They remembered hiding in their cellars as the British army swept in from the west and drove the invaders back. And back. And further back. And then the armies stopped. They faced one another in trenches dug into the soft soils near the River Somme.

The children heard stories of how the armies put up barbed wire between themselves and their enemies then tried to smash the trenches opposite with the great guns that made the Bray school walls shiver.

Sometimes the guns fell silent but the village was never free of the motor-lorries and wagons drawn by sweating horses. They were like a circus passing through the town as they pulled supplies to their tired army and their hungry horses. It was a carnival train of shells and bullets, cannon and tanks, wood and wire and gas masks and grenades. A daily carnival of death.

The traffic snarled and snaggled in the narrow village streets, where it met with traffic going the other way: the marching men and the wounded, bandaged soldiers that were being carried to Amiens or back home to Britain.

Master DuPont found his voice. ‘How can I help, sir?’ he asked.

‘Good morning, I am Captain Ellis.’ The young soldier had a kindly face under the dust from the roads. The children watched, agape, though they didn’t understand much of what he said. He went on, ‘The British army needs to take over your school. We want a command base for General Bruce.’

Master DuPont blew out his cheeks. ‘The general can’t command the army from here,’ he argued. ‘The trenches are twenty or thirty kilometres away.’

The soldier sighed. ‘Not any longer. The enemy has broken through our lines. They smashed us with thousands of shells then marched over no man’s land under cover of the fog. The Germans are coming.’

Aimee smiled and spread her hands wide. ‘I told you,’ she said to the teacher.

Master DuPont’s face turned cloud-grey. ‘The children will have to leave. They’ll have to go to Amiens. There are homes waiting for them there. We never thought we’d see this day.’

Aimee whispered the news to the children and they gathered their pencils and books and got ready to exit the classroom. The teacher watched them and despair ran through the wrinkles of his old face. ‘What will I do?’ he groaned.

‘Give me the keys to the school,’ Captain Ellis said.

Master DuPont reached into the desk and passed a tarnished set of clanking keys to the captain. He looked at the children and tried to smile. ‘Wherever you go, my young ones, remember you are French and our spirit shall never be defeated. Let us sing our anthem one last time before you leave.’

Captain Ellis stood to attention. Aimee stepped across to the piano in the corner of the room and struck the notes firmly. The quavering voices of the children filled the room.

‘Arise, children of the Fatherland,