he alone managed to crawl here

"The rumors about him are mysterious and mundane. Before he was my father, he was a skinny kid in the South Vietnamese army. He was a heroin addict. He was a gangster. He sold American cigarettes on the black market. He cruised girls. He ran away from home. He was part of a select unit trained by the Americans. He jumped out of airplanes and disappeared for weeks into the jungles and hill towns. His friends fell around him, first during the war and then after the war, but somehow he alone managed to crawl here, on his hands and knees, to this life."

~~ from The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Lê Thi Diem Thúy