The first body is a middle-aged man wearing nothing but a pair of pinstriped trousers. He has been shot through the chest. The second … He walks along the line. The bodies are all men, shot in the head or chest, up until the first shell crater. The burst has thrown two bodies up into the air and they have landed, all in a muddle, in the shallow pit. Both men. Next to them, a woman in tweed trousers, blouse shredded and soaked with blood. Black hair cut very short. Tom is glad she is lying on her face. Another man next to her, one leg, no arms, squinting at the bullet hole in his forehead. A short, middle-aged woman in a jarringly happy floral print dress, knotted between her legs. And next to her, another woman wearing tweed trousers, on her back, arms flung out. From her breastbone up, there is only blood-blacked grass. Tom swallows, and kneels. The navy blue jacket she wears was once smart. A bag, some sort of canvas army haversack, the strap wrapped around one of her wrists. He looks inside: empty. But as he bends his head he picks up the faintest of smells, a needle of perfume spiking, for a moment, through the reek of burst bellies and high explosive. The headless woman’s left hand is closed in a loose fist. On an impulse, he lifts it gently and studies it. I can’t remember, he thinks. Why can’t I remember her hand? He sees something dark between the white fingers, the thing she was holding when … He finds himself easing the fingers away. Why are you doing this? You should stop now. You should … Something falls into the grass. He picks it up. A cap badge: cannon and crown. UBIQUE.

He doesn’t even notice the bullets as they start to whine and sizzle across the square. Only when a mortar round bursts a few yards away and the shrapnel clatters against the shell of the car does he look up. Then he hears shouting. ‘Major Collyer! Major! ’ Soldiers are waving urgently through the door of the observation post. The Bren gunner fires a long burst and Tom hears the bullets smack against the wall of the block of flats behind him. He doesn’t move, waiting for something to strike him, to rip him open and spill him out. But another mortar round bursts and his training takes possession of him. He begins to lope back towards the shop. A bullet kicks up the grass next to his feet but he ignores it. Lousy shots, he thinks. Nothing works out the way you need it to.

They pull him back inside the observation post and he senses the soldiers’ professional admiration. Always a special place for madmen and lost causes like me, he thinks. ‘Did you get what you wanted, Major?’ the lieutenant asks. Tom nods.

‘Yes, thank you.’ What else is there to say?