The nurse handed Tommy Atkins’s box to the British Legion man and walked out, waving at Johnny uncertainly as she went past. And then the vicar ushered the man through another door, giving Johnny another funny look.

Outside, the October sun was shining weakly, but it was managing to shine. Johnny went outside and waited.

Eventually the man came out, holding two boxes this time.

‘Uh,’ said Johnny, standing up. ‘Um.’

‘Yes, lad? The lady from the Home said you’re doing a project for school.’

Doing a project. It was amazing. If Saddam Hussein had said he was doing a school project on Kuwait, he’d have found life a lot easier . . .

‘Um, yes. Uh. Can I ask you some stuff?’

‘Of course, yes.’ The man sat down heavily on one of the benches. He walked with a limp, and sat with one leg stretched out straight in front of him. Johnny was surprised to see that he was probably as old as Grandad, but he had that dried-out, sun-tanned look of a man who keeps himself fit and is probably still going to be captain of the bowls club when he’s eighty.

‘Well . . . when Mr Atkins said . . .’ Johnny began. ‘I mean, he used to say that he was “the one”. I know about the Blackbury Pals. I know they all got killed except him. But I don’t think that’s what he meant . . .’

‘You know about the Pals, do you? How?’

‘Read it in an old newspaper.’

‘Oh. But you don’t know about Tommy Atkins?’

‘Well, yes, he—’

‘No, I mean Tommy Atkins. I meant, why he was so proud of the name. What the name meant?’

‘I don’t understand that,’ said Johnny.

‘What do they teach you in school these days?’

Johnny didn’t answer. He could tell it wasn’t really a question.

‘You see – in the Great War, the First World War . . . when a new recruit joined the Army he had to fill in his pay book, yes? You know? Name and address and that sort of thing? And to help them do it, the Army did a kind of guide to how to fill it in, and on the guide, where it said Name, they put: Thomas Atkins. It was just a name. Just to show them that’s where their name should be. Like: John Smith. But it . . . well, it became a sort of joke. Tommy Atkins came to mean the average soldier—’

‘Like The Man In The Street?’

‘Yes . . . very much like that. It was a nickname for a soldier, I do know that. Tommy Atkins – the British Tommy.’

‘So . . . in a way . . . all soldiers were Tommy Atkins?’

‘Yes. I suppose you could put it like that. Of course, that’s a rather fanciful way of—’

‘But he was a real person. He smoked a pipe and everything.’

‘Well, I suppose the Army used it because they thought it was a common sort of name. So there was bound to be a real Tommy Atkins somewhere. I know he was very proud of his name. I do know that.’