Purple Heart Recipient Uses Experience, Not Award as Greenfield Recruiter

As a United States Army recruiter, Staff Sergeant Nicholas DiMiceli has no qualms telling recruits that enlisting isn’t for everyone.

The 25-year-old 2004 Brookfield East graduate tells the young people and parents that walk through the doors at that if they can’t deal with getting shot at or having the enemy try to blow you up, then the infantry is not for you.

DiMiceli, a Purple Heart recipient, pulls no punches because he knows first hand the dangers of being a U.S. soldier deployed to a hostile land. He knows what it’s like to have your brain rattle around in your head after a bomb goes off under your truck. He knows what it’s like to see a fellow solider die, and what it’s like to feel like you’re about to take your last breath.

And if he didn’t tell recruits about the dangers of being a soldier, he feels like he’d be doing his job an injustice.

'I thought I was dying'

DiMiceli was three months into a four-year deployment to Iraq when he got injured. Just a few weeks earlier, on Christmas Eve, he and his fellow soldiers packed their gear and made a 3-hour convoy to Fallujah.

On Jan. 5, 2007, DiMiceli and his unit had left their station and were out on a reconnaissance mission to investigate a large improvised explosive device (IED) that had gone off in the area. From there, the unit was headed to a nearby gas station where it was to execute a raid on a suspected terrorist.

A light drizzle fell as the day was cold and windy, and the sky cloudy. DiMiceli was in the second vehicle of the convoy heading east on Route Pittsburg when it came to a S-curve that had become a notorious location for enemy IEDs.

Without warning, DiMiceli felt a gigantic concussion-like explosion rock the truck. In the blink of an eye, the truck’s inside was mangled, the dashboard contorted every which way and the hood blasted up into the window.

This blast completely numbed the left side of DiMiceli’s face.

“I though my face was gone,” DiMiceli said.

Same thing with three fingers on his right hand. They too went numb during the explosion.

“I was so out of it and so dazed,” DiMiceli said. “My eyes were closed and my brain was wandering and I thought it was over. I thought I was dying.”

Moments later, DiMiceli realized he was in fact alive, but when he opened his eyes, a cloud of grey debris engulfed him, and despite the protective eyewear on his face, it got into his eyes.

“I felt like something was plastered to my eyes,” he said. “I closed them and it felt like rocks, gravel, kind of like the Nerds candy, being packed into my eye. It was sharp and it hurt, like there were mini-razors in them.”

Eventually, DiMiceli was helped from the vehicle but as he lay on the ground on a street in Fallujah, he thought he was blind and that his hand was gone. Soon thereafter, he was at a surgical station in Fallujah, having his eyelids peeled back so doctors could scrape the debris away.

A full recovery

In the end, he suffered eight abrasions on his eyes, but his vision slowly came back and has not been permanently compromised, and three badly sprained fingers regained feeling nearly six weeks later.

Months later, DiMiceli was awarded the Purple Heart, given to those who are injured as a result of hostile enemy action. And while he is proud of the award, he doesn’t use it as tool to convince recruits to enlist.

“I don’t talk about it. I don’t find it fitting in my line of work,” he said. “I signed up for infantry and I knew the dangers of that job when I signed up for it. I knew I’d be shot at. I knew all that stuff.

“If people really want to know, I have pictures and I’ll show them. I tell them that the job is dangerous, but I don’t like to talk about me. The process isn’t about me. It’s about them.”

DiMiceli has been at the Greenfield recruiting station since Sept. 15, and though he feels the Army’s biggest struggle these days is finding qualified individuals to enlist, that’s not the case here.

“If you just take a look at the makeup of these kids, where they come from, their desire, their passion to carry America’s legacy forward, I’ve never seen a recruiting market like this,” DiMiceli said. “The perception of military service is so much more true to service of country than anywhere else I’ve been, which is good because that’s a lost value on our generation.”

And while DiMiceli doesn’t necessarily use the story of how he got a Purple Heart during the recruiting process, it has shaped him professionally as well as personally.

A few months before his deployment was over, DiMiceli was again involved in an IED attack. This time the vehicle in front of him was hit. The blast killed the driver and another soldier leaped from the truck and collapsed on the ground. DiMiceli immediately asked for and was granted permission to perform buddy aid.

“I knew I had to get to those guys that needed help,” he said. “(His incident) helped me realize how important it is to be brave for your friends. When I was injured, the thing that kept me mentally engaged was the fact that the guys to my left and my right were deeply concerned I’d be all right. I felt it. They weren’t going to let me go and they had my back.”

And as he drives the streets of Greenfield, DiMiceli can’t help but think back to the day he survived the IED attack and realize how lucky he is to be alive.

“When I came back from deployment, I decided I wasn’t going to take freedoms for granted anymore,” he said. “Every day is a blessing. Every morning I’m awake is another great day. Driving around on streets here and not getting blown up, I can’t describe to people how that feels.”