Chapters 21-22 Summary

Chapter 21, "The Refuge," continues the narrator and Joseph's trek, along trenches that parallel the treeless former Pylônes Rd., in sight of German observation posts. A hillock serves as the hub of a more complex trench system that reaches all parts of the sector. A doctor patches up patients and sends them either inside the Refuge or on to a bigger clearing station in the trench along Béthune Rd. Joseph waits two hours to be seen and then is lead away from the narrator, who rests in the two-level underground Refuge before walking back.

The feeling of suffocation is worse than in the trenches. At the bottom is a ill-lit cavern with a low ceiling. A burned German aviator and a zouave debate which has seen more. A man with gangrene complains of having been young and clean a mere...