“No. He gave us a tongue-lashing for getting expelled. Then told us that for the family’s sake, he would try to keep us safe.”

General Wei assigned Jin and Daming to the field hospital, where a doctor gave them medical manuals to read. They followed behind doctors and medics, helped out in the hospital tents. It all seemed like a big adventure. Then came their first battle.

The wounded poured in, lifted on stretchers, carried in blankets, helped in by their comrades. Some were reduced to screaming animals from pain, some were shocked and stupefied, others mercifully unconscious. Daming worked in the operating room, a small shack beside the main hospital tent. They ran out of morphine and Daming held down patients as the surgeon dug bullets out. He bandaged sawed-off limbs, stitched wounds. The air-raid siren howled but the surgeon kept operating.

Then a blast and darkness. Then silence.

He struggled up to see the roof and two walls gone. Tattered canvas flapped outside but there was no sound. A soldier, mouth open and contorted, screamed in the silence. Daming stood up but his legs felt as though he was pushing his way through a bog. He stumbled out and knew that Jin, that everyone in the hospital tent, was gone. That he was lucky he hadn’t been sliced open by shrapnel.

It had rained while he was unconscious and the ground was soft. He skirted around small ponds of muddy water, bomb craters that had filled up. But it was a beautiful morning. A high wind fanned thin white veils of cloud across a clear, clean blue sky to skim the mountaintops. He remembered that so vividly.

Daming’s great-uncle had been sick with remorse. “I should’ve sent the two of you back to Shanghai the minute I saw you,” he said, glaring at Daming. “I should do that now before I have to write another one of these letters to the family.”

“I’m not a very good field medic but the army can’t afford to be picky right now, sir,” Daming said. “Please, Great-Uncle, I’d rather stay and do my duty than go home.”

“Hmmm,” General Wei said. “I understand. I’d rather face the Japanese than Jin’s mother.”

He assigned Daming to oversee the transport of wounded soldiers from the front to hospitals inland. Now Daming spent his time shuttling back and forth on trains and trucks.

“I’m in the thick of it,” Daming said. “Great-Uncle offered me a way out but I didn’t take it. And it wasn’t just because of Jin’s mother. Call it patriotism or hatred of the Japanese, but I wanted to do something useful for once.”

Then he brightened and slapped Shao’s shoulder. “I’m taking a trainload of soldiers to the hospital in Chunking, but not for another two days. Lots of time to catch up.”