The lieutenant said, ‘All right, don’t let’s be formal. Just get up on your hind legs and speak when you want to. Martin? – You want to say something?’

‘A question,’ said Private Martin. ‘Why the French kids and not our own? There’s been an order out ever since we came over here forbidding us to send parcels of sweets or chocolate home to our own families. Why?’

‘Blowed if I know,’ confessed Mister Challis cheerfully. He was not a very profound young man. ‘Anyone else know?’

Someone said, ‘To keep the prices up.’

Mister Challis said, ‘There you are. To keep the prices up. O.K.?’

‘I’ll be ––ed if it’s O.K.’ said Private Martin. ‘I’ve got a wife and three kids. I never went to war to keep the prices up. Why can’t I put a piece of chocolate in their mouths if I want to?’

Corporal Gonigle spoke, ‘I think the reason’s much more simple than that. It’s just that they’ve got so much essential stuff to carry across the Channel that they can’t handle a parcel post home. Probably when things get easier they’ll lift the ban.’

‘When things get easier,’ jeered one of the men. ‘We’ve been bottled up in this bloody beachhead for five weeks. We’ll still be here a year come Christmas, by the look of things.’

‘Don’t you be so sure,’ said Gonigle. ‘You never said that last Friday night when you sat up on the hill, there, watching all those bombers going in over Caen, nor the next day when we heard our chaps had got into the town. You were cheering your bloody head off last Friday night.’

‘Children, children,’ said Mister Challis, ‘let’s get back to business. Sweets or no sweets?’

‘Well,’ said Sergeant Ferrissey, ‘I’ve got no bloody chocolate to spare, for one.’

One of the men shouted, ‘He wants it for the women.’

Someone else said, ‘Do ’im good to give some up, before ’e shags ’isself to death.’

There was laughter, then an uneasy silence.

‘Too much rabbit,’ said Private Martin. ‘Take the bloody vote.’

The platoon voted.

‘It’s a lovely idea,’ said Private Smith (037). ‘He’s a fine man, the padre.’

‘Aye,’ said Private Barnicoat, ‘it’s a lovely idea. People ’ere ’aven’t a good word to say for us. We come an’ liberate ’em an’ they charge us the bloody moon for a glass o’ cognac.’

‘It’s not the people,’ said Private Smith, ‘it’s the profiteers. Same as at home. How much d’you have to pay for a glass o’ brandy in Blighty?’

‘Brandy?’ Barnicoat laughed bitterly. ‘Don’t ask me! I’ve ne’er bought a glass o’ bloody brandy in me life. I’m a workin’-class lad I am, not a bloody Piccadilly swell. What would the likes of me be doin’ buyin’ brandy?’