Blind soldier advances career after Iraq

[Batgirl]

By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot
© July 22, 2006

FORT MONROE - Something told Tiffany Smiley not to sign the papers that would end her husband's Army career.

A week earlier, Scott Smiley had been a lieutenant in charge of a Stryker Brigade Combat Team platoon in Mosul, Iraq. He'd graduated from West Point, made it through Ranger school and hoped to serve in special operations.

Yet in April 2005, he was barely conscious - the victim of a suicide car bombing that sent shrapnel into his brain, leaving him temporarily paralyzed and permanently blind.


Capt. Scott Smiley wears prosthetic eyes after a suicide attack in Iraq blinded him. “What I have fought for, I am still involved in,” he says. RICH-JOSEPH FACUN / THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT


Within days of Smiley's arrival at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, a civilian social worker encouraged his wife to fill out forms to medically retire him.

"Instantly, this thing inside me was like 'No, this isn't right,'" Tiffany Smiley, now 25, recalled. "It was just this gut feeling."

Through weeks and months to come, as Scott Smiley's body healed, as he learned how to walk with a cane and read Braille, he and his wife were told by doctors and therapists in Washington; Tacoma, Wash., and Palo Alto, Calif.: Your Army career is over.

Smiley - earnest, outgoing, quick to poke fun at himself, devoutly religious - has proved them wrong.

Taking advantage of the Army's new willingness to consider allowing seriously injured soldiers to stay in uniform, and with the backing of superiors all the way up to a three-star general, Smiley has settled into a job at Fort Monroe's Training and Doctrine Command.

He has matter-of-factly accepted his fate.

"Being blind is no different than being sighted," he said. "You just live life a little differently."

The guy everyone calls Scotty jokes about colleagues having to straighten crooked patches on his uniform and laughs about being stopped on base and asked for directions, which he was able to provide.

Last Thursday, with friends, family and more than 50 of his colleagues looking on, Tiffany Smiley attached captain's bars to her 26 -year-old husband's camouflage uniform.

"We aren't giving this to you; you have earned this," Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp said during the promotion ceremony. The general - whose son, Capt. Jeff Van Antwerp, was Smiley's company commander in Iraq - perhaps has been Smiley's greatest ally in his quest to stay on active duty.

The general, who knew Smiley before his injury, kept tabs on the officer from the day he was hurt. He called the military doctors in Landstuhl, Germany, where Smiley was sent from Iraq. He got subordinates to research Army doctrine on medical retirement and called on colleagues - including the Army's surgeon general and the commanding officer of Walter Reed - for help.

Van Antwerp said in an interview last week he took to heart the Army's creed never to leave behind a fallen comrade.

"If they can contribute, they ought to be able to stay in," he said.

Van Antwerp offered Smiley a job at Fort Monroe in February, and the couple - high- school sweethearts from Pasco, Wash. - moved to Virginia in April.

Smiley works for the Army Accessions Command, evaluating basic training policies and procedures and making field visits to talk to soldiers about what to expect in war.

"What I have fought for, I'm still involved in," he said.

That hasn't always been the case in the Army.

Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, a spokesman for the Army's human resources command, said the service's approach toward injured soldiers has changed dramatically since the start of the war on terrorism.

"The mentality years ago was once you're injured, you're no longer of much value," Arata said.

Senior Army leaders think differently now, Arata said, citing the Wounded Warrior Program as an example.

The Army program, which has a staff of 40, helps severely wounded soldiers transition back to duty if they want to stay in, or assists them in finding civilian jobs, sometimes inside the Army.

"We're looking for ways to use the skills and experience that the soldiers still have," Arata said. "Because they're blind or missing a leg or have other difficulties doesn't meant they're not an asset to the Army."

The program began under a different name in 2004, but its message was just beginning to be heard, Van Antwerp said, when Smiley arrived at Walter Reed a little more than a year ago.

"He's been a pioneer through this process," Van Antwerp said.

Smiley credits the many people who interceded on his behalf so he could stay on duty.

"All along the way it's been kind of a fight," Smiley said. "But it's a good fight."

He worries about other injured soldiers who don't have high-ranking advocates or families to help them.

"A lot of soldiers are being told what to do, what they can and can't do," Smiley said. "There's tons of information that the Army doesn't necessarily tell that private or sergeant or lieutenant or captain."

Still, he senses some change. The Wounded Warrior Program now has counselors working directly with soldiers at Walter Reed and may expand that to other large Army hospitals.

And Smiley is doing his part to get the message out.

Last month, Smiley returned to Walter Reed with Van Antwerp to speak at a Wounded Warrior Program job fair. He told the crowd to think about staying on active duty, to tap into the Army's resources for training that will help them down the line.

"Allow the Army to make you better than you are right now," Smiley said he told them.

Smiley and his wife both credit their faith with sustaining them over the past 16 months. "I just thank Jesus Christ every day that I'm even alive," Smiley said after he was promoted.

His wife remembers him crying only twice, both times at Walter Reed - the day the Purple Heart was pinned to his T-shirt and the day he learned doctors couldn't salvage his right eye.

The officer wants to serve out his five-year commitment to repay his West Point education, meaning two more years in uniform. Staying in longer might be difficult; being blind likely prevents him from commanding soldiers, a requirement for officers moving up the ranks.

His job is still evolving. He participates in video teleconferences, e-mails friends serving in Iraq to learn about what kind of preparation their soldiers need and occasionally travels to Army bases to assess training procedures.

In the office, Smiley relies on a scanner to convert hard-copy documents into computer files. A special computer program "reads" those files or e-mails into an earpiece.

Smiley doesn't feel as productive as he did on the ground in Iraq, but it feels good to do what he can.

"I wake up in the morning and I'm happy to go to work," Smiley said. "Sometimes there's not much information that they need from me. But I feel that I'm useful."

He and his wife live on base in housing usually reserved for higher-ranking officers, two blocks from his office. He walks to and from work, pedals the back of the couple's tandem bicycle, walks their dog, Ocean, and goes running with his wife along the fort's seawall, a cloth band connecting their wrists. Two weeks ago, he went sky diving.

"I can't do a lot of the same things I used to be able to do," Smiley said. He misses watching the sun come up, seeing green grass and blue water. He regrets that he'll never again see his wife's face.

Though his injury altered the way he lives, Smiley insists it hasn't changed him at his core: "I'm the same exact person I was before."

[ClutterbusterNY]

Amazing and Outstanding!

[Blind_Reaper]

He's an example to all injured soldiers... Good luck to him.