I can see the jury warming to Walt’s delivery, but Shad seems willing to pay the price to get what he wants from Dad’s old friend.

“Second, the major said Tom had only minor wounds himself. In fact, Private Cage had sustained serious shrapnel wounds from fragmentation grenades on the night of November twenty-fifth, when the Chinese first attacked our position.”

Shad looks a little disconcerted by this correction of the record. “Go on, Captain.”

“Well, we started with eight wounded soldiers in that ambulance—it was an old Dodge WC54, World War Two vintage—which meant we were double loaded, plus me driving and Tom in the back. Most of those boys was wounded so bad they wouldn’t have made it to a surgeon even if the ambulance hadn’t gone off the road. The accident only caused additional casualties and shock, like the major said. Two GIs were killed by machine-gun fire during the ambush, and two more died during the roll down the cliff. One might have reached the hospital in decent shape if we hadn’t been ambushed, but he sustained a skull fracture during the crash. He was in and out briefly, then fell unconscious. But here’s my point: as bad as those two conscious boys were hurt—mortally wounded, both of them—they fully understood the situation. No help was coming.”

“How did they come to understand it? Through what you and Private Cage told them?”

“Lord, no. The whole damned division was bugging out, and they knew it. All discipline had broken down; the army was in full retreat. I don’t like saying it, but wounded were being abandoned all over the place. We could hardly get tanks down that road, much less stop and mount a rescue operation. Nobody was going to take time to winch an ambulance back up onto a road that was nothing but a kill zone. And those boys knew that. We all did. Even Powers.”

“Let’s get back to the wounded men,” Shad suggests.

“Let’s,” Walt says icily. “So . . . I was trapped in the driver’s seat, but I could hear fine, better than I wanted to. One boy was crying for his mother; another was screaming in pain. He quieted down when Tom gave him some morphine. That’s when Tom came forward and freed me. He did that by breaking my shoulder, by the way. Broke it with an entrenching tool.”

A soft gasp sounds in the courtroom.

“Weren’t no other way,” Walt said. “There wasn’t no Jaws of Life down in that godforsaken gorge. Tom told me what he’d have to do to get me out, and I said ‘Get on with it, then.’ I’d have let him cut my arm off to keep from being captured by those Chicom bastards.”