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A new mission for Staten Island vet

Feb-10-2008 » Filed Under: 2nd SCR

by Staten Island Advance

Staten Island native Lt. Ryan Miller often dreams he is back in Iraq, patrolling the streets of southern Baghdad with his buddies in the Second Stryker Cavalry Regiment.

When wakes in his bed on the West Point Army base, he is greeted by a sobering reality: A steel contraption that holds together a shattered left leg, and a myriad of scars across his abdomen and buttocks where searing shrapnel once tore through body.

Miller, an Elm Park native, is a 24-year-old wounded war veteran who now has a new mission: Heal.

This mission is more mundane, but, in many ways, far more difficult than his deployment to Iraq last summer. It requires he endure persistent pain, discomfort, and fatigue from taking more than a half-dozen medications. It is filled with general malaise, searching for ways to occupy hours that were once strictly regimented.

Yet, like a war, it has no certain conclusion. Determination will not make him whole again. He may never regain the muscular, 220-lb frame that just months ago strode easily under the weight of body armor, helmet and assault rifle. He may not even walk again on his own leg.

But Miller insists this mission will be accomplished, without regret or self-pity, but with the grace and courage usually associated with a soldier on the field of battle.

"I'm alive, my mind is intact...I have an incredible future ahead of me," Miller said during a recent interview at his home in upstate New York. "There are so many other soldiers who are much worse off, who don't have the support I have."

Miller his credits his strength to four years in the United States Military Academy, and the unwavering love and support of family -- particularly his mother, Rita Dougherty, who has been a constant companion since he was wounded in an attack in South Baghdad in October.

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