Smithy nodded. “McCain and Frazer, go with Murray,” he shouted.

Jasper checked that he had a couple of Willie Petes, white phosphorus grenades, then struck out from the path, followed by the other two.

He looked for signs that the terrain might be turning rocky or sandy so that the vegetation might thin out and form a clearing. He was careful to note what landmarks he could, so as not to get lost. After a couple of minutes they emerged from the jungle onto the banked edge of a rice paddy.

At the far side of the field Jasper saw three or four figures wearing the thin cotton pajamas that were the everyday clothing of peasants. Before he could count them they had spotted him and melted into the jungle.

He wondered whether they were from the target village. If so, he had inadvertently warned them of the company’s approach. Well, that was too bad: saving the injured took priority.

McCain and Frazer ran around the edge of the paddy, securing the perimeter. Jasper exploded a Willie Pete. It set fire to the rice, but the shoots were green and the flames soon went out. However, a column of thick white phosphorus smoke rose into the air, signaling his location.

Jasper looked around. Charlie knew that when the Americans were preoccupied with their dead and wounded it was a good time to attack them. Jasper held his M16 in two hands and scanned the jungle, ready to drop to the ground and shoot back if they were fired on. McCain and Frazer were doing the same, he saw. In all probability none of them would get the chance to duck. A sniper in the trees would have all the time in the world to draw a bead and fire an accurate deadly shot. It was always like that in this fucking war, Jasper thought. Charlie sees us but we don’t see him. He hits and runs. Next day the sniper is pulling up weeds in a rice paddy and pretending to be a simple farmer who wouldn’t know one end of a Kalashnikov from the other.

While he waited he thought of home. I could be working for the Western Mail now, he mused; sitting in a comfortable council chamber, dozing while an alderman drones on about the dangers of inadequate street lighting, instead of sweating in a rice paddy wondering if I’ll take a bullet in the next few seconds.

He thought of his family and friends. His sister, Anna, had become a big shot in the book world after discovering a brilliant Russian dissident writer who went under the pseudonym of Ivan Kuznetsov. Evie Williams, who had once had an adolescent crush on Jasper, was now a movie star living in Los Angeles. Dave and Walli were millionaire rock stars. But Jasper was a foot soldier on the losing side in a cruel, stupid war a thousand miles from nowhere.

He wondered about the antiwar movement in the States. Were they making headway? Or were people still fooled by the propaganda that protesters were all Communists and drug addicts who wanted to undermine America? There would be a presidential election next year, 1968. Would Johnson be defeated? Would the winner stop the war?