‘The feller arrived here dressed like a British sergeant then left looking like a priest.’

‘Did he now? Thank you.’ The watcher set off thoughtfully, his cane clacking on the cobbled road.

‘I suppose the Father won’t be needing those extra graves after all,’ the gravedigger chuckled.

Marius and Aimee struggled against the flow of people shuffling along the road from Peronne. Some were pulling hand carts piled high with furniture. Others had wheelbarrows and prams loaded with their pitiful riches. A tottering old man pushed his crippled wife along in a wheelchair. Sick people hobbled on sticks along the rough cobblestones. Mothers carried babies in their arms. When shells whined over their heads they flung themselves on the ground and sheltered their children with their bodies.

An old woman shivered and clutched her thin woollen shawl about her thinner body. Everything she had left was contained in a small leather bag and she held a picture. It was a photo of a young man in French army uniform. From time to time she kissed it with her dry, cracked lips and muttered, ‘My son.’

A poor old man who could go no more laid his few poor goods beside him on the side of the road. He sat with his back to a smashed piano on the pavement and gazed with pitiful eyes at the crowd flowing past.

‘Refugees from Peronne,’ Aimee said. ‘Trying to escape the fighting. Will this war ever end?’

Marius stayed silent. As they climbed the hill back to the drovers’ road they escaped the crowd of misery. In the shelter of a few trees they opened Sergeant Grimm’s pack and took out some of the food. They ate little because they needed to make it last. ‘We reach Peronne tomorrow and then we say goodbye,’ Marius said.

Aimee didn’t answer directly. She was looking through the pack. She pulled out the plans for the Whippet tank with a note that said it could be stopped with a can of mustard gas. ‘These are the real plans,’ she said. She began to tear each sheet in half, made a small pile of them, then she took a box of matches from Silver Hand’s pack and made a small bonfire of them.

The girl reached into the pack again and pulled out a sheet of thick cream paper. She nodded and gave a small smile. ‘This is General Bruce’s free pass to anywhere in the British army. It’ll be useful.’ She looked at Marius. ‘Yes, tomorrow we say goodbye.’

Of course, she was wrong.

31 August 1918: West of Peronne