U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

Carlos Figueroa monoskis in Aspen Snowmass on Thursday as part of a VA sports clinic for disabled veterans.

An Iraq war veteran who yearns to snowboard next March at the Sochi Paralympics recently told a priest he would give his left leg to compete for his country. And then, he did.

Six weeks ago, retired Army Sgt. Carlos Figueroa allowed a surgeon to amputate below his left knee — 10 years after an IED blast rendered the limb nearly useless. The decision was surprisingly simple, he said, because it sliced away a decade of mounting pain. Yet he also acknowledged: “I did give it up because I want to get into the Paralympics.”

“When I went in, my doctor asked me: ‘What’s your biggest goal?’ I told him: ‘Be on my board within three months.’ He just said, ‘Dude, most people aren’t walking within three months,’ ” Figueroa recalled. 

Walking will come. What he can do — already — is carve down a mountain, the lone place Figueroa, 34, feels at peace: “Up there, I’m no different from anybody. No PTSD. I’m at my happiest.” On Thursday, Figueroa beamed while manhandling an Aspen, Colo., slope atop a monoski at a sports clinic for disabled veterans. As a familiar, cool breeze brushed his face, he also dreamed about racing in Russia.

“My love for snowboarding is about loss, the loss of what I had in the military, where you’re used to being on the move, on patrols, on raids. That’s how I treat my races. The moment that gate drops, it’s like the door opening on a raid. I go full blast. I’m able to get something back that I felt was taken away. That rush. I love it.”

U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

"Up there, I'm no different from anybody. No PTSD. I'm at my happiest," said Carlos Figueroa of the feeling of carving down slopes.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have borne a bittersweet byproduct: scores of American Paralympic hopefuls. The Sochi Paralympics, to be held just after the 2014 Winter Games in that city, marks the inaugural Paralympic snowboarding event for disabled athletes. The U.S. men’s Paralympic snowboarding squad will consist of five members.

'Slim chance'
Figueroa (and those close to him) knows he’s the longest of long shots. His own coach, Mike Shea, estimates he took two years to, literally, make the leap from his own leg amputation to landing jumps. The raw nerve endings in an amputated limb must become desensitized to the harsh pounding. When the board hits the snow, the stump pushes into the prosthetic leg, “sending chills up your spine,” Shea said. “It doesn’t feel good.”

Then there’s the calendar. If Figueroa is indeed back on his board by autumn, he’ll have a limited number of sanctioned races — beginning in January 2014 — to rack up enough points to rank among the top five American men. And the U.S. Paralympic snowboarders, including Shea, compose the world’s deepest talent pool in that sport. The roster likely will be named in February.

“It’s a slim chance, a super, super small window,” Figueroa said, “but we’re still going to push.”

He needs only a sliver of possibility to kindle his hope — or better yet, someone telling him he can’t. He certainly doesn’t need two legs.

The Feb. 15 amputation came 10 years after a bomb detonated beneath his armored vehicle, ejecting him through an open roof hatch. A decade spent lugging a useless left limb (with no heel), suffering increasing back and knee pain, instantly convinced him to say “Let’s do it,” when an orthopedic surgeon in San Diego suggested, “Let’s cut.” He was done, he said, wasting another day “in a bubble” due to his injury, calling the operation “liberating.”

'Go fast and have fun'
Nobody who has heard that account is betting against Figueroa.

“With any military athlete, you can definitely see that sense of pride and determination above and beyond what you see with other athletes. Part of it is just a chance to represent their county again,” said Kevin Jardine, high performance director of Parlaympic alpine skiing and snowboarding for the U.S. Olympic Committee. “They’re willing to sacrifice a lot.”

Added Shea, who lost his leg in a 2002 wake-boarding accident: “Anything you tell Carlos, he’ll get it done. He always seems to find a way. He has no fear up there. He has passion. And I’ve learned from him the smiling gets you a long way in life.”

This week at the National Disabled Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Aspen, organized by the Department of Veterans Affairs, Figueroa has been tempted to grab a board and shred. This is his fourth year attending. As a testament to his disregard for other people’s timelines, he couldn’t even stand on a snowboard four years ago due to his injury, yet he competed in a World Cup event for disabled snowboarders not long after that.

Until his prosthetic leg arrives, he’ll stick to monoskiing, during which he sits in a “bucket” atop one ski, using his arms to hold smaller, balancing skis.

“The first run, I took it slow. After that, I opened it up,” Figueroa said. “I just want to go fast and have fun.”

When the instructor noticed his raw speed, he warned Figueroa: “You do realize if you go down, you may peel off half your face.”

Figueroa simply grinned: “That’s alright.”

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The benefit-claims backlog that has ensnared nearly 600,000 younger veterans — many with war wounds — has reached a crisis point inside the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the hour has come for President Barack Obama to become personally involved in unclogging the quagmire, two of the nation's leading veterans advocates told NBC News Thursday. 

"It’s time to go above the VA. If you think of VA as a broken down car, it’s hard for us to know how to fix it if we can’t see under the hood. The president can see under the hood. And the president can send people in to fix it," said Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq War veteran and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which represents more than 200,000 people.

"When you have so many men and women that are waiting years to see their claims adjudicated, there is a problem and it's somewhere within VA. And the president needs to take a personal interest," said Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. 

Rieckhoff contends that Obama must answer a key question: With the overall claims tally surpassing 900,000 cases earlier this year and with 34,000 troops soon returning from Afghanistan, should VA Secretary Eric Shinseki be replaced? 

In a meeting Wednesday with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Rieckhoff said he told Obama's top advisor: "We need to hear it from the president" as to whether Shinseki should remain atop the VA.

During a press briefing Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "It is absolutely the president’s position that we need to aggressively address this problem, and he has made clear to Secretary Shinseki that he wants this addressed. He is getting weekly updates on the backlog."

Responded Rieckhoff: "We’re focused on ending the backlog. What we need from the president is a plan to end the backlog. If (Shinseki's removal) is a part of that plan, we’d love to hear about it. The easy thing to do is fire some people. But that won’t necessarily fix things.

"Yes, we need a cultural transformation (at the VA). We need new blood, new ideas," Rieckhoff added. "But three VA secretaries have been there and three VA secretaries have failed. That’s why we’re focused on the president. This is bigger than Shinseki."

IAVA file

"The backlog is the place where veterans end up feeling betrayed. When your claim is delayed 600 days, which is the case if you live in New York or L.A., you feel like your president and your country are letting you down," said IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff, photographed Thursday speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C.

VA official urged to step down
On Tuesday, Miller called for the resignation of Allison Hickey, the VA's under secretary of benefits. Miller is frustrated with Hickey, in part,  because she can not project where the backlog will stand in 12 months while she is simultaneously promising that no veterans will be waiting 125 days or more for their benefits by 2015. Miller said he fears that high-ranking VA officials have failed to reveal to Shinseki the real depth of the claims challenge and the scope of the financial hardships faced by hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans — many who are unable to work due to battle injuries.

Asked Thursday if he believes Shinseki should resign, Miller said: "I am not prepared to ask the same of the secretary. He has a strong desire to do what is right. My fear is his leadership (team) has not been transparent with him to the point that he knows the true picture that exists out there." 

This week, four other prominent veterans' groups — Student Veterans of America, The American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans (DAV) all voiced support for Shinseki and for the work being done by the VA's Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), which has handled claims for millions of veterans. Those groups argue that the VA's plan to cut the backlog should be given a chance to work.

"DAV believes that VBA is on the right path, that they have set the right goals and that they have leadership committed to transforming and institutionalizing a new claims processing system to better serve veterans," DAV national legislative director Joe Violante testified Wednesday before a Senate panel examining veterans issues. 

During 2012, the VA paid $58.6 billion in benefits to 4.3 million veterans or their survivors, according to the VA. The agency reported Thursday that its total "claims inventory" stands at 859,396. The VA defines its "backlog" as claims that have been pending for more than 125 days — that number stands at 592,222, according to the VA. 

"Secretary Shinseki believes it is unacceptable that veterans are waiting too long to get the benefits they have earned," read a statement emailed by Josh Taylor, a VA spokesman. "That is why VA is implementing an aggressive plan that will solve this decades old problem for good and transform how VA processes claims for decades to come."

But according to Miller, one factor fueling the backlog is that VA claims handlers are not working as efficiently as they did before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1997, the average VA field officer processed 138 claims a year while, in 2011, with three times as many overall employees, the average VA field officer processed 73 claims a year, Miller said. 

"I have confidence at this time that (Shinseki) has a desire to move in the right direction. He leads an organization of 300,000 people that delivers some of the best health care in the world as well as educational benefits," Miller said. "But this benefits backlog, unfortunately, is going to be a stain that will stay with VA for years to come."

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Courtesy Jesse Holder

Jesse Holder, a 173rd Airborne trooper, was wounded in 2007 while serving in Afghanistan by shrapnel from an RPG round.

Four soldiers, four battles — and, between them — four total inches separate the slim expanse between death and life.

One died because his armor plating wasn’t one inch higher. Three survived by that same tiny fraction, left to mull the unanswerable: "Why am I still here?"

In the final days of 2012, the somber tally of American service members wounded in action in Afghanistan surpassed 18,000 while the number of U.S. military men and women killed there eclipsed 2,040, according to the Department of Defense.

As Jesse Holder can attest, many of those 20,000-plus causalities are here — or are gone — based on a cold geometric fact of war: So often, everything comes down to a single inch.

"I got hit in the neck and I thought I was done," said Holder, a 173rd Airborne trooper wounded in 2007 by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade while in Afghanistan. The round detonated just above and to the right of Holder’s head as he rode in the turret of an Army truck, patrolling a steep-walled riverbed.

"I said, out loud, 'Oh, this is it. I’m going to die right here.' Everybody in the truck was thinking the same thing because of all the blood."

He was airlifted to a makeshift hospital where a surgeon removed the metal fragment. The doctor then revealed that if the chunk had entered Holder’s neck "one centimeter to the left," it would have opened an artery. He likely would have bled to death in the truck. Instead, he was back on the line 10 days later. He never lost consciousness.

"After the fire fight," Holder said, "when you're back at your base talking about it, that's when it usually comes out: 'I was inches away.' You'll hear: 'If that glass shield hadn't been there, or if that tree hadn't deflected the bullet, I wouldn't be here now.'

"During combat, you try not to think about it. But I think that's why, when people come back, some have a hard time," added Holder, who recently published a book, "Chutes, Beer, & Bullets," recounting some of those close calls. "I've been good at compartmentalizing it, and not thinking about it. But I lost a friend like that. It was the one inch that killed him."

'It could have been me'
That buddy was Army Spc. Jacob Lowell, 22, a 173rd Airborne trooper who had been in Afghanistan for two weeks when his unit clashed with enemies armed with small arms and grenades on June 2, 2007.

Courtesy Jesse Holder

Jacob Lowell, left, is pictured with a fellow soldier. Lowell was killed in action after a bullet narrowly missed his protective armor.

"All my friends, all at one time, they got wiped out," said Holder, who was not part of that mission. "A lot of our guys didn't make it home. My good friend did die by a narrow margin. The bullet went right above Jacob’s protective armor."

The feeling dubbed "survivor guilt" is a sentiment that Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio-based psychiatrist, has often heard expressed during his conversations with more than 7,000 veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

"I've heard lots of stories, including: 'I was so close, it could have been me.' For some, it's almost like they're saying: 'I feel worse about that than if I would have died.' So they bring home this terrible, burdensome guilt," said Croft.

Recovery can be helped by "learning to reframe that event — not to forget it, but to be able to understand it in a different way," Croft said. 

Therapy can include coaxing veterans to talk about — and eventually accept — the notion that "in the heat of war, a lot of things happen, things you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy," Croft said.

What's more, combat includes the mathematical equation that thousands of deadly projectiles are whizzing back and forth, up and down; some hit vehicles; some hit trees or rocks or dirt; some hit people, and breeze an inch past human flesh.

'There's a reason I'm here'
Former Army helicopter pilot Joe Baginski has lived more than 40 years since a Vietnam mission during which he nearly was wounded or killed so often in the span of just five minutes, he can't even calculate the number of near misses. But he's put his own survival into healthy — and folksy — perspective: "I must have been smiling just right because I never got a scratch."

In November 1968, Baginski, then 21, hovered his chopper at about 75 feet in thick foliage as other men on board dropped crates of ammunition to U.S. soldiers who were running low on bullets amid a battle with a far larger North Vietnamese force. The helicopter's tail rotor spun inches from branches thick enough to bring down the craft. At the same time, North Vietnamese Army troops fired on the chopper. Bullets pierced the floor. The co-pilot was struck in the arm. A sergeant major was hit in the foot. The instrument panel and numerous gauges — directly in front of Baginksi — were obliterated in the barrage. When the ammo drop was complete, he carefully maneuvered the bird up and through the jungle canopy.

"I have no idea how many rounds we had hit on the inside of that helicopter," Baginski said. "But there had to be at least a dozen that struck that instrument panel and fragments were going anywhere. I don't know how close I came but it had to be pretty close."

For soldiers who beat heavy odds to survive harsh battles, finding deeper meaning in their post-military lives can help them deal with nagging wonders about why they came home when buddies did not, Croft said.

"They decide: 'I guess there's a reason I'm here.' That can be the impetus to move forward with life," Croft said. 

That's a sentiment embraced by John Bennett, who was dropped by a sniper's bullet in Iraq in 2005. The bullet entered his right side, shattered two vertebrae, fractured a third, and cost him his colon, his spleen, half his pancreas and his ability to walk.

"An inch to the left, it would have deflected off my ballistic armored plate and I would have been fine. And an inch to the right, it would have hit my liver and it would have more than likely killed me," said Bennett, a former infantry soldier who lives in Cascade, Mont. 

"In the earlier stages of my recovery it was a daily thought: Half inch left and I wouldn't be in this situation. And I still think about it periodically. But, I don't dwell on it," Bennett said. "I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason. I don't know what the reason was for me to stay alive and be in this wheelchair, but it was for something. Maybe it was to help with articles like this that help others believe they can move forward, no matter what their situation is. Who knows?"

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Courtesy John Bennett

John Bennett, shot by a sniper while serving with the Army in Iraq, is one of many wounded veterans to go hunting with the Sportsmen's Foundation for Military Families. He bagged a nine-foot alligator in Florida.

In the swamps and river bottoms near his Florida ranch, outfitter Danny SantAngelo has spent 20 years guiding veterans — some without arms, legs or sight — back to soothingly familiar country: in the field, stalking live prey, armed with weapons.

Often, such group hunting excursions were contract jobs that SantAngelo accepted from what he calls "these big, million-dollar-a-year projects for wounded soldiers."

"They take these soldiers and veterans, gather them up from different areas, and take them to a facility like mine where we’d house them, host them and hunt them for a few days," SantAngelo said. "A bunch of soldiers getting together in a camp again, sitting in the woods with guns, and maybe a lot of them even drink too much, so to say. And at the end, they’d high-five each other, hoot and holler and pull out of here.

"We've always donated 100 percent of our services to help these groups. And, of course, I never said no. I always said yes, and did it."

For SantAngelo, however, that changed three years ago when, during one outing, he spotted a veteran hunter with tears in his eyes.

“He was having a tough time. He confessed to me he couldn’t believe he’d been so selfish and had come. He’d been gone several years on tours, fighting in combat. He’d only been home a couple of months. But now he was off again with a bunch of soldiers, sitting around this campfire,” SantAngelo said. “He’d felt like he’d walked off and left his family all over again. Well, I began to see that for these guys, there’s really no benefit afterward.”

As large, organized hunting trips for veterans proliferate in popularity, SantAngelo is changing the rules, at least in his corner of the swamp. He's launched the Sportsmen’s Foundation for Military Families, escorting combat veterans — and their spouses, children, parents or siblings — onto land he leases for hunting to spend a few days, as he sees it, of badly needed family bonding.

He’s executing his mission, he said, on a sparse, nonprofit budget, guiding one family per week. His two-person operation — it’s just SantAngelo and his wife, Carla — is headquartered on their ranch along the Kissimmee River in central Florida, about 30 miles north of Lake Okeechobee.

“You don’t come here with a couple of war buddies. You come here to be with your family,” SantAngelo said. “We try to support the people who suffered back home while their hero was away.

“So many of these vets go on different hunting trips all over the country. But I see a lot of bad things going on out there through these big nonprofit groups," SantAngelo said. "A lot of these guys are on medications (for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). They get there with a group of guys they don’t even know. They go to drinking while on medications. Not good. So you have veterans researching all these free hunting trips that are out there for them. But those trips have nothing to do with their families. And what do they really get out of that? They go home and have all the same problems.”

Iraq veteran John Bennett, 41, has been on several of those group-hunting expeditions, despite using a wheelchair since a sniper shot him in 2005 while he was on patrol north of Baghdad, acknowledging: “Those trips are wonderful, don’t get me wrong.”

But two years ago, Bennett personally saw SantAngelo's vision: hunting plus family may equal better days. He headed to Florida to track alligators at night with one of SantAngelo’s hired guides. For that visit, Bennett had hoped to bring his daughter, but she couldn’t attend. Instead, Bennett spent time with another veteran and his family, he said, riding in a pontoon boat, armed with a bow and arrows, searching for his intended catch.

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“It’s really neat to be able to include your family, especially your kids, so they can see that dad can get out there and still do the things he used to do,” said Bennett, who bagged a nine-foot gator. SantAngelo later shipped him the meat. (If a veteran-client's spouse or children prefer not to hunt, they can fish or canoe or ride horses while at SantAngelo's ranch.)

“The military was such a big part of my life,” added Bennett, a former infantry soldier who joined the Montana Army National Guard in 1991. He lives in Cascade, Mont. “Even if I had not been a hunter before, just knowing that I could still shoot a firearm and not be completely freaked out by it was good.”

Indeed, SantAngelo contends hunting and fishing can serve as a form of rustic therapy for combat veterans from all wars, a return to some of the tactics and tools they once knew intimately, but now utilized in a safe, quiet environment.

For that reason, SantAngelo’s foundation foots the bill to bring in and then guide ex-military members with an array of devastating wounds.

Blind veterans who come to his ranch use a double-stocked rifle, sharing the weapon with a guide who — when the prey is in the scope — whispers to inch the barrel slightly up or down, left or right, then instructs the best moment to squeeze the trigger. Veterans without arms can blow into a special tube, which actives the trigger of a rifle. Veterans without full use of extremities use laptops and joysticks to aim their weapons and fire at wild boar, alligators, coyotes and turkeys. SantAngelo also takes his clients on the river to fish for trophy bass.

Meshing outdoors sports with the tricky transition from the battlefield to home front is a concept the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs also has adopted. VA officials have seen the same behaviors SantAngelo has witnessed: that many large hunts arranged for veterans morph into drinking parties and families are never invited.

“He’s exactly right,” said Jose Llamas, the community and public affairs officer for the VA's National Veterans Sports Programs. “These other organizations put on weekend trips where it’s hunting, camping, fishing. But it’s drinking, and there’s no follow-up at the end.”

In addition to hosting adaptive sports summits across the country where family members are encouraged to join disabled veterans in surfing, cycling, skiing, fishing and target shooting, VA recreational therapists — via various VA medical centers — routinely take local veterans fishing, Llamas said.

“Hunting is not one of those things you can do in every community,” he added. “But from our Paralympic grant program, we just gave $25,000 to a VA hospital in Grand Junction, Colo., to get the equipment needed to take the (disabled) veterans out hunting.

“What we do is incorporate (hunting, fishing and other sports) into the health-life plan of the veteran,” Llamas said. “The secretary of the VA, Eric Shinseki, is very adamant about this being not just one weekend out of the year, not a vacation, but a step in the right direction of the veteran becoming more productive in the community by living a healthy lifestyle, by being an example to other veterans.”

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A packed convention center — even a place staffed with PTSD experts — is precisely the type of environment most service members and veterans are likely to avoid. 

For many military folks dealing with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, crowds make them jumpy. And due to the attached social stigma of the disorder, the thought of being spotted at such an gathering would make lots of veterans cringe. 

But a virtual get-together where disabled veterans can anonymously ask questions about the anxieties weighing them down?

That's part of the thinking behind the first True Help Disability Web Expo taking place Thursday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Central Standard Time. The free event, organized by Allsup — a nationwide provider of services for people with disabilities — loops together more than a dozen leading health, disability, advocacy and social service organizations, several of them adept at working specifically with current and former service members.

Attendees simply need to register to chat all day from the comfort of their homes, local coffee shops, or their places of work. The expo will provide a "veterans booth" where military personnel past and present can seek and find suggestions, tips and advice on how and where to get treatment — including a primer on how to successfully access and steer through the monolithic U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, said Brett Buchanan, an Allsup’s VA-accredited claims agent. 

"In my experience dealing with veterans with PTSD and with depression, I find that the veterans do much better over the phone, when they’re in their house," Buchanan said. "I can have better conversations with them then when I meet them face to face.

"I think, absolutely, when you’re going to compare a Web expo to a live expo at an actual convention center, I don’t think you would get those individuals anywhere near that environment with those crowds," he added.

Allsup will bring together representatives from 15 national nonprofit groups that specialize in disabilities, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Brain Injury Association of America, the Invisible Disabilities Association and the National Family Caregivers Association. 

"Our hope is that veterans will find valuable information and resources that they just didn’t know existed," said Rebecca Ray, director of corporate public relations for Allsup. "We know veterans have a lot of options through the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense. But there are a lot of groups that help veterans that may be new to them." 

While attendees can live chat with experts throughout the day, the expo will offer two moderated sessions for service members and their families: "What You Need to Know About Veterans Disability," from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. CST, and "Wounded Warriors — A Discussion on Veteran Disability Resources," from 2:35 to 3:00 p.m. CST.

"We dive into little nuances of the VA disability system," Buchanan said. "There are special considerations for different veterans — specifically if the veteran has more than one disability that’s related to service, or if they’re a combat veteran they are given special consideration.

"We’ll be talking about the VA process," he added. "We’ll be taking people through, step by step, on filing a claim, what happens if the claim is denied, or what happens if you get a decision and you’re not satisfied with it: are you able to appeal it?"

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Christopher Lee / Getty Images for NBC News

Exactly one year after losing his sight in Afghanistan, Navy Lt. Brad Snyder earned a gold medal in the 400-meter freestyle at the 2012 Paralympic Games in London.

For one final, terrifying moment, Navy Lt. Brad Snyder could see.

In fact, the last thing he ever viewed — one year ago today — was his two intact arms and his two attached legs. After stepping on a hidden bomb in an Afghan farm field then feeling the raw heat of the blast burn his face and hurl him backward, Snyder’s first instinct was to look down and inventory his body parts.

“That gave me positive reassurance everything was going to be OK. Shortly after that, my vision went away. I thought maybe blood or dirt had dripped down over my eyes,” said Snyder, 28, a former bomb defuser. “And then it was black, just black, the same way I see now. It didn’t occur to me until the fifth day in the hospital that I wasn’t going to see again.”

Today in London, with that dark anniversary in mind, Snyder dived blindly into a pool and sprinted away with gold – earning his third medal (two golds and one silver) at the 2012 Paralympics. At the close of the 400-meter freestyle final, Snyder cruised into the wall nearly six seconds ahead of the runner up, Spain's Enhamed Enhamed, who took silver.

"It's not a poor anniversary and I'm really looking forward to celebrating how far myself and my family have been able to come over the past year," Snyder said from the Olympic Aquatics Centre pool deck. "It's a special night for all of us, (including friends and family who cheered from  the stands). We are going to look at this evening as a celebration. A celebration of conquest if you like. We are all happy to be together, being in London and enjoying the experience."

Snyder finished the race in four minutes, 32.41 seconds, a personal best. But it was a larger span of time — 365 days — that truly occupied his thoughts and fueled the best race of his life.

He swam for victory: “Yes, I’m really competitive.”

He swam for inspiration: “The idea that there shouldn’t be anything in the way of barriers presented to you that slow you down. Yeah, (stuff) happens. But I hope this shows the value of attitude, of making a decision to not look back. I made that decision. From that point, it was all just about figuring it out and moving forward.”

And he swam for love: “My support network really came to bat for me when I was down. My mom, my brothers and sister were at my side. My Navy friends demonstrated their commitment to me. So I feel an obligation to reciprocate that commitment, to show them I appreciate the love. I want to prove to them — and myself — that I can experience success on a level I experienced before, even though I am now blind.

“Competing (today) was the pinnacle of that.”

His mother, Valarie, witnessed her son's golden swim while sitting with her other two sons, her daughter, and Valarie’s sister  — the same group that surrounded Snyder’s hospital bed near Washington, D.C. when a doctor told him no surgery could restore his shattered eyes. In fact, those eyes later were surgically removed and replaced with prosthetics.

When she watched her son compete — as he once did for the Naval Academy swim team — Valarie knew she would be “weeping,” she said, while she measured the massive ground Brad already has gained in 12 months. But she also reflected on how this journey began for her: with a horrifying phone call last Sept. 7.

At 5:30 a.m., the ringing phone read “unknown number” on its screen — the same message that showed up each time Brad called home from his base in Afghanistan. But he typically called her at 11 a.m.

“At that time, it could only mean one thing,” Valarie Snyder said. “I didn’t want to answer it.”

She did, though. And her son’s commanding officer revealed to her that an explosion had hit Brad in the face, that he still had all of his extremities and that he was then in surgery. Not long after she was reunited with her wounded son at a stateside military hospital, he reassured her that his life would continue without sight. And what the woman saw today in the London pool only reinforced that sunny outlook, she said.

“He keeps saying he’s got to show me it’s not a disability, that he’s going to be fine,” she said. “He’s telling me that I don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

"He truly was swimming for (his family and friends)," said his swimming coach, Brian Loeffler. "He recognizes how much suffering they went through when he was injured.”

Related: Blinded Navy officer grabs gold in first Paralympic race
Related: From darkness to gold: Blinded swimmer ready to race
Related: Iraq vet: 'Now it's time to win at Paralympics'
Related: Ex-Marine's journey from homelessness to Paralympics
Related: 'Superhuman' Paralympians burst onto world stage 

It was Loeffler who realized — while first perusing the Paralympic swimming schedule — that Snyder would be competing in his best event one year to the day after losing his vision.

“It immediately became a goal of mine to do everything I could to help Brad win a medal on that day,” Loeffler said. “I initially only told his mother of the schedule.  (But) I could not keep it from Brad so I told him a week after I told his mother because I wanted him to focus in on that special day as well.”

Snyder, ironically, visualizes each of his swims beforehand, using the mental images he has concocted for the pool, the lane lines and the crowd. The tactic allows him to feel that every race is already familiar.

Slideshow: Blinded warrior has visions of gold

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last year. The Navy officer will once again represent the U.S., this time at the London 2012 Paralympics in September.

Launch slideshow

Prior to today's race, he saw himself walking across the pool deck toward the block, standing above his assigned lane as his name was announced, then feeling the surge of competitive juices rise inside. A gold medal is what he glimpsed in his mind. And if only for four furious minutes, his new life as a blind man faded as a constant reality.

“From the moment I step up on that starting block, I just want to beat everybody in the pool,” Snyder said. “But once I hit the (finishing) pad, once the race was over, it all went back to just being an amazing experience.”

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Less than a year after losing his eyes in a battlefield explosion, Navy Lt. Brad Snyder on Friday felt the wall, heard the cheers and tasted gold, beating the world’s best blind swimmers in the 100-meter freestyle final at the London Paralympics.

In a race only the Aquatics Centre spectators (and none of the eight competitors) could see, Snyder, a former Naval Academy swimmer and an ex-Navy bomb defuser, posted a winning time of 57.43 seconds. He finished more than one second faster than China’s Bozun Yang, who took silver.

“It was my first final, it was my first medal," Snyder said after the race. "It’s an immense amount of relief. There was a lot of uncertainty this morning as to whether I’d be fast or not, a lot of uncertainty whether I’d be able to come in front of this crowd and keep my wits about me and keep a good race plan. We succeeded on both counts today, came out of the gates with a gold medal and now I’m looking forward to maintaining that as much as possible throughout the week."

Earlier in the day, during his qualifying heat for the 100-meter free, Snyder set a new Paralympic record of 57.18 seconds — more than a half second faster than his previous personal best (which already was the No. 1-ranked time in the world.)

“I have six more events, some better than others, but I’m prepared by good nutrition and good rest.," he said. "As soon as we’re done here we’ll head back, grab some dinner, go to sleep and kinda just get into this rhythm of competition — swimming each morning, swimming each evening — and see if we can keep that performance at a high level.”

Before today’s races, Snyder said his busy London swim schedule shapes up perfectly for potential success.

“I’m actually really excited to have one of the preferred events up first, so I have something I’m targeting and feeling good about and looking forward to,” said Snyder, who lives in Baltimore. “Hopefully, I'll get the butterflies out in prelims and then be ready to rock at night.”

Slideshow: Blinded warrior has visions of gold

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last year. The Navy officer will once again represent the U.S., this time at the London 2012 Paralympics in September.

Launch slideshow

During a patrol last Sept. 7 in Afghanistan, Snyder was rushing forward to help two Afghan soldiers wounded in an initial IED blast. While sprinting, Snyder tripped a second hidden bomb in a farm-field irrigation ditch. His eyes were irreparably damaged by the detonation and later were removed by a surgeon.

Entering the London Paralympics, Snyder trained for months with his coach, Brian Loeffler, to shave split seconds off the world No. 1 times he already had set this year in three freestyle events — the 50 meters, 100 meters and 400 meters.

But trying to cut through the water more quickly caused Snyder to crash hard into the lane lines during some of those practice sessions.

“I started wearing compression sleeves in practice because I started beating my arms up pretty bad,” Snyder said before Friday’s race.

Related: From darkness to gold: Blinded swimmer ready to race
Related: Iraq vet: 'Now it's time to win at Paralympics'
Related: Ex-Marine's journey from homelessness to Paralympics
Related: 'Superhuman' Paralympians burst onto world stage 

“We’ve put a lot of emphasis on quality. I’ve put a lot of work into just being as symmetrical as possible and really working on a quality stroke and trying to find ways to maintain good technique ... That way we can avoid crashing and losing speed due to fatigue.

“I’ve been doing a lot of kick and strength work to hopefully be able to control the speed of the sprint with my legs as opposed to trying to do it with my arms which I think lends to me crashing.”

Like all blind Paralympic swimmers, Snyder competes while wearing blacked-out goggles — a Paralympic rule to ensure no athlete in the field can see even a glimmer of light. He also relies on Loeffler, the swimming coach at Loyola University, to stand at the end of his lanes and tap him on the shoulders with a walking cane to alert him that a flip turn or finishing kick is needed.

The 100-meter free was the first of seven events Snyder will swim in London. Depending how well Snyder performs in his preliminary heats, he could race 14 times in nine days.

“It’s spread across so many days. And there’s one event per day. And my coach and I have strategy on that: it behooves me to use the opportunities to race just to get accustomed to the pool, the setup, the sound of the start, and walking around," Snyder said. “If I can make finals in an off event then it gives me the opportunity to go through the ready-room system.

“It actually works out great to just kind of make the extraordinary ordinary. Just get accustomed to being in front of the people, hearing the noise, hopping in the pool and racing.” 

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Slideshow: Blinded warrior has visions of gold

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last year. The Navy officer will once again represent the U.S., this time at the London 2012 Paralympics.

Launch slideshow

The man who views only black today is visualizing all the colors of his London swims. In his mind, he sees the aqua-blue pool frothy with wakes, the home stretch of the lane lines painted red, and the dark, wide mouths of roaring fans.

Behind prosthetic blue eyes — replacements for the natural pair he lost after an explosion in Afghanistan nearly a year ago — Navy Lt. Brad Snyder soaks in the scenery of a dream realized. The 2012 Paralympics open today in Britain. Snyder races for gold Friday.

Already, though, he can glimpse a distinct, happy glow.

Related: 'Meet the Superhumans': Paralympians burst onto world stage 

“During the Olympics, I read about the races, about (Michael) Phelps and (Ryan) Lochte and Missy Franklin. I heard the commentary and used that to pull out the details to produce this image,” Snyder said. “But instead of reading about Lochte, I just implanted myself in there.

“I imagine stepping onto the block, hearing “take your mark,” the sound of the start, hopping in the pool then just being smooth and strong down the middle of the lane, executing some good turns, and hitting the pad at the end. I’m imagining success. I’m imagining the good feeling that comes with competing well.”

As an elite athlete — among blind swimmers he is No. 1 in the world at three freestyle distances (50-, 100- and 400-meters) — Snyder draws such mental pictures as a preparation tool. As a result, nothing in or around the London pool, he said, should feel unfamiliar.

But in a life being rebuilt after severe injury, this ironic tactic is simply how the man endures.

“I’ll tell you a little story,” said his mother, Valarie Snyder. “He was describing his apartment to me: ‘It has the most beautiful rooftop view.’ That’s how our conversations go all the time. It’s been rare that he gets down, and even then he apologizes for it: ‘Sorry I was in a bad mood.’ ”

Related: Veterans push Paralympics back to battlefield roots
Related: Wounded warrior seeks glory representing America in London

The bright side is never far off. But total darkness came in a single stride. On Sept. 7, 2011, the former Navy bomb defuser was rushing forward to help two Afghan soldiers wounded in an initial IED blast. In his dash, Snyder stepped on a second hidden bomb in an irrigation ditch spanning a farm field. His eyes were irreparably damaged by the detonation and later were removed by a surgeon.

Once a member of the Naval Academy swim team, Snyder returned to the water about a month later — this time, seeking a familiar, soft place in a world suddenly filled with surprise, hard edges.

“I was there the first day he got back in the pool,” his mother recalls. “Just to see the sheer joy on his face. On the ride home afterward he told me: ‘I can do this, mom. I can swim competitively. Everything new that I can do just makes me realize: this isn’t such a bad thing.’ ”

The warm water also rekindled an ultra-competitive, inner furnace, driving Snyder to begin training in Baltimore with Brian Loeffler, head swimming coach at Loyola University. His new goal: earn a spot on the U.S. Paralympic swim team and compete at the world’s second-largest sporting event, the Paralympics. He punched his London ticket in June after a series of spectacular sprints at the time trials in Bismarck, N.D.

He strolls into London’s Olympic Stadium today with 226 other disabled American athletes — one of 20 active or former service members on the U.S. team, and one of six wounded during combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

“There’s a girl who was in a coma for four years. There are people dealing with moderate cerebral palsy,” Snyder said. “It puts everything in perspective when I’m contending with my own little issue to see what everybody on the team puts up with. It humbles you. Every person on the roster is one of the most amazing people I’ve met.”

Yet each teammate also is an accomplished athlete who outperformed hundreds of Paralympic hopefuls to make the cut. For context, simply peruse two of Snyder’s post-injury times. In the 50-meter freestyle: 26.54 seconds — better than 10 Olympians who swam in London; and in the 100-meter freestyle: 57.75 — quicker than three 2012 Olympians.

The 100-meter free on Friday offers Snyder his first crack at a medal, and it unleashes an aggressive schedule of seven events over nine days. In addition to his three world-best times, he’s currently ranked No. 2 among blind swimmers in the 100-meter butterfly and No. 4 in the 200-meter individual medley. For each event, Loeffler works as Snyder’s “tapper,” using a walking cane to touch Snyder’s shoulders to alert him that the wall is near and that a flip turn or final push is required.

“His order of events sets up well since the sprints are early in the week (and) I do expect he will do well in his early events,” said Loeffler, who also serves as the co-head coach of the American Paralympic swim team. “(But) we have focused his training toward the 400 free.”

For Snyder, his coach and his family, that is the race of races, scheduled for Sept. 7 — exactly one year to the day he stepped on the bomb.

“It’s difficult to imagine and quantify the emotions I’ll be running through that day. But it’s going to be a moment that I’m going to enjoy. Because to me, competing on that day means that I was presented a challenge and I experienced some success in my transition to blindness. I conquered my adversity to some extent. Obviously, the adversity is not conquered. I’m still blind at the end of the day,” Snyder said. “But it means I’ve walked the path from being chained to the bed at exactly a year ago to competing on an international level at event like the Paralympics. It means I won a little bit.”

All of the people who huddled near that bed last September at Bethesda Naval Hospital outside Washington, D.C. will be in the crowd in London — his two brothers, his sister, an aunt and his mother — who calls herself “a weeper” and who fully expects a gush of tears, win or lose.

“From getting the phone call that morning from his commanding officer to not knowing what we were about to go through to what we went through the past year and then to see all that he has accomplished, well, it’s going to be amazing,” Valarie Snyder said.

“He shared something with me not long ago. He said that every little boy dreams of doing something great in their life in sports. If you’re a runner or a swimmer, you dream of one day going to the Olympics. But when you grow up," she added, "you realize that was just a dream."

“He believes has been given the opportunity to actually fulfill his dream.”

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.” 

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International Paralympic Committee

Competitors roll into the opening ceremonies of the first Paralympics, held in Rome in 1960.

Five U.S. wars and 64 years later, the Paralympics are set to complete a bittersweet roundtrip, in both place and purpose.

The 2012 Paralympics, the planet’s second-largest sporting event, open Aug. 29 in London – where a doctor first imagined that an Olympic-like competition might push paralyzed British fighter pilots to recapture their independence. 

The American team soon bound for England contains 20 athletes who have worn the stars and stripes. They include world-class cyclists, sprinters and soccer players. All are veterans or active-duty service members, six of whom were wounded in combat.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created an unintended byproduct: a growing pack of elite, disabled athletes – men and women who yearn to challenge their battered bodies and, they hope, to outrace and outscore some of the best in the world.

“In our circle, the Paralympics is just as coveted as the Olympics and we train just as hard for it,” said retired Marine Rob Jones, who lost both his legs above the knee after an IED blast two years ago in Afghanistan. He began his quest to make the U.S. Paralympic rowing squad in 2011. “I wanted to compete, you know, do something.

“If you have a goal then you can develop a plan. If you have a plan then you can actually be going toward something, as opposed to just going.”

International Paralympic Committee

Three paralyzed British fighter pilots compete in the javelin toss at the Stoke Mandeville Games, predecessor of the Paralympics, near London, circa the early 1950s.

In two words: forward motion. In 1948, that was the then-radical notion of Dr. Ludwig “Poppa” Guttmann, a neurologist who treated spine-injured British flyers at Stoke Mandeville Hospital northwest of London. He ditched the accepted medical thinking of the day: that paralysis meant a stagnant life and an early death.

On the same afternoon that athletes from 59 nations marched into nearby Wembley Stadium for the opening ceremonies of the London Summer Olympics, Guttmann gathered 16 former service members on the lawn outside his hospital for an archery contest. One year later, more patients from more hospitals participated in the newly dubbed “Stoke Mandeville Games.” In 1952, a military hospital in Holland asked if it could send its own group of veterans to compete, according to the International Paralympic Committee website. By 1954, Egyptians, Australians, Canadians, Israelis and Finns also were vying for victories in table tennis, javelin and water polo.

“Dr. Guttmann’s mantra was: They were going to be productive citizens and they were going to use sport to accomplish that,” said John Register, associate director of community and military programs for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Paralympics division. He also is an Army veteran of Desert Shield and Desert Storm – and an amputee who swam at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta and who earned a silver medal in the long jump at the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney.

“Warrior athletes were at a high-functioning level before they were injured. The fighting soldier is just a person who is extremely professional in what they do,” Register said. “After injury, sports can be a very strong conduit to get back to that active lifestyle.

Slideshow: Olympic Emotional Moments

Click for more from the 2012 summer games in London.

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“When you incorporate the esprit de corps at military installations where these warrior athletes are healing," Register added, "then they push each other to be better than they were the day before." 

'Who am I now?'
In 1960, 400 athletes from 21 nations arrived for the first Paralympic Games in Rome – held after the closing of the Summer Olympics in that same host city. As with every Paralympics since, the swimmers, racers and ball players used the Olympic venues to claim their own gold, silver and bronze medals.

While the Paralympics have steadily expanded, the wars in the Middle East have slowly nudged the international sporting event back toward its original intent, helping wounded veterans find and reclaim their former identities, Register said. 

London 2012: Who were the real winners, losers?

The 2012 Paralympics – the largest ever – will span 140 countries, more than 4,000 athletes and 20 sports. Ticket sales already have topped 2 million, outstripping the crowds in Beijing. And this year, current and former military members make up nearly 9 percent of the 227-person American roster – almost 2 percent higher than on the 2008 U.S. team.

Slideshow: Blinded warrior has visions of gold

Lt. Brad Snyder lost his sight in an IED explosion in Afghanistan last year. The Navy officer will once again represent the U.S., this time at the London 2012 Paralympics in September.

Launch slideshow

That list includes Lt. Brad Snyder, a former Navy bomb defuser who lost his vision after an IED explosion in Afghanistan on Sept. 7. Once a Naval Academy swimmer, Snyder has a chance to grab gold in at least two swimming events, including the 400-meter freestyle – to be held one year to the day after he was permanently blinded.

“Having the Paralympics out there was definitely a kick in my direction,” Snyder said. “It allows people to heal through sport and establish a metric for success. It’s really an awesome opportunity.”

Register has been preaching that message for years in his job at the USOC. He enlisted in the Army in 1988 after an All-American track career at the University of Arkansas. Following Desert Storm, he stayed in the Army, which allowed him to train part-time for a spot on the 1996 U.S. Olympic track team. In May 1994, as he was leaping over a practice hurdle, Register landed awkwardly, severing an artery in his left knee. The injury led to an amputation.

His physical therapist suggested Register add swimming to his exercise regimen. He was so fast in the pool, however, that he snared a spot on the 1996 U.S. Paralympic swim team.

After devastating injuries of that sort, especially after people lose parts of their bodies, they often ask: “Who am I now? Am I still that husband to my wife, or that wife to my husband? Can I still be employed?" Register said. "Those are the questions. Through, sports, they search for the answers.

“What sport does is show that person, individually, that they can accomplish a lot more than they think. They realize: I can get back to the lifestyle that I thought I had lost. And in time, they come to the realization that they haven’t lost anything.” 

Alex Wong / Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, left, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki testify before the House Armed Services Committee and House Veterans' Affairs Committee on July 25, 2012 in Washington, D.C.

The system designed to assist service members transitioning from active duty to civilian life is "overwhelmed," Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told legislators in a historic Congressional hearing on Wednesday.

The hearing, in which Panetta and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki testified about both departments' capabilities to successfully transition service members, was the first time both the House Armed Services and Veterans’ Affairs committees met jointly.

Among legislators' concerns were VA's claims backlog, the lengthy wait for active-duty wounded warriors to secure disability retirement and the effectiveness of the Transition Assistance Program (TAP), which is meant to help service members plan for a post-military career and better understand their benefits.

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"The reality is that not all (service members) are getting the kind of care and benefits they should get," Panetta said. The expected  draw down of at least 80,000 soldiers in the coming year will strain transition services as well, he said. "This system is going to be overwhelmed — it's already overwhelmed."

If the Department of Defense is subject to sequestration cuts as part of across-the-board deficit reduction, the Army may have to trim its forces by an additional 80,000 to 100,000 service members. The president has promised that VA would be exempt from sequestration, but Shinseki told legislators that the exemption might not cover administrative costs.

"We all know there is a surge of veterans returning home, and it has become apparent that DoD and VA are straining to meet the challenge of providing a successful transition for these men and women," Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, told NBC News.

In the past four years, Miller said, the claims backlog has ballooned and wait times for appointments, particularly for combat-related psychological disorders, have extended into months. In addition, a single electronic medical record that could be used between VA and DOD remains five years away.

As of July 21, more than 915,000 claims were pending with the VA, two-thirds of which have been in process for more than 125 days.

Shinseki testified that the backlog was due in part to recent decisions to award claims in three new categories -- Vietnam-era Agent Orange illness, post-traumatic stress disorder and Gulf War illnesses. In his written testimony, Shinseki said that VA plans to eliminate the backlog in 2015 with a goal of processing all claims within 125 days.

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Injured or wounded service members who want to medically retire from the military, which would grant them full medical benefits and monthly compensation, also face long delays. As of May 2012, more than 26,000 service members had open cases; in the Army, where service members wait the longest, claims were processed in average of 427 days.

That includes time spent for rehabilitation and medical care, Shinseki said, but both departments were tasked by Congress with expediting and streamlining the disability retirement system several years ago, and the goal for processing cases is 295 days.

Panetta said that as the two bureaucracies work together in unprecedented ways to improve the transition process for service members, there still remains a "lot of built in resistance to adapting and changing the way we do things."

"Things are going to have to change," he said. 

Rebecca Ruiz is a reporter at NBC News. Follow her on Twitter here.

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Florida Marine Sgt. Enrique Trevino is more than halfway to his goal of completing one million push-ups to raise money and awareness for wounded veterans.

"In the very beginning, there were a lot of people who said your body can't handle it," Trevino told NBCMiami.com. "That's their first mistake was telling a Marine you can't do something."

Trevino began his one million push-up pursuit as a New Year's fitness resolution, but soon realized he could turn it into an opportunity to help the Wounded Warriors Project. The organization helps veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Trevino himself has served, get reacquainted into post-military life.

Related: Veterans excel on another front -- fighting wildfires

He said not all vets return with wounds that one can easily see.

"People who are suffering from PTSD. Those are scars that are not seen, but people don't notice everyday," Trevino pointed out. "I'm just trying to bring awareness to those veterans who're transitioning into civilian life, and just make sure they're never forgotten."

Related: Wounded soldier is now a Paralympics shooter

Thanks to his push-ups and presence on Facebook and Youtube, Trevino has raised more than $19,000 for his cause. A web page has been set up for people to donate. Still, his sights are set higher.

"My goal is to reach $20,000, but if we can do more than that, which I know we can, I'm all for it," he said.

Last week, Trevino cracked the 500,000 mark, but he said that has not made his push up routine any easier.

"I'd be lying if I said it got easier, but my endurance has gotten better."

Read and watch video on NBCMiami.com

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