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FORT Braxton Bragg, N.C. When Capt. Ivan Fidel Castro joined the Regular army, he set ends: to bound out of aeroplanes, kick in doorways and lead soldiers into combat. He accomplished them all. Then the trench mortar round landed five pes away, ruinous away his sight.

“One time you’re blind, you have to lay new ends,” Castro expressed.

He set them high.

Not content with merely staying in the Ground forces, he is the only blind officer portion in the Particular Forces - the small, elite unit of measurements famed for falling behind foe lines on combat missionary stations.

“I am locomoting to force the boundaries,” said the 40-year-old executive officer at the Seventh Special Forces Group’s main office company in Fort Braxton Bragg. “I don’t want to go to Fort up Bragg and show up and sit down in an business office. I want to do work every twenty and have a missionary post.”

Since the warfare began in Iraq, more than 100 military personnel have existed blinded and 247 others have misplaced sight in 1 eye. Only 2 early blind officers serve in the active-duty Regular army: one a skipper studying to be an teacher at West Point, the early an teacher at the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Castro’s unit of measurement commander emphasised his is no brotherly love assignment. Instead it draws on his experience as a Peculiar Forces team fellow member and platoon leader with the 82nd Airborne Division.

“The only reason that anyone serves with Seventh Special Forces Group is if they have realed talents,” stated Col. Sean Mulholland. “We don’t treat (Castro) as a public personal business or an enrolling tool.”

An 18-year Regular army veteran, Fidel Castro Ruz was a Ranger before complementary Special Forces preparation, the punishing yearlong course plenty of soldiers neglect to complete. He united the Particular Forces as a weapon systems sergeant, earned an officer’s commission and affected on to the 82nd - desiring to render one hour interval to the Peculiar Forces as a squad leader.

Then living changed on a rooftop outside Youssifiyah, Republic of Iraq, in September 2006.

Fidel Castro had palliated other paras atop a business firm after a dark of struggling. He never heard the incoming mortar round. There was simply a flash of light, then dark.

Shrapnel torus through his body, breakage his arm and shoulder and tearing up the went away side of his face. Two early paratroopers deceased.

When Fidel Castro Ruz awoke six hebdomads later at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., his right eye was kaput. Doctors existed unable to salvage his went away.

The Blinded Veterans Connexion estimates 13 percentage of all combat infirmary emergency process in Iraq have affected eye harms and more than half of the soldiers with traumatic brain traumas also endure some optic impairment. That makes them the third most common harm - behind post traumatic stress disorder and brain hurts - in Irak.

“What he is making is a potent example that blind mortals can take exciting and meaningful careers,” stated Thomas Zampieri, manager of regime relations for the connection.

After 17 calendar months in recuperation, Castro after a permanent duty assignment in the service’s Peculiar Operations Command, landing place duty with the Seventh Special Forces Group. He focuses on managerial tasks piece honing the group’s Spanish preparation, an utile language for an unit of measurement that deployss regularly to prepare South American military personnel.

“I want to back up the hombres and make sure living is easiered for those guys so that they can carry through the missionary station,” he stated.

Though non fully independent, he exhausted a weekend before setting about his job taking the air around the Grouping area at Fort Braxton Bragg to cognize just where he was travelling. He cautiously measured the stairs from motorcar to business office.

“Obviously, he cannot do some thing that a sighted person can do. But Ivan will find a manner to acquire done whatsoever he needs to acquire done,” Mulholland informated. “What I am most impressed with, though, is his finding to go on to function his state after all that he’s existed through.”

Castro works out on a regular basis at the gymnasium and runs, his leg powerful and mesomorphic. And though he has a prosthetic right eye and his weapons system are marred by shrapnel, his oversize personality eclipses his war wounds: Nonentity escapes his palmy hellos, friendly banter and measureless drive.

He took to the woods the Boston marathon this twelvemonth with Adm. Eric T. Olson, commanding officer of the U.S. Peculiar Operations Command. Last twelvemonth it was the Marine Army corps Marathon. He wants to contend in the Iron man triathlon in Hawai and graduate from the Army’s officer looking course, that teaches captains how to conduct troops and plan trading operations.

Mulholland informated Castro, who was presented a Purple Bosom like others injured in combat, will ever be part of the Particular Forces house.

“I will fight for Ivan as long as Ivan wants to be in the Ground forces,” Mulholland stated.

Married and the begetter of a 14-year-old boy, Castro still needs help acquiring to the gymnasium. He of late needed an escort to the front of the home base company shaping, where he encouraged a provision clerk.

One time in front, Ivan occupied charge.

Sticking on the new soldier’s rank to his uniform, Fidel Castro urged the soldier to execute two ranks high. In the Particular Forces, he told, one has to go above and beyond what is enquired - advice he lives by.

“I want to be hardened the same way as early officers,” Castro said. “I don’t want them to occupy pity over me or give me something I’ve non earned.”