‘I got him,’ gasped a voice out of the darkness. Howard turned again, peering this time in the direction of the voice. Sergeant Bowler was lying on the ground.

‘Are you injured, sir?’ he asked, moving speedily to assist.

‘Shoulder,’ the sergeant muttered resentfully through gritted teeth.

Howard examined the shoulder and knew the wound was bad; the sergeant was losing a lot of blood. For the second time in only a matter of minutes, he found himself searching a man’s kit for the waterproof packet of field dressing and patching up as best he could. The anger that was with him most of the time surged through his body in a wild and unexpected wave, making him want to roar. He couldn’t patch any fucking thing up. He bit on his tongue and held in the roar. It made no sense to lose it now. He didn’t even like the sergeant.

‘How’s yours?’ Howard didn’t comprehend at first, but he followed the man’s shaky glance. A pool of blood was seeping through his own uniform, covering it like ink on blotting paper, just above his hip. He had not felt the bullet nip the side of his body – adrenalin had protected him – but on noticing the wound, pain seared up his side. It was the first bullet he’d taken. His initial response was shock, then amusement at being shocked. Hadn’t he always expected this? He undid his jacket to examine the damage.

‘Flesh wound, sir.’ He let out a deep breath, instinctively relieved. He wondered whether he had the energy to apply gauze. Was it worth it? Realising that he had nothing better to do, he did apply the gauze to stem the blood flow. Then he drank some water, passing his flask to the sergeant, although he must have had his own.

Bowler drank too and then barked, ‘Fasten your jacket, Private. We’re fighting a war, not at a bloody pub.’ Howard followed orders and wondered how long he might have to stay in the crater with this man; the three dead bodies caused him less offence.

The shelling and gunfire continued to roar around them. Intermittently, the earth swayed like a cradle; rocks and dirt showered into the crater. Conscious that his wound was not critical, Howard knew that he’d have to move out, carry on. He could hold a gun and shoot it, so his country needed him to kill someone. If he stayed put, there was a danger that he’d be court-martialled. Being shot at dawn was no longer the thing he considered the worst option; however, he didn’t want to give Sergeant Bowler the satisfaction. The man had been after his blood for ever, ever since he intercepted his letter to Vivian.

He crawled to the edge of the crater. The way that lay between him and the objective seemed overwhelming. The ground was beleaguered with dead bodies and pockmarked by deep shell holes. It was sliced and cross-sliced by old trenches that had been originally dug by the Allies but were now held by the enemy, tangled with barbed wire and spotted with machine guns. Howard felt another overwhelming surge of fury. This one was almost welcome; it overrode the stabs of pain from his injury. To cross even fifty yards of such territory in the squall of the enemy’s fire would be a catastrophic ordeal; it was a far greater task than that of rushing from one trench to another. The German guns continued to belch out huge numbers of weighty shells. They systematically raked the ground, desperately trying to make the English yield the position they had acquired. Howard saw men fall backwards and forwards, others blown to nothing, but, tenacious, the soldiers would not retreat. They would not crawl away from their dead and wounded.