Editor's Note: This is the last story in a five-part series detailing the lives of Iraq War veterans.

When Josef Miller boarded the bus to boot camp in fall of 2002, he had no idea what to expect. He jumped on, moved to the very last seat and kept quiet. The drill sergeant marched in and began yelling for everyone to put their heads down and keep them down. Miller heard noise outside, so he carefully tried to look out of the window he was sitting by. The sergeant caught Miller, walked over to him, and punched out the window.

"Everybody get off the bus!"

Only one thought crossed Miller's mind: "What did I get myself into?"

Expectations

Joining the military never crossed Miller's mind until the very end of his senior year of high school. His older brother had just enlisted in the United States Air Force and began telling him what a great college alternative it was. Following his brother's advice, he enlisted in the United States Army.

Soon after his basic training, he began his computer technician courses.

"If I was going to join the military," Miller said, "I might as well get the skills I wanted for my future career." He was never really "into computers," but soon it became his life.

"The older guys in the military can really screw things up," he said. "I would go in, fix something, and the very next day they would call me in for the exact same problem they had caused last time. I would get so frustrated. I didn't even want to work with computers anymore at times."

But he didn't complain; it was better than physical combat preparation. The only thing Miller knew about combat was what he had seen in war movies like "Full Metal Jacket," which "always made me expect the worst."

Soon, he would find his expectations to be true.

Meeting an all-too-familiar visitor to war

He was in Germany when he heard the news: He was going to Iraq.

"I was like wait, wait hold on," Miller said. "I'm going to Iraq? I always kind of knew, but I was in denial. Hearing it made it real."

From Germany, Miller flew to Kuwait, then to Baghdad, Iraq. He expected to see combat as soon as he stepped off the plane.

"I was like 'Where's my gun? I need my gun before I get off, ' " Miller said. "Then nothing happened. I waited for two hours for someone to come pick me up and take me 250 yards to the base."

In the back of his mind, he knew it would only be a matter of time.

Being in charge of 192 computers around Baghdad is no easy task, but Miller excelled at it. He spent most of his time updating and setting up networks, facilitating communication with the rest of the world. Most of his time was spent indoors -- except when he was guarding the bases and on patrol duty. There, he realized the war scenes in movies were nothing compared to actual fighting.

"I was on guard tower duty from midnight to 6 a.m.," Miller recalled. "It's pitch black, and one night we just hear this explosion. Three rockets came down about 50 yards from base. We couldn't see where they were coming from. Nothing hit us, but it was so massive, it knocked us down and shattered the windows. The shock of it scared the crap out of me."

Mortar shell fire became commonplace, and gradually Miller began to adjust to them. "They never hit the base anyway," he thought. As the fire sirens went off, Miller would pull his bulletproof vest around him and go to sleep.

March 2004: Nine months after first arriving, Miller was preparing to leave. It took his unit days to pack up all the equipment and get it inspected.

And then the unthinkable happened. The train bombings in Madrid, Spain caused the government to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. The end result became clear: More soldiers were needed, and Miller's deployment was extended.

"People just started laughing at the absurdity of it," he said. "First we were supposed to be there for six months. That turned into nine, which now became a year. This one guy kept laughing and wouldn't shut up. I thought he had gone insane. It pissed some guys off when he wouldn't stop and fights broke out."

The extension brought Miller face-to-face with an all-too-familiar visitor to war: death. Miller and another friend had just finished a game of basketball and were heading back to the compound when they heard a loud whistle. Miller looked up. A rocket came barreling down onto the court he had just left, sending shattered concrete up into the air. He threw himself onto the pavement, but he couldn't stay down -- he needed to make sure the people on the court were OK. One solider was left paralyzed because of the explosion. Had Miller left the court five minutes later, it could have been him. Never before had a couple of minutes made such a difference in Miller's life.

When his last day in the war-torn country finally came, Miller was hesitant to believe it; he had heard the same story three times before. He made all the motions to go, but never really believed he was leaving.

To leave, Miller had to drive nearly 20 hours out of Baghdad into Kuwait. He was driving on a newly paved road when the Humvee three spaces ahead of him collided with a contractor truck coming the opposite direction. The collision caused the soldier's Humvee to flip off the road. Miller immediately pulled over. He was in shock -- it was his friends'. One solider hung upside down from his truck by his rifle sling. Another soldier's entire lower half was crushed underneath the truck. The last man was the driver. Miller had trouble recognizing him, even though it was his friend. Every single bone in his face was smashed after hitting the steering wheel. His teeth were knocked out, stuck in the grooves of the wheel. That day, he had lost three friends, and all he could think of was the wife and kids each left behind.

"I just felt awful," Miller said. "They always kept a good face even in the worst situations -- to the point where it would get annoying. They were going home ... It's a hell of a way to not make it."

The soldiers completed the trip without any more incidents, but the ride was somber.

Only one regret

Miller had a rough transition back to civilian life. He tried getting back into his normal routine and started dating, but he didn't realize how much the military had changed his mannerisms.

"I took this one girl to the movies," Miller recalled. "When we were walking, a car shifts gear and backfires really loud. I immediately threw myself on the sidewalk. My date looks down at me and says, 'Did you trip or something?' I go, 'Yeah -- I tripped.' We finally got to the movies. I got so impatient that about 20 minutes into it, I asked her if we could leave. It was awful."

Miller, who came to Penn State in the spring of 2007, is currently training to become an Army officer. But at 25, he was already older than most of his classmates. He still has trouble adjusting to large groups -- in Iraq, you "always had to be on your toes."

Looking back at his deployment, the near-death scenarios and the friends lost, Miller has only one regret: He wished he had paid more attention.

"I was young and dumb," he said. "I was 19 to 20 in the middle of a war zone. I missed some of the things that were said and some of what was going on. I was just a kid. What did I know? It probably could have made all the difference."