Regulations allowed for four men at a time to be executed, and so four posts—one of them the scorched pillar from the tetherball set, with the tetherball still attached—were dragged into place, and the first four prisoners were brought there, their arms retied behind them.

One of them was a blond-bearded lieutenant who had the merry devil in his eyes. His stripes were torn off, and he shrugged. “I never liked them anyway,” he said.

Tied to the pillar, the lieutenant scuffed his heels on the ground during the blessings of the priest, in whose authority he did not believe, and during the letter writing—he had no family—he produced smirks and dark humor. He laughed as one British sharpshooter was leaning against another’s back, using a ragged pencil to make small circular bull’s-eyes. The lieutenant even laughed when a bull’s-eye was pinned onto his chest, right over his heart. “Target,” he said. “My new rank.”

Ironside ordered a sergeant from the Slavo-British Legion, one who had not mutinied, to raise his sword and to drop it as a signal for the execution. As soon as he realized he would be the one to cause his friends to die, the sergeant laughed, too.

There was a Russian joke that had been popular for as long as anyone could remember: Two boys jump into a lake in summer. Neither knows how to swim, and both of them sink. Both realize they are the prisoners of fate. One of the boys thinks, “I trust in my ability—I’ll fight my way to the surface,” and he struggles and thrashes. The other says, “I will put my faith in the nature of things,” and chooses not to struggle, but just to relax and find the surface by floating. The next day, both their dead bodies are found by the village elders, who say, with relief, “They both made it to the surface—they learned well!”

Which is a punch line that, if you happened to be a sergeant in an army that has just been recruited, holding a sword to signal the execution of your friends, might be hilarious.

From the high arc light, the field was brilliant, with long shadows behind the prisoners. The flying V of executioners had loaded their rifles and chambered the cartridges. Around them, at attention, were the Allied soldiers and the Slavo-British Legion. The low wind brought the smells of burning wood, a campfire smell that gave the scene a flavor of intimacy. Ironside recognized something else in the air, an ill sensation between a smell and a sickening dread. It was fear, the onset of civilizing influence.