George, the ginger soldier with the cackling laugh and big mouth, lobbed taunts like hand grenades at him as they marched, but Frederick refused to let the tall miscreant or the friends he called Tommy and Mouse know any of his insults had hit their mark. To distract himself, Frederick mentally wrote and revised a growing list of complaints, which he was determined to recite to Major Norton-Griffith upon their meeting, starting with the fact that most of the men in this unit were not trained to march in a straight line, much less to fight on the front lines.

Frederick, of course, had been trained to do both at boarding school. He had no doubt that when they arrived at the Ypres Salient, whatever error had placed him with this motley band of ruffians and vagrants would be corrected. A soldier of his caliber was born to lead troops, just as the Chamberlain men had for generations. Of course, the officers would not be aware of his family or his Eton education. He was three years shy of graduating and had been forced to perjure himself to join the army, but surely his impressive lineage, education, training, and experience would be obvious to his superiors the second they witnessed him in action.

Frederick slid his cold hands into the pockets of his greatcoat, where his left hand brushed against the silky vane of a long plume. He’d received the white feather three weeks earlier, when his classmates slipped it beneath his dormitory door after he refused to fight a younger student who’d challenged him. No explanation or message accompanied the feather. It needed neither. Frederick knew its meaning the second he spotted it. Everyone did.

Coward.

He’d kept the feather as a reminder of what he had to do. He’d prove them all wrong. His classmates, the army, his brothers, his father, even the gutter rats trudging behind him. Frederick Chamberlain was no coward. He was born to fight. He was born to lead, and after the war, his name would be engraved on the walls of Eton with the names of the prestigious school’s other war heroes. His portrait would hang in the Chamberlain family gallery, alongside his brothers’ and his father’s. The men and boys marching with him would treat him with respect. And once they heard of his victories against the Germans and saw the medals that would someday hang from his uniform, his perjury at the recruitment table would be forgiven and any difference in age existing between him and the other men fighting for crown and country would be forgotten. Leaving the feather in his pocket, Frederick marched on, determined to catch up to the lieutenant leading the way and distance himself further from those falling behind.

Their unit reached their destination as the sun crested the crooked lines of trenches stretching along the horizon. The lieutenant then divided them into groups. Some of the older soldiers were handed shovels and escorted to the front line to dig trenches and dugouts for the infantry. Others were ordered to report to the Royal Engineers tasked with repairing and reinforcing the muddied roads they’d just traveled. A medic informed a group of soldiers not much older than Frederick that they’d be serving as stretcher bearers at a nearby Regimental Aid Post.