He stopped and she waited, knowing he hadn’t finished, that the terrible stories of what “invasion” actually meant were numberless and that he wouldn’t have said any of this to anyone else because he was the man in charge, the one who did the ordering and the listening but never the confessing.

“We were supposed to land around Sainte-Mère-Église but we landed all over fucking Normandy, split by the Merderet River,” he continued. “The men near Carentan landed in mud to their necks and it sucked them under like quicksand. The gliders came down too hard and impaled themselves on Rommel’s damned asparagus and all that survived was the equipment. The crickets we use to call to one another to rendezvous were useless because nobody was in hearing distance of anyone else. A brand new private got stuck in a tree, hanging from his chute, and we found him, not taken prisoner by the Krauts as he should have been but riddled with one hundred and sixty-two bullet and bayonet holes. Scattered at his feet were the ripped pages of his prayer book. Greater love hath no man than this,” Dan quoted, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

This time, it was Jess’s turn to reach out for Dan’s hand, just as he’d done at Easter. Because in spite of the fact that Dan’s division had been unable to land in their drop zones, they’d taken the town of Sainte-Mère-Église by the early morning hours of D-day, thus securing a defensive position to prevent German reinforcements arriving on the beaches. That success had been much spoken of, but not what it had cost to gain.

“I was never more relieved than when I found Jennings after only a couple of hours,” he eventually said.

“Thank God,” Jess breathed.

“By D-day plus two our division only had two thousand fighting men left. That’s less than half the number who left England.”

They sat in silence after that. Below them, on the beach, they watched litters disgorged from ambulances and onto airplanes, a never-ending stream of men who would return home vastly different to how they’d used to be.

Neither let go of the other’s hand. At last Dan said, “Are you waiting for a ride back to England?”

“How did you guess,” she said, ruefully acknowledging her state of extreme dishevelment.

“I remember how well the fellas in public relations look after you. Let’s go. I’ll find you a chauffeur.”

As they wound their way down to the sand, Jess noticed the more than usually deferential “sirs” sent Dan’s way and she suddenly understood when she saw one man nod at Dan and say, “Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Lieutenant Colonel?” she asked.

He flushed, reminding her of Jennings. “And Battalion CO.”

“How many men are you in charge of now?”

“About seven hundred and fifty.”

And she was glad, foolishly glad; with someone like Dan in charge of all those men, the invasion might actually succeed.

Within an hour she was stepping into a plane and Dan was asking her, “When will you be back?”