HEROES: On a Moonlight Night

Charley Gilliland. a towheaded Ozark farm boy, learned to kill a rattlesnake and throw a mule by the time he was ten. He put in his turn milking and plowing, bought his first shotgun when he was 13, played football and refused to play basketball ("for sissies"), grew strong enough to hold a 98-lb. anvil over his head, but never once stopped dreaming of the day he would become a soldier. He sent away for cereal buttons, collected old CCC caps, medals and sheriff badges, and wore them all, strutting around the house.

On his 17th birthday, he talked his parents...