More special than he realizes.

William looked at his watch. “Get the lead out, boys. We’re going to be late. And you know how Sobel gets if we’re not at the airstrip on the nose.”

*  *  *

Training at Camp Toccoa had been unlike anything Tom had ever encountered in rural Virginia. He’d never even been up in an airplane let alone imagined jumping from one. His mother asked him why he’d chosen the Airborne and he gave her some bit about wanting an adventure. But in the quiet moments of the night when he asked himself the same thing, he came up with only this answer: that it was something none of the men in his family before him had ever done.

And therefore, there would be no one to whom he could be compared.

His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather. They had such illustrious military achievements to their names. All medaled marksmen who could handle rifles with speed and deftness and accuracy. Family photos lined the mantel and certificates of merit hung in expensive frames around their fireplace. Taunting Tom, tempting him since before he could even walk, with the glory of a soldier.

An uncle who’d died in the Battle of Cantigny had his own shrine in the dining room.

It was a history to be proud of. But he’d known them long after the boys they’d been in those days. When they’d been whittled away, no longer the robust and muscular carvings of men who’d seen battle but old men who clung to the glory days and smoked cigars while they told stories of those they’d served with.

Tom was still untested. Patriotism mingled with unspoken fears. Could he do what they’d done? He wasn’t sure. But it was expected of him all the same.

Paratrooping offered a unique solution. It was a brand-new division of the army. Neither his father, nor his grandfather, nor his great-grandfather had done it. Nor any of his uncles. And so, they could not worthily comment on his success or his failure at it. Because it would be an experience that was all his.

And what he’d told his mother had turned out to be true. It was an adventure, and he’d begun to understand why the men in his family reminisced with such regularity. His years at college and grad school paled in comparison to the exhilaration of jumping out of an airplane. The utter freedom of it. Even if he spent his career doing it, he knew he would miss the thrill of it once age forced retirement. Not to mention the camaraderie between the men, unlike anything he’d experienced at the university. A mutual pledge of shed blood if war demanded it was a hearty exchange that no study group could replicate.