Episode list

Sam Damon, from small-town Nebraska, finds life in the U.S. Army, just prior to World War I, so appealing that he breaks off his relationship with Celia, his childhood sweetheart. When war does break out, Sam is sent to fight in France where his courage and initiative raise him in rank from private to sergeant to lieutenant to captain. Along the way he crosses paths with an assertive nurse - "Tommy" Caldwell, daughter of Col. Caldwell - and an ambitious officer, Courtenay Massengale, whose promotions have come from manipulating his contacts with his superiors.

The war ends in 1918. Sam Damon marries "Tommy" Caldwell and they return to the U.S. where Sam continues his military career at a backwater Army base in Kansas. Also before returning to the U.S., Courtenay Massengale marries Emily Pawlfrey, the spoiled niece of a wealthy American senator. Back in New Jersey, however, this marriage quickly shows signs of strain as Emily taunts Courtenay about his being "unable" in the bedroom.

"Tommy" Damon gives birth to a boy, Donny, at the Army base in Kansas where Sam's military career seems to have stalled. Meanwhile Emily Massengale seeks from other men the satisfaction she can't find with her husband. She becomes pregnant by a married taxi driver and, distraught, tries suicide by overdosing on pills at a cheap motel. Rushed to an emergency room, she and the unborn child are saved. Emily now wants to divorce Courtenay but he threatens to expose her adulterous past. Reluctantly she gives in and Courtenay says they will raise the child as their own. "Tommy" and Sam, now stationed in Texas, have child problems of their own. She insists that Donny be kept away from things military lest he too becomes a soldier.

Pressured by "Tommy," who fears the military's influence on their son -- she caught the boy playing with and firing his father's gun -- Damon reluctantly leaves the Army and takes a job in a factory owned by his wife's uncle in Erie, Pennsylvania. Damon brings new efficiencies to the factory and forces out some men whose racial prejudice has terrorized a co-worker. These actions result in the co-worker's 12-year-old son shooting and killing the ring-leader of his father's tormentors. The boy then flees. Still not comfortable with civilian life, however, and concerned about the build-up of hostile forces in both Europe and the Pacific, Damon rejoins the Army and, in 1938, is posted to the Philippine Islands where the runaway boy, now a soldier, faces more racial prejudice. Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., Courtenay Massengale and wife Emily are having trouble with daughter Jinny who's just been expelled from school. Emily wants her husband to intervene with the school but Massengale is more concerned with his possible promotion.