Or rather, where I should have died.” He paused, and his eyes went away again. “I was shot in through the lung and into the gut. There was never any question that I would die. The only question was when. The surgeons made me as comfortable as they could, but medicine was always in short supply, and I refused when I could. Better that they should go to men who had a chance of survival.”

I couldn’t imagine what it might have been like. You see pictures and movies of the horrors. Men missing limbs. Blood and flies everywhere. But Paul had actually lived it. What does that do to a man? Especially one who has lived as long as he and seen war and the same mistakes over and over again?

“I lay there in the medical tent and had time to look back over my life. What I...

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