‘These flaps’ were a series of test embarkations that had taken place during the previous fortnight. Startled villagers and citizens of the seaport town had seen columns of infantrymen trudging, on four different occasions, down to the docks and filing aboard landing craft. Each time the rumour had spread in the town that ‘it’ had started. Each time the troops had returned and the civilians, arguing in groups at their front doors, declared that it had been called off again, or that it had all been done to fool Jerry’s spies, or that it was only a practice. In fact these embarkations had been carried out to enable the Movement Control organisation to time them and ensure the accuracy of its schedules.

Norman nodded. ‘The embarkations shook them up a bit. I think the first time they all imagined it was the real thing. Since then, they’ve really started feeling the suspense. Oh, to hell,’ he said suddenly, ‘this is my fourth. Neither of us has drunk like this before.’

‘I’ll give you a game of rummy.’ This was an innocent occupation to which the colonel was much addicted.

‘You’re an old robber, aren’t you? I lost ninepence to you last night. You must be out to ruin me.’

‘Lock, stock and barrel,’ chuckled the colonel, shuffling the cards.

‘Have you heard the story about the fifteen Poles and the girl in the railway carriage?’

He dealt the cards deftly.

The events of the past week had indeed aroused the men of the battalion from their summer torpor; not only the test embarkations, but the sight of fresh units arriving day after day, dispersing to encampments among the woods where they waited, together with the Fifth Battalion, for the order to embark; the roads choked with tanks and artillery moving down towards the sea, the women running out of the houses to offer apples and jugs of tea to the festive crews. The battalion’s drivers, returning from their errands, told of huge parks of transport and equipment stretching for ten miles and more at a time along the fields on both sides of the main London road. Others, who had been down to the port, described how the streets near the waterfront were cordoned off by military police and barred to the public, with more troops piling in every hour to squat on the pavements and await their turn to embark. Rumours thrived, mad and fantastic rumours; and the days, which a week or two before had gone spinning lazily by, became a torment.

NO BEER – Private Scannock spelled out the sign painfully. He stood in doubt for a few moments, looking at the card nailed to the door of The Ploughman. It took time for the meaning of things to register in Private Scannock’s mind. No beer; and they were dry at the Horse and Hounds as well.