Now do it over. And over. And over. Until you can do it under gunfire. Do it under gunfire when you haven’t eaten in three days. Do it on no sleep. Do it in your sleep. Do it while pissing down your leg in fright. Do it while mourning a mate who got his head blown off yesterday. Do it with blood in your eyes and a load of shrapnel in your leg. Do it with a shot-up buddy dying on your shoulders.

That’s all battle was: men doing what they were told, no matter the emotion or circumstances. Some men had a talent for the telling, but most were simply good at the doing. Sure, there were the crack sharpshooters. The ingenious mechanics. The miracle-working medics. The artistic camoufleurs. The canny, iron-nerved sappers. The soft-stepped, eagle-eyed scouts. But most of the military force was made up of grunts, going where told, doing what told.

Standing with his buddies, listening more than talking, Kennet realized even the grunts had their hidden talents. The jokesters who could find humor in anything. The vulgates who could find the innuendo in anything. Or men like Alfred Martin who never got the jokes, never cursed, and blushed at anything the least bit suggestive. Marty’s talent was his innocence. He was the unit’s baby brother.

Nolen Anderson, a born-again Nebraskan, could drive you batshit crazy with his biblical recitations, but he had a preternatural ability to look over the platoon and find the soldier poised on the brink of his sanity, staring into the abyss. Anderson would put a hand on the tight shoulder, find the thousand-yard stare with his own and say, “You’re going to be okay. I prayed for you this morning. God and I had a long talk, I told him about you and I know it’s going to be all right.”

And with that strong hand on their shoulder and Anderson’s earnest gaze never wavering, men on the edge stepped back, believed Anderson, and lived to fight another day.

Anderson put that hand on Kennet’s arm now. “Fish? You all right?”

“For sure,” Kennet said, though his voice warbled a little.

“Man,” Hook said, rubbing circles on his chest. “Even the time I got arrested, I never felt panic like that.”

“I don’t panic until O’Hara panics,” Jock said.

And the unflappable, stoic O’Hara smiled, almost looking bashful.