A powerful scene/chapter at the mid-point of The Winter Soldier

About halfway through Daniel Mason's novel The Winter Soldier (2018) there's a terrific chapter in which a sadistic Austrian officer comes to the military hospital that's at the center of this narrative. The officer, Lt. Horst, is charged with returning to the front (this novel takes place during World War I, near the Eastern Front) men who he believes have recuperated - which is to say everyone in the hospital save for those with amputated limbs or gruesome head injuries. The protagonist of the novel, a young medical student serving as the head of this small hospital, Lucious, has been deeply involved w/ the recovery of those with what today we would call shell shock; Horst can't accept that these men are incapacitated, as they have no visible physical injuries, and accuses them of being deserters and cowards. He basically tortures to death one of the mentally ill soldiers and then forces another into his caravan heading back to the front; Lucious feels helpless, humiliated in front of the other soldiers and his top nurse (with whom he's also developing a love relationship) Margarete - and in particular he feels that he has kept one of the victims in his field hospital too long - rather than sending him back from the front - so that he could continue his research and experimental treatment on a victim of shell shock - altogether a powerful and frightening chapter. I'm not sure where this novel is headed, but it's clear that the novel is improving as it develops, after a slow start. Yes, it's at times over-written and, yes, Mason can't resist showing off his knowledge of medical history, languages, and other arcana, but he's building a good story that centers on character and that establishes a milieu and historical setting that's pretty far from most American fiction, contemporary or otherwise.