Frank Kohnke, 98, is emblematic of a great generation that that unceremoniously answered when the nation called. The Milwaukee teenager enlisted at age 16, lying about his birthday and forging his mother's signature.
He was desperate to be a paratrooper, a bold new military specialty that trained men to jump out of airplanes and float into combat zones under silk chutes and the cover of darkness.
"You look at it now, and you just think: "Stupid," Kohnke laughs. "But that's the definition of being young. I was stupid, but, oh, how I wanted to be a paratrooper."
He was assigned to the 101st Airborne, an untested unit that was stood up just days before the end of World War I and never saw action then. But before World War II, the 101st was reorganized with parachute regiments, and it got the critical assignment of dropping deep behind enemy lines hours before the invasion.
Its commander would famously call the mission a "rendezvous with destiny."
--GreGen
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