Welcome to Kind World from W-B-U-R. I'm Erica Lance.

There's one day of Joe Cerna's life that has reverberated through every other day since.

It's 2008, Joe's in Afghanistan, where he's serving in the Special Forces.

He and three other guys are in an armored truck. It's big, with doors so heavy that you need

a hydraulic system to open them.

They're driving along a canal on a dirt road around midnight.

And at some point, the road gives away.

The truck land sideways and it starts sliding down the hill into the water.

The water starts rising, like over my head. I'm having trouble getting my seatbelt off.

His friend jumps back and yanks him up so he can breathe.

The hydraulics is knocked out and we are fighting for these doors and fighting for these doors.

You can't see the water rising because it's pitch black.

You can feel the water rising up to our chin. And then I hear a gurgling sound

and I realized that the fuel cans that we had on outside were crushed.

And then I can smell the fumes.

The only pocket of air I had was now contaminated.

I kept coming in and out.

I had seized things that weren't there,

and I was hallucinating.

I thought I had died.

Joe wakes up to a sharp tug.

His team has found the truck.

...