‘I shall send them home for my mother to wash and darn,’ he said, ‘as soon as I get a chance.’

‘There’s not much left of ’em to darn,’ said Shannon.

Paterson laughed tenderly. He could see his mother inspecting the socks in shocked surprise, and writing to him in blessed innocence: whatever have you been doing with your socks?

‘She’ll probably tell me not to walk so much,’ he said.

Beneath the hedge which marched across the slopes of a Norman hillside lay a slit trench, a deep and narrow slot of darkness hidden by the riotous grass and overhung by the green tangle of hawthorn.

A man, standing in the trench this summer evening, would look out across a quiet valley to the gentle hills that rose opposite, their flanks clothed with orchards and cornfields and clumps of dark woodland.

It was something for a soldier to wonder at, the calm and beauty of this unscarred battlefield, in which there stirred no sign of human life, and in whose peace the thudding of guns and the roar of traffic on rearward roads had faded to a scarce-heeded background, drowned by the clamour of birds.

The pale sky, in which wisps of cloud lost themselves subtly, was still lustrous with the last dazzling shafts of sunlight.

Nowhere could a sign of war be seen; no charred patches in the corn that billowed like a golden sea in the valley; no columns of black smoke. The rifles, the mortars and the machine guns were silent.

The only occupant of the trench was sitting on its floor with his back to the earthen end wall, his knees drawn up to his chin. His blanket was draped over his back like a poncho and he was smoking a cigarette.

It was true that in this position Corporal Meadows could not enjoy the view. But, although he was not a man without feeling, he took greater joy in the luxury of relaxed muscles than in the sight of a picture which by now was only too familiar to him. He was, too, a sufficiently experienced soldier (as the Africa ribbon on his soiled tunic bore witness) never to show himself unnecessarily above ground. Besides, he liked the view from where he sat – the patch of sky with a pattern of overhanging leaves fretted against it.

For the last few hours Corporal Meadows had been mainly concerned with trying to keep himself from feeling lonely. He had glanced twice through a newspaper which he had already finished, he had written a letter to his wife that filled eight pages instead of the usual two and he had smoked even more cigarettes than was his custom. Now he was content to watch the leaves stirring against the sky.

It is not usual for a soldier to occupy a slit trench on his own. For Corporal Meadows, a sociable man, it was especially rare.