In 2005, my Army unit searched an Afghan village for an enemy weapons cache. Our convoy consisted of a lead Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun, a center civilian pickup, and my team’s trail Humvee, in which I manned the Mk 19 grenade-launching machine gun. It was a pretty average day.

Then our convoy suddenly stopped. An old Afghan man with a long gray beard had walked out in front of us. We all readied our weapons, fearing an ambush.

“You cannot go that way,” the old man said through our interpreter.

“We are Americans. We’ll go wherever we want,” we responded.

“You must not go that way,” the man said. “The Soviets left a minefield on that side of the village.”

We thanked the man and chose a different route. Why did this Afghan save our lives? He gained nothing by helping us. No one would have blamed him for letting us drive to our deaths. But he risked being shot by a scared soldier with a loose trigger finger when he halted us. We........

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