The second person that Eddie meets is his former captain from the army, whom Eddie finds sitting in a tree in a Philippine rainforest. The Captain reminds Eddie of their time together as prisoners of war in a forced labor camp. Their group escaped after a lengthy period of time and burned the camp during their escape as an act of relieving some of the stress placed upon them during their long stretch in captivity. Eddie remembers that he had seen a shadow running from one of the huts that he set aflame, although he never identified the figure. The Captain confesses that he was the one who shot Eddie in the leg to prevent Eddie from chasing the shadow into the fire, which would have certainly caused Eddie's death. This saved Eddie's life while leaving him with the lifelong injury and severe limp that Eddie repeatedly blames as the main reasons for his never achieving a life outside of Ruby Pier, which he had grown to loathe in his old age due to his mother's failing faculties making his father's taken-over job and a life at the pier impossible to escape.
Eddie then learns how the Captain died - something he had never put much consideration into before, as all the men in the platoon had lost touch with each other after the war, and he was in no condition at the time to fully realize what had happened. As the Captain and his men were making their escape from the prison camp, the men were tending to Eddie's leg wound in the back of the truck as the Captain cleared the path ahead. As he scouted ahead, he stepped on a land mine that would have destroyed the truck and killed all the Captain's men had the Captain not set it off, instead making the battlefield the Captain's final resting place. Eddie learns his second lesson about the importance of people's willingness to make sacrifices for others, big and small.
After this revelation, the Captain shows Eddie the true nature of his Heaven, which is not in fact the battlefield that Eddie remembers. The war-torn environment around them makes way to the most serene, beautiful nature landscape that Eddie has ever seen. Eddie looks at the Captain to see a man he hardly recognized without the layer of ash and dirt on his face - a young man in a pristine, clean army uniform who explains that for his Heaven he wished to see what the world was like before war, fighting, conflicts, and cruelty. Eddie watches the Captain walk away after he tosses Eddie his old combat helmet. Inside the helmet, Eddie finds a foreshadowing of things to come: a single picture of his late wife Marguerite, the same one he carried with him during war times.