Years ago, I met a fellow veteran at a promotion event for one of my novels. The man suffered from traumatic brain injury, sustained in an improvised explosive device attack on his vehicle during his deployment to Iraq . Due to his injury, he wore one of those soft helmets, and he misunderstood basic social cues. I pitied him and thought of how close I’d come to a similar fate.

With the Army in Afghanistan in 2005, I was manning the turret behind the Mk-19 grenade-launching machine gun , with my top half sticking out of the H umvee and my back resting against the upright, locked-open turret hatch lid.

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