The meal the next morning was virtually the same, except for the addition of tea. After breakfast, the nurses removed the soldiers’ IV tubes; most of the men were fed up with bedpans, and the nurses spent a large percentage of their time helping the volunteers walk to the lavatories at either end of the ward.
After that, the patients were placed on gurneys and wheeled to a large physical therapy room—actually a gym that had been converted for this purpose. They lay on tables and were placed at the mercy of machines that stretched and bent them in more ways than they knew existed. All of them were sore and exhausted by the time they returned to their ward for lunch, but they were not allowed to sleep. After the bland midday meal, each man got an iPod-like device and watched a video briefin
