Tom. He was a nice man, Mister Hodge, and his wife a nice woman; she laid a lovely supper in front of you. For the last five years Private Smith had grown unaccustomed to being called Tom. He only heard the name from his mother when he was home on leave. In the battalion, he was one of a tribe of Smiths, each of whom bore some distinguishing title. There was Sanitary Smith, the chief latrine-wallah (sometimes known by a more pungent and equally alliterative nickname), and Smith-In-The-Signals, and a score of other Smiths each of whom had been trained to accompany his surname with the last three digits of his Army number. So that when Tom Smith saw a finger jabbed at him and heard a voice bark, ‘What’s your name, you?’ it had become a reflex for him to jerk to attention and answer, ‘Oh-Three-Seven Smith, sir.’

It was nice, in the evening, to come out of camp and leave the saluting and the sentries behind you, and to sit in the kitchen at Hodge’s place or in the public bar at the Ploughman among kindly farming folk who called you Tom. It was the next best thing to being home with mother.

They were turning in through the door of the Ploughman, and settling themselves in their accustomed places at the plain wooden table. Private Smith preferred this dark, dingy, low-beamed little four-ale bar, with its sawdust-covered floor and the same dozen and a half farmhands gathered every night, to the gaudy, rowdy Horse and Hounds at the other end of the village, where most of the battalion flocked to crowd bawling around the strident piano and to woo the fancy women of the district. At the Horse and Hounds you poured beer down you till you had to spew it up; at the Ploughman you sat with friends and made your pint last.

Oh-Three-Seven Smith sipped his ale appreciatively and listened respectfully to the conversation of his seniors. Under their elbows on the table there were newspapers, with stories of thousands of bombers roaring over Europe, with headlines: KING’S MESSAGE TO HOME FLEET – GOD SPEED BEFORE THE BATTLE. But tonight, among his friends, Private Smith spoke not a word about bombers or battles, but talked happily of pigmeal and ribrollers, seed-harrows and granular fertiliser.

‘You’re getting busy up at the camp again, Tom,’ remarked Mister Hodge. ‘We could hear the rifles going all day on the range.’

‘Ah,’ said Tom, ‘we’re never finished training.’

‘Balloon’ll be goin’ up soon, by the look of things,’ said Charlie Benbow.