Wade Trammell recalls the time he and his fellow firefighters responded to a highway crash in which a beer truck rammed into a pole, propelling the truck’s engine through the cab and into the driver’s abdomen....

As a young GI at Fort Ord in Monterey County, California, Dean Osborn spent much of his time in the oceanside woodlands, training on soil and guzzling water from streams and aquifers now known to be contaminated with...