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Walsh and the lieutenant came up after Gallagher got back in line, while I was still on the ground. They examined me, as my two negligent troopers secured the sapper, who was still alive.
    “I’ll be damned,” SSG Walsh said.
    “What?” The lieutenant asked.
    “Giordano is the luckiest mother fucker in the Herd. He may have to change his underwear and get new LCE, but I don’t think he’s wounded at all.”
    “Are you sure?” 2LT Andrews asked.
    “Yes, sir. Let’s get him on his feet. He’s a little dazed by the blast, but he’s OK.”
    “You sure got an angel on your shoulder, bud,” SSG Walsh said.
    “I’ll say,” my platoon leader agreed. “No Purple Heart for you.”
    “No confirmed kill, either,” Walsh said, as he looked at the wounded sapper.
    “Sir, let’s get the medics over here. The sapper could have a ton of information about who else is lurking outside the perimeter.”
    Less than 20 minutes after I shot the NVA soldier, the first platoon on our left encountered four sappers near a culvert that engineers had built across a small stream. Alerted by our earlier contact, our boys spotted the enemy before they could ambush anyone. After a brisk firefight, four NVA soldiers died. Two Americans received minor wounds.
    The next day, at the express direction of my First Sergeant—a man that I still admire above almost all others—I held informal counseling sessions for my negligent subordinates behind the company shit house. Top supervised as I counseled each one in a dismounted Airborne bare-knuckle drill. The first session went well. The second proved far more challenging—but ended on the right note.
    When it was all over, both of my men apologized and swore that they would never fuck up again. For the next several weeks, we became so close that one of the guys named his second son after me ten years later. The other, Tim Williams, died in my arms at LZ English. My oldest son bears his name.
    I had several other close calls in Vietnam.
    Six weeks after shooting the sapper, Tim Williams and I were in a C-123 transport that took ground fire on an approach into the landing strip at LZ English near Bong Son. Tracers from .51 caliber machine guns wounded Paratroopers in the webbed seats on both sides of me. One of the rounds hit Tim in the back and exited his chest. The enemy fire disabled the port engine and destroyed the hydraulic lines that controlled the landing gear.
    Somehow, the brave and skilled aircrew managed to land the airframe, but other Paratroopers suffered serious injury in the controlled crash landing. Two of my friends, including Tim, died in that incident. After holding Tim until the life ebbed from his body, I walked away with a heavy heart, a ton of guilt, but without a scratch.
    Two weeks later, on my 21st birthday in July, I rode shotgun on a Jeep that had business in Qui Nhon, a small Annamese town on the South China Sea. Due to the irresponsibility and gross misjudgment of a horny lieutenant, we missed our convoy back to An Khe in the Central Highlands. Adding insult to injury, the lieutenant ordered that we travel without an escort at dusk, west on Highway 19.
    The driver, the officer, and I negotiated the treacherous switchbacks of the An Khe Pass after dark. For the next hour, I could sense an evil presence along the road.
    It wasn’t until the next day, when the NVA unleashed a massive ambush against a South Korean infantry battalion in An Khe Pass, that we realized that the NVA had followed our Jeep at every turn. Not wanting to spoil the tactical surprise or risk losing the bigger target, the enemy must have decided that three Americans were small potatoes. They let us through unmolested.
    In addition to a dedicated, motivated, and deliberate enemy, threats at An Khe included drunken and deranged comrades.
    The night that I made sergeant in November of 1968, an intoxicated, homicidal staff sergeant tried to shoot a close friend of mine over an imagined slur. After