The Feldpolizisten clambered into the jeeps, started the engines, turned and drove away, dragging the second prisoner. He was jolted off his feet, head thumping the ground. He screamed. Once. They drove off through the farm gate.

All was silent except for the chug-chug of the Kübelwagen as they climbed the hill, and the twi-twi-twi of the yellowhammer on the gate.

Joe slumped in the middle of the field. Life snuffed in the puff of a gun, the jolt of a Kübelwagen, Geoffrey and his nurse, heads down, arms back, stiff as corpses.

He pushed himself up. The farm was deserted now. He thrashed his way through the oats which tangled and dragged at his shoes, clambered over the lower gate, ran towards the body. The top half of the head was a mass of broken bone and slimy brain. His chest an open cave, shattered ribs cream against the blood. Fibres and strings had tumbled out in the gore.

Joe leaned over and retched. The tangled corpse had been a man once. He looked again, at the frail, immature bones, the slender, scabbed hands strapped behind its back. Not a man. A boy. Perhaps no more than fifteen.

A child. Perhaps the same lad he’d looked for once.

Joe shut his eyes, spoke without thinking, ‘Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.’ He couldn’t bear to look anymore. He had to do something. Tell someone. He’d heard talk of the Germans’ brutality. The executions. The cruelty in the camps. He’d never seen it, apart from the starvation, and that was too obvious to miss. Had he chosen not to? And may perpetual light shine upon him. The nurse’s bike was leaning against the farmhouse wall. He pulled it away, one foot on the pedal, pushed off. May the souls of the faithful departed. He had to find Trude. Tell her what they’d done. She’d be as shocked as him. Perhaps she could intercede for Geoffrey and the nurse, beg the Feldkommandant to show leniency. Through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

He was blind to the road in front of him, heedless to the quivering in his gut, the stretch of his tendons and muscles. He had to find Trude. He knew she didn’t work at the general hospital because she’d told him that – couldn’t think where to look for her, who was in charge of the German nurses and doctors.