Someone thumped his back and he raised his head like a sleeper awakened. Men were streaming past him to the right, hurrying, bowed low. Above the noise of the bombardment he could hear a whistle shrilling, voices raised, the cackle of a machine gun.

It was so hard to rise from the consoling earth, to cast off the protecting dream. He felt so lazy and remote. He could not understand what was happening, or where his comrades were hurrying; but they were moving, and his instinct compelled him to stumble after them.

He plodded forward, frowning at the ground like a day-dreamer in a crowded street. He did not hurry, for his steps were measured by the tender lullaby he was still whistling to himself within the bombardment.

At eight o’clock in the evening the Brigadier’s attack went in from the southwest. Protected by dusk, mist and an artillery smokescreen, the assaulting troops were able to work their way steadily up the hill.

They were already desperately tired, having been fighting for days before, and having marched several miles in full kit to take up their positions for this attack. They met heavy opposition at first, in spite of the fact that the Germans were unprepared and were already weakened by the tenacious attacks of the Fifth Battalion.

It was dark already when a troop of British tanks gained the crest; and within an hour the infantry, heartened by the sight of the tanks, had overrun the summit.

The moon had risen when an officer of the victorious battalion went forward over the hilltop in search of the Fifth Wessex.

His own men were trying to dig in, and as he passed through them he saw that they were so exhausted that they were falling asleep over their spades.

He moved cautiously down the opposite slope. He could see no sign of life.

He halted and raised his hand to his mouth.

‘Hallo, Wessex!’ he called. His voice echoed in the green moonlight, among the broken trees.

‘Hallo-o-o!’

He picked his way forward another few yards, fearful of the mines with which the ground was still thickly sown.

‘Ahoy there, Wessex!’ he shouted.

‘Wessex – ahoy!’ There was no reply.

Two hundred yards in front of him a man rose from a fold in the ground, slowly and silently, like a corpse from the grave. Another man rose, and another. As more and more men rose to face him the officer felt as if a legion of ghosts was springing from the earth.

None of them spoke.

They began to move towards him. Silently, like sleepwalkers, they began to make their way up the desolate, moonlit slopes, towards the summit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The beginning of a story