THEY WERE SCATTERED along the sides of a country lane resting. To the south the ridge peeped above the hedgerows as pastoral and innocent in the serene sunlight as when they had first seen it. There were other troops up on the ridge now, and they were being shelled; but the remote thudding and the little puffs of smoke that blossomed against the blue seemed from this distance to possess no menace. Down here the birds were singing.

There were not many of them sprawling at the roadsides. Most of them lay flat on their backs, staring up at the sky with eyes as void and cavernous, as the windows of empty houses. Some squatted cross-legged, rummaging nervelessly in their packs. They were unshaven, their shirts and tunics unbuttoned to the waist, their boots unlaced. There was little talk. They were deafened, numbed still to the fact of their survival. The summer’s beauty hurt them, as returning consciousness brings hurt to the wounded. The song of the birds was heartbreaking.

A column of prisoners shambled by; a line of men bobbing past with the slow and melancholy rhythm of captivity; dazed and sagging, stumbling over their own broken boots, their eyes intent upon the dusty ground. Their skins and their tattered, hanging clothes were smothered in the same dark grime and powdered, over that, with the same grey covering of dust; so that it was hard to tell the men from their rags, moving bundles of misery.

The men of the Fifth Battalion looked up at them dully, without interest. There was little to distinguish the victors from the vanquished; all were bowed under the same burden of shock and exhaustion, all were masked alike in filth and clad in indistinguishable rags; all might have belonged to the one, defeated army.

***

Major Norman envied the men their apathy. As exhausted as any of them, he found himself unable to rest. He was seized by a terrible, trembling impatience. His body seemed to be out of control, waiting for something in a physical agony of suspense; for what he did not know. His gums itched; the muscles of his cheeks ached with the strain. He smoked hurriedly at a cigarette, unreasoningly impatient to throw it away, as he had thrown away a dozen already, and to light another.

He stretched his arms; not in fatigue, but because the muscles were contracted unbearably. He felt as if cotton wool were being packed into his head, stopping his ears, pressing at his eyeballs from behind, threatening to burst his skull.

A jeep came wallowing down the uneven lane. It jolted to a stop and the Brigadier walked across to him.

‘Hallo, Noel.’ The Brigadier’s eyes were anxious under their thick black brows. He studied Norman’s face, trying to find behind the mask of sweat and dust a clue as to how he should talk to this man.