‘Know why?’ growled Martin. ‘Before we went down the nets I told him I’d put a bullet in him if I heard him moan once, just once.’

They were back at the dump now, each lifting one of the boxes of ammunition that were stacked there. ‘He said his wife and kids came first,’ said Martin. ‘I’ve got a wife and kids, too. The bastard.’

They delivered their loads and plodded back towards the dump. There was no time for rest.

Somewhere in the darkness they could hear the throb of aero-engines. Red, dotted lines of tracer were sailing slowly up into the sky; more and more of them until they criss-crossed in pyrotechnic patterns. Bombs were falling in the distance, and the men watched with fascination as they exploded, first seeing the second’s incandescent glare of white flame, then hearing the noise, as if all about them giant furnace doors were swinging open and slamming shut again.

The ground shook with the thudding reply of distant batteries. Guns on a nearby beach joined in, the heavies with a dull booming, the Bofors with their insistent banging, the little quick-firing Oerlikons, noisiest of all, with their incessant crack-crack-crack. The ships out in the anchorage were firing now with all their armament, and the noise rose to a hysterical crescendo.

The droning of engines grew louder, challenging the din of the barrage. The ammunition carriers heard the battery ahead of them open fire and each man, as he walked, looked about him for cover.

There was the sudden drumming roar of an engine, low over their heads. The corporal, leaping into an abandoned slit trench, thought he saw the shadow of wings flitting past. He landed heavily on top of someone else who was already crouching in the narrow pit and gasped instinctively, ‘Sorry.’

They did not even hear the explosion; the sides of the trench closed in on them like clapping hands; the weight of sand and splintering timbers pressed the corporal down into suffocating darkness. He heaved and struggled, and felt the man beneath him fighting to move. He forced one hand up through the wet, scratching sand and felt it moving free. There was movement above him, and voices strangely muffled; the timbers were being lifted from his back and he was out, gasping, into the sweet, fresh air.

He gulped and raised himself on all fours. Everyone was safe. The platoon trailed off again for more ammunition, the corporal, breathing painfully, in the rear. Mister Challis watched his men plod by, and counted them. One, two three – the fourth man’s head was a strange and shapeless blob of white against the box on his shoulder.

‘Gotham?’ exclaimed the lieutenant. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The Swedebasher looked sheepish in the gloom.

Corporal Gonigle came up to him. ‘Look,’ he said, coming close to the Swedebasher, ‘he’s still got an evacuation label tied to him.’