Private Oh-Three-Seven Smith was a little anxious.

‘I reckon we’ll be away before the harvest, Corporal,’ he said.

‘I reckon we will.’ Corporal Shuttleworth was not very interested.

‘Going to be a good harvest this year, Mister Hodge is thinking.’

‘Is he?’ said Shuttleworth. ‘Leave me alone. I’m writing.’ He was huddled on his bed with a writing pad on his knees. The blanket was littered with crumpled sheets of paper.

Oh-Three-Seven Smith pulled his beret on to the back of his head. ‘I’ll be off down there,’ he said.

Shuttleworth looked up. ‘Down where? Hodge’s Farm again?’

‘I promised Mister Hodge I would. It’s been hard going getting the barley in in time.’

‘Christ Almighty!’ Shuttleworth exploded. ‘It’s been the hottest day in weeks, we’ve been marching our feet off all day. Look at the others… look at ’em…’

Most of the platoon were sprawling on their beds, with their boots off, smoking.

‘And you go off,’ he went on, ‘to break your back working. It’s knockin’ off time now, Smithy. Lay down an’ give your feet a rest.’

‘They’ll be working for three hours yet in Ten-Acre Field,’ said Oh-Three-Seven Smith, ‘till its gets dark. There’s a lot to do down there.’

‘He’s a mean bugger,’ said one of the men as Private Smith went out, ‘he kills himself workin’ every night for a couple of bob.’

‘It’s not the money,’ said Shuttleworth, ‘he likes it. There’s a lot o’ these swedebashers go down the farms every night to put some work in.’

There were, in fact, many men in the Fifth Battalion whose greatest pleasure was to work on the land whenever they could get out of the camp. They came from the farmlands of the western counties in which the battalion had originally been raised. Successive dilutions had flooded the battalion with men from all parts of the British Isles but there was still this core of countrymen, a kind of passive mass within the battalion of big, beefy, awkward lads with shy, red faces, whose names rarely made news or even figured on the charge sheets, who spent their evenings (when they were not out working) sitting quietly on their beds talking to each other, writing long letters or grubbing in the enormous parcels of food they were always receiving from home. They had the reputation of being miserly with money and generous with food. They were poor hands at gambling and past masters at rabbiting. They were easy to pick out in the dining hall, where they clenched their knives and forks in their fists and, bending low over their plates, shovelled vast quantities of food into their mouths humbly and absorbedly. They were good soldiers, enduring, uncomplaining, not without initiative but rarely inspired. Their speech was a delight to hear, broad-vowelled and leisurely, full of rich, rolling r’s.