CHAPTER FOURFOR SEVEN DAYS THEY were beaten harshly. Their hair was cut, short on the sides, left thick on top. Their clothes were taken from them, even the clothes Nang had received from Met Hon after the coffin torture. Another break with the past, another barrier to even the minutest growth of security. The new issue of baggy, lightweight green utilities announced immediately to everyone they were plebes to be hazed, conscripts to be humiliated, boys with pasts that must be beaten, starved or terrorized out of them or who must die in the attempt.
For ten days they subsisted on reduced food and water rations until hunger and thirst became constant thoughts adding the fear of death by starvation to the fear of beatings. For fourteen nights they were locked, alone, hands tied, in tiny cag
