Cook-Corporal Southcott put down the dixie of hot tea he had been carrying and rested for a moment. His face was scarlet, shining with sweat and smarting in the sunshine. His rough, khaki shirt chafed against his body.

‘All right, lads,’ he said, ‘let’s get this grub up. The lads likes it hot.’ He picked up the dixie. The two fatigue men with him picked up the big haybox they were carrying. They moved on.

There was another mile to go to the forward positions, uphill, on a road deeply rutted by the rain and baked hard by the sun. But the men liked their food hot – even in the most torrid weather they grumbled if their stew was not piping hot or their tea not quite at boiling point; and the cooks, hardworking and devoted men, did not begrudge their labour.

A couple of hundred yards ahead of them, on the left-hand side of the road, stood the three jagged walls which were all that was left of a cottage. ‘Come on, lads,’ he urged, ‘we’ll have another blow when we reach the cottage.’

They toiled on, too breathless to talk.

Wheep.

Southcott heard the first bullet, dropped his dixie and flung himself to the left-hand side of the road. The two fatigue men stood bewildered for a moment.

Wheep. Wheep.

The two men dived for cover as Southcott shouted angrily at them.

‘Sniper,’ he said, over his shoulder, unslinging his rifle. It was not uncommon for enemy snipers, alone or in small groups, to come creeping through the forward positions at night and to open fire during the day on troops coming up from the rear.

Wheep. Wheep.

Two bullets kicked up dust in the roadway near the dixie.

‘Bastard!’ roared Cook-Corporal Southcott. He plunged out into the middle of the road and picked up the dixie. Wheep. Wheep. He was back in safety, panting, with the precious tea at his side.

‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we won’t do ourselves any good cringing down here.’ Cook-Corporal Southcott did not mind being shot at. But for a sniper to take pot-shots at a can of tea on a hot summer day; that was uncivilised. He was an angry man.

They wriggled forward, hidden from the view of the sniper in the cottage by the steep bank.

‘When I go in,’ said Southcott, ‘keep your eyes open and start shooting.’

‘Now!’ he shouted. He rose to his feet and rushed forward. A rifle cracked again from the rubble. There was the glimpse of a human shape behind the wall. He heard his two fatiguemen firing over his shoulder and saw brickdust spurt from the cottage wall. Something moved again behind the wall. The grim silhouette of a German helmet was plainly visible. Southcott plunged on, his flesh shrinking, waiting for the red-hot impact of a bullet.