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Informationen zum Autor Captain Scotty Smiley is the Army’s only active-duty blind officer. He lost the use of both eyes when a car bomber blew himself up in front of Scotty’s vehicle. A recipient of the bronze star and Purple Heart, he currently teaches the core course in leadership at West Point. Scotty and his wife Tiffany are the proud parents of two young children.Doug Crandall served in the Army for thirteen years, including the last five at West Point where he was an award-winning leadership teacher and later the Executive Officer to the Dean. Doug now lives in Richland, Washington, with his wife Stephanie and their children. Klappentext "Hope Unseen" tells the inspiring story of triumph over tragedy in the faith and courage of an officer blinded in Iraq, who now serves at West Point. Leseprobe HOPE UNSEEN C HAPTER 1 DEPENDENCE DAY In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians (chapter 4, verse 12) No yellow snow!” was not a suggestion at Mount Rainier’s Camp Muir. The climbing guides issued it as an edict. “If you need to go, use the restroom over there—this snow doubles as a source of water at ten thousand feet. None of us wants to go redrinking yesterday’s grape Gatorade after it spends the night in your bladder.” Easy for them to say. “Over there” was no big deal when you could see. But for a blind guy? I might as well walk to Boise to take a pee; I had zero chance to make it two hundred meters. I had stuck a lot of unwanted things in my mouth during the last eight hundred or so days of darkness, so what was wrong with a tiny taste of lemon snow for a few people who could still see? The decision quickly became a dilemma. I follow rules. But to pee properly I needed help. I had been superexcited when the guide told our group that we would be waking up at eleven in preparation for the climb to the summit. It was just 9 P.M . Fourteen hours of sleep? Simply awesome. It was smart to allow us rest before we ascended the final four-thousand-plus vertical feet to the fifth-highest point in the continental United States. But my joy was soon turned to frustration: the guide explained that we would be arising at 11 P.M. Two hours? I don’t mess around with sleep patterns—even if my life now exists in a perpetual nighttime. By the time I decided that I could no longer hold it, the rest of the climbing team was knocked out. If I woke anyone up, I’d be robbing him of probably half his night’s rest. In a departure from my normal worldview, I became a utilitarian. The odds that someone would actually happen upon my urine were extremely low—the Mariners winning the World Series low. Compare those minuscule odds and their minimal impact with the guarantee someone would lose sleep if I shook him awake, and the answer became clear. At just after 10 P.M ., 10,100 feet above Enumclaw and Yakima and Fort Lewis—feet freezing and teeth chattering—I peed in the snow just a few steps behind the tent. Really, the dilemma was less about me stealing anyone’s sleep and more about how much I hate—how much I really despise—my childlike dependency on others. With more than two years of blindness under my belt, maybe I should have been used to it, but I wasn’t. Being helpless in certain circumstances never gets easy. The pain dulls a bit. But it’s a lifelong challenge. It’s difficult to admit, because I like to think of myself as noncompetitive, but the truth is I want to be the best at every endeavor I undertake. Deep down I want to march the fastest, pin the quickest, shoot with the most deadly accuracy, marry the prettiest...
