‘He’s all right,’ said Corporal Gonigle, ‘it’s a head wound. He’s breathing.’ The wounded man was breathing hard; each time he expelled his breath he made a little snoring noise. Martin had already pulled a field dressing from the wounded man’s thigh pocket, and he applied the bandage with quick and expert movements.

The corporal straightened up after his scrutiny of the wound. ‘Looks like a splinter. Opened up the side of his head; messed his face up a bit, too. It’s knocked him cold for a bit. I reckon he won’t take long to come round, though.’

They lifted the Swedebasher carefully between them and bore him to the beach dressing station.

When they handed him over to the orderlies and were walking back to rejoin the platoon, Martin spoke again. ‘That’ll just suit that bastard,’ he said, ‘the miserable sod. He’s got a Blighty one there.’

The corporal laughed. ‘The Swede’s all right,’ he replied. ‘He just can’t keep his troubles to himself.’

‘I’d’ve given ’im trouble if ’e’d kept on much longer,’ said Martin savagely, ‘moanin’ all the time. Give me the sick, that bastard did.’

Martin was right, and the corporal did not answer. Two months ago the sergeant had brought a new man into the platoon’s Nissen hut. ‘Golly,’ he had said, ‘here’s Private Gotham. He’s fresh from the farm. Find him a bed.’ They found him a bed and humped his kitbag up from the gate for him, had poured him a mug of tea from the can that was boiling on the stove and had squeezed together on the benches on which they were sitting round the stove to make room for him. They were offering him a place in their community. But Gotham – after ten minutes of his Gloucestershire accent they named him Swedebasher – had refused their kindnesses, without thanks, and had crawled into bed with his face to the wall. The next day he had started grumbling: about his farm, about the money he was losing, about the injustice of dragging him away into the Army, about his wife, about his three children, about the food and the beds. The rest of the platoon were preparing for an invasion; they were trained to the limit and impatient to go. They had no time for Gotham and his grumbling. At any other time he would have been accepted as a character and tolerated; but now they turned their backs on him and let him sulk in solitude. His loneliness, his bitterness against this strange and hostile world, his longing for his farm and family had grown every day. He had gone aboard the troopship like a convict to the hulks.

‘You know,’ said the corporal, as they fell in again with the platoon, ‘he was pretty quiet all through the day.’