The day of glory has arrived!

Against us tyranny’s

bloody banner is raised.

Let’s march, let’s march!

Let an impure blood

soak our fields!’

Aimee finished with a crashing chord that shook the windows. Master DuPont sniffed and blew his nose loudly. ‘God speed and prosper you in all you do,’ he said.

The teacher lowered his head and walked out of the door into the misty air without looking back, and Aimee suddenly saw the fearsome old man was frail as dead leaves.

21 March 1918: Amiens, Northern France

Brass buttons shone and medal ribbons were a rainbow of colour on the drab uniforms of the officers who sat and stared at the map on the wall. There were enough moustaches in the room to make a yard brush and the lips underneath them were tightly turned down when they heard the grim news.

General Bruce stood in front of the map with a pointer. ‘We knew the German army was going to launch Operation Michael against us but I didn’t think they’d get so far so quickly.’ He turned to a small man with a uniform as neat as a needle. ‘What went wrong, Colonel Wright?’

Wright stepped forward and took a pencil to point at the map. ‘The morning was foggy. The Germans hit us with thirty divisions in the first wave. When the fog lifted, no man’s land was swarming with horses and men. They had rifles and “potato-masher” stick grenades. Their shells hit our trenches, which were soon filled with dead or wounded. The British men left alive were ready to surrender.’

General Bruce shook his head. ‘A dark day. The enemy drove through our trenches and on for eight miles. We have to stand and fight somewhere.’

A sergeant was standing by the door and there was a murmur of talk as someone passed him a sheet of paper. The sergeant had cropped dark hair and the eyes of a hawk, over a thin nose and a cruel mouth. But the strangest thing that caught your eye was his shining left hand. It was silver. A false hand taking the place of one he’d lost.

The man with the silver hand held up the paper in his right hand. ‘Excuse me, General Bruce. It’s a message from General Haig.’

‘Not now, Sergeant Grimm,’ Colonel Wright snapped.

‘Sorry, sir. It’s important,’ the sergeant said. He marched over to General Bruce as stiff as a puppet and handed him the paper.

Bruce looked up and said to his officers, ‘Go back to your men and read them a copy of this message.’

‘What does it say, sir?’ Colonel Wright asked.