Tom Cotton is a rare member of Congress. He’s one of just over a dozen who served on the front lines of either Iraq or Afghanistan, and one of just four in the Senate. The 39-year-old Harvard Law alumnus is also the upper chamber’s youngest member.

For perspective, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch had been a senator for four months when Cotton was born in 1977, while the Senate’s oldest member, 82-year-old California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, was already on her second marriage.