Chad Carswell was barely 18 when insurgents during Operation Enduring Freedom took aim at his KC-135—a giant gas tank with wings—with him and other Air Force crewmen inside. He described a chaotic scene in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times and the moment he realized the only way to thwart a deadly and fiery explosion was to try to get to the guns that were locked up in a vehicle 10 feet away. “It was a pretty intense moment,” recalled Carswell who recounted the days he served at the border of Qatar during U.S. airstrikes on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in America’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Carswell admittedly didn’t expect to find himself in combat just weeks into boot camp. Others newly enlisted left before finishing training, but Carswell said humanitarian work with refugees “made him realize how blessed he was”—and so he …