was nineteen, serving overseas in Vietnam.
He often wrote cheerful letters about terrible food, unbearable heat, and friends who made him laugh.
At the bottom of one letter, he’d written:
Don’t worry, Quinnie. I’m being careful.
Three weeks later, military officers arrived at our parents’ farmhouse.
Danny had been seriously wounded during a patrol and had passed away while being evacuated for medical treatment.
He had been only twenty minutes from the hospital.
I couldn’t stop thinking about those twenty minutes.
So, weeks after his funeral, I joined the Army
