Second Lt. Doug Pringle was stunned when a group of disabled World War II veterans walked into his room at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco in November 1968 and invited him to go ski-ing. With one leg severed and the other leg shattered by a North Vietnamese grenade just five months earlier, Pringle quickly refused.
He reconsidered after his buddies came back from their first outing with stories of hanging out in bars with beautiful women.