It was March 1969, and the three of us were sitting in a Boston Whaler a mile off the Viet Nam coast, and two miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. The engine had died, and the current was carrying us north at three miles per hour. I had been in-country for a little over a week, and already my roommate had been med-evaced to Japan, full of metal from a Chinese 122mm rocket. We didn't know if he would live or die. I was floating north toward a...