Saint John Rescue is a vast organization of highly skilled volunteers and professionals. In Ontario, Canada, and many other places around the world, they provide ambulance service, rescue lost hikers, and promote water safety. Each year, they help thousands of people and save hundreds of lives. But one bright Wednesday morning, August 25, 1993, in Niagara Falls, they did something else entirely.
It was last light, and my front scout, Gair Anderson, my assistant team leader, Bruce Cain, and I were each placing a claymore mine facing an enemy trail. It was a well-used trail, four miles west-southwest of Quang Tri City, and only the night before we had heard enemy troops casually talking as they walked along. We were confident that more enemy troops would return. Then, just as we slipped in the detonators, a dark figure suddenly appeared on another trail, a hundred feet away.
