‘There’s a spot of bother up the road, Corporal. A couple of Boche in a house. They’re very obstinate. Care to come along?’

‘By all means.’ Gonigle felt relieved. ‘Have you got any grenades?’

‘Oh, heaps.’

The corporal put his book away carefully, and rose to his feet. The sun was shining and a pleasant breeze was stirring the hedgerows. It was all very rural. The two men sauntered away down the lane.

‘Right!’ shouted Sergeant Ferrissey, and crashed in through the doorway of the house.

In the blink of a second he saw the silhouette of a man up on the landing, against the blinding daylight of a shattered window. His machine carbine came up to his waist – the movement was a reflex, quicker than thought – and leaped in his hands. He heard the rapid-fire thunder in the hallway as if from someone else’s gun. The body came crashing down the stairs, and he went bounding past it, up to the first landing and beyond, with his men behind him.

‘Raus!’ he roared, and fired another burst through the door that faced him on the top floor. There was a confusion of movement and frightened voices behind the door, and he crouched on the stairs with his carbine ready as the door opened. A German artilleryman emerged, with his hands above his head, and two more men behind him.

‘Come on,’ snarled the sergeant. ‘Schnell!’

The Germans tumbled down the stairs. He followed them, and as he reached the foot of the stairs, turned the dead German over with his boot. There was no weapon in the man’s hands: only a white handkerchief in one clenched fist.

Sergeant Ferrissey was not a sentimental man; he wasted no pity on the German who need not have died. But he rebuked himself as he stepped out into the sunlit street. Michael Ferrissey, he thought, Michael Ferrissey, you’re slipping. One round would have done there, not half a bloody magazine.

‘All right, my lads,’ he roared. ‘Keep moving, my lucky lads, keep moving.’