Wounded Sisters soldier returns home

Sgt. Brett Miller is lucky to be alive. Badly wounded in Iraq, the Sisters firefighter and National Guard soldier celebrated his survival and homecoming on Friday, October 21.

More than 20 Sisters-Camp Sherman fire personnel turned out at a brief ceremony at Sisters Fire Hall.

“It was 11:11 hours on August 11,” Sgt. Miller recalled. “I was doing my job as truck commander of the lead gun truck. We were clipping along at about 50 mph when we got hit with a surface laid 155 mm round six feet off my door.

“The blast took out all the armored windows and threw shrapnel all over the place.”

An unconscious Miller was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in Iraq where he spent a week.

“It was like a UFO experience in Roswell. When I woke up, I was in another place with bright lights and didn’t know where I was or how I got there,” he said.

Miller suffered two ruptured eardrums, bleeding from the right ear and a concussion that caused enough cranial swelling that he was monitored with three CAT scans a day. He was found to have some vision problems with his right eye and some muscle damage to his right leg that causes him to limp at times and to prefer to sit down rather than stand.

He was flown to Germany for treatment and then to Madigan Hospital in the state of Washington. He has been told he may be there for a minimum of six months unless a plan can be worked out to move him to a local hospital for treatment. His National Guard Unit, G Troop 82nd Cavalry, is expected back to the states in a month.

Miller was part of the 82nd Cavalry assigned to northern Iraq where hostilities are fierce and where few of the news media venture.

He was home on a three-day leave and planned to visit his seven-year-old daughter who lives with her mother in southern Oregon.

During the ceremony, Miller was presented with a firefighter’s sweatshirt and other gifts. He cut and served a decorated cake to his friends. Dave Elliott, chair of the fire district board of directors and mayor of Sisters, stopped by to welcome him home, as did Denise Wheeler. She headed up a local effort to make and send pillows to military personnel overseas.

“Your ‘turn-outs’ are hanging up and waiting for you,” said Fire Chief Tay Robertson.

In recent months, Miller had sent a number of e-mails to friends in the area. Some of these messages appeared in The Nugget, a mixture of wartime experiences, observations of Iraq and humor.

On July 8, Miller wrote “Yesterday was a bleak day in military history. I am afraid as of July 7 the army has made the mistake of promoting me to sergeant.”

While only one or two percent of the Iraqi population is labeled “insurgents,” with a population of several million that adds up to a sizable number of the enemy.

“They will try one approach and if that works, they keep using it,” he explains. “ If it doesn’t, they try something else until that works. There are many ways to spell ‘bomb.’”

The get-together ended with a tiring Sgt. Miller and with sobering thoughts by his friends who got a close-up view of the war.