chunk: Penrose slowly asserts himself; the war takes a toll on his personality, but he begins to live up to his early dreams of heroism. However, his creeping self-doubt grows by degrees; he is reassigned from his post as scouting officer once on the Somme, knowing he cannot face another night patrol, and earns the wrath of his commanding officer – an irascible Regular colonel – over a trivial incident. The colonel piles difficult, risky work on him – remarking to the narrator that "Master Penrose can go on with [leading ration parties] until he learns to do them properly" – and Penrose submits, working doggedly to try to keep from cracking. After a long period of this treatment, by the winter of 1916, Penrose's spirit is worn down; when the narrator is invalided home with an injury in February 1917, his last support is gone. He is wounded in May at Arras – a friend remarking in a letter that "you'd have said he wanted to be killed" – and they meet again in London in November. Penrose has