‘Well, my lads. This is it. At last. You know, I’m damned if I know what to say to you. You’re well equipped. You’re well trained. There isn’t a better battalion than this in the British Army – so there certainly won’t be in the German Army. Everything that you need to be told you’ve been told for months past. So I won’t tell it to you all over again. Keep cheerful – that goes a long way. Keep your heads down when you can – only take risks when you have to.’

He hesitated again, searching for a peroration, and ended triumphantly: ‘Eat when you can, and keep your bowels open. That’s all lads. Fall the battalion out, Sergeant-Major.’

For the next hour the men were busy writing their last letters home; brief, guarded and unsentimental letters for the most part, not at all like the last letters of story-book soldiers going into battle.

Dear Mum [wrote Charlie Venable], You may not hear from me for a week or two, as we shall be busy for a bit. Don’t worry, whatever you read in the papers. I’ll make up for it as soon as I can with a nice long one. Love and kisses,

CHARLIE

Most of the letters were like that.

At three o’clock in the afternoon the officers and n.c.o.s went for their briefing and came away looking secretive and important. At four o’clock the battalion filed past the pay table and were handed crisp, new, hundred-franc notes. At five o’clock they had tea – a huge festive meal was served to them to get rid of the battalion’s spare rations. After tea they sat in little groups by their tents while their platoon and section leaders passed on the information they had brought from the briefing conference. The Movement Order for the morning was read to them. Get to bed early tonight, lads, their officers told them, there’s an early reveille in the morning.

The little groups broke up. Men wandered about inside the wire fence that surrounded the camp, or sat talking softly with their friends. There was singing from some of the tents, not rowdy but wistful and harmonious.

It was a strange, sad, beautiful feeling to know that this was your last evening in Blighty. It was like being very much in love, and very young, the evening before your wedding. Everyone moved about in a subdued kind of way, and all the little everyday things that you continued to do, all the ordinary little communal sights and sounds of the camp, even the clattering of pans from the cookhouse and the noise of the ablution taps running, became strangely poignant.

And it was such a lovely evening, clear and quiet and cool, with the tiny little ships moored in rows on the unruffled sea.

The Fifth Battalion took the advice of its officers and went early to bed.