I am operated on and vomit for two days. My bones will not grow together, so the surgeon’s secretary says. Another fellow’s have grown crooked; his are broken again. It is damnable.

Among our new arrivals there are two young soldiers with flat feet. The chief surgeon discovers them on his rounds, and is overjoyed. “We’ll soon put that right,” he tells them, “we will just do a small operation, and then you will have perfectly sound feet. Enter them down, sister.”

As soon as he is gone, Josef, who knows everything, warns them: “Don’t you let him operate on you! That is a special scientific stunt of the old boy’s. He goes absolutely crazy whenever he can get hold of anyone to do it on. He operates on you for flat feet, and there’s no mistake, you don’t have them anymore; you have club feet instead, and have to walk all the rest of your life on sticks.”

“What should a man do, then?” asks one of them.