There was death everywhere. Howard could taste it on his tongue and feel it in his nostrils and lungs. Death stung his eyes. Here there was just more. More ambulances roaring and crashing over the thrown-up mud, more stretchers carrying the wounded, more bodies lying prone. Finished. An unforgivable, unreasonable thought struck Howard. The dead were the lucky ones; this was hell. He wanted to vomit with shame at the thought; he wasn’t a defeatist. He looked around helplessly, wondering what he could do to aid; to ease someone, anyone. Those on the stretchers who were being carried away cried out; each furrow in the ground that forced a bearer to slip or slide caused the wounded to yell in pain. This lot were in a worse way than those Howard had tended to in Dunkirk. These men were still shocked and furious; they hadn’t moved on to acceptance or denial. They were writhing in agony and screaming with dismay or horror. Nurses dashed from one to another, doing their best to ease and comfort. The worst were those who were too delirious to cry out. It was their eyes that screamed. Howard wondered how they bore it. Did they know that the foul smell came from them?

In the opposite direction, young men teemed towards the enemy’s guns like ants on a picnic rug swarming towards cake crumbs. Horses laboured to pull carriages carrying artillery. They neighed, straining with the weight, but stumbled through. Several thoroughbreds lay freshly dead. Enormous and powerful still, they oozed blood, entrails smoking pitifully. The deluge stretched out in front of him, yard after yard, mile after mile. As far as he could see. On and on it went, oceans of bloody, muddy men, crowds of dejected, humiliated prisoners, endless dead bodies lying in the filth, blood still weeping from their wounds, the plummeting shells plunging ceaselessly into the earth, blasting up streams of soil and flesh.

Clarke pulled out a notebook.

Howard was stunned, almost sickened by the man’s presence of mind; he himself could no more have put pen to paper in that moment than he could fly to the moon. ‘What will you tell them?’ he yelled.

‘Who?’

‘The men and women who still think of war in terms of heroic pageantry. The mothers at home who are giving up sons, the women who are sacrificing husbands, lovers, brothers.’

Clarke shook his head. ‘Not this. We don’t tell them this.’

Howard knew that it wasn’t that Clarke suddenly agreed with Kitchener’s policy of throttling the press; it was simply that he didn’t have the words. How could he begin to draw the picture of civilisations collapsing, men tearing one another to shreds like cannibals? He would have to find something but not give them everything. Everything was far, far too much.

Severe fighting is taking place today near Nieuwpoort, south of Ostend. Very heavy firing has been heard at Dunkirk since eight in the morning. It is suggested that torpedo boats or gun boats are being used in the canals.