get ready, and I got over there in July of 2015. My team and I, our main portfolio of advising was training, gender integration, recruiting, personnel, manpower, and I'm leaving something out somewhere in there. Training encompassed pilot training, maintenance training, any type of training. My folks worked with the Afghan Air Force, our partners, in those various things. So we had a lot of things we were touching with regard to our advising role. One of the projects that we had was to work with the Afghans to update the Afghan Air Force's manpower document, meaning all the things, the slots to put the people in. So any organization, University of Michigan has a manning document, the Air Force, United States Air Force has a manning document, every organization of some size has that.

Laurel Burkel [00:06:02]:
And so the Afghan Air Force had a certain number of authorizations, so we worked, because I had the manpower folks, that was a main, that's a main project that they do. Um, we went to all of our advisors in our AERICS mission wing, whether it was the chaplain, the public affairs, the maintenance guys, the flight, the squadrons, the flying squadrons, whatever. We went and said, okay, what should this manning document look like moving forward into the future? For example, we had, we were working with the Afghans. They were getting MD-530 light attack helicopters, so we needed to create a squadron. How many pilots, how many to maintain the number of aircraft they were going to have, you know, the leadership, maintenance, all of the things that make, that make an organization. We worked on that project and we were at a point where it was time to go support the Afghan colonel to give the briefing to the leadership, both of our U.S. command and some of the Afghans at the Afghan Ministry of Defense, to say here's what we recommend to moving forward, how this should look. And so in the years past, we had given that briefing, but we're advising them.

Laurel Burkel [00:07:09]:
And so this was a move to, he was going to give the briefing, but we were going to go in support of him. So a little bit about Afghanistan and Kabul itself. Lots of stuff going on in Kabul with NATO having been there since 2001. You have the NATO headquarters, you've got Kabul International Airport where there's a NATO compound where my folks lived. And then the Afghan Air Force headquarters area, and then there's a forward operating base where I lived, which my folks would come to. We do our work, we go into the Afghan Air Force area and do our stuff, and then they would travel back. And so that, and there were several other places all scattered all over Kabul. So there was a heli, basically a helicopter taxi service comprised of all different kinds of helicopters.

Laurel Burkel [00:07:53]:
So folks would go and say, hey, I need a ride, in the NATO, NATO, in the NATO workforce. And they would do that because driving was not exactly safe. Some people still did that. We did have two mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles because we would have to drive around to the other side of the runway to go to the Afghan Air Academy. That was part of our advising portfolio. So rather than, we didn't fly there, we would drive there. But any other really places we were going to fly helicopter taxi service. So my folks set that travel up, and we're going to travel on Sunday the 11th of October to go from Kabul International, the 5-minute flight from there to the Afghan, to NATO, to the NATO compound.

Laurel Burkel [00:08:35]:
We're going to spend the night at the NATO compound, get up the next morning and walk with our, our interpreters are going to meet us, who are Afghans. They were going to meet us outside of there and walk over to the Afghan Ministry of Defense to support Colonel Mohammed, who was the guy who was going to give that briefing, and then come back and then go back. So for me, I was really excited because it was a little break from the monotony of living at the forward operating base and being right there. We were all going to be there for a year. That was one of the things, is the monotony of a year of a small place, adequate but not very exciting. So I was stoked about going to the NATO headquarters, going to NATO headquarters because I was going to go to the chow hall at the US Embassy, much better chow hall than what I had at my little forward operating base, meet some friends. I was going to get to shop at the, at the NATO bazaar there. It's October.

Laurel Burkel [00:09:26]:
I'm thinking about gifts for people and that kind of thing. And it was just a little break. I was looking forward to going to the gym at the NATO compound because I didn't have to wear the Air Force fitness gear. I had to wear that at the forward operating base. And I like wearing my Michigan stuff and other whatever color I want, whatever, you know, Under Armour cool thing. I had an Under Armour super, a pink Supergirl shirt that I took on the trip because I was going to wear it at the gym the next morning that I didn't get to. Um, so it was like a little trip, a little vacation and some work, a culmination of a lot of significant work we had done. So that afternoon of Sunday afternoon, we were there at the passenger terminal and we took off about probably about 15 minutes late.

Laurel Burkel [00:10:08]:
There was 2 helicopters in British, 2 British helicopters, which I was excited about because I've never been in a British helicopter. So this is really kind of cool. We're going to get You know, I'm an aviator. I'm not a, I'm a fixed-wing aviator. And what that means is airplanes, really. And a rotary wing is helicopters and things like the Osprey and things like that. This was kind of a cool little deal. And so it was me, Phyllis, my major, Greg, my master sergeant, who had been in-country a week.
Phyllis had gotten there about 3 weeks before I had, and she was my major on the personnel side. So she's kind of my deputy of the personnel stuff. And then I had Roy, my contractor, who had been in the Army but had done a lot of, a lot of contract advising with us and working with us. And he knew the colonel, had been over multiple times in the past and several over several years, had been doing these regular trips over to be supportive of the military folks in the advising effort. And let's see, 1, 2, 3. Yeah. So that's the 4 of us. And then there were 2 other passengers.

Laurel Burkel [00:11:09]:
There was a French contractor, and then there was a Lithuanian major. So this helicopter has 4 centerline seats facing to the left and 4 centerline seats facing to the right and in the back. And we were in a little white van, got out, and we just got on and sat down. And there's a crew of 3, so our helicopter has 9 people on it. I get in the right seat, and, or the right, the back window doors are open. I get in, I go to the left, and there's a Lithuanian major sitting right in the very back. And so I sit next to him. I put my bag down, and then Roy was the front left-facing seat.

Laurel Burkel [00:11:44]:
On this side, the French contractor was back to back to Roy. This seat was empty. Phyllis was back to back to me, and then Greg, my master sergeant, was back to back to, to Povilas, the Lithuanian major. Two pilots up front, and there was an officer in the back as the third crew member because there's somebody back there kind of loadmaster keeping us out of trouble. And then the other function was they had a weapon, they were looking out. As we went across the, the Kabul countryside, if you will, or, or city side, there's a couple of ridgelines and things. And yes, there are bad guys that are looking to do things, so that he, he was, had his weapon, a weapon was looking out. A 5-minute trip, about 4:30 in the afternoon.

Laurel Burkel [00:12:25]:
We were the second helicopter. Weather was fine. There was nothing going on weather-wise or anything like that. So we go across, and as we lifted off I remember reaching over and poking Phyllis in her shoulder underneath her flak vest saying, "Woohoo, we're getting to fly." And I looked up to look out at the cockpit because I'm fascinated by it being a crew dog. And that's the last thing I know that I ever said to her because she perished in the crash. So we go over and we come in to land and we were scheduled arrival, but we were about 15 minutes late. There were people on the soccer field, NATO headquarters. It's a soccer field that you land on for anyone that has ever flown into the NATO compound in Kabul.

Laurel Burkel [00:13:06]:
It's a soccer field. If you're the 4-star general, if you're the Prime Minister of Canada, whoever you are, if you're coming into Kabul, into the NATO compound, you're coming by helicopter or by ground, which those guys wouldn't, it would be helicopter. So we came in and there are people on the soccer field. So the lead helicopter says, hey, we need to go back around, whatever terminology that Brits use to, the British Royal Air Force uses to do that. So we make that maneuver. Now, that descentm, I remember the descent, and I remember not finishing it, and kind of in the back of my mind going, that's weird, because I could see the T-walls, the, the concrete around to, to protect that, that area. Um, and that's the last coherent thought I have for quite a while. I remember sort of, if you want to call it a fugue-like state, or just general confusion, kind of, but not anything like consciously that I could put a thing to.
But I'm not unconscious. We'll talk more as this unfolds, as the things I said and did.

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:10]:
So, so did you have kind of like glimpse memory but get. No, I do not.

Laurel Burkel [00:14:16]:
No, I can tell you this whole story because of the British report that I have a copy of. They came to interview me while they were investigating, while I was recovering in Germany. And I got the report in November of 2016, actually December, so over a year. And then they actually came here to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois where I ended up being assigned after the crash. And I went back to Canada for a few months and came here to Scott. Well, Greg, my Master Sergeant's wife, is here because they were stationed here. She was also in the Air Force. So the Brits come and they verbally brief those who've lost someone.
So they had done, so we'll get into that.

Yvonne Heimann [00:14:55]:
But so, so last coherent thought is you're supposed to be landing and you're going down. Wrong terminology.

Laurel Burkel [00:15:02]:
You are on, you are, we don't finish the process of landing, but you don't finish it. And I remember going, so what happens is they see the kids on the soccer, the people, it's not kids, whoever it was, on the soccer field. So lead helicopter says, hey, we have to go around, which is not, it's, it's something we all know what that means. So they take off and they go back around. And as they're doing this, this is all now from the report and talking to people that are part of the story, because I don't remember any of this. I will tell you when I come back into remembering this story that I'm telling you right now. And so they're talking and they realize, they're talking about like ground reference point. Oh, there's the palace, there's the blah blah, whatever.
They realize they've lost sight of lead. So they're visually following, they lose sight of lead. So that contributes to the crash, doesn't cause it, but it contributes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:15:46]:
Do me a favor, because we probably have a lot of people that are not as much in aviation what means losing sight of lead.

Laurel Burkel [00:15:53]:
So as you're coming into land, you got the lead helicopter in front of you, right? And as they went back to go around, they're following lead back to come in and try again. But they were talking about things on the ground and lost sight because lead made a turn and they did not notice that. So as lead makes a turn, they lose sight of lead. So they, they make a right-hand turn, and as they do that, they had, they lost situational awareness of where they were in relation to other things in that airspace. One of the other things in that airspace is a persistent threat detection system surveillance balloon. So it's a little white blimp that's above the NATO camp connected to the ground by a cable that has, you know, data transfer, power, all those kinds of things. It's there to look around the perimeter of that NATO compound looking for things the bad guys might do or anything that might be a threat. So that's up in the sky.

Laurel Burkel [00:16:47]:
It's a known thing when they're doing their flying prep. They, they, they, they have that information. They just lost the situational awareness. So what happens is we make that turn and we end up somewhere in that flight path. We strike that tether of that balloon, not the balloon itself, but the tether. That doesn't cause the crash. What causes the crash is the way the tether gets stuck on the back spine of the helicopter. So for 17 seconds, this thing is interacting with the helicopter.
At the 17-second mark, I don't know how high we were, people ask me that all the time. I don't know. Um, coming back around, not super high, maybe a couple hundred, a few hundred feet off the ground would be my guesstimate. It's probably in the report somewhere. I just didn't pull that out from, from the information. Um, so for 17 seconds, the pilots are trying to fly a helicopter that's got a tether with it, and at the 17-second mark, that tether gets into a 3 to 5 millimeter gap on the back cowling of the helicopter where the tail rotor driveshaft is. And what I need to do is show you at least the picture of what an unwrecked helicopter looks like. And just give me a second because it's kind of important to understand.
It will help because you can show this when you put the podcast together. I just got to find where it is in my, in my stuff here.

Yvonne Heimann [00:18:05]:
And that's, I think that's one of the things that freaks me out a little bit about helicopters. If like, if I lose an engine on a plane I glide. Helicopter, it's like if you're not high enough, yes, you just drop like a wet bag of potatoes.

Laurel Burkel [00:18:22]:
Way to do this. So this is an unwrecked British Puma Mark II. So I was sitting back over here, so it's, it's getting caught on the back spine. So at the 17-second, so this is the main rotor, that's the tail rotor. Tail rotor is there to counteract physics because with that thing, it would spin without the little thing in the back kind of countering that to keep the whole fuselage from spinning crazy like that's, like that's rotating. So at the 17-second mark, that tether gets into there and causes the tail rotor drive shaft to no longer work. So at that point, it is no longer a flyable aerospace vehicle. So from that time to the time we hit the ground, going over 4,000 feet per minute, 16 to 32 G's of force, 7 seconds, the pilot shut the engines off and somehow managed to crash land that thing into the, back into the NATO compound.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:15]:
So first of all, securing the helicopter enough to crash land it, not just completely disintegrated, and landing,you'll see, some people survived. Um, managing the helicopter to some extent and also getting it into the compound, because if you, if this training helicopter wouldn't have been able get into the compound,

Laurel Burkel [00:19:30]:
We would have crashed into one of the buildings where lots of people work in NATO. There are so many worse scenarios that could have happened. This is awful, but I look at, that's why if there's ever anybody that says, well, pilot's fault, no, they, they did some things, some situational awareness things that contribute, but they do a lot of things that, I'm here today, there's a lot of other people here today, there's a lot of other people here today. It takes a lot. So we ram into the ground, kind of cocked to the right, nose up. This is what I lived through. This is an actual photo of the crash. This right here, this is the boulevard.
So somehow they put it in the main boulevard of the NATO compound. These are buildings right here. That's a T-wall next to a building. This right here, these vehicles, that's the German national security element. If that's over a little bit more, or over here a little bit more, or you know, magnitudes of this.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:32]:
It looks like this. So this is, to be so bad language, it looks like a perfect parking job except for how smashed that is. Yeah, there is nothing left of the, this is the front rotors.

Laurel Burkel [00:20:42]:
So everybody on the right-hand side died. The pilot, the guy in the back, the crew member in the back, the French contractor, Phyllis my major, Greg my master sergeant. The 4 of us on the left-hand side survive in what I call various stages of disrepair. So the pilot up front, serious head injuries. I don't even, I don't know what his status is right now. I know he was, he was very seriously injured. Greg, my contract, Roy, my contractor, was the lightest injured of us. He had some back stuff.

Laurel Burkel [00:21:13]:
He had his, he had his arm out of the open because remember the door was open. He was doing this. I was yelling, get me out of here. I have zero recollection of that whatsoever. And then Povilas survived too, but he had, he was at Landstuhl. He had surgery. He had stitches, this arc of his scapula, and he had some brain, some head and brain damage that, I'm the only person that went back to work fully after this happened. Roy actually went back to work in Afghanistan for a couple of days, and then he went, "I know I need to go home." I don't think he's been back to do that role since then.

Laurel Burkel [00:21:51]:
Povalas is still in the Lithuanian Air Force. He is still working, but he is a wounded warrior, same as I am. But his capacity is definitely diminished because of what happened. Um, so within 15 seconds, so you'll see right here, this is the instrumentation, the people running out to render assistance from all these places. 15 seconds, they are obviously going to go to the front because there's people in the front. They know that for sure. So they flip the instrumentation back to get the pilots out. They realize there's people back there between Roy's arm and Buff yelling, get me out of here, and other people probably whatever.
Um, they run to the back, they get Roy out. It's about 11 minutes and 20 seconds, I want to say, or 25 seconds. He's the first guy they get out. I'm the second person at 15 minutes and 20-some-odd seconds. I was lifting my hips and helping. I've got to meet some of the people who are the people who ran towards this, and I can talk about them. I've met some of them. And imagine meeting someone who saved your life.

Laurel Burkel [00:22:49]:
Imagine meeting the person whose life you saved. They represent the highest of human selflessness by running towards us because there were other people that were running with cameras and doing things and lots of people that wanted to help, but there were also people that were kind of just sort of bystanders and the people who wanted to video and do whatever. A wide range, the range of the human condition. But these people, I focus on them to say they are what we all think would happen. We're sitting here in my house, if there's something that happened on that road out there in front of my house, we think I'm going to run out there and do something. You know, you do not know really until you do. So these guys who are part of this story know that, and they represent that, and I, and I celebrate them These are opportunities to celebrate that. And then in situations like this, every second counts.

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:41]:
Because there's jet fuel everywhere. You have no idea what's going to happen.

Laurel Burkel [00:23:44]:
There's jet fuel all over the place. Some of my articles of things I've gotten back are the ravages of jet fuel on rubber and all these different things. It's pretty incredible what can happen. And then the fear of fire, right? A really big fear of fire. There's a whole bunch of jet fuel, there's engines. But they shut the engines off before we hit the ground in that 7 seconds. That's, that's one of the things, guy that ran out, there's a guy that ran out that had worked on Marine One, who was civilian working contractor working at the NATO headquarters, had a, had pulled circuit breakers on the helicopter, knew to do that. There were people with fire extinguishers.

Laurel Burkel [00:24:25]:
There was so much fire extinguisher particulate in here that there was, I got to meet an Italian, my the night I spent at Bagram, and they told me he was there for smoke inhalation. So I'm spending some time that first night going, I don't understand why I'm not dead of explosion or burned to death. And then they want me, then I meet this guy who was smoke inhalation. I shook his hand. Remember, he almost broke my hand shaking my hand. But I got to meet one of the guys who helped get me out and help. Like, they needed, there was 5 people that were done. They needed to find ice because they need to prepare the bodies to go home.
All these things that are thinking about in this small, small installation that's not really prepared for something like this. But that, that, um, that Italian, what happened is the fire extinguisher particulate, he inhaled that. But I didn't know that for a month and a half. I sat there trying to unpack how do we not all blow up. And what it was is there wasn't really any fire. It really wasn't any fire. So that smoke stuff was actually fire extinguisher particulate. Like, oh, okay.
But I didn't know that until I talked to people who are part of my story. So that happened. So they're running and they, so they, they're helping me. I'm lifting my hips and moving with my broken neck to get out.

Yvonne Heimann [00:25:46]:
And there's one piece she just kind of dropped in there right now that you don't even know yet. With all of that and them, and like in that moment it's, it's just a doing. You are doing everything to not have an explosion, to not have a fire going on, to get people out of there. So I'm assuming pretty much I'm just, somebody is grabbing you and just trying.

Laurel Burkel [00:26:08]:
Well, they're trying to get me out because we're trapped in there. I mean, this, so it took them 15 minutes and 20-some-odd seconds to get me out. The guy right next to me, Povlas, 90 minutes because they had to cut a hole in the back there to get him out because that's how wrecked.

Yvonne Heimann [00:26:24]:
And but in that moment, it's like you are not necessarily concerned that, quote, you're going to break a fingernail. You're going to drag people out the moment you can reach them. And what Buff just dropped in here, so kind of on the side, as you found out later, once the brain was working again, you broke your neck in that crash. And as much, if I remember right, a hangman's fracture.

Laurel Burkel [00:26:47]:
Yeah, we'll talk more. We'll get to that. She just Set on this. We'll get to that. So they get me out and I'm laying off to the side over here somewhere. Who knows which side, I don't know. But I'm laying there and, and in the front, the first helicopter, there was, there was an air, a U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander.

Laurel Burkel [00:27:04]:
She had actually been working in with some of the guys in my office that worked for me, and so she knew them. But she was in that front helicopter. They thought we'd been shot down. That goes to the nature of the security, the environment that we were in is they thought we'd been shot down. They weren't allowed to land right away, but when they did, she came over because she has a medical background. And NATO compound does not have a very robust medical facility because that's housed at Bagram Air Base at Clark Theater Hospital, where there's a very robust medical presence. These guys have like a clinic, kind of, sort of, with a small group of, of of medical folks, in which interestingly enough, the family care practitioner, I got to meet her later because her husband was my anesthesiologist in Germany at Landstuhl when I had my surgery for my injuries that we'll talk about. She wrote an article about how there was a German doctor who trained them beyond the way they were supposed to be trained for mass casualty stuff.

Laurel Burkel [00:28:11]:
And before he left, he wanted to instill in them an idea of what to happen should something happen. And so his training probably helped them deal with this mass casualty that they have now. So I'm off to the side. Oh, so this Navy Lieutenant Commander comes running in, and by this point I'm kind of complaining about my neck, and she says, stop, do not touch that colonel, lock her neck down. Without her, I probably would have moved around enough to probably have finished that break and finished the business. But she put, had a collar put on me. Like I said, Povilas was 90 minutes. Phyllis, my major who was deceased, was the last person they got out the 98-minute mark because they're going to get her ready for her to go home.

Laurel Burkel [00:28:53]:
Not the way any of us wanted to go home. But two of the most important missions we do in the United States Air Force and Air Mobility Command and Transportation Command is aeromedical evacuation and bringing home those we've lost. Nobody left behind. Exactly. And that could be, it doesn't matter. Typically, if we need to, we will move not even anybody, Americans, our partners, whoever, we will move. And I have friends that I have worked those missions, commanded those missions. My first evaluation flight, United States Air Force, was a premature baby from Guam in the Pacific to Hickam Air Base in Hawaii.

Laurel Burkel [00:29:33]:
My first ever evaluation flight. This little baby needed to get there for treatment. And so that whole concept was very, is very important to me as a squadron commander. We did some of the first people that were injured, well, before I was a commander, my squadron did some of the first people injured at Kandahar when we opened up Kandahar Air Base way back when. There were some folks got injured, we were airlifting, moving them, and I was helping as a, not as a commander then, but my guys when I was a commander in Iraq, we were moving people and doing those things. Those two very important, very serious missions that we do. We will pick off a mission to do either one of those things. We will have a C-17 that's on a mission doing its thing, and the folks right here at Scott Air Force Base, not too far away, will get word that something has happened.

Laurel Burkel [00:30:18]:
Their medical evacuation cell will say, hey, we need an airplane. Can you guys get us one? And they will work to figure out how that, how that happens. Um, so these folks here at ground zero literally are going to try to help get things ready for that. So I'm on the side. So the Navy Lieutenant Commander helps, gets me, puts the collar on, and I'm talking and laughing and joking with people. I said the following, it has been corroborated by people who were there, I have zero recollection of this that I said I'm getting too old for this shit.

Yvonne Heimann [00:30:51]:
Knowing it now, I can completely see that.

Laurel Burkel [00:30:54]:
I can completely see that. Everybody that knows me goes, yeah, that would be something Buff would say. Oh good. You know, in, in a situation like this. So they recognize that I need to get back to where we took off from to continue my care, but they, they're not gonna be able to do a whole lot. So they, they figure that out. So they get a helicopter to fly me back. So they pick me up and they carry me over there, and I am talking and laughing and joking with the people that are carrying me there. They fly me back

Yvonne Heimann [00:31:19]:
And everybody guesses everything is fine.

Laurel Burkel [00:31:23]:
Well, I just don't know. I mean, no, no, they know I'm, they know there's probably some injuries, but they are, they don't know the extent at this point. There's no, there's no evidence or doubt.

Yvonne Heimann [00:31:33]:
There's something to be said about people in an accident. It's like you, you really, in that moment, you can't tell. I'm like, I've seen something similar on the ground where it's like you talk to somebody, you have full-on conversations, and later on you hear the intensity of the injury and you're like, how?

Laurel Burkel [00:31:54]:
Right? Yeah. Oh, I have, yeah, yeah, yeah. I shouldn't have been able to help them get me out of the helicopter. But adrenaline is a powerful thing. Oh God, you will talk about how, you know, taking care of yourself is a powerful thing. You never know. One of the things I tell my audiences, and we can go into this later, is one of my points I highlight with my recovery story is get in shape for your life because you never know when you might need it. If I hadn't been trying to get in shape, something I'm always constantly trying to get to do, I would not have been able to make that kind of recovery.

Yvonne Heimann [00:32:29]:
And it's, it's interesting because I've heard the same thing. Um, we both know Matthew. You have seen him around on the podcast too. He had his roundabout with COVID If he would not have had the lung capacity he had, he might not have survived that. When he had his knee injury, there are certain things that you need to build up to, to even have that surgery. And if he would not have had the strength to that, so you see it over and over and over again, you have better recovery rate if you "train for it."

Laurel Burkel [00:33:06]:
If you train for it, if you, if you always are shooting to get in shape for your life, and that could include naps. We can talk more about, again, about that later, that, you know, there's times where I take a nap. I take a cat and I crash out. If I get up early in the morning and I need, or if I'm just, I'm feeling like I need 30 minutes or whatever it is, that's part of taking care of yourself. Absolutely. So, so all that to be said, They fly, I go back, and now I'm in, in the Role 3 medical clinic at Kabul International Airport. And this is where I come back into the story. I'm in a hospital bed, I have a collar on, and my leadership from the, from my wing is all standing around my bed looking very serious.

Laurel Burkel [00:33:46]:
My first thing is, where are Phyllis, Greg, and Roy? They're like, oh, don't worry about that right now. They've seen x-rays or whatever it is they saw to know that my neck is not in great shape. And it's dangerous. And so they're like, hey, we got to get you up to Bagram and we're going to fly you by helicopter. And I'm like, whoa, what? You mean just like time and what do you want to put me in? By this point, I've already had a helicopter ride that I don't remember, but I'm like, wait a minute. But I also knew that was the safest way to get there. Yeah. So I know that this is something we're going to have to do.

Laurel Burkel [00:34:15]:
So I'm like, okay. So we fly up there and they send Carrie, my captain, with me as my non-medical attendant. So Carrie is from Chicago. And remember, my uniform was, I was covered in jet fuel, so they cut everything off except for my underwear. So I have no clothes. So Carrie or somebody runs back to my room, my little trailer, and grabs stuff. Now, my hair was so long. I desperately needed a haircut and perm.
This is not naturally curly. This is perm curly. I just got it done last week, so it's kind of fresh. I was in desperate need of a haircut and a perm, and I've been in a helicopter. After crash. You saw my hat collection. I always have hats. If I'm, tonight after hockey, I will have a baseball hat on because my hair is not appropriate without a hat on.
So they get me clothes to wear except for a hat. I'm like, I need a baseball hat. So then she runs back to her room and gets me her Chicago Blackhawks hat. So that leads to a pretty, a pretty important picture in my, in my stuff.

Yvonne Heimann [00:35:22]:
It leads to a pretty important picture. Buff is not at all a sports fan. No, I'm being sarcastic here.

Laurel Burkel [00:35:30]:
Yeah, not at all. So that first night, Carrie and I are there, um, they let me walk around, which when you see the x-rays, you're like, what the, So we went to Roy's room because Roy was there too, and we went to Roy's room. And if you Google this crash, you will see it says 5 injured, 5 killed, but there were 9 in the helicopter. There was a there was a Turkish colonel who was injured on the ground when we crashed into the ground. So Roy, we're talking to Roy, we're talking about the crash, and the curtain in the other, in the room, the other bed in the room comes back. It's that Turkish colonel. He says, hey, I was injured in that crash too. So the three of us sat there, we held hands, and we started our recovery journey together.
It was amazing. It was, kind of profound.

Laurel Burkel [00:36:20]:
What are the odds that he would be in the same room with Roy? I never would have known about him or gotten to meet him. I did eventually meet the Italian that night who I shook his hand and nearly broke it, who I thought had smoke inhalation. And I'm going, I'm trying to logically make that make sense. It was the fire extinguisher particulate that I, with some help, figured out later. So Carrie and I, we were, I was up all night I was using my phone, which was an iPhone, whatever it was, small 6S, I think it was about this size. I like the mini. Um, survived the crash in my pocket. So I was making phone calls.
I was calling, I called my dad, I called my family, I called friends back here at Transportation Command, I called all kinds of people. I don't, I may have even called Matt. I don't remember, but my phone bill can tell me. My phone bill is a fascinating study of who did I talk to that night. But I was between adrenaline and all of that, just trying to start to understand what had happened. That's who I was talking to. So we spent that first night like that. And the next morning, I had, the wing commander came in to visit.

Laurel Burkel [00:37:24]:
I had some visitors. The wing commander was a general. Um, and so the next morning we're there, and the vice wing commander came in, Pat Schlickenmayer, who is this guy in this picture right here. He and I had come over together on the deployment rotator, and so he's visiting with me when the medical folks come in. So that's me, I've got my Roots sweatpants on, I've got my things that matter. You know, we all say, oh, it's just things, it's no big deal. Well, they kind of do, can matter at certain points in life. So my mother had passed away in 2013, and it's important to me.
I miss her every day. I think anybody misses their mom when they pass away, if they're still here. I'd given her that Cardinals shirt. And so when she passed, I got that shirt back. So I'm thinking about what do I want to bring in my deployment for a year away from my family, my cats, my cars, all my sports stuff. What little things like I'm going to bring that shirt so that when I wear it, I can think of my mom. Well, that's the shirt they grabbed. Got my Michigan sweatshirt.

Laurel Burkel [00:38:23]:
And then you'll see that I have this, that ugly-ass Blackhawks hat on. I'm not a Blackhawks fan. But I needed a hat, so Carrie gave that to me. So I just want to say that when we did get up to Germany, after we were evacuated up to Germany, my brother came over for 2 weeks of my care time as my non-medical attendant. He brought a Michigan hat, and we, I gave her a proper trade. I traded her way up. I still have that hat. It's in the closet.
It will always be something I will keep. She does. She does. Yes, I gave her, I traded her up a Michigan hat. So here's Schlick and I. So at this point The medical folks come in and say, hey, we're going to air evacuate you up to Germany and we're going to litter you on. We got a C-17 coming, we're going to litter you onto the plane. And I say, no, you are not littering me onto an aircraft.

Laurel Burkel [00:39:12]:
One, I'm an air crew member, we don't get littered on the planes. It's kind of like a football player or a hockey player or about whatever sport, nobody wants to be carted off. You want to go off under your own power. Well, I'm a crew member and I don't want to be put onto an airplane on a stretcher. Two, I walked into this effing country. I may have used a different word if you talk to some of the senior leadership of Air Mobility Command. They may have inserted a different word, which is probably more likely that I did say, because I'm an air crew member and we use those words.
Like, yeah, I effing walked into this country I'm effing walking out. 3, I want to respect and honor my two folks that I just lost by walking out. Can we do that? Now, I had yellow socks on. I'm probably like the pain-in-the-ass patient colored socks. I had no shoes, and I had not seen the severity of my broken neck at that point. And I, but I asked. And I tell medical folks, I challenge medical folks, never forget your case is a person. There's a time and a place where allowing that person to walk on the plane might not have been the best answer, but never just dismiss it because that's not the procedure.

Laurel Burkel [00:40:26]:
Because I will tell you that having, they litered me to that plane, I walked up that ramp, and then got onto the stanchion and sort of behaved myself for the flight up to Germany. And I will tell you that was a key piece of the beginning of my recovery, having the ability to walk out of Afghanistan under my own power was a huge thing for me, and they were decent enough to do that instead of sticking to what the procedure said or what they saw in the x-rays. I know they're probably a little scared of, of that, but they were there to help me do that.

Yvonne Heimann [00:40:57]:
Like, we're not even allowed to walk out of a hospital, right? But it's like, especially, especially with somebody that is serving, there is, there is a pride to that personality that is able to finish it.

Laurel Burkel [00:41:15]:
If I'm leaving before I'm supposed to be, can I finish it on my terms with some amount of dignity? Yeah. And, and continue to unpack the 'on my terms' thing, because no, it absolutely wasn't on my terms. I was ripped away from what I was doing, and I had to deal with that. So that's, that's what that picture is. So shortly after this, this is the 12th of October Monday, I get onto a C-17 and we travel up to Germany. Now what's interesting, and we have time for this, I want to share this, is what's going on back here at Scott Air Force Base. So this is a Sunday, there's always people working at the tanker airlift control center, but it certainly is not busy on a Sunday. There's the people that have to be there, and we maintain control of our C-17s around the globe.

Laurel Burkel [00:42:01]:
My C-130s, when we would go over to Afghanistan or to fly into and out of Iraq or wherever we go, we get chopped, they call it change of operating control, to the commander of that area. Our C-17s, we don't do that. They're strategic assets. They stay under the control of Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command here at Scott Air Force Base. So I have a friend that managed our C-17s that were in that, in Afghanistan, in the central Horses Theater. I'd worked with him the last time I was here, and he was on the desk that day. And they had a lot of leadership sitting at, we call it the round table, watching a high-visibility mission unfolding. Don't know what it was, but they were there, including the Surgeon General of Air Mobility Command.

Laurel Burkel [00:42:48]:
Very unusual for that, that general to be there on a Sunday afternoon because it's even earlier back here, right? It's later and it's earlier. So So they were there. Word starts to trickle in that there was this helicopter crash in Afghanistan, and Dan hears that it was an American Air Force colonel, female. He goes, wait a minute, there aren't too many of those over there. So he goes over to the air, our air medical evacuation cell and says, I want to know the name. Is it Laurel Burkel? And they all kind of go, whoa, how do you know that? He's like, all right, what's going on? What's going on? No, because he knew me. Like, what's going on? How can I help? And we do, as I said before, those are the two most important missions that we do in my book, the most intense, the most emotional, the most, so much behind doing those missions. Imagine it's someone you know.
Now, I've worked with those, those generals sitting at that table for my however many years at that point in my career, whether 24 years I mean, I had worked with them. I worked at Air Mobility Command when I was a captain. And I know a lot of these guys. And they're sitting at the table with someone they know. So now Dan's going, I need this waiver. I need this. We need to do this.
We're going to do this, do that, whatever. And they're all, yep, yep, whatever. They get it all in place and it's starting to unfold. And all of a sudden his desk phone rings. Hey, Dan, it's Buff. Oh my God. I had his phone number in my phone.

Yvonne Heimann [00:44:13]:
What are you doing?

Laurel Burkel [00:44:16]:
You're getting transported out. She's like, um, how are you doing? I'm like, I'm fine. I broke my neck.
Hey, are you gonna send an airplane to come get me?

Laurel Burkel [00:44:26]:
If you know her in person, that's, yeah, I mean, it was very grim. The word they had gotten was I wasn't expected to survive and all these different really grim things. And so here I am talking to him on the phone, he's like, this isn't as grim, but I mean, yeah, it's serious. I get it, but what are you doing? So imagine calling me. Yeah, so imagine you're doing a mission for someone that, you know, it's, it's more intense. No different, same amount of service, same amount of effort, but everybody, it just attenuates your emotions.

Yvonne Heimann [00:44:54]:
You can't, you can't easily just, and yeah, it's, it's never easy, but you, it's more difficult to not be able to put it in a box. Yes, that was one, that was one of the things where I'm like, I I don't know if I could do that because at, at some level, at certain situations, you need to be able to disassociate to do your job. Yes. To do what you are there to do, you need to be able to disassociate. And that's easier when, and again, I do not want to take away from it, but it's emotionally easier when it's a name on a piece of paper than when you know the face behind it.

Laurel Burkel [00:45:39]:
You can't do that kind of putting it aside thing. Yes, to do the business, yes, but you still have to come to terms with the emotionality of it at some point. Being human beings who have feelings, you do. So that's an anecdote of what's behind the scenes on that flight. And so this picture, if I can get this back up, here we go. So the other side of this story is I had had friends and family supporting me throughout my deployment, my prep time, my getting over there, my being there. Um, and I mean, I learned about Facebook Video Messenger while I was there because my friends back here, my, my civic club ladies went on their wine tour and they called me from the wineries in southern Illinois, not sober. I'm in a place where I can't drink and I'm in my little room, my little trailer room, and they're talking, woo! Well, while I'm talking to them, we get a horn going off for an incoming rocket.

Laurel Burkel [00:46:32]:
They're like, hey, I gotta go. So I do my thing. And, you know, those are, those rockets are, if it's your day, you're gonna die, you know, you're gonna die. But they're not very accurate for the most part. And so I get back on and I dial into them like, you know what, whatever. But I mean, Facebook video, I learned about because I was there and my friends were, I was plugged into them through social media. They were sending me care packages and sending me care notes, and I was sending pictures of things I could send pictures of. And so we're connected.

Laurel Burkel [00:47:01]:
All right, I'm about to get onto an aircraft to go to Germany. How do I let my family and friends know that I've survived when we have two families about to be told the worst news they're ever going to get? How do I respect that notification process? Yet I am a human being who has people that I need to tell them I'm hurt but I'm here. How do you do that? Well, how I chose to do it is this picture. I sent this picture to Facebook and I wrote 3 words. One, tough, T-U-F-F, bird, Colonel Frank. And I just posted it and I got on board that C-17 and we went up to Germany. So that's how I let, so social media, we talk about how awful it is and it's too much and whatever, it is also an amazing way keep connected. I have a friend that my 3 months I spent in Germany recovering, he was stationed at NATO in Belgium.

Laurel Burkel [00:47:59]:
He would come over and visit because he would come shopping there, and we got, we were connected through, we had been stationed here together a while back, but through Facebook and other places. And he said, 'Buff, you represent the best of what Facebook is about.' And he's very right about that, that we, it can be a time suck, it can be very emotionally charged, especially in the current environment that we are in. It's exhausting. It is exhausting.

Yvonne Heimann [00:48:25]:
It is, but it can also be amazing.

Laurel Burkel [00:48:29]:
It's like 90, it can be absolutely amazing. So I don't give up on it because of this. And these are the people, this is a key part of my resilience network, my connections that are what I relied on as I walk this recovery journey. I mean, they were what I relied on while I did this. This was not anything, I've never done something like live in a combat environment or an unsafe environment, live there. I have flown airplanes to places, dropped off stuff for people, picked up stuff for people, and gotten back to a safer location where my aircraft are because they're a high, you know, fairly high-value asset. I've never lived in a place where people are, you know, firing off rockets, we're carrying 9mm, we're carrying, we're carrying M4 weapons. I mean, I had to learn how to shoot an M4.

Laurel Burkel [00:49:20]:
I had never done that before. You're a colonel at the range learning how to shoot an M4 for the first time. And there were times where I thought about needing it because of some of the things that went on while we were there. And so it's just a different environment, very, it's different. And so having family and friends through those connections, having that access Yep, it was just, it was something to rely on. We all had people and things and whatever, where it's a shirt or Carrie brought her Black Fox hat because that's important to her, right? So I get to Germany on Monday and I meet with the neurosurgeon and he has seen the stuff and he says, okay, he said, well, at the time I was 47 years old, he said, 47-year-old woman, this probably is He said, "I did some looks," and he said, "I think what we should do is I will put a halo on you for the broken C2," which this is what we were looking at. This is my C2.This is second vertebra.

Yvonne Heimann [00:50:20]:
There's not supposed to be a black line in that, is there?

Laurel Burkel [00:50:20]:
Yeah. This is called a hangman's fracture because when a hangman hangs someone, they want this, it to look like this. And this is the same injury that Christopher Reeve had or something similar. Similar. And so the outcomes are radically different. She's not here anymore.

Yvonne Heimann [00:50:38]:
I'm playing hockey in a few hours.

Laurel Burkel [00:50:41]:
And you also got your FAA allowance back. Wrong language.

Yvonne Heimann [00:50:48]:
I got my, I got a waiver to be qualified to fly in the Air Force. If you were even just remotely interested in aviation, and again, Yvi doesn't always get the language right? That is huge.

Laurel Burkel [00:51:01]:
It was a point of honor for me because I did not want to, not if the balloon went up and they needed a C-130 nav, I didn't want to say, well, you can't do it because you have a broken hip that's healed or whatever. So yes, that comes much, that comes a year later. And so this necessitates a halo. This is the one that if I had moved too much, I would have I would have killed myself. What also is going on, so that's the maze-colored circles here, that's the break. This is the side view, second from the top, that's the C1, C2, and then there, this other thing that was happening down here, my C5-6, is in my medical records it says my disc got herniated between those two vertebrae. This is like crushed.

Laurel Burkel [00:51:50]:
This right here is a near-complete internal decapitation. So medical people look at that, I should not be here or have everything intact. Yeah, so this is what we're dealing with. So the neurosurgeon looks at this, he says, I've consulted with people at Bethesda and down in San Antonio. What we're going to do is put a halo on to give this a chance to come together and heal. We'll see how stable it is. This, we're going to have to go in move your, we'll put the halo on first to stabilize your neck because it's that dangerous. We'll put, move your windpipe out of the way, pull out that, that crushed disc, put in synthetic bone plug, a little butterfly, titanium butterfly, 2 screws in the C5, 2 screws in the C6, and that will fuse.
That's called a discectomy. That will fuse. He was certain, pretty sure. He said, we'll do that first. He said, we'll take the halo off after about 3 months, we'll see how stable things things are. If this is not very stable, then I will fuse C1, C2, C3. And if he had done that, I would be just like I was wearing the halo, looking kind of like a robot. He said, but let's do this first and we'll see.

Laurel Burkel [00:52:56]:
And I know that he looked at it and probably went, it's probably going to need to be fused, being a 47-year-old woman. And I'm like, well, you don't know me, right? This is where you have, you have some, maybe not say, but if you're taking care of yourself, and something happens, you have better options. You have better options. So that's the plan. So on the 20th of October, I, and oh, by the way, I never had an IV or surgery in my life. So I'm looking at a neurosurgeon who's saying, "Go big or go home," right? So I'm talking to a neurosurgeon who says he's going to put 6 screws in my my skull. He's going to cut my neck open, move my windpipe out of the way, pull out that crushed disc, put all that stuff in, and I'm going to wear a vest with poles that the top part of the traction of that is those screws and that, that thing around my head. What was your first thought? I was, we went shopping.

Laurel Burkel [00:53:55]:
Carrie and I went to the BX and we did some retail walking around, kind of unpacking, because the other part of this is I'm not at work anymore. I got ripped away from what I was doing most every day for about 100 days of it. Um, and something, I have Phyllis and Greg are not there. Carrie was the one that ended up having to tell me that. That first night while we were sitting at Bagram, I, I kept asking. She said, ma'am, they're gone. She had to tell me, which I don't like that it happened that way. I don't think she should have had to do that, but I think everybody was really trying to figure out how to not continue, how does not stress me more, maybe, I don't know.

Laurel Burkel [00:54:33]:
But she was the one that told me that they had passed. And so I'm processing all these things, and I got this. So, so yeah, my, they've sent Carrie home the evening right before my surgery. My brother came over. Once he got there, Carrie was released to go back because we still have to keep doing the mission. We're missing Greg, Phyllis, Roy, me, and Carrie out of a small little office. You still got to finish the mission. So she went back to do that and my brother came over there.

Laurel Burkel [00:55:00]:
The Air Force flew him over from Michigan. He had, he was there for the first 2 weeks and so he was there for the surgery. That went fine. When I came out of the surgery, the worst thing was my throat hurt like nobody's business and the first time I saw a neurosurgeon I said that. He said, "Talk to the anesthesiologist." And if you think about it, when they intubate you, right? Well, imagine intubating someone with that it isn't quite the same. So I think that probably led to my throat being hurting so much. I think everybody hurts, and I kind of classify myself as a wussy when it comes to pain and stuff. I mean, a cavity getting fixed, I'm like, it's gonna hurt, oh my God, it's so scary.

Laurel Burkel [00:55:43]:
And then I've had this, and so I spent 5 days in the hospital. The reason I had to stay that long is because when we, this is, this halo is in my skull, which was living tissue. So kind of like when you get braces. Did you wear braces? Yeah. Remember the first tightening? Oh, God. Okay, I want you to imagine a similar type of thing with 6 screws in your skull because he's trying to keep the traction on that a certain way, and so we have to make adjustments. That's what the screws are for, kind of. They're the screw it into my head and keep it.
So my brother and I go in to see him and he said, do you want a local? And I'm like, I probably, because you're asking me, I probably do. So he puts them in. That hurt like anything. You're asking, so that hurt. Uh-huh. Please. Yes, probably. So he puts that in and then he starts tightening and I screamed like a little schoolgirl.

Laurel Burkel [00:56:35]:
My brother was sitting there. I'm grabbing the cushions of the thing I was on and that was the worst part of the entire experience was that first tightening. And I liken it to your brace tight because everybody goes, oh my God, yeah. Imagine that being 6 screws in your skull. The second time we did it and the third time, it wasn't nearly as bad. And then when we took them out, it didn't hurt. It felt weird. It was a weird sensation, but it didn't hurt like, like that.
And so when we did that, my blood pressure went up to 200 over 100 or something, some ridiculous amount. It stayed at 150 over 100 or it was some ridiculous amount. I'm forgetting what it is now. But the point of that is, is that they could not release me from the hospital until that came back down. So that took a couple of days. So I was in the hospital actually 2 days longer. I ended up staying in a room they made out of an office because Longstuhl had to look at and go, can we, can we have her here? Because typically people get stabilized and they go back to where they come from. I came from Canada, another country, a different medical system.

Laurel Burkel [00:57:43]:
So they didn't really, weren't going to just send me back there. So they were talking about where could, what they were going to do. And so there was a lot of conversation. It was very stressful because they were talking about PCSing me to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which I was in Canada. So they want to pack me up and move me from Canada to Wright-Patterson in Ohio. While I'm wearing a halo in Germany. My neurosurgeon said it was going to take 3 months, and so the folks at Landstuhl, the leadership there, sat down and they figured out, they asked me what I wanted to do. I said continuity of care, I'd like to stay here until this comes off.
Not because I want a vacation in Germany, but because I want to have continuity of care.

Yvonne Heimann [00:58:21]:
I want the guy that put it on to take it off.

Laurel Burkel [00:58:24]:
To finish it off, yeah. Exactly. And so did he. So they said, they looked, they went, look, our patient load is such that we can support that. We can support that. We believe in continuity of care and we can learn from it. And I said, as long as it's not invasive, I'm more than happy for you guys to learn from it. You can monitor and, So that's the plan.
So I'm going to be in Germany for the remainder of my time wearing the halo, which is approximately 3 months. So that's when we fly over, we come up with a plan, my brother, my sister, my dad for 7 and a half weeks, and then another sister. My youngest sister had just started working at Ford Motor Company from Michigan. They're all still up there, and she could not get the time off. So my dad stayed and kind of did her tour, if you want to call it that. So my brother was there those first 2 weeks, and then my sister, and then my dad, and then my sister for the time frame that I wore that halo. So there was— because there was definitely some logistics. I know somewhere in here we have to talk about when did I ask for help.

Laurel Burkel [00:59:22]:
Well, Things like putting my underwear on. I was in a helicopter crash, and I tell people the only thing I got was a broken neck, but you can imagine how banged up and bruised I was. I didn't bring it down, but the, the, the POW bracelet that I was wearing, I still have, is all bashed up. It's German steel, and it is bashed up from being in that crash. I have, you know, I mean, it's, it's how

Yvonne Heimann [00:59:45]:
So, so do you not give up? Because, and I'm just halfway jokingly asking, because in a situation like that, you have people around you, doctors around you, like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm gonna stiffen up your neck at some point. I'm just gonna put a plate in it. You, you are in a situation where A lot of people are going to question your walking away from this, potentially, simply because of the stories they have seen, because of the experience they had had, because of the medical knowledge they have. How do you not say, you know what, fuck this, this is too difficult, I don't want to deal with it, whatever goes on in our head sometimes on a daily basis, and not give in to the limiting beliefs you potentially run into from others because they have stories that say me, your chance is not that good.

Laurel Burkel [01:00:49]:
Because I never really thought about those things. Um, a couple things. One, I had two guardian angels that day: my mom, my Air Force mom. I have two new guardian angels that I didn't want to have, but I have. And Phyllis and Greg would never let me sit in my room and feel bad for myself. They would not let me do that. Phyllis was a serious badass. She was 2 years younger than me, She had been a high school German teacher.
She met, she and her husband were in Germany when the wall came down. Oh, I remember those times. I know you do. And Phyllis loved teaching German. 9/11 happens, she decides to enter the Air Force, became a personnel officer, but went to McGill University, got a degree in German teaching, got an assignment at the Air Force Academy teaching the cadets how to speak German. And then she had this opportunity, and she along the way has two kids. Her and Dave are, Dave is from Michigan, so her son, her older son, is a big Michigan fan because Dave is from that area, and that's how his Alex became a Michigan fan. And she decided to go for this opportunity to aide-de-camp to the commandant, the superintendent, I'm sorry, the Air Force Academy.

Laurel Burkel [01:02:06]:
3-star female general. She interviews, she gets the job. She does that for almost a year. Now she's finishing that tour and they're looking at what should we, what should she do? Well, she needs to get back into personnel and she needs to have some sort of an operational thing if she's going to be a commander. So they suggest and work her getting that air advising role that she was in. Phyllis had done, she was a bodybuilder at one point. She got the folks in the office up super early, like 3 o'clock in the morning. They would go work out.

Laurel Burkel [01:02:38]:
She was goofy. She was like an old, like a kind of like a hippie, but not. A Catholic, way better a Catholic than I could ever hope to be. Um, they had a chaplain priest who would come every so often. He would come over to the NATO compound where they lived, and Phyllis would mandate them come get used and go to church. So the weekend before the crash, the week before, we had a Mass, and I'm the last person to have given her the blood of Christ. Because when we do Catholic services, we do the little host and we do the wine. That's the coolest thing.
I'm deployed and Catholics get wine. We get to have wine if we can, if we can acquire it.
So I'm like, so you don't just always have to watch your girlfriend. But that's considered the body and blood of Christ. It's something that we believe in, is important part of our faith. And so the priest had asked, is anybody a Eucharistic minister? Would be willing to do the wine thing? I said yes. And so I was the last person to do that for her. And Phyllis was, she really never swore a whole lot. She did, we all went, whoa, right? She was, she was, and she connected with people, the folks that served us our food, the third country nationals. She would figure out some words in their language and she would connect with them.

Laurel Burkel [01:03:51]:
I'm still friends with some of them on Facebook and other places. There are there's so many that, one of the important parts of this story, of this whole thing that happened, is that we have something awful happen and there's the people that we think are affected, those right around it. There are so many other people that are affected, like from something like this, something that happens. There's so many other people, those folks, the people that work with us, the Afghans, the whoever people that were connected and are hurting because of what happened. Greg had only been there a week. Well, Greg was from Michigan. He's a big Michigan fan. They did a moment of silence for him at the next Michigan football game that next weekend.
Yeah, I only have one picture of them I'll show you later. Of them. This one. This was taken the day before the crash. That's Greg, that's Phyllis, me with my Cardinals hat on, and then Dave, my, my training deputy. And this is Andrea, who Greg was replacing her and another Master Sergeant who had been doing that work. She wasn't supposed to leave till Wednesday. They had done their turnover and there were some folks leaving on Saturday, some C-130 folks.

Laurel Burkel [01:05:06]:
She said, hey man, can I go? And she asked Phyllis, and Phyllis asked me, and we said, we asked Greg. He's like, I'm good. And then this. So she left on Saturday, the day before the crash. If she hadn't left, she would have been with us. She carries some serious survivor guilt. For me, I don't have that. I look at it and go, we got on.
I didn't tell them where to sit. We just all sat down, you know. We made, I won't say haste, but you sit, you know, okay, I gotta get in, sit down, get ready because we're going. Um, didn't think about it. Didn't think about that if I sat on the right side, I would have died, or if I sat on the left side, it would have lived. Aviation in general, we, some of that compartmentalizing you talked about earlier, we, we do some of that because what we do is inherently dangerous. Taking an aerospace vehicle and going up in the air and taking a huge chunk of metal into the air. Exactly.
So it is, I have friends I have lost. I have crewmates. I have fellow whatever. I have, we all have people that we carry that we have lost. In some way, shape, or form. You just kind of process that, that I didn't tell them where to sit. If, and if I had said don't go, they would have been upset. There was a lot of work put in.

Laurel Burkel [01:06:16]:
There was every, they, they needed to be there. They should be there. So there's no survivor's guilt like that for me. So I guess I approach it from I'm here, and I don't kind of question that. A whole lot. Now there's times in my life since then where I've not been in the world's best place where I can slide towards that of, why am I here and Phyllis isn't? That has happened here and there along the way. We're all human. We have our days where it sucks.
And I have gone there and thought about Phyllis should be here. She's a grandmother. She knew she was going to be a grandmother. She never got to meet her granddaughter. She knew her son was going to be in the Air Force, but she didn't know that he was going to go be a pilot in my old squadron. That he is a major, he is kicking ass, he's done a tour in Germany, he's now down in Florida flying at Naval, uh, instructor pilot, helping out with Air Force folks at that base. She has 4 grandkids now. Yeah, she didn't get to enjoy those things, but she is in every single single one of us.

Laurel Burkel [01:07:22]:
And again, I now have 4, actually, I have 6, a couple other people since passed since then that are close to me. The guardian angels, I keep them very busy, and I think that's kind of what I'm supposed to be doing, was keeping them busy instead of sitting here and feeling sorry for myself and not doing things. And I guess I just kind of didn't put a lot of thought into it. I should probably, I just like, okay, I gotta, I gotta wear Halo for 3 months Okay, okay, you just do.

Yvonne Heimann [01:07:51]:
And it's, it's interesting to listen to you say and just go. When I was going through with my late husband through cancer treatment, everybody is like, how did you do that? Because I pretty much put my work, my business on freeze. And it's like, I just did. You did. It's like, okay, what's the next thing we got to do? What's the next thing we got to do? What's the next thing we got to do. And I think the, the beauty, especially listening to Phyllis and the story and how it comes back around and how things are connected, is it is always interesting to me, and I find it so fascinating too on the interesting side of things, how things are interconnected, how now one, one of her tree branches down is back in your old squadron, how things are coming back around and connecting, and how we earlier recognized that we are connected. Your master's thesis being the Berlin Hitler Olympics, and it was my backyard.
And I think That's a great, great end for us for a long podcast where it's like, number one, resilience doesn't happen in an individual sport.

Laurel Burkel [01:09:14]:
That's my bumper sticker, is that resilience is not an individual sport. We don't do it on our own. I mean, we're incredibly resilient. What's inside of you and the resilience that's in there is incredible, but you cannot access that by yourself. We need each each other. We are not meant to go through life by ourselves. And some of that is to help us unlock some of those, that capacity that we have, that asking for help.
The story about that is, you know, my brother gets there. My brother had to help me put my underwear on. How embarrassing. He's 2 years younger than me. How uncomfortable. I'm, you know, 47, so he's 45 at that point, right? And, and think about that. Or my poor captain before that. You know, we get to Germany, I'm gonna go try to take shower, and she knows how bad my neck is broken. I'm probably still, you know, not,

Yvonne Heimann [01:10:00]:
Oh my God, taking a shower with a broken neck!

Laurel Burkel [01:10:03]:
So I have a collar on to not die, so I have a collar on to die, right? So, so we, I stare at the wall to take the collar off, and I go into the shower to the room, which they had. It was kind of a cool room because it was kind of handicapped, so there was a, you know, the German, the European hold the shower. You can actually take a shower head I can do these things, but she's not in there with me while I'm doing it. And so she's, and I'm recognizing the risk of her because I know at one point we talked about what would happen, what would have happened if something had happened, what would have happened to her and her career if something had happened to me, you know. But my brother, I had to ask for help to put my underwear on. I had to ask my dad for help to put clothes on because I have these halo poles on, because I had to. We had to clean my pin sites. They call they called this, I don't have the screw down here, but 6 screws in my head, which the medical community calls those pins.
They are big-ass titanium screws, and we had to clean those twice a day. One, so that my body didn't get used to it. Two, so that I didn't get any infections. And we are Burkels, we follow instructions. I'm, we're from Germany.

Yvonne Heimann [01:11:08]:
I— that my family part, at least.

Laurel Burkel [01:11:10]:
Oh, we love— we love— what's the instructions? So I think that's maybe, you know, that's Some of it is just faith in that I didn't even think about not doing those things. And as far as getting out and doing the things that we did and going to Christmas markets and doing trips, and Phyllis and Greg would never allow me to sit in my room feeling sorry for myself. And we were in Germany, we had the opportunity to go and do things to continue that healing through those experiences. Places. It was very weird to be in Germany with Phyllis having been a German teacher. And I took German in high school and 4 semesters in college, and so I dabble in it. I am not good at it, but I can fumble through some things. And so some of it comes back when you go.
And I would often think about Phyllis when I was doing these things, that, you know, I'm in a place that is a part of her. There's some poetic poeticism to that that was pretty amazing. And having my family, or my brother had never been to Germany, neither had Virginia, Melissa hadn't, my dad had never been to Europe. It was interesting for him. He's a big history buff. He was born in 1944, and so he didn't experience World War II, but he can appreciate that time frame. And to see some of the things, right, were very powerfully powerful to him. That's not really a great way to say it, but just to experience those.

Laurel Burkel [01:12:42]:
We went, so my dad is a big fan of Patton, and we went to the Battle of the Bulge Cemetery in Luxembourg, and there's Patton's grave and a bunch of all the other U.S. soldiers from the Battle of the Bulge. What we also did, my friend that took us there, not far from here's the German cemetery. We went there to see how the German military recognized theirs that they had lost from various battles and things. It was just to understand that, to see the damage to some of the things that are still there and kept there as a reminder of what had happened. And so it was very, very uplifting to get out and do those things. We don't even have time for all these other pictures, but You know, the different things and places that we went to. Christmas markets, Saarbrücken, to go just go to some of the places because there were some organizations, Wounded Warrior Project, the Red Cross, some others, friends that would take us places and we would go on these little R&R trips because Landstuhl is the regional medical center for Europe, the Middle East, Africa.

Laurel Burkel [01:13:48]:
So I became friends with people that were there who the wife was there because she was pregnant and going to have their child. And the country that they were in didn't have medical care that rose to the level that was acceptable, so they were brought there to have a child. I'm friends with them. They get a Christmas card from me every year that I met while I was there. All these different stories of people that I, that I got to connect to are absolutely, we could spend hours talking about that. But the key to it all is being willing to make those connections and cultivating and maintaining the ones you already have. That you don't know when you might. So who are the people you want to tell good news to? Who are the people you want to tell the tough news to? Have those people.
Have those people. Take the time and take the effort to keep those connections. It can be a pain in the ass. It can be. And you might lose some of those people on the way and gain new ones. You just don't know. But have them. Be them.

Laurel Burkel [01:14:45]:
And so when I finish every single presentation that I do. We can, again, lots of crazy amazing stories that I could share. The last thing here is this right here. Sometimes we need someone to simply be there, not to fix anything. So I talked to these big high-powered, you know, Air Force, I've spoken to Air Mobility Command's leadership, so all of the commanders in the, in the organization, the senior enlisted I've done it at your, at Air Forces in Europe, USAFE. You don't have to do stuff. I don't need you not to fix anything or to do anything in particular, but just let us feel that we are cared for and supported. How do you do that for others? And do you have people in your life that do that for you? How do you do that? Because you never know the good and the bad.

Laurel Burkel [01:15:40]:
You know, I talk about celebrating personal milestones along the road. Take time to enjoy those good things because the bad stuff's going to find you. How do you enjoy the good things? How do you enjoy the good things? Whatever those might be, whether it's kissing the Stanley Cup and liking it, whether it's going down to Houston in 2024 and watching your college football team win a national championship, whether it's your hockey team winning your division of your tournament that you hosted here in your area and your cat liking the trophy that you got, whether it's going to the USA Figure Skating Championships in St. Louis in January 2026, the winners of whom will go to the Olympics here in a couple, in a week or two, and you're standing at your restaurant, you turn around and there's Scott Hamilton. I'm still on a fangirl high from getting to meet Scott Hamilton. He was just at the restaurant. He was so nice. I'm like, can I take a picture He's like, yes.

Laurel Burkel [01:16:37]:
And so we have to take the picture and he's like, let's turn around for better lighting. I'm like, you're so cool. I'm like, what an amazing thing. That guy, I watched him as a kid win gold in Sarajevo. I think it's Sarajevo, 1984. Being a number one international best-selling author, getting to sign people's books, or getting your last Air Force flight right before you retire, or the penultimate. Doing your Air Force retirement at 19,341 feet. Go big or go home.
But the people that are in that, who you care for and support, who care for and support you, enable these, these good things. And then they're there to help you through the bad. They absolutely are. And so, I mean, we could talk a lot more about whatever, but there's a lot.

Yvonne Heimann [01:17:21]:
You know, she's going to be back. You already know she's going to be back. Yes, I'm gonna send her off to hockey. You know she's gonna be back. This is, it's because I could talk with you forever between resilience, between how things connect, the waves that are happening from little things and small things. I'm gonna send you off to hockey because you're gonna have some fun tonight. Yep.

Laurel Burkel [01:17:52]:
Only in terms of blood though. I will say that do not think that my life is all sunshine and rainbows. I have those days like everyone else does. I'm as much a human in the good days and the tougher days as anyone else that's going to see this or whatever. But it's my connections that help me get through those lower and help me enjoy those higher and then other stuff. So yeah, I'm excited about getting to play hockey with ladies. I get to enjoy it whatever the score ends up being. Yeah, we won't be happy if we don't win, but we're going to have fun being together and I'm grateful one, that I'm able to do that physically and in a lot of other ways.

Yvonne Heimann [01:18:32]:
So yeah, enjoying it. Oh my God, I love being on the road, meeting people like you, being able to call you a friend now because, oh my God. And it's, it's interesting, we might, we might get humble Buff here in a second because you are an inspiration. Other people, other people like me fangirl around you too. And I think you can be as much an inspiration as everybody that has allowed you to be here today. So thank you for coming on.
Thank you for being you. Thank you. Thank you for giving up your heel and understanding resilience and just being you, because oh my God, she's fun. Crazy. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, you know the spiel, hit the follow button because we're going to have both back, and I'll see you in the next episode. Sweet.
I'm gonna hit those because they matter.