While leading my squad on patrol, I instinctively turned around to signal to my men that the enemy is in the area and to pass it up to our platoon leader. As I turned around, I hear a faint metallic click at my foot…then the explosion. Instantly, I am traveling through the air, my steel pot (head gear) is traveling in one direction, my rucksack previously strapped to my body is traveling in another direction, I can see the visions of my life moving slowly before my eyes in what seemed like an eternity. I feel suspended in time. There is no sound around me. My body is stunned, and I am going in and out of consciousness. While in this suspended state of life and death, I remember praying, God, please don’t let me die…if you let me live, I will devote my life to saving humanity.

God saved my life in Vietnam. Before Vietnam, I lived a purposeless life caring only about fun, booze, and women….But why did he save me? What cause God to turn me around at the moment of the explosion? What was he saving me for? Looking back, I now accept my land-mine explosion encounter in Vietnam as one of many times of major transitions in my life when God interceded to guide me…a spiritual marker that would lay the groundwork for all that would follow.