I forced him, with my hand on his shoulder, to look around. I said, ‘This is the hour when the place is always full of women and children—it’s the shopping hour. Why choose that of all hours?’ He said weakly, ‘There was to have been a parade.’ ‘And you hoped to catch a few colonels. But the parade was cancelled yesterday, Pyle.’ ‘I didn’t know.’ ‘Didn’t know!’ I pushed him into a patch of blood where a stretcher had lain. ‘You ought to be better informed.’
