Which is how the Ninth battalion of the Norfolk Regiment ended up on the Somme in July 1916, Captain Richard Hadleman with them. He had in his pocket some letters from Alexander, who, to his delight, had been spared his great decision by being judged too old and unfit to go. His life back in Farringham was much the same, bar the blackout at night and the very occasional sight of a zeppelin.

Richard had spoken up at a Labour Group meeting in October 1914, declaring, for some reason, that it was the duty of every good Socialist to enlist and protect the workers of Belgium. He’d seen the effect that battle had had on those children huddling about the fire⁠ — though that whole time seemed like a dream now⁠ — but he’d thought that he was a man, that he could make a sober decision to go to war and fight to his own specifications. Alexander had seemed very wise on the matter, in bed that evening. He’d said that, though Richard might be killed, it was his life to risk, just as it was a conscientious objector’s right to risk hatred and ignorance at home. The government didn’t possess the soul of either man, he’d said. Only that of the man who found himself forced or jollied into joining up because it was the only thing he could imagine doing.

Even then, Richard hadn’t been comfortable with that.

Now he looked up at the absolute darkness above him and tried to scream, but it came out as a long, rattling choke.

Next time he’d stay home. Next time. As if there were wars in Heaven or Hell, as if there was another battlefield he’d find himself on. The letters he held would have been enough, at any point, to have had him sent home. In disgrace, yes, but home, and what was disgrace compared to that? But he’d never shown them to anyone.

It was 14 July, just past eleven o’clock at night, and Richard had been lying in the cornfield since the early hours of that morning, coughing up blood and liquids of other colours that disturbed him far more. It was taking him a long time to die. He had, oddly, been part of one of the few successful military actions of the war.

At 3.25 that morning, 20,000 British troops had rushed across no-man’s land in the first-ever night attack, following only five minutes’ bombardment. The Germans, used to the regular pattern of meaningless daylight sorties and endless night barrages, had actually been surprised. Five miles of their frontline had been overrun, the Norfolks firing as they ran along German trenches, bayoneting men as they woke from sleep. It had felt like a great victory, a breakthrough that might have brought this all to an end.