“Not at that point. But every GI north of the thirty-eighth parallel knew the Commies’ prisoner policy. No quarter given. The North Koreans had been mutilating POWs before executing them. A couple of ambulances filled with wounded had been burned out with flamethrowers. And we were even more afraid of being captured by the Chinese.”

Shad takes a moment before going on. “Wasn’t it your duty to stay with the wounded, Mr. Garrity?”

“Mr. Johnson, that might be a thorny problem in some philosophy book, or even a field manual. But in real life . . . no soldier is obligated to wait for certain death unless ordered to, and we hadn’t been. Tom and I had a tough choice. We were medics, and dedicated to our work. We could stay there and be captured—which meant death or worse—or we could try to climb out and bring back help, if we could somehow hook up with an American unit in time. We knew the odds were low. We told those boys how things stood. We said, ‘We’d take you with us if we could, but we can’t move you without killing you.’ And that’s when one of them, a tough little fella from Idaho, said, ‘Kill me now, then. Better you than them devil monkeys.’ That’s what some guys called the gooks—the North Koreans—back then. I don’t think he even knew it was the Chinese who’d knocked us off the road. Anyway, I looked at Tom, he looked at me, and we knew each other’s minds. It was either put them boys out of their misery or leave them to a terrible fate.”

“And Major Powers?”

Walt sniffs as though he has just detected a noxious odor. “Major Powers. Well . . . early on, the major had been praying, like he said. But about this time he chimes in and says, ‘I know what you men are thinking, and you can’t do it. No matter what these boys say, it’s wrong, and you know it.’”

“How did you respond?”

“I told him I thought what he was saying was fine for a church meeting, but not much use down in that gorge. I’d gone to church most every Sunday growing up, but my heart told me it was up to them boys to decide how they wanted to meet their maker.”

“And?”

“They decided. They told us to give ’em enough morphine to go to sleep and not wake up. And that’s what we done.” Walt sniffs a couple more times, like a man with hay fever, but then I realize his old slit eyes are welling with tears.