The delegates from the platoons arrived in a steady stream with their contributions.

‘Thank you, my lads,’ he beamed. ‘Thank you. Thank you.’ He bobbed his head delightedly as each of the representatives came up to him. ‘Thank you, Corporal. Thank you, Bailey. Sweets on the left, chocolate on the right. Thank you. Thank you.’

He was a very happy man.

***

The sun shone brilliantly on the morning of July 14th; the birds shrilled in the trees; the children squealed with excitement in the cottage doorways; and the back lanes leading into the village were full of soldiers and plump, ruddy-cheeked peasant girls making their way to the parade.

The village war memorial, at which the parade was being held, stood at the junction of a main road and two side lanes, both of which ran into it at the same point. The side lanes were crowded; military police were on duty to keep the main road clear, for a few miles away the front was still active; the area was seething with ceaseless toil; troops, guns, tanks, supplies were pouring forward day and night.

A streamer, prepared during the night by the battalion’s pioneer platoon, hung across the roadway from roof to roof above the memorial, flaunting the inscription: VIVE LA FRANCE. The windows were full of flags and faces.

There was a clamour of excitement as the battalion’s guard of honour marched into position. The men had spent the whole of the previous day pressing their uniforms and scrubbing out the stains; they had bleached their webbing equipment with builder’s lime. Their boots shone; they marched with precision. The battalion gloated.

‘A tonic!’ said Charlie Venable ecstatically, watching them.

There was a crash of rifles as the platoon halted and stood at ease.

Again the babble of excitement and the blur of white faces all turned in the same direction. A procession was winding its way from the village church to the war memorial. At its head stumped the war veterans, a group of fat, black-clad little men with fierce moustaches; men with wooden legs, with empty sleeves, with faces seamed with scars; comical little men who remembered Verdun. Behind them trooped a rabble of children, dressed in their stiff, white, best clothes, shepherded by the village schoolmaster, a thin and upright man with an unexpectedly gentle face and an ancient trilby hat. In the rear came the women, clustered round the curé, anxiously watching over their children.