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On Feb. 19, 2007, SSG Shilo Harris and his fellow soldiers were on patrol on Route Metallica, south of Baghdad, when their Humvee hit a roadside bomb.

Three soldiers died. Two — the driver and Harris in the front passenger seat — were seriously wounded.

“I remember seeing one of my buddies,” Harris said. “He lifted his eye [protection] and I saw the fear in his eyes and that’s when I realized I was badly hurt. I remember hearing the helicopter, I remember hearing the crew chief saying "You’re going to make it.”

SHILO'S BIO

As the son of a Viet Nam veteran, Shilo Harris always knew he wanted to be soldier. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he enlisted as a Cavalry Scout in the US Army. In February 2004, Harris deployed to Iraq where he participated in dangerous reconnaissance missions and armed combat.

When he arrived at the combat support hospital in the Green Zone, Harris could hear his driver’s voice.

"The last thing I remember is asking the doctor about my soldiers” he said. Harris woke up 48 days later — and 40 pounds lighter at Brooke Army Medical Center.

He had suffered third-degree burns to 35 percent of his body, including his face, arms and torso. He lost his ears, the tip of his nose, his left index and pinkie fingers and his right pinkie finger. He had broken his left collar bone and his spine. Doctors operated more than 20 times, mostly on his face.

“It’s been a long three ...something years,” said Harris, who was medically retired in March, 2010.

So that Shilo could recover at home, Kathreyn became his primary caregiver spending up to six hours a day on his wound care. Additionally, she was mom to their daughter and stepmom to his three sons (and now a newborn baby!).

During his recovery, she became an Advocate for the Army Wounded Warrior Program (AW2) to support other wounded warriors at Brooke Army Medical Center.

Kathreyn shared with me that, “The situation that we’ve been put in, it would have been just as easy to let it guide our life into a negative and into turmoil—and all the negative things that you can imagine but we’ve taken what happened to Shilo and we’ve turned it into a very positive thing.”

Since retiring, Shilo has become an Outreach Coordinator for the Wounded Warrior Project and has become a Motivational Speaker.

In his free time he volunteers in many community and military events, consults medical professionals, and is a motivational speaker. He enjoys helping to mentor and coach other Wounded Warriors, Veterans and individuals with disabilites to success by utilizing the rehibilatation that can be found in the Great Outdoors.

“You know when I’m talking to [an audience] I try to tell them you have to look at everything that God gives you as a gift. It may not always be the gift that you want, but you have to take what you get sometimes and turn it into something else. And that’s kind of what I’ve done.”