Afterward, Rutledge had nearly killed Fleming, a last desperate defense of an inner self so unacceptable to a conscious mind that he’d hated the doctor, blamed him for bringing him out of his silence and back into awareness. . . .

THE SOMME OFFENSIVE of 1916, a disaster from its inception, had begun in July and dragged on through the summer. So many men had died that the bodies corrupted and rotted where they lay and the survivors lived with the stench. Weeks into the battle, they were none of them quite sane, but when Corporal Hamish MacLeod cracked, the shock of it left Rutledge and his men staring.

There had been no sign, no warning. Taking over from a gut-shot and dying sergeant, MacLeod had led his men with extraordinary skill and bravery, an example to them all. When he abruptly refused to make another assault on the machine-gun nest that was their objective, there was stunned disbelief.

Orders had come down that the gun had to be silenced before the entire line went over the top at dawn. Artillery fire, laid down in earnest during the night, had deafened them, battered them until they were all on the ragged edge of despair. And still the machine gunners survived, because they were well dug in and no one could reach them through the hail of bullets.

As the weary, white-faced corporal shook his head, refusing a direct order, saying only “I willna’ kill any more of our own. I willna’ go back again. It’s madness,” the eyes of the men at his back were grim, disheartened.

Rutledge didn’t know how he and Hamish had come through each assault unscathed. He didn’t know where he himself would find the strength to go back through the wire a sixth time. But there was no choice. One machine gun had the firepower of forty men. It could take down an entire line. It had to be put out of action.

Rutledge reasoned with Hamish, threatened him, called on his patriotism, and the silent Highlander had merely shaken his head. But his face pleaded for understanding even as it reflected the grief and torment in Rutledge’s.

In war there is no time for compassion. No time for mercy. To save a thousand lives, one had to be sacrificed. Rutledge gave Hamish an ultimatum. Be ready in an hour’s time for the next attempt, or be shot for cowardice.

Hardly cowardice. But that was the name the Army gave it when men broke under fire.

In the end, Rutledge had had to carry out his threat. In the darkness before dawn, a hastily drawn-up firing squad had shot Corporal Hamish MacLeod. And as Rutledge had delivered the coup de grâce to the badly wounded Highlander, the salient had been blasted out of existence by a German shell. Buried alive, blinded, and deaf, Rutledge had lived only because Hamish’s body had protected him. A bitter irony . . .