Soldiering on: six months after losing his right leg in Iraq, U.S. Army Sergeant Hilbert Caesar wheeled across the finish line of the New York City Marathon.

On November 7, the streets of New York flowed with a head-bobbing stream of resolve: More than 36,000 competitors pushed themselves for 26.2 miles, by foot or by wheel, to the Central Park finish line of the New York Marathon.

Among these marathoners were 84 hand-cyclists--athletes who propelled themselves by churning the hand pedals of low-riding racing wheelchairs.

Among these hand-cyclists were around two dozen soldiers, up from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., who left a leg, or more, on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. And among these war-injured soldiers was Staff Sergeant Hilbert Caesar, who, six months after losing his right leg in Baghdad, hand-cycled his way to a 1:53 finish.

FROM GUYANA TO BAGHDAD

Caesar, 27, is one of many foreign-born people who accept jobs risking their lives for their adopted country. A native of Guyana, he moved to Queens, N.Y., in 1988, when he was 11 years old. He joined the Army 10 years later. "I was trying to travel, see the world," he says. And he did, sort of: After attending basic training in Oklahoma, he was stationed in South Korea, Kosovo, and Germany. An artilleryman, Caesar moved up the ranks within the First Armored Division and re-enlisted twice.

>From late May 2003 to mid-April, Caesar was a soldier in Baghdad: patrolling, raiding, searching cars at checkpoints. With the end of his tour in Iraq drawing near, he was looking forward to spending some time in Spain and the Netherlands.

But with the way things were going, he and his comrades knew that their tour would probably be extended. When the Army confirmed their fears, they sucked it up. "We're soldiers," says Caesar. "We expect the worst and hope for the best."

On April 18, Caesar and some other soldiers were dispatched, in tank-like vehicles called self-propelled howitzers, to a "hot sector." Their job was to protect a supply route, look for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), and engage the enemy if the enemy showed its face.

It did not. Instead, it detonated some ammunition by remote control, rocking Caesar's vehicle and sending shrapnel through metal and flesh.

A moment of suspended reality followed, a stilled silence in the midst of roaring war. Then reality returned: one soldier with part of his calf blown off; another who would lose an arm; and Caesar, unaware that his right leg was dangling by skin below the knee.

A LIFE SPARED, A LEG GONE

"I tried to take a step and I just dropped down," he recalls. "That's when I realized my leg was gone."

Nine days later, Caesar was in a bed at Walter Reed. Sometimes he would look down at the absence of his leg and ache. Other times, he thanked God for sparing his life. He began working out in the physical therapy unit, where he met Dick Traum and Mary Bryant, who were visiting from New York.

Traum was an amputee, a marathoner, and the founder of the Achilles Track Club, which encourages the disabled to participate in events like marathons. Bryant was a cancer survivor and marathoner who had helped her brother, a quadriplegic, finish the 1997 marathon.

Caesar remembers the day that Bryant asked him to try a hand-cranked wheelchair. "I was like, aah, I don't know about that," he recalls. "And then when I tried it, I didn't think I wanted to do any marathon."

But the Achilles pitch gradually registered. Soldiers joined the track club in dribs and drabs, including Caesar. They wheeled laps around the hospital's physical therapy room through late winter, and when the weather warmed up, they trained outside.

HITTING A WALL, PUSHING THROUGH

For their first goal, the soldiers focused on a five-mile event in Central Park. On an August day, amid rain and thunder, Caesar wheeled across the line first in his Achilles crowd. "He flies," Bryant says.

The weekend before the New York City Marathon, Caesar trained on hospital roads, his arms and chest aching from the hand-crank repetition. But he was itching to show his city how he could move, how he could fly.

Caesar says he hit a wall at about mile 16, with the Queensboro Bridge and its steady incline, but that he pushed through it with some prayer and a single-minded focus on getting to the finish line.

"Things have changed; my lifestyle will change," says Caesar. "But my personality is still the same. I'm still driven, still competitive. I still love a challenge."

Dan Barry writes the About New York column in The New York Times; additional reporting by Damien Cave.