A Red Cross flag fluttered from a tree trunk. Behind the ambulances there seemed to be a good deal of frenzied activity going on. Weary-looking men were sitting in silence on the banking. Others had found places to sleep. The whiteness of dressings glared against their bloodied faces.

“How’s the accommodation?” asked Taylor. “Should I have bought a return ticket?”

“Most convivial,” observed Jones.

There was a litter of kit by the side of the road as they went into the trench: helmets and packs and water bottles. Harry saw a leather case that looked like Francis’s camera and then he was scrambling over all the kit. Groundsheets and mess tins and webbing fell away as he stretched. His hands trembled as he grasped. It was a pair of binoculars.

“You that keen for a close-up?” asked Yates. “I think I’d rather look away.”

Harry shook his head as he looked at the pile of once-upon-a-time possessions. He wondered how long it would take to tidy all of this up in the end.

“Like a ruddy church jumble sale,” suggested Wilkinson.

“Only less crochet and chipped cups.”

A gunner by the entrance to a dugout was picking a tune on a banjo. He nodded to them as they passed. They tried to whistle along but their lips were too dry and the effort was given up. The gunner’s melancholy notes followed them down the sunken road.

The ground seemed to lurch as a shell struck ahead. “Is that ours or theirs?”

Will shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it bloody does!”

There was a flicker in the sky ahead and Harry felt his heart beat faster. Sweat prickled down his back. Francis hadn’t seemed afraid as he’d gone up that morning. He’d got on his businesslike face, as Will called it. He had checked his kit carefully and shaken both their hands. He had looked older in the electric light. Will had tried to hug him, but Francis had shrugged him off and told him not to be soft. “I’ll be back when I’ve ended the war,” he had said.

“Smartly, now,” the shout came back. “Get a shift on.”

“Are we late for our date?” asked Taylor.

“I am all abuzz,” said Will. “My nerves are all tingling and my belly’s full of butterflies.”

The earth walls narrowed and the noise ahead increased. It was a great drone, a deep bass noise that seemed to be coming both from above and from the ground under Harry’s feet. They were going on in single file now. With an explosion ahead Harry found himself thrown against the trench wall. There was grit in his eyes and in his mouth. Though he knew that he was holding the line up, he had to stop for a moment, rub his eyes, and spit it all out. The earth wall trembled behind him.