“Excuse me, Private First Class Hugo Black,” Ironside said. “Might you explain how we have entirely avoided hitting a three-story building?”

“The hand crank, sir,” he responded weakly.

“Please make it work, and then fire again.”

Hugo nodded. While he and Wodziczko dug up the base plate and repositioned it, a French scout performed reconnaissance and reported that the first shell had destroyed the playground equipment, and the tetherball was burning. Furthermore, a pack of wild dogs living under the carousel had been displaced.

Wodziczko whispered something that Hugo found disgusting but, finally, agreed to: use some of the lard from their rations to grease the hand crank. It seemed to work, and the elevation could be adjusted—though neither man was quite sure how many turns of the crank were correct to aim for the roof.

Ironside inquired if it was possible please to fire again.

Without responding, Wodziczko dropped the bomb into the shaft and ran off. Hugo held his breath, and his fingers went over his mouth. He tasted chocolate. The round went into the Russian sky and then came down soundly on the roof. The top floor erupted into flames.

At once the barracks was emptying, mutinous legionnaires scurrying like ants evicted from their nest.

Ironside turned his back on them. He walked some distance as the Russians flooded onto the field, dozens at a time, until the full three hundred of them stood in clumps. His promenade continued long after the last mutineers had come to ground, staring toward the great, distant man who had flushed them out and who stood alone, thinking saddened thoughts. There had been many nights in his life like this, and since he was still alive, he supposed he had learned from them. What was the lesson here, and were there still lessons at this late date? He wanted the war to be over; he wondered what “over” meant, and when the next war would begin.

History repeats itself, he thought. The problem with that nostrum was, you never knew what piece of history you were in. There were a limited number of outcomes, and yet there never seemed to be a way to learn a lesson. You were never at the beginning or end of anything. You were always at the middle, in a mist, and it was always up to someone else to announce later what your time on earth had meant. There was a thin line, for instance, between tenacity and stupidity. A mutiny was a stroke of genius or it wasn’t. How sad to make the effort.

Unspoken, as if able to overhear his troubled thoughts, the mutineers began to feel shame.