‘There, lad,’ he said soothingly, ‘that’ll do just t’keep dirt out.’ He steered the blind boy back to the tape, forced him down to his knees and put the tape between his fingers.

‘Foller this back, lad,’ he said gently. ‘When yer get on t’ that road again you’ll be by the dressing station. They’ll take you in.’

He stood for a moment watching Little Alfie crawling back towards the beach on all fours, the tape between his fingers. Then he stooped, wiped his bloody hands in the sand and doubled after the platoon.

Most of the Fifth Battalion were across the beach. As the last of them clambered up a steep bank of sand, sticking close to the tape for fear of mines, they moved aside cautiously to pass Corporal Shuttleworth.

He was sitting, dazed, on his pack by the tape. Where his right boot had been there was a raw red stump. ‘Mind the mines,’ he muttered dreamily to the men passing him, ‘or you’ll get what I got.’

No one had time to stop for him. One after another the riflemen looked curiously at him, as if they had never known him, and hurried on. The blood was draining away from him fast. There was no pain and he was becoming sleepy. Some of the men trudging past him were his friends; sometimes one of them would stoop over him and tell him apologetically that the stretcher-bearers would be along in a moment to look after him. He would shake his head drunkenly, and once he giggled. One of his old comrades from the Green Howards, bending over him, heard him snigger, ‘Half a man, half a bloody man. The cow, she’ll get my pension.’ The blood was running away from him into the thirsty sand. He shook, as if enjoying some great secret joke. He mumbled something and toppled forward across the tape. The last rifleman of the Fifth Wessex stepped over the body and plodded on.