As a doctor, Juan took an analytic view of their profiles. Many lower-level soldiers had been conscripted and were often tortured if they were caught absconding or disobeying orders. Some of them were campesinos themselves, not so much sadists as cowed conformists who’d been indoctrinated during their military service. Juan wasn’t naive about the savagery of their past acts. He just felt that the war had victimized everyone in different ways.
