Now they were all in place, crouching along the steel sides of the craft, settling their weapons across their knees and fumbling with cigarette tins. They had a long trip ahead, four miles to the shore.

The sailors were shouting.

‘All gone forrard.’

‘All gone aft.’

The engines throbbed more loudly and they could feel the tug of power beneath them. The landing craft began to sidle away from the troopship; the waste foam and heaving water between the two vessels widened. The engine note became deeper and more powerful and the squat craft began to move forward, butting into the waves, painfully climbing them and slithering down into the troughs to attack the next hillock of grey-green water. Paterson stood up and looked around him. As far as he could see other little craft were bobbing towards the shore. Somewhere ahead of them the first flights of assault craft must be piling in now.

‘Make yourselves comfortable, lads,’ he told the men. ‘There’s plenty of time yet.’

Some of the men were talking, some smoking, some vomiting quietly into brown bags of greaseproof paper. The wind was bringing to them now the sound of shells bursting ashore. Each man could feel each thudding detonation somewhere inside him. The talking stopped. Men took up their rifles and machine carbines; there was the clack of bolts being drawn and rammed home. The slow, wallowing motion of the craft eased; they were coming into shallower water. Orders were being shouted in the stern and a marine heaved himself up over the side and began to take soundings. There was smoke sprawling across the beach ahead, and the black plumes of explosions, each with a cherry-red flicker of flame at its heart, were leaping up in front of the high bows.

The landing craft nosed inshore through a mass of floating rubbish. A dead sailor came floating out to sea, face and legs under water, rump poking upwards; then a dead soldier, his waxen face turned up to the sky, his hands floating palm upwards on the water; he was kept afloat by his inflated lifebelt. Ahead of them lay beached landing craft, some wrecked, scattered untidily along the waterline.

There was a jarring explosion beneath the bows and the whole craft lurched forward. Men toppled forward in a heap, clambered to their feet as the ramps crashed down, and ran splashing down into the water. They had no time to stop for the two men who had been caught by the mine exploding beneath the bows and whose blood stained the dirty seawater as the boat began to submerge. They were all away now, and wading with weapons held above their heads towards the wet sand ahead.