Unlikely Warrior

I had to make a choice between peace and honor, and I had chosen honor. So begins the journey of C. Michael Dingman from conflict-avoiding child and teen to recipient of a Bronze Star for Valor for his service as a combat medic in the Vietnam War to devoted minister. Unlikely Warrior is an achingly honest testimony of a decent boy becoming a good man, trusting his God and doing his best to do the right thing while covered in mud and blood and ducking volleys of enemy fire. A perfect sentence and a perfect statement of theme. Dingman includes, realistically, moments of grim levity (as when a pair of stubborn soldiers, eager to assert their pluck, eat cans of beans while standing unfazed over a dead body) amidst the horror of war; this is entirely appropriate, as the terror, unremitting, simply cannot be borne. The most effective journeys of the heart encompass the whole spectrum of human emotion.