80% done with The Story of the Malakand Field Force

He’s got politics on the mind but his ideas are naive and too narrowly focused, though his heart and honor are in the right place.

He speaks with a soldier who had an arm amputated and he wonders what that man’s future will be like, how he’ll get a measly pension, drink the money away, die a pauper. He is angry that the ‘richest nation on earth’ can’t or won’t take care of its soldiers.

History repeating.