During his last weekend visit to town, as they’d sat eating scones and drinking tea in the kitchen, Samuel had been most gratified by Amelia’s response to the note he’d promised to deliver.

‘From young Private Hill,’ he said, handing her the envelope, ‘a thank you for the book you gave him, I believe.’ That’s what Rupert Barrett had said anyway when he’d delivered the note to the officers’ tent.

‘Oh my goodness,’ Amelia exclaimed as she looked down at the envelope, upon which was very clumsily written, ‘Mrs Sanderson’. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she repeated in breathless amazement, ‘Ant wrote this himself.’

‘So his corporal tells me, yes,’ Samuel said.

She opened the envelope and took out the note. Watching her closely, he could see she was touched as she read its brief content, several times over, it seemed.

‘How lovely,’ she murmured finally. She looked up at him and smiled.

Such a sweet smile, Samuel thought. Then, looking down once again at the note, she read it out loud to him.

‘Dear Mrs Sanderson,

‘Thank you for the book you gave me. I am reading “How the Leopard Got His Spots”.

‘Yours sincerely,

‘Anthony Hill (Ant)

‘He wrote every single word himself,’ she said, showing Samuel the note with its crude, half-written, half-printed scrawl. ‘But the arrangement and the wording itself, particularly the “yours sincerely”,’ she added, ‘how could Ant possibly have come up with that?’

‘I believe he had some helpful suggestions from his corporal, Rupert Barrett,’ Samuel said. ‘In fact, Corporal Barrett told me he’s helping young Anthony read the book, just as you did.’

‘Oh how wonderful.’ Amelia’s smile this time was one of pure joy. ‘How absolutely wonderful.’

‘Yes, as I mentioned, the men often help each other,’ Samuel said. ‘Many of the educated write letters home for the illiterate and teach them how to sign their own names. It’s most heartening to see.’

‘I’m sure it would be, Samuel,’ she replied, still with that joyous smile. ‘I’m sure it would be most heartening to see, for I find it most heartening to hear of such a thing. Men teaching literacy skills to those less fortunate. How splendid.’

He found her pleasure unbelievably rewarding, which seemed to him rather strange.

The construction of the out-of-town Negro Servicemen’s Club had not gone unnoticed by a number of prominent locals, including Senior Sergeant Bruce Desmond and his mate Pete Vickers.

‘The old Parslow farm,’ Pete said as they sat in their customary corner of the bar at the Queen’s Hotel. ‘Ned’s taken his family and shot through to Brisbane and Val Callahan’s converting the place to a club.’ As usual, Pete had made it his business to find out all he could.

‘Really?’ Bruce was surprised. ‘I presumed the US military was footing the bill.’

‘No, no,’ Pete scoffed, ‘the military doesn’t give a stuff about its black soldiers, that’s why the poor bastards were pissed off out of town.’