On the train to Mineola Field, Long Island, he sat with his nose to the window. The train was delayed because an ammunition explosion had blown the previous train off the tracks and into a lake. Those shattered railway cars each contained eight horses, and they were slowly sinking. There was apparently nothing to be done for them, but for six hours, from the late afternoon, through sunset, and into the night, Lee heard the horses crying out. At first there were many different types of whinnies and moans, and by the end, just one final horse, voice torn, making a braying sound of terror as the waters rose up and percolated over the carriages.

Lee did not know why it had once seemed important to be in the movies.

When it was safe to move on, the train rumbled ahead. But he heard the horses every day for a month.

In Aldershot, England, a man asked him if he knew he looked rather like Wallace Reid, and he felt both devastated and proud.

He learned about airplane maintenance, how to take apart motors and machine guns, all the signals for réglage, and then, on the last day, it was arranged that he be attacked by a dog.

The dog was a captured German shepherd named Goose, and he had been trained as a killing machine. It was unlikely that any of the men would encounter such a dog in the field, or so they were told, but it was important to know how to survive their ferocious attack.

Goose was black and tan, barrel-chested, with tall black ears, one of which had been perforated by a bullet. The enlisted men stood in the center of a field, with protective padding on their hands and groins and around their throats, and they were told to go limp when Goose attacked. “Drop facedown,” screamed the sergeant major, “fingers laced behind the neck. Thus, if a Boche dog goes for your jugular, he will only bite off your fingers.”

Lee was the twelfth in line. He watched as the eleven previous men were lined up, as they decided either to stand their ground (and were at tacked and knocked down) or to run as fast as they could (and were attacked and knocked down). Goose didn’t make a single sound. He behaved as if he neither enjoyed nor hated his duty, but saw it as a necessity.

At first, being knocked to the ground appealed to Lee. It would feel like something.

But then he thought it couldn’t be much of a life, could it, knocking people down? By this date, hadn’t everyone had enough of cruelty? Further, he remembered he had saved his biscuit ration from that morning, and still had it in his pocket.

“Duncan!”