Bethany Hamilton, the 15-year-old surfer from the Hawaiian island of Kauai, is standing in the lounge in the clinic at the US Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany. Laura Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger have occupied the spot she now stands in, but Hamilton is a celebrity in her own right in the US. In October 2003, the high school student was attacked by a shark while surfing off the coast of Kauai. Despite having lost her left arm in the attack, she was back on her surfboard within only four weeks of the accident. It was a minor miracle.

The talented but largely unknown surfer was suddenly transformed into a media event. She was a guest on Oprah and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and her story was featured in Time and People. The blonde teenage girl with braces quickly became a symbol of bravery and an unrelenting determination to face life's challenges.

This is her message: "He did it for me, and He can also do it for you." She's talking, of course, about God. Bethany Hamilton has learned this hopeful sentence by heart and it's part of what has become her regular speaking program.

She wrote her story down in "Soul Surfer," which was published in October with an initial run of 300,000 copies. Hamilton has her own fragrance line, too, with perfume bottles in the shape of little surfboards, and her story is soon to be made into a Hollywood movie.

Now, in Germany, Hamilton is supposed to give a speech to a dozen marines who were wounded in the Iraq war or are suffering from post-traumatic stress. She sees hunched-over men, some walking on crutches or heavily bandaged. They're all waiting until they are able to travel and can finally be flown home.

But as she stands in front of the troops, she shuffles her feet and whispers: "I forgot my speech." The audiences chuckles, and her planned speech turns into an interview.

"Are you afraid of the ocean?"

"How big was the shark?"

Hamilton's manager, Roy Hofstetter, stands next to her. He has been at her side constantly ever since the accident. The lanky businessman from Kauai is a friend of the family -- or perhaps just the first person to recognize the hidden potential of a one-armed surfer.

His client has taken the place of US GI Jessica Lynch in America's pantheon of national heroes. But while the story of Lynch's rescue in Iraq was always somewhat controversial, Bethany's is the perfect drama.

"She looked into the jaws of beast, won her battle and, with the help of God, accepted her fate," says Roy Hofstetter. In her first TV interview after coming home from the hospital, Hamilton said: "This was God's plan for my life."

Could there be a better symbolic figure for America?

Nowadays Hamilton is frequently on the road on behalf of the Lord. "Bethany has a mission; she wants to make this planet a better place," says Hofstetter. She dedicates hospitals and facilities for the disabled, and she's traveled to Ramstein on behalf of an organization that addresses the needs of US troops abroad. "You could say that George Bush hired us," says Hofstetter.

The fate of a GI wounded in Iraq or someone who has spent nine months in Najaf can hardly be compared with that of Bethany Hamilton. But that discussion doesn't come up at Ramstein.

The event ends after an hour. Hamilton signs a few autographs before she leaves and appears relieved. The troops, however, are not. Nevertheless, the surfer girl has fulfilled her end of the arrangement, even if she ultimately got more out of it than the soldiers.

But Bethany Hamilton doesn't want to save the world, and she's no miracle child. She's just an admirably brave girl who refuses to give up her dream of becoming a competitive surfer. In some ways, her accident has brought her closer to her goal. In fact, she's already being sponsored by surfing gear manufacturer Rip Curl.