Although there were eight phases to the fighting here, when Gray would later speak of the Somme he would mostly refer to that first morning in July—sixty thousand British casualties, the flower of an empire. His account of it is as pointed as any. After a visually impressive but useless bombardment (owing to the shells having been fused to burst on impact rather than underground, where the Germans were waiting), he had led two platoons onto the grassy slopes. They walked because they had been told to walk. They carried their rifles to the left because they had been ordered to do so. Although occasionally forced to circumvent shell craters, the ranks remained nearly symmetrical in long waves across the fifteen-mile front. The first signs of resistance almost seemed innocuous: a gentle tac-tac-tac from a thousand yards away. Soldiers seen slipping to their knees were thought to be picking up souvenirs. (Nose-caps were especially popular). But the German machine-gun tactics were surprisingly sophisticated by this time. Their teams were like skilled technicians operating high-precision lathes; not so much disciplined as mechanized. Working with predetermined accuracy set by the traversing screws, they mowed down the British lines like rows of corn.

Young men in docile lines, bent and silent, plodding to their deaths. Gray would never speak of this day except in terms of the larger Mata Hari story, and even then he would only note that nations faced with military disaster often turned to secret schemes.

There were three days following the assault before Gray returned to Mata Hari's world. For the most part he spent these days recovering wounded from the field. (The forgotten ones would simply crawl into shell craters and die). He had lost all hope of survival, and supposed that if he did not fall in the next assault there would always be another. He had also lost all sense of time, so it was either dawn or dusk when the orders came recalling him from the front, either the butt end of Tuesday or the crack of Wednesday. The orders were delivered by a messenger on bicycle, and within a matter of hours Gray found himself on his way back to England.

His escort was a stiff young captain named Hooper who seemed to think that Gray should have been ecstatic at the prospect of leaving the front. Gray met him in the courtyard of a ruined hotel on the edge of a rear village. It was a warm day, with a wind raising dust from abandoned fields. A black Renault and driver waited under the withering poplars to take them to the railhead.

"I don't suppose you're going to tell me what this is all about," Gray said.

Hooper grinned. "Afraid not."

"Why not at least tell me who sent you?"

"Sorry."

"What if I refuse to go?"

"Then I'll have to arrest you."

"What if I kick your stupid face in?"