The colonel’s throat tightened. His vision blurred. Because suddenly he wasn’t standing in a mess hall. He was twenty-four years old again, half-buried in sandbags outside Da Nang, Tet Offensive lighting up the sky like hellfire.

Vietnam, February 14, 1968.

Lieutenant Foster was pinned down with three wounded soldiers. Mortars shook the earth. The radio was dead.

Then Captain James Mitchell appeared—charging through enemy fire to reach them.

“Can you move?” Mitchell shouted.

“I can,” Foster answered, blood streaming down his temple. “They can’t.”

“Then we carry them.”

Forty-seven minutes of dragging wounded men through mud and bullets. Forty-seven minutes of Mitchell taking hits, bleeding through his uniform, refusing to stop.