One of those was Anna, but I only became aware of her once I had fully regained consciousness and was already a fair way along the road to recovery. She had explained how I had been brought there by a British officer one afternoon with a great gash under my kidneys, and had given me the letter from Father, still sealed in its envelope. The letter enraged me, because he had couched his abandonment of me in a mixture of military jargon and euphemisms: I was now ‘on the bench for the remainder of the game’ - that sort of thing. As an emergency measure, he left encoded directions for a dead drop near an abandoned well a few miles from the hospital. He said he would check this each day as long as he was in the area, which should be a few weeks more. But the main message was clear: recover, return to England, and forget I’d ever been to Germany.

I disliked Anna at first - or rather, I disliked myself for finding her attractive. Although not long out of boyhood, I was no stranger to the opposite sex, and had had my share of flings along the way. But none of the girls I’d known were anything like this. She was twenty-six, a Georgian with dark, rather flamboyant looks, but there was an unforced grace to her manner that set her apart. After five years of blood and battle, this fit, efficient woman, with her tanned arms, long lashes and perfectly set features seemed almost like a goddess to me. She seemed to belong to another world, where everything was bright and calm, and I wanted to jump through the looking glass and join her in it - but what hope had I of that? I knew that her beauty and job would mean she had probably long become tired of being mooned over, especially by patients, so I resolved not to fall for her, while, of course, at the same time hoping that my aloofness would make me more attractive than more obvious suitors.

My resolution barely lasted a couple of weeks, partly because my wound was so messy that it required almost constant attention, and I was isolated in my own room. While she administered medicine and changed my linen, I had discovered she spoke excellent English. After a few tentative exchanges, I dared to ask if she would mind arranging for me to have some books from the mess library. This she did, and I soon discovered she was very well-read, so after that we began to discuss literature: she was shocked I had never read any of the Russian greats, and proceeded to feed me all the English translations she could find.