Part 2, Chapter 12 Summary

Minetta is sent to hospital after his injury, and is alarmed when the doctor says he will be able to return to his unit the following day. He interferes with his wound to make it worse in the hope of delaying his release from hospital, and decides to pretend to be mentally ill so that he will not have to return to combat. However, once he is moved into a tent with the genuine mental patients, he is afraid that he really will go mad. He thinks of his girlfriend, and how they will not be able to write to each other if he is a mental patient, and how she will go off with somebody else. In addition, he is worried about his mother, how she will feel if she does not hear from him. Because he acts as if...