Recon is assigned to work on building the road and gets assigned a ration of beer. Wyman gives part of his to Red. Red is reluctant to get friendly with the young man, who is glum because the girl he likes hasn’t written to him. Ridges gets a letter from his father. Wilson’s wife sends him a scolding letter saying she is entitled to the money he’s earning. Gallagher looks over his mail, including letters from his wife, Mary. He always imagines that what she’s writing about just took place, rather than being long ago. A stack of mail arrives for Hennessey, and the clerks mark it for return, thinking briefly of Hennessey’s parents.

Gallagher is called to see the chaplain, who tells him Mary died in childbirth. Gallagher is stunned. The Time Machine section that follows, titled “The Revolutionary Reversed” (266), looks at Gallagher’s background growing up in South Boston. His father was abusive to his mother and he and young Roy fought regularly. He always feels that other people get breaks, but not him. He gets involved with politics and the anti-Communist movement but doesn’t advance as he wants. He meets Mary, who is small and gentle. He shouts at her one night and makes her cry.

Gallagher is devastated by news of his wife’s death, and the men try to be sympathetic. He continues to get letters from his wife and feels like she’s not really dead. He has trouble focusing. The chaplain looks into getting him a furlough, but the Red Cross investigates and finds the child is being cared for by Mary’s parents. Gallagher reads his wife’s last letter, written right before she gave birth, and is shaken. He sees a giant kelp washed up on the beach, and it horrifies him. He weeps. Roth feels pity for Gallagher, even though he thinks the man has a chip on his shoulder. Roth, too, sees the kelp, and it gives him a sense of gloom. Minetta complains to Polack about being stuck in the Army. Stanley, who is a corporal now, jokes with Brown, less deferential than he was before. He tells Brown about an accounting scam he ran at the business where he worked.

Croft, who is walking the fringe of jungle along the beach, suddenly fires into the jungle. Shots are returned, and Stanley panics. Minetta is wounded in the leg by a bullet. Brown reflects that he’s never going to stop believing he could be shot at any moment until he is back in the States. Stanley feels a vague oppressive horror.

Cummings fears that his troops have gotten lethargic. When he visits the front lines, he sees the men have improved their bivouacs. He thinks if they’ve bedded down, they’re less willing to fight. He is frustrated that his campaign is going sour. Hearn hates his job as the General’s aide, which reduces him to nitpicking with Clellan, the orderly who cleans and brings fresh flowers to the General’s tent.

The General gives Hearn a list of supplies to gather from one of the freighters anchored offshore. The officer in charge of supplies refuses to give Hearn everything on his list, so Hearn bribes a seaman to give him the supplies and boats away before the officer can catch him. He realizes the General is making him behave in ways he hates and resents the General all the more. He leaves a cigarette butt on the spotless floor of the General’s tent in revenge.

On the front lines, Cummings confronts a sergeant who filed a false patrol report. When he sees the cigarette ash on his tent floor, he is furious: “To Cummings it was a symbol of the independence of his troops, their resistance to him” (318). He calls Hearn into his tent and gives him another lecture on political philosophy and power. Hearn decides that the General’s deepest wish is for omnipotence, and he despises the man. The General says he’ll court-martial Hearn unless he picks up the cigarette butt. Hearn, though he is furious with himself for giving in, does so, then immediately asks for a transfer to another division.

The Time Machine section features Robert Hearn and is labeled “The Addled Womb” (328). It begins with a description of the city where Bill Hearn has built his house and runs his business. Robert is sent to a day school where he learns how to fight. He graduates from his academy, dates, and goes to college. In one class, a professor discusses kelp. He decides to be a literature major and writes short stories. He works his way through college, but when he shows interest in a communist organization, he’s told he has a bourgeois mentality. He gets a job as a junior editor in New York and dates more women. He is irritated by his visits back home to Chicago and feels like he is bored and waiting. He enlists in the Army a month before Pearl Harbor and remembers looking at the Golden Gate Bridge as he shipped out.

Minetta is sent to the field hospital, where it is comfortable and the tent stays dry when it rains. He doesn’t want to go back to his platoon. He tries opening his wound again, but the doctor still insists he is well enough to return. Minetta decides to pretend he is hallucinating that he sees Japanese soldiers. He is sent to the tent with the most serious cases and given a sedative when he screams.

One night, severely injured men are brought in, and Minetta can hear one of them wheezing for air. The next morning the man is dead, and there is a sheet over his body. Minetta decides he wants out of the hospital, so acts as if he’s recovered. The doctor says if he tries any tricks like that again, he’ll have him court-martialed. Minetta is furious and resents all officers, but he rejoins the platoon.

Red, whose kidneys are paining him, asks Wilson to come with him to visit the medic. The medic gives Red some wound tablets and dismisses him. Red, too, thinks the Army doesn’t care about the actual men. Wilson is told he needs to have an operation to cure the advance of a sexually transmitted disease. He doesn’t want an operation.

The Time Machine section labeled “The Invincible” (373) describes Wilson as a child growing up in the South. He enjoys sex and fixing things. One day he wakes up married to Alice. The day after their child is born, he asks her for money and goes out drinking, then sleeps with her best friend. Alice complains that he gave her a sexually transmitted disease, but Wilson believes he can simply take a dose of what he calls pyridin. He buys his daughter, May, a doll.

Hearn is transferred to Dalleson’s section and Cummings plans his assault on the Toyaku Line. He wishes he could have naval support. He wants to land in Botoi Bay and attack the Line from the rear as well as the front. Major Dalleson enjoys planning the logistics side of things. He came from a poor family, joined the Army during the Depression, and was promoted quickly. As a Major, though, he finds it more challenging to deal with officers, and he does not feel fully qualified for his job. However, he is loyal and determined to do his work well. Dalleson does not like or trust Hearn, whom he thinks is insolent. The General does not feel his punishment of Hearn has had enough of an effect.

Dalleson suggests that the recon unit needs an officer. Hearn is on duty that night and thinks about political philosophy and Cummings’s descriptions of the push to power. He resents the General all the more. Hearn takes a patrol report, and Dalleson scolds him for not keeping the report records up to date. He is scolding Hearn when General Cummings enters the tent. Cummings wants Hearn to take a map off the wall. Hearn drops the map while handing it to him, and the General is angry. Cummings knows he will have to get rid of Hearn. He devises a plan to have a platoon land on the south side of the island, cross the Watamai mountain range, and attack the Japanese outpost holding Botoi Bay. He knows he will need reconnaissance first. He realizes Hearn is about to be transferred to that unit but tells himself Hearn can do the job, and if a dozen men are killed, it’s no real setback for his plans.

The Time Machine section, labeled “A Peculiarly American Statement” (403), looks at General Cummings’s formation. His father, Cyrus Cummings, was important in his town. He hated that his wife was letting young Edward do things like paint and sew. He sends Edward to military school when he is 10, and after that West Point. Edward is drawn to the town of Boston and his cousin, Margaret. He learns that there are levels of doing things: The level of objective truth, and then the level of appearances. He is mocked at West Point for his approach to strategy and marries Margaret before he is deployed to France during World War I. He goes to the front once and watches an attack with curious observation. He feels exalted by the power of command. His marriage to Margaret sours even as he is consistently promoted. He is sent to Europe again on diplomatic assignments engineered by Margaret’s brother, Minot. He conducts negotiations in France, then visits Rome. Minot informs him that Margaret is behaving questionably back home.

In the Chorus section, “What is a Million-Dollar Wound?” (428), Gallagher, Wilson, Stanley, and Martinez discuss what kind of wound, like Toglio’s elbow, can get you discharged.