Silence. No screeling gulls, no piping guillemots. No gannets or shags. No raptors. No waders. Joe had never been on a coast without life, a land without birds. Never been close to the sea when all that could be heard was the wind, a breathless whine that hummed above the clack-clack percussion of the soldiers’ boots on the stones and the shrill trumpet of orders. Schnell.

There were ships in the harbour. Gangs of men in rough, torn clothing were unloading cargo. At the far corner, there was another gang working on what looked like breakwaters. In front of them was a row of workshops, with anchors hanging against the wall and fishing nets strung with glass floats. Welcome to Alderney was visible on the faded signage. They hadn’t travelled far at all.

‘Schnell!’ The men were butted into line, two abreast.

‘Water,’ Joe said. ‘I need water.’ He wanted to add, Food, too? There’d been nothing for almost two days. The soldier ignored him and Joe could see from the set of the soldiers’ faces that they would give no quarter. The other men were resigned, as if they were used to starvation and thirst. Used to orders. They formed a crocodile.

‘Abmarsch! Links. Links,’ the guard yelled. ‘Zwei. Drei. Vier. Singen!’

The men either side of him began to sing. The men behind sang, as did those in front. Male voices filled his ears, tenors, a baritone. He felt the hairs on his arm rise. What twisted logic did those Nazis have that forced these men to sing? Like this? What went through the hearts of the guards? Joe heard that the slaves in America had sung as they worked, spirituals of loss and longing. Of hope and redemption.

Kalinka, Malinka.

The way his shadow fell, Joe knew they were moving east. Links! Links! In the distance, Joe could make out the silhouette of fortifications with their thick, high concrete walls and square, solid bunkers. Joe saw the labourers, some in the blue striped uniforms like the men he’d travelled with, some in ragged shirts and trousers with a white stripe painted down the leg, others dressed in old cement sacks. All of them were covered in grey dust, their hair thick and matted, their feet clothed in rags or clumsy wooden clogs. Soldiers stood by, rifles and whips at the ready, while the labourers fed the vast mixing machines with sand and cement, pouring in water, pushing wheelbarrows of wet concrete. Thin as skeletons. They looked even more emaciated than the Russian prisoners in Jersey.