Chapter 16The years of war blurred together and Smith walked through them as he would through a violent and almost unbearable storm, head down, jaws closed, his mind fixed on the next step and the next and the next. But for all his stoic endurance and stubborn movements through the days and weeks, he was a deeply divided man. A part of him recoiled in instinctive terror at the daily waste, the tide of destruction and death that inexorably assaulted mind and heart; Once again he saw the exhausted faculties, he saw the classrooms emptied of their young men, he saw the tormented looks on those left behind and saw in those looks the slow dying of the heart, the bitter wear and tear of feelings and sorrows.
Another part of him was intensely drawn to the very h*******t he dreaded. He found with
