Corporal Shuttleworth stood sagging against the door of his hut, drunk, vomiting, ashen of face. He entered the hut, closed the door uncertainly behind him and stood swaying in the flickering firelight.

He reeled about the still hut, bumping into beds, collapsing once on to all fours and rising drunkenly to his feet. He was mumbling softly to himself and singing unintelligibly.

Two men slipped out of bed and padded barefoot across to him. They took him by the arms and led him gently to his bed. They pulled his boots off, lifted him and slipped his tunic off, unbuttoned his shirt and trousers and spread his blanket over him.

‘You bitch,’ they heard him mumbling, ‘you rotten, lousy bitch.’

They went back to their beds and slipped into the warm blankets, luxurious with the heat of the stove against their feet.

‘Oh, Sal,’ moaned Corporal Shuttleworth; and the men lay under their blankets listening. ‘Oh, Sal, Sal, Sal,’ he wept himself softly to sleep.

CHAPTER SIX

The Doggy Boys

MEN LOOKED UP SUDDENLY under the rims of their steel helmets as the stillness of the morning was broken by the rush and rustle of shells overhead; they cowered against the sodden turf as the first shells exploded a few hundred yards in front of them, then rose and moved forward behind the barrage as the whistles shrilled. Everywhere they were rising up from the tall grass, from folds in the ground, from sunken roadways, until the hillside, empty of life a few minutes before, was alive with the khaki figures that swarmed forward behind the thudding barrage.

Cast up high on the desolate beach behind them lay the empty landing craft; more craft were lurching forward in the shallows, their ramps crashing down into the water, their loads of riflemen streaming ashore; and more were bobbing in on the white-capped waves that came racing endlessly out of the Channel mists.

The morning was cold; the men shivered in their wet clothes. But the knife-edge of winter was gone from the wind; the sun shone in a pale sky. At the end of March there was already a breath of spring in the air; and the naval guns were booming somewhere over the skyline, the shells were rushing and rustling overhead, the thudding barrage was flinging up billowing domes of earth and smoke in front of the Fifth Battalion.

‘Get on there, lads, get on there.’

Colonel Pothecary strode uphill, swishing at the grass with his cane, driving the leading sections closer to the barrage.

‘Come on, my lads, up on your feet; you won’t get hurt.’

The colonel plodded on past a group of men who had flung themselves to the ground. He went on for twenty yards, not looking round, drawing dangerously close to the leaping barrage, until he heard the men on the move again and slackened his pace to let them come up with him.