Arthur flicked a tear from his cheek as he folded the precious letter and tucked it down the front of his battledress next to his dog tag. The duckboard he was sitting on with his back pressed against the cold earth wall of the trench was slowly sinking into the mud but Arthur was so cold that he didn’t care any more. Men were pacing up and down blowing on their hands and stamping their feet as they waited for the order to advance. This was the part he hated the most; the waiting. Funnily enough, once the shout came and he was up and over on the field, he had got into the habit of blocking everything else from his mind. It was do or die up there – although he often had nightmares now as the faces of some of the men he had rammed his bayonet into paraded before his eyes in their death throes. A huge rat suddenly ran across his foot and Arthur shrieked as he kicked it with all his might. The loathsome creature sailed through the air, hit the other side of the trench, dropped to the ground then scurried away with its prize – someone’s finger – still in its mouth as Arthur shuddered and tucked his hands under his arms. And then the shout came and pandemonium broke loose as the men grabbed their rifles and surged towards the ladders propped up the sides of the trenches.

Once up on the field, Arthur positioned his rifle in front of him and plodded along. He could see the enemy advancing and started to fire then suddenly he felt as if someone had thumped him in the chest before he hit the mud with a sickening thud. He had dropped his rifle and he lay there staring up at the sky before raising his hand to his chest where he found nothing but a gaping hole with something warm and sticky spurting out of it.

That’s strange, where’s me jacket gone? he wondered, then suddenly a picture of his mother’s face flashed in front of his eyes and he smiled. He lifted his arm, for the vision was so real that he felt she was there with him. The sounds of the battleground receded and he felt strangely peaceful. ‘I love yer, Mum,’ he whispered through the blood that was bubbling from his lips and then his eyes gently closed and he knew no more.

It was four weeks later when Arthur’s mother was scrubbing the doorstep that the boy on the bicycle braked beside her.

‘Mrs Partridge?’

She nodded numbly. Her mouth had suddenly gone dry and no words would come out of it. He handed her the brown envelope then touching his cap respectfully he pedalled away as she knelt there staring down at it. She had no need to open it, for she knew what it would tell her. She had felt it for some time. Her son was gone from her for ever. Arthur would not be coming home.