Dan Nevins joined the military straight out of high school, to fight the first Gulf War. He spent four years in Germany; he was a paratrooper at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. "I did all this fun military stuff," he says. In 1999 he left active duty and became a reservist, then chased a girl out to California and went to work for Pfizer. "I loved it, my life was on track," he says. (And Nicole is now his wife.) Then his unit was activated to go to Iraq in January 2004. Nevins was with some of the first reservists to be deployed. "Our orders were for 545 days, which was a big shocker to the family," he says. "But you say, 'You know what? We'll get through it, I'll survive.'" He was a squad leader with cooks and medics reporting to him. "It was great, it was what I'd trained to do."
