He took the Swedebasher by the shoulders. ‘Swede,’ he shouted, ‘Swede, did you walk out on them? Did you come back here on your own?’

The Swede nodded his bandaged head violently in the darkness. He managed to speak at last. ‘I felt a fool in there,’ he said. ‘There were some terrible bad cases there, Corp.’

‘You silly old bastard,’ the corporal chuckled, and punched the Swede affectionately in the ribs.

‘Here, Corp,’ said Private Gotham suddenly, taking his handkerchief from his pocket and unfolding it, ‘the doctor gave me this. It’s what he took out of my head.’

‘Wait till I show the missus,’ he said with gloomy pride. He wrapped the splinter of steel carefully in his handkerchief, replaced it in his pocket, shouldered his box again and stumbled away in pursuit of his comrades.

In the sweet, summer orchards the men of the Fifth Battalion crouched in their slit trenches listening to the guns and watching the gun-flashes tearing the darkness apart. Sometimes men dozed off, no longer kept awake by the ceaseless rumbling of artillery; but the faintest rapping of machine carbines in the distant woods brought them trembling to their feet.

Sergeant Shannon peered into the darkness, consumed with terror. His day in battle was catching up on him, and living in retrospect the hours through which he had shown no sign of fear, he huddled shivering against the earth wall of the trench, feeling his stomach muscles contract and his lungs freeze with the physical sensation of fear until the pain became unbearable. He had known this in Africa and Sicily, in the secret moments of the night; there was no escaping it. He looked at the rifleman who was slumped sleeping in the bottom of the trench, and wondered that the mad shattering of his teeth did not awaken the man. The darkness was alive with shadows and strange shapes. He saw again, against the flares and the gay rockets that were dancing over the treetops, little Bradley crawling on all fours back along the tape, his own hands bright with blood, the limbless trunk in the roadway in front of him. He heaved himself up on to the parapet and leaned forward, supporting himself with one hand on the ground while he vomited loudly and violently.

Charlie Venable and Baldy, who were on duty behind a Bren in a heap of rubble that commanded the roadway nearby, lay silently watching the sergeant retching. They were close enough to see his dreadful shivering, the shivering of his whole body – limbs and trunk and flaccid cheeks.

‘See,’ whispered Baldy, ‘what did I tell yer? Shannon ain’t so tough.’

‘Quiet, you cowson,’ hissed Charlie Venable. ‘Keep your eyes on the road.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Wild roses