Staff Sgt. Joseph McKenzie was less than an inch away from possible death four years ago on a ridgetop in eastern Afghanistan.

An enemy bullet hit him on the brim of the Kevlar advanced combat helmet covering his forehead, bloodying his face a bit from the concussion but otherwise not doing much harm.

On Tuesday, with his wife and 17-month-old son present, Army officials presented the Schofield Barracks soldier with the front half of his helmet on a plaque — a divot visible on the outside and a deformation on the inside — after it was X-rayed and analyzed.

“For some of you guys who haven’t been downrange yet, this is a wake-up call. Life’s real, man,” he told fellow soldiers of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry who were in formation for the helmet presentation.

One inch lower, and things could have been very different for McKenzie, noted Col. Dean Hoffman IV, project manager for soldier protection and individual equipment out of Fort Belvoir, Va.

“I think it’s pretty easy to tell how close Sgt. McKenzie came,” Hoffman told the assembled soldiers.

Hoffman said he made the trip to Hawaii for the presentation in part because he admires the now 29-year-old soldier.

“Not only did he continue to serve in the fight (then), but he continues to serve today,” Hoffman said. “He just recently graduated from Ranger School in February.”

For McKenzie the helmet is a reminder how tenuous life can be and how hard life was in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, a rugged, remote place where some of the U.S. military’s greatest losses occurred.

“It’s just something kind of reminding you how serious life can get in an instant, and how something as little as your helmet, that people (complain), ‘Why do we gotta wear this?’” can save a life, McKenzie said. “So maybe a reminder for other soldiers — hey man, this stuff works. It might sound like big sarge trying to tell you what to do, but from life experience, this stuff can save your life.”

McKenzie deployed to Iraq in the 2007-to-2009 time frame and was in Afghanistan at the tail end of a 12-month deployment in 2011 with the 101st Airborne Division when he got hit.

He and other soldiers were helicoptered in to a higher elevation to create a blocking position while another platoon pushed through the valley below.

A series of sandbagged positions were set up, and the soldiers were taking sporadic fire when the Chicago man was shot. The round came in on a downward angle and pushed his helmet into his face, he said.

“It was just kind of like a blunt force, almost like a punch,” he said, adding his right eye went black for a second.

“Basically around my eye and my cheek, I was bleeding, basically from the helmet hitting off my face,” McKenzie said. After the impact he took off his helmet, “and I saw where the impact was, and then from there I was able to assess — I’m breathing, I’m moving, I’m not dead, so I figured, OK, I’m good now.”

Staff Sgt. Joshua Baecker turned on a GoPro camera and caught a bloodied McKenzie being treated.

The infantryman, who like a lot of infantrymen liberally applies the F-word, complains somewhat incredulously in the video that the enemy fighter “f——— shot me right in the f——— head.”

“How you feeling? Dizzy? Nauseous?” asks the medic.

“No man, I’m a f——— stud,” McKenzie offers in return.

McKenzie said Tuesday it didn’t take long from the time the medic determined he was OK “before it turned into, ‘All right, let’s make some jokes now.’”

He said there were a lot of emotions — including the realization he had a very close call.

“I think maybe just the adrenaline, plus the fear — it’s like you are all pumped up, something’s going on, and then all of a sudden you get, thud (from the bullet), like put in your place real quick,” he said. “So it’s kind of like a wake-up call, kind of like a humbling-type thing.”