Aimee ran down the path to meet them, her pigtail held in a faded and frayed ribbon. ‘The Germans are going,’ she cried. ‘They’re packing up and leaving.’

‘So are the people of Bray,’ her teacher said.

‘Would you like to go to Amiens? To be safe? I have a cousin there you could stay with.’

Aimee looked at him as if he were mad. ‘I have the sick and wounded to look after in the barn,’ she said. ‘It’ll be a couple of days before they go. Marius says they’re opening a hospital in Peronne to take them.’

‘The British will be here soon,’ her mother said. ‘Then there’ll be no soldiers for you to nurse.’

Aimee frowned. ‘Yes there will. The British soldiers will need my help. Let me stay, Maman.’

Colette shrugged. ‘Very well. Your current patients may be the enemy but they are still just people who need our help.’

‘That’s what I think too. And I can’t let Marius down,’ Aimee said and ran back to the barn.

The teacher looked at Colette. ‘I thought she hated the boy?’

‘That was months ago. Things change. In fact I think she’ll be a little heartbroken when the lad goes back to Germany.’

But Marius was going nowhere very soon.

24 August 1918: Bray

Bray was burning. From the farm on the hill Colette Fletcher looked down as the old buildings crumbled and tumbled and golden-black flames leaped up to the copper smoke. The shells had stopped now. In the dawn light, shadows of men moved forward over the fields.

The German machine-gunners had gathered in the railway yard to hold back the ribbon of riflemen heading their way. But every time a machine gun fired, the British spotted it and had shells dropped on the deadly gun nest.

Soon the last of the German troops were giving up the fight. They limped through the shattered streets of Bray and headed east and back on the road to Peronne. Others threw down their weapons, shouted ‘Kamerad’ at the Canadian troops and gave themselves up.

The last of the German trucks stood outside the barn while sick men were helped on to the crowded seats. Doctor Weger polished his glasses and his face was grey with three days of unshaven beard. ‘Aimee, you have been so good to us. Many men are alive because of you.’

‘And Marius with his medicine,’ she said quietly.

‘We will leave just one patient in your care. Marius. So unfair that he should catch influenza now. His temperature is 103. If we try to move him it would kill him.’

‘And if you leave him behind he’ll be a prisoner. He doesn’t deserve that,’ Aimee said and sniffed down a traitor tear. ‘You go now, Doctor. I’ll take care of poor Marius.’