He didn't hear the explosion just below his boots, which even now, weeks later, amazes Sgt. Ionatana "John" Ala.

He saw the dust, though, as it swelled up around the Humvee. He watched it steal the Iraqi night and swallow his view of the road.

And the next sensation was distinctly out of place. Ala was floating, weightless for a moment as the Humvee — 5 tons of welded steel — was lifted 6 feet into the air.

An Army reservist with the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry, Ala had been a weekend soldier for 19 years before he was sent to Iraq last January.

Today, as the nation honors its 24.5 million veterans, Ala can proudly say he has joined their ranks.

His 10 months in Iraq — his first time in combat — changed his life.

The blast took Ala, a 37-year-old husband and father of two from Mililani, to the edge of eternity but somehow brought him back to safety.

Ala is a bear of a man, with broad shoulders, a full, round face and a crushing handshake. But his voice softens at the memory of that day.

"I guess I have been given a second chance," he said. "The guys tell me how bad the vehicle was damaged, and I think I was very fortunate and lucky."

The Humvee was destroyed, "pretty much blown apart," and the whole front end was gone, Ala said.

"Considering the damage to the vehicle, it could have been worse," he said. "I think someone was looking out for me."

Shrapnel from the blast had to be removed from Ala's left knee, and his left foot was fractured. The wounds sent him home several weeks ahead of his unit, which is due back in January.

Ala, a UPS driver, returned to a family that was never far from his thoughts.

His 8-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter only vaguely understood what he was doing. Even now, they do not know exactly why he came home. Their mother won't tell them.

"They don't need to know," said Carylynd Cintro Ala. "I told them Daddy twisted his ankle."

Her husband was in the Army Reserve when she married him 11 years ago. There were soldiers at their wedding — the same soldiers who are in Iraq right now — but she never expected her husband to get wounded.

"I'm lucky to have him here," she said. "He will mend, but in a way, he's still there. His mind is there ... with them."

Ala was a squad leader in Charlie Company. Returning home meant he left behind another kind of family — his men in Iraq.

Their job was to patrol areas outside of a U.S. base called LSA Anaconda, looking for hidden weapons, among other daily missions. They did this nearly every day for months, six to 12 hours at a stretch, and maybe they'd get a day off once a week, he said.

It forges a bond that only soldiers truly understand, one that cannot be duplicated in the civilian world.

"That's all you got when you go out and do a patrol," Ala said. "The guy on your left and the guy on your right, those are your brothers in arms."

They would talk about family, but usually not while on patrol. The task required focus.

Without that, something deadly could be mistaken for something innocuous, like a dead dog in the street that is really a carcass filled with explosives, he said.

"If you lose focus, you could end up losing your life. You just have to remain vigilant and focus on the mission at hand. Look at the road. You can't take anything for granted."

And so it was on Oct. 16 at 10:45 p.m., on a canal road north of Anaconda, that Ala and his men were on patrol. They were nearly finished when the blast shuddered beneath them.

"I can pretty much recall everything. I looked to the left and saw my driver there. I saw the short circuits, the sparks coming from under the vehicle and the radio. Then my door flew open, and that is when I heard the bang."

Ala said he felt lucky that the blast was on his side of the vehicle and not beneath his driver, a young man from American Samoa. A blast can turn gas and brake pedals into missiles.

No one was seriously injured, but the attack served as a prelude to a deadly series of roadside bombings that struck the battalion and the unit they were attached to, the Hawai'i National Guard's 29th Brigade Combat Team.

Two men from the battalion were killed as was a guardsman. A fourth man, also a reservist, lost both his legs in the blast that killed the guardsman.

Ala knew them all.

They had trained together and served in combat, shook each other's hand, told each other to be safe.

And when Ala attended a memorial yesterday for Staff Sgt. Wilgene Lieto and Spc. Derence Jack, two men from Saipan who served with his battalion, he knew the roles could have been different.

"That could have easily happened to me," he said.

He stood stoically through a bugler's taps and a bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace."

And when it was his turn, he hobbled slowly on crutches toward photographs of the soldiers, then balanced on one leg so he could salute them.

Soldier to soldier.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.