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Army tenure far from over, blind soldier advances career after Iraq

Jul-22-2006 » Filed Under: Homefront

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By KATE WILTROUT, The Virginian-Pilot

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.

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.[...]


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