Because he couldn’t do anything other.

Again, the choices his generation faced were not really choices; they were reductive apologies, a faint imitation of choice. Become a soldier or be imprisoned. Kill or be killed. Go to war or never look your lover in her face again. Try to get her husband back to safety or go to hell.

After just twenty yards or so, Howard thought he might drop Aubrey. He wondered about taking off the man’s boots to lessen the load but didn’t dare; the value of boots had been drilled into them from day one. Aubrey’s hip was banging into Howard’s wound, making it unimaginable for him to think of anything other than the pain that he had to forget in order to progress. He worried that it would reopen. He couldn’t afford to lose more blood; he was already weak and nauseous. One foot in front of the other, he stumbled on. Twice he thought he’d let him slip, plummet to the ground. His arms and chest stung with a weariness he’d never before known. He collapsed to his knees, but rather than lay Aubrey flat and have the effort of picking him up again, an effort he wasn’t sure he was up to, he rested with the officer splayed across his thighs, like a sacrifice. He reached behind him into his pack and fished out another one of the water bottles he’d collected, dribbling some into Aubrey’s mouth and then drinking too.

Aubrey muttered something but Howard couldn’t hear it. He cursed the man for making the effort, because it meant he had to respond. He bent his body to lower his ear closer to Aubrey’s lips, every quarter of an inch of movement new agony. ‘We are alike,’ Aubrey whispered. Howard doubted it, and his cynicism must have shown on his face. ‘She sent me too. I couldn’t get away fast enough. I’m in this nightmare because of her.’

Each time Howard hoisted Aubrey up, the muscles in his back and thighs stung viciously with the effort until he thought they would snap. Aubrey only called out twice, but he must have been in constant agony. It was merciful that he slipped out of consciousness. Sweat fell into Howard’s eyes, almost blinding him, but he had no way of rubbing it away. Exhausted, he tried another position. Grabbing Aubrey under the arms and clasping his hands across the man’s chest, he bent and walked backwards, dragging him, slow and rugged progress for a length of time that would never be quantified by either man.

Howard could only see his war. He did not know that just a few miles away, the Allied soldiers had cut through. They had found the German gunners and silenced them for ever. German soldiers emerged from the trenches and lurched about in a bemused, drunken fashion, stupefied by the bombardment they had endured. Then frenzied, terrified, vengeful and virtuous men fought hand to hand until the enemy were spitted on bayonets. Dying men screeched like pigs meeting their end in a slaughterhouse. The barrage progressed in short rushes. The Allies surrounded craters, shouting roughly and flinging grenades at the enemy, who were trapped like fish in a barrel. Those who tried to stagger or scuttle up the steep sides were fired upon. They rolled down again, squashing any living comrades until there were none of those left, only bodies, dead at the bottom of this pit of hell. The Allied soldiers knew that this was winning. And it was better than losing.