Colonel Eklund takes his time with this one. “It is. You might think that performing one’s duty under fire is standard procedure. But after serving in three wars, I can tell you it’s not. I’ve seen muscle-bound hero types cower in trenches, while skinny runts held together with spit and whipcord charged machine-gun nests, howling like the hounds of hell. What’s remarkable about the night the Chinese overran us is that Private Cage survived at all. He had more burp gun rounds sprayed at him than what you see in these silly shoot-’em-up movies they make nowadays. But somebody upstairs was looking out for him that night. As for duty . . . the men who served with Tom Cage knew that if they went down, he would do everything in his power to save them. They knew it, you hear me? And because of that, they fought hard. And when they fell, he kept his end of the bargain. He crawled out into a dark so full of Chinese soldiers you couldn’t move without one trying to bayonet you. You can’t ask more of a man than that. And you can’t teach it in boot camp. A man’s either raised up to do his duty or he’s not.”

“A stirring speech, Colonel. I have to admit, you’ve convinced me. Tom Cage acted heroically on the night of the twenty-fifth. But let me ask you this: Have you heard of cases where men who acted heroically in war committed crimes later in life?”

The colonel’s face clouds with unpleasant recollection. “Ah—”

“Objection,” says Quentin.

“On what grounds?” asks Judge Elder.

I can see from the colonel’s face that Shad struck vital tissue with his thrust. Dad’s going to take a hit here; Quentin senses it, too. Colonel Eklund remembers something, and he isn’t about to lie on the stand. But Quentin himself already argued that Eklund qualifies as an expert on military matters, and by Quentin’s own strategy, trying to suppress any part of the truth—even an unpleasant part—would be a mistake.

“Withdrawn,” Quentin says softly.

“Colonel?” Shad prompts, smelling blood.

“I knew a sergeant in Vietnam who killed his wife after he got out of the service. Killed his wife and then himself. He suffered from battle fatigue. Or PTSD, they call it now.”

“Is that the only such case you remember?”

Colonel Eklund hesitates, then says, “No. A guy I served with went to jail for robbing a bank in Illinois.”

“After he’d won an award for bravery?”

“The Bronze Star.”

“Any other cases?”

“I don’t think so. You hear things, you know. But those are the only instances in my personal experience.”