Some of the injuries were truly dreadful. Most were from artillery shell damage, as usual, but there were also gunshot and bayonet wounds, skin blistered from mustard gas, and the persistent, hacking cough of trench fever.

One of the young men swore and tried to lash out at Grace as she peeled the bandages off his feet.

‘Don’t mind him, he doesn’t know what he’s saying,’ she said to Eliza, whose round blue eyes had filled with tears. She was obviously a well brought up young lady, not used to such language.

‘I bloody do!’ The young man let fly with another stream of obscenities, some of which even Grace hadn’t heard before.

As she peeled off the last of the filthy bandages, she heard Eliza Parrish gasp with horror.

‘Sod off if you don’t want to look!’ the young man snarled.

‘Why don’t you go into the ward and ask Sister if there’s anything she wants you to do?’ Grace nodded towards the double doors. Eliza fled gratefully.

Grace turned back to the young man. ‘Now then, let’s see what we can do with these feet of yours, shall we?’ she said bracingly. But even she could scarcely bring herself to look at them. They hardly seemed like feet at all, more like swollen, misshapen lumps, the skin blackened and blistered, half the toes already rotted away. And the smell … That awful, sweet, decaying smell that came from trench foot.

Eliza was still trembling when Grace went to check on her later in the scullery. She was bundling up the last of the uniforms, ready for burning.

‘I don’t understand why they’re so angry,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘You’d think they’d be pleased to be safe …’

‘They don’t realise they are,’ Grace said. ‘They’ve spent so long in the trenches, feeling very afraid, expecting to die at any moment. They’ve seen some awful things – things we couldn’t even imagine. It’s going to take a long time for their minds to accept that they’re not in danger any more.’

Eliza Parrish stared back at her with wide, frightened eyes. Grace understood that, like the men, the VAD had also seen some things today that she couldn’t possibly have imagined.

‘I don’t like it when they cry,’ Eliza said slowly. ‘And the ones who stare at you, as if they don’t know where they are. –’

‘Shell shock,’ Grace said.

‘It just seems – unmanly to be like that, don’t you think?’

Grace stared at the girl’s pert, pretty little face, and it was all she could do not to take Eliza Parrish by the shoulders and shake her.

She decided to walk away before her temper got the better of her. As she went, Eliza said, ‘What will happen to him?’

‘Who?’

‘That boy … The one with the trench feet?’

‘We’ll have to see what the doctor says. But I expect they’ll have to amputate.’

‘So he’ll never walk again?’

Eliza’s face crumpled and she started to sob. Grace glanced nervously over her shoulder, then quickly took a handkerchief out of her pocket and stuffed it into the girl’s hand.