He finally returned to his Michigan hometown this
week — six months after the explosion that cost him his arms and legs — to
serve as the grand marshal of his old high school's homecoming parade.
"I didn't come to Vassar yet, because I wasn't
ready for people to see me without my legs. ... Because in Vassar, everybody
knows everybody," Mills said in an interview hours before the parade
Thursday. "Great town, but I just wasn't comfortable with them seeing
me in a wheelchair."
Mills is
still undergoing rehabilitation at a medical center in Washington, D.C.
Mills barely suffered a scratch
during his first two tours of Afghanistan, but during his third, on April 10,
he placed a bag of ammunition down on an improvised explosive device. The
resulting blast tore through the athlete's muscular 6-foot-3 frame.
Since then, he's undergone a
grueling series of medical procedures and been pushed to the limits by medical
professionals intent on seeing him pull through his rare injury.
His hometown has pulled for him
from afar. Hair salons, American Legion posts and many others hosted
fundraisers this spring and summer as the small, tight-knit community rallied
around him. Hundreds of people waving American flags jammed into Vassar's
downtown to catch a glimpse of Mills at the parade Thursday evening.
Mills, his wife, Kelsey, and
their 1-year-old daughter, Chloe, served as the grand marshals. Mills stood
tall in the back of a Jeep, smiling and waving his left prosthetic arm as
people screamed his name. He occasionally yelled out the name of someone he
recognized.
"It was a lot to take
in," Mills said of the signs of support he saw on the drive from the
airport to his parents' home. "Now, I just have to make sure not to let
everyone down. Coming into town was amazing."
The 25-year-old is one of only a
few servicemen to lose all four limbs in combat during the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars and survive.
"This is my new normal, and
it's all about how I adjust to it," he said moments after using his
prosthetic legs to walk from the living room to the sun room at his childhood
home. "There's no good that's gonna come from me sitting there and
wondering, 'Why'd this happen? Why me? Now what do I do?' The answer's right in
front of you: it happened because it happened."
Mills almost didn't come home at
all. Within 20 seconds of the IED explosion, a fast-working medic affixed
tourniquets to all four of Mills' limbs to ensure he wouldn't bleed to death.
The medic was able to save Mills' life, but not his limbs.
After that, he isn't sure what
the future holds. He might go back to school, or perhaps work as an instructor
at Fort Bragg. Before any of that, however, he said he's looking forward to
spending an "emotional" two days with hundreds of his closest friends
in Vassar.
May
God be gracious to him and others who suffered such terrible injuries.
..... Wars
cannot be justified because people suffer so much afterwards.
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