"I'm still rather excited about antibiotics," he admits, because he is. "If we'd had something like that -- well, in all honesty, as many men died to infection or disease as did bullets. At least as many. I was nearly one of them. Typhoid swept through the hospital at Peshawar while I was recovering from being shot."

It's not the sort of thing he often admits to a new acquaintance, but, well, one army surgeon to another. There's something of a shared horror there.

"I'd only just graduated from medical school when I signed up. Damn fool thing to do, looking back, but at the time I didn't seem to have much in the way of a choice." Money. It's always about money. "I suppose telling me what war you've managed to get yourself pulled into won't mean anything to me, but I'm curious to hear all the same."