Page 14. This story is partially a look at the fact that there were a surprising number of Vietnam vets in the Army even at this late date - mostly National Guard CW5 helicopter pilots. It's partially a story about the wartime volunteer Army's desperation for manpower drawing in people who wouldn't ordinarily be there at all, and some of the situations that creates. It's ALSO a sort of thought experiment about someone who (a) really does want to be there and (b) can't be coerced by the Army short of a firing squad.
Military leaders in the United States are, as a whole and taking one with the other, on average, by far the most risk-averse, ticket-punching, block-checking, what-does-the-regulation-say, slide-turns-green group of ostensibly armed killers in human history. I'm as guilty of this as anyone, and the system is designed to breed them and to winnow out anyone else. The best civilian analogy that I've heard is: imagine if a law firm made you wait 20 years to make partner, fired half of prospective partners 18 years in, and handed each new partner a one-time million-dollar check on top of his or her salary. You can imagine the kind of people that does and doesn't retain. In some ways, that's a good thing - Napoleon and Caesar were dynamic risk-takers, and we don't want any of those.
It's also the source of the very valid criticism that the Iraq and ESPECIALLY the Afghan wars were fought one year at a time, over and over, with the intention of avoiding defeat just long enough to repeat the cycle. This is the story of a guy who's not playing that game.