This isn’t a tale of heroics. It’s a story about luck, timing, and the kind of science that can turn death itself on its heels. In 1968, Uncle Sam decided I should wear an Army uniform. I was soon trained as a light weapons infantryman and given orders to report to the First Air Cavalry in Vietnam. Then fate intervened. Through some bureaucratic twist, one of those “Army miracles,” I was rerouted into on-the-job training as a medical corpsman. That, I quickly learned, was the best job in the Army. I was stationed in Germany. Determined not to wind up hauling trash or scrubbing latrines, I buried myself in medical study. Soon I was assigned to the treatment and surgery room at the largest dispensary in the country, a place where everything from major trauma to childbirth emergencies rolled through the doors. Through a small comedy of errors, nobody realized I wasn’t formally trained. Had they known, they would have shipped me to an ambulance crew. Instead, I found myself stand...