Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Michael Burke was putting to the test a core conviction upon which many of his decisions in life were predicated: that bad things happened to other people, that he was going to come through all this just fine. Of course, this belief in personal immunity is one that a great many soldiers take into battle—army recruiters of the world rather count on it—and it tends to hold up well right up until the day it’s proven wrong.
