‘One day he came down to our quarters on a brief respite from commanding the garrison at Hooge. We had arranged for him to join us for dinner. I remember he asked, “Would I delay you too much if I took a bath before I join you?” Wonderful manners, that sort of boy, even over there. He didn’t sit with us while his bath was being drawn, but walked about in the open air because dirt and lice are socialists and they cling to officers and men alike. There were legions of them crawling over him and a potent stink came off him. Sweat and worse. He’d been in the dugouts for a while; he was expecting to move up, go into battle any day. He’d already seen too much. “Hooge,” he muttered, in a thoughtful way. “Not what anyone would call a health resort, is it?” He was chirpier after his bath. We played cards and he even told jokes. After a short stay he finished up his whisky and went back to the trenches and his men. His head hung even though the officers are trained to stand tall. I could see that he expected to be killed. It was his quiet resignation that threw me. The war had been going on long enough by then that the clever men calculated the odds. “You know you are the only famous person I have ever met or am likely to.” He shook my hand. “Goodbye.” It was pitiful, his certainty that death was coming.’

‘Did he die?’

‘Yes.’ Howard sighed again. Impatient and weary at once. Had she expected a reprieve? A happy ending? He supposed she had. ‘I’ll get to it. So Hooge became a full on battlefield on 15 July. The height of summer. It was so damned hot. I don’t know, but somehow it seems even worse killing in the sunshine. These boys should have been in parks and at the seaside with their sweethearts eating penny ices. Instead they lay in vermin-infested trenches, skin scorched, mouths parched.

‘The Germans had taken control of one of the mine craters; this was an important strategic position as it secured the tip of a triangular area across the Menin road. There were trenches running down to it on both sides and they had fortified it with sandbags and packed it chock full with superior machine guns that could clean up on all three sides. Do you follow? Their position meant that a straightforward assault by infantry would be a suicidal endeavour. Our trenches faced this throttlehold and our men, all volunteers, were shelled day and night. A huge number of them were ripped to fragments; others were buried alive or made insane with shell shock.

‘My Irish officer was in the thick of it. He watched as his men ducked below the sandbags and scrabbled in the sides of the crater. Fragments of flesh, charcoaled hands, booted feet, burnt heads came falling over them when the enemy mortared our position. The craters were often filled with the fetid water that slopped over from Bellewaerde Lake; the boys suffered with soft rotting feet even before they died. Despite the itchy lice, the men had to stay still and steady. Moving had the potential for drawing the attention of the enemy; a lit cigarette, the sun glinting on a medal were all dangers. Besides, it sometimes disturbed the nerves of the next man in the row. They were all jittery, but a soldier losing it and screaming out, alerting the enemy to exact positions, could cost twenty lives. A man who says he’s not afraid in battle is a liar, a fool or a psychopath. You don’t want to be near him. Fear held them steady, as much as courage.