Content Warning: This section of the guide makes reference to violence, racism, anti-gay bias, anti-trans bias, and sexual violence. 

As the novel opens, Thomas McNulty looks back on his youth and time in the army, beginning around 1851. He reflects on the process of preparing dead soldiers for burial in Missouri. He joined the army at about age 17 (he isn’t certain), despite the poor pay, for lack of better prospects for work. He allows that being in the army was a good life, if not an easy one. Thomas is grateful his first and last friend, both in America and in the army, was John Cole, whose Native American heritage and looks led older soldiers to make racist comments. Thomas is an orphan from Sligo, Ireland, whose family died in the famine, and who journeyed through Canada before coming to the United States. John is an orphan from New England, whose father died when he was 12. An older Thomas reveals these biographical details interwoven with his recollections of his past, which are recounted in a somewhat linear fashion with various digressions. The boys, who met in St. Louis under a hedge where they waited out a rainstorm, felt an immediate kinship for one another, Thomas recalls, despite their instinctive wariness brought about by difficult childhoods.