The two lieutenants devote a good hour to following the instructions in that manual. The instructions are not that complicated, but Enoch Root keeps noticing syntactical ambiguities and wants to explore their ramifications. First this rattles Ethridge, then his emotions tend towards impatience and, finally, extreme pragmatism. To make the chaplain shut up, Ethridge confiscates the manual and starts Root on stenciling Hott’s name on the coffin and pasting it up with red stickers printed with medical warnings so appalling that the topic headings alone induce faint nausea. By the time Root is finished, the only person who can legally open this coffin is General George C. Marshall himself, and even he would have to first get special permission from the Surgeon General and evacuate all living things within a hundred-mile radius.