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I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men’s shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast “bloody wars and dread diseases” because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that’s how it’s always been, in the military.
