Except they didn’t.

By early afternoon, the town was awash with the returning wounded. Not the exact same men, obviously. The ones who had left in the morning were being sent to replace these casualties; they’d crossed en route. Howard couldn’t expect to find the soldier who had given him a letter to post, the pretty French girls wouldn’t see the men they’d kissed, but to all intents and purposes they were the same men because in just the space of a day Howard had lost sight of individuality and personality. All he saw was vast numbers, a sea of khaki. Lines of ambulances brought in the endless tide of wounded. They were laid out, stretcher by stretcher, in station yards, four, five, six hundred at a time. It was impossible to keep count, although someone must. Some of them had lost legs or arms. Bloody stumps were tied up with bandages that had already turned brown and putrid. Howard wanted to call out to a nurse, ‘Come, come quickly. Give this man back his arm.’ But it was impossible. They couldn’t sew limbs back on to these young bodies. It was already too late. The nurses couldn’t even get round all the wounded to administer morphine and drinking water. These men had lain this way for days in one holding place or another. That was why they stank so high.

Howard did what he could. He ran to a café and begged a carafe of water. Backwards and forwards he ran between the filthy lines and the café. He fetched water for thirty, forty maybe. Some he couldn’t offer even that to. Their faces were grotesque masks of clotted blood, like a mask an actor might put on to play the devil. Some of their faces were hardly there at all. Bone and gore only. They couldn’t breathe properly or speak. Some didn’t even bother to moan. Their bodies were hideously ruined. Torn.

He was dripping water into one chap’s mouth when the soldier died. Howard didn’t know what to do. Should he tell someone? The dead man lay amongst the wounded. Panicked, Howard felt responsible. He hadn’t shot him, but walking away was just as heartless, wasn’t it? Of course not. But yes, certainly. He stayed put, frozen.

‘Come on, young fellow, we have to get a move on.’ Clarke’s hand was on his shoulder. Howard was speechless. Dumb. Clarke reached across and gently closed the dead soldier’s eyes. ‘Nothing to be done here,’ he commented, but it wasn’t callousness, it was fact. Howard looked about him and noticed that they were swilling down the station hall with disinfectant fluid. Over half of the wounded had been cleared. Clarke sighed. ‘I hear the French doctor in charge received a telegram from the director of medical services.’

‘What did it say?’

‘It said, “Make ready for forty thousand wounded.” So I’m told.’

‘Some mistake, surely. An extra zero inadvertently tapped.’

Clarke shrugged.

They walked to the Front. It took them close to four hours. Military cars, trucks and wagons drawn by horses and mules, all heavily laden, rattled past but did not stop. Why should they? They had a battle to fight, a war to win. The air was sharp, urgent. Howard and Clarke did not talk much to one another as they trudged through the ever-blackening evening, both lost in their thoughts. When they got close, talking was an impossibility. Nothing could be heard above the eternal shelling and batteries firing barrage after barrage.