So, under nothing but instinct, he burrowed down into the men again, pulling their warmth back around him, until he was concealed in a dark burrow of flesh, with a little air.

He stayed that way for maybe ten minutes, then had to surface.

He lay there amongst the limbs of those he knew, for some time, taking one full breath in three and coughing, aware that he was getting the end of the gas as it drifted away. That, and there was some bleeding in his jacket, a wound the pain of which rose and fell with his lungs.

He didn’t even think of trying to get back to the line. He wasn’t sure where it was any more, or even in which direction. If it wasn’t for Alexander, he would be quite satisfied to die, knowing that the war he was fighting in was utterly futile. It was almost as if he’d proved a point of politics to himself. In this place, upwards of 400,000 British men were going to be killed. They’d lost 20,000 just the other day.

He sucked a grim smile. It was like rich countries deliberately killing themselves, leaving their battered remains ready for the revolution that would surely come, for who could return home without wanting to face those who had wasted good men thus?

He raised his hand, and tried to sing ‘The Red Flag’. But he was unconscious before he’d got past the bit about cowards.

He woke again in the night to a noise. He tried not to make a noise, though he heard many distant cries, oddly hoping that it wasn’t a German come to rob him. A face appeared over the low ridge above him, a muddied blond lad in a dull grey uniform. ‘Good Lord,’ he whispered. ‘I knew there were some Norfolks out here. Richard Hadleman, isn’t it?’

Hadleman blinked, the face wobbling in and out of vision. He tried to remember the name. ‘Timothy? What regiment are you?’

‘None, actually. Red Cross. A few of us are having a sniff about out here, because nobody quite knows who owns this bit at the moment, and we kept hearing shouts. Now, if you can move, I don’t want to get my arse shot off doing field dressings. Mind taking the hand of a filthy conchie?’

Hadleman reached up and felt everything give as Timothy Dean hauled him out of the pile of bodies. He stifled a shout.

Timothy supported him by his shoulder and the two of them picked their way off towards the British line. Hadleman glimpsed familiar shapes a few hundred yards away. ‘Got any jobs going?’ he whispered.

‘You don’t need to worry,’ Timothy replied. ‘You’re going home.’

The bells of Norwich Cathedral rang clear and sharp on an April morning in 1995.