I pulled three men out of that vehicle before the fuel went.
The third one, the last one, the one I went back a second time for when everyone was screaming at me not to, was a nineteen-year-old private named Danny Shaw.
He was pinned, and he was burning, and I got him out, and in getting him out the second blast took most of my left leg below the knee and a good portion of my hearing on that side.
I never saw Danny Shaw again.
That is how it works, more than the movies tell you.
They medevac you in different directions, you wake up in different countries, you heal in different states, and the men whose lives braid together for one screaming afternoon simply never find each other again.
I knew he lived. They told me that much in the h*spital, a nurse with kind eyes who brought me the one piece of news I’d been asking for before I was even fully awake: the three you pulled out, Sergeant, all three made it.
