The dog cocked its leg against the kerb, its ribs and vertebrae jutting out beneath its threadbare fur. The private whistled again, and the dog began to run after them, dragging its back leg.

‘I miss my dog,’ Private Nash said. ‘Bits.’

‘Bits?’ John said. ‘Is that his name?’

‘Yeah.’ The private whistled for the dog again.

‘Why Bits?’

‘It’s what went into him, isn’t it?’ He shrugged, grinned. ‘Bits of this, bits of that.’

He looked away from the dog and turned to John, smiling. He had a gap tooth. His eyes had brimmed up. ‘I miss him. I really do.’

He wiped his eye, stared back at the dog running after them as fast as its lame leg would allow.

‘Don’t like it,’ Arthur said, leaning forward and peering out of the back.

‘Orders.’

Arthur gave him a look, don’t ‘orders’ me, sonny. John never pulled rank, nor did Arthur parade his savvy, but John knew that in Arthur’s eyes he wasn’t just green, he wasn’t a proper soldier either. He should be in the other truck, with all the scientists whingeing about unpressed trousers and dusty billets, not here with the men, bringing up the rear.

‘Bloody liabilities,’ one of the squaddies had said to Arthur when they first saw the scientists. ‘Reserved occupations, my arse.’ Arthur pinched the tip of his cigarette to put it out, then ground it into the earth. He’d nodded. They didn’t think John had heard. He should have tackled them on it, there and then. They knew what this mission was about as well as he did, brought together, an army within an army. Top secret and all that. But he hadn’t liked to. These were grown men with more battle scars than John could ever count. He needed them far more than they needed him. His job was to translate but till then he was in the army, and don’t you forget it, Second Lieutenant, sonny.

‘You know,’ Arthur said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and looking over the jolting floor at John, ‘you never hear the bullet that hits you. You hear the one that misses you. The hiss as it passes, then the crack—’

The hiss. The crack-a-tat-tat.

‘Down,’ Arthur yelled, throwing himself on the floor. Private Nash had fallen against John, blood pumping from his perforated neck, his slumped head pinning John to the bench. John vomited down his battledress, yellow bile mixing with the thick black blood, dribbling on the squaddie’s dusty gaiters. He felt someone pull him free, push him back into the far corner of the truck. He heard the thud of Private Nash’s body as it fell to the floor, watched the head tumble free.