When they heard the throb of a motor-cycle among the trees they sat up, their hearts quickening with excitement and foreboding.

‘Dispatch rider,’ said someone. They knew what that meant.

They did not have long to wait. A few minutes later the company sergeant-major came stumbling through the darkness calling for platoon officers. The junior officers and sergeants went off towards headquarters, talking together in self-conscious little groups. They came back very soon and dispersed among the platoons, some quiet and preoccupied, some nervously boisterous.

Voices were raised and mingled in the darkness. There was the noise of movement, the clatter of weapons and equipment.

‘On your feet, Number Seven Platoon.’

‘Fall in here, Number Ten Platoon.’

Hurry and confusion, eagerness and disappointment, fear and excitement, all mounting together in the darkness.

‘All right, my lads.’ Here was Mister Paterson. ‘Get dressed. Eat what you can. No, you can’t brew up.’ Cold sausage-meat, bully-beef, cold pork-and-vegetable stew scooped from the tin; fluffy fragments of biscuits salvaged from pockets and pouches. Swallow it, wash it down with stale, metallic water from your bottles. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Eat while you can; it may be your last chance. ‘Thirty minutes, chaps, ready in thirty minutes.’

No news. No briefing. Surmise; wild rumour.

‘All right, my lucky lads. On your feet. Come on, come on. Move, MOVE. Over here, Nine Platoon. Fall in here, Number Nine. Put that fag out, you bloody fool. I won’t tell you again. Over here, Number Nine Platoon, under this tree. Everyone here, Sergeant Shannon?’

The men talking rapidly among themselves, leaning on their rifles.

Us again. Always us.

Some dirty job, I suppose.

It’s the breakthrough. We’ll go right through this time. All that stuff that’s been going up the line these last few days. Tanks. Guns. Carriers. Jeeps. Halftracks. This is it, boys. This is it.

B–– to you. Every time we go up it’s the breakthrough to you. Where’s the preparation? Where’s the artillery? Breakthrough my foot.

They don’t do that barrage business no more. This is it, Albert. I tell you this is it.

And the band played believe it if you like.

With a clatter of equipment Number Nine Platoon moved off, in single file, into the darkness, singing defiantly:

And the band played believe it if you like, if you like, And the band played believe it if you like.

The Fifth Battalion of the Wessex Regiment had been ordered to deploy along its start line before daylight. Throughout the night the files of riflemen, plodding up and down hill along the narrow, tall-hedged lanes, had looked over their shoulders at the barrage flaring on the horizon, fretting the edges of the night with fire, and had felt its thudding rumble against their eardrums.