The small room held beds for three soldiers. My lungs were scarred from the gas. I could barely breathe. The stitches in my shoulder had grown infected and the nurses drained pus from the swelling each day. Still, I was the healthiest of the three roommates. The man to my right was swathed in bandages and never spoke my entire time in Number 24 General Hospital. He was fed by the sisters and moaned quietly in the late of night. Every once in a while the doctors would come in and cut off more of his body and bandage him up again. The man to my left had a gut wound that oozed red and then green and then, as he shouted through the night, burst and his insides slid out of him and with a quiet relief he died. They brought a stretcher for him and covered him with a flag. I struggled to stand as they carried him out, which was the custom. That evening, in the low light of dusk, they brought in someone new.

The orderlies propped him up on five pillows in the bed. They raised him by tape and webbing, which passed under his torso and was attached to the bedposts. The orderlies didn’t joke like they normally did as they worked. The patient smelled of rotting meat and rancid oil and the stench of him flooded through the room. He already seemed more dead than the soldier with the gut wound. Before they left, the orderlies placed a canvas screen between his bed and mine. For three days the sisters came and woke him to feed him soup or change his bedpans. The rest of the time he slept. The only sounds in the room were the soft moans of the soldier to my right and the creaking of the webbing beneath the new patient’s torso and my own shallow wheeze.

One morning, before the sisters came into our room, I heard a soft voice. “Hey, buddy, scratch my arm, will you? My right arm.” I sat up, unsure from which of my roommates the voice had come. “Scratch my arm, will you, buddy, it’s itching like hell.”

The voice, I realized, was coming from the new man. I tilted myself out of bed, struggled to my feet, and walked around the screen. When the soldier came into view I stopped and stared. For a moment I forgot to breathe. He was an absolute horror. The arm that he wanted me to scratch was gone, but that was not all. His head was facing the ceiling and I stared at the side of his face, but he had no profile. His nose had been shot off. The entire top part of his face, including his eyes, had been mauled. Fluid leaked clear from his bandages. Of his limbs, all that remained was his left leg. His swollen lips shook uncontrollably as he breathed. The smell of rot rose thick and noxious about him.

“What about it? Scratch my arm, will you?”

“The surgeons took off your arm,” I said. “Like they took off mine.”

“Then how come I still feel it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I feel mine too.”

“What else did they take off me, hey, buddy?” he asked.

“Your other arm,” I said. “And your right leg.”

“I knew my eyes were gone,” he said. “But I didn’t know the rest. Funny thing is the left leg is the only one I can’t feel. How’s the face? Do I still got my looks?”

I examined his mangled features and knew I should feel pity but felt none. “They blew off your nose,” I said.

“Ahh, Christ. No eyes, no arms, no leg, no nose. The bastards.” He took a deep breath. “Don’t that beat it just to hell. Hey, buddy, can you do me a favor? Can you get me a glass of water?”

On the windowsill a pitcher and glasses were set out. I poured water into one of the glasses. I brought the glass to his swollen lips. He choked on the water and coughed as I poured it in. Much of it ran down his chin.

“Thanks, buddy,” he said. “Hey, can you do me another favor and scratch my side, my left side? It’s like I rolled around in poison ivy down there.”

I put the glass down on a table by his bed and stepped toward him to scratch his side. He gave me directions, higher or lower, and I followed them. His skin was scabby and dry.

“That feels great,” he said. “Hey, buddy, one more favor. How about it? Will you kill me, buddy? Will you, please? Anything I got is yours, buddy, if you’ll just kill me. Please, please, buddy. Kill me kill me kill me won’t you kill me, buddy?”

I backed away from him as he spoke. I backed into the wall. He kept pleading until a nurse came into the room with a pot of water and cloths.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Visiting,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said. “Corporal Magee is very ill. He needs his rest.”

I went back to my cot as she began to wipe down Magee’s torso with a wet towel.

Corporal Magee was quiet for much of the day, sleeping. Later, when we were left alone by the sisters, he started up again. “Hey, buddy. Will you kill me, buddy, will you, please?” I told him to shut up, but he kept on begging me to kill him.

“Why should you get to die,” I said, finally, “with the rest of us stuck here alive?”

“What are you missing?” he asked.

I told him.

“Just the arm, are you kidding?” he said. “I had just an arm gone I’d be dancing in the street with my girl, celebrating.”

“Leave me alone,” I said.

He was quiet for another day, for two maybe. I couldn’t stop thinking about him lying there beside me like that. Even when they came in to cut some more off the mute soldier to my right I thought of Magee. When he started in again, begging me to kill him, I said, “Tell me about her.”

“Who?”

“Your girl. You said you have a girl.

“I don’t got nothing anymore. The Huns they blew her away with the rest of my body.”

“But you had a girl.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking.”

He was quiet for a long moment. I thought he had gone to sleep. “Her name,” he said finally, “is Glennis. The prettiest girl on Price Hill.” He told me about her, how pretty she was, how kind, how gay, and in the telling he also told me about his life back in Cincinnati. He worked as a typesetter on the Enquirer. He went to ball games at Redland Field and himself played second base in Cincinnati’s entry in the Union Printers’ International Baseball Federation. He went to church and helped with collections for the poor. Nights he spent at Weilert’s Beer Garden on Vine Street or sitting with Glennis on her porch on Price Hill. As he spoke of his good and honest life before the war I felt a bitter taste. He told it all to me and then, after the telling, he complained that it was gone. Once again he asked me to kill him.