Hopkins’s voice brought him out of his reverie. At half-past seven that morning the artillery barrage would stop and they would go over the top. The orders were to push forward at a steady pace in successive lines, but as each soldier was expected to carry entrenching tools, two gas helmets, wire cutters, two hundred and twenty rounds of ammunition, two sandbags, two Mills bombs and other essentials totalling almost seventy pounds of equipment each, Alexander knew the most they could hope for was a slow walk into No Man’s Land. The aim was to seize, according to Field Marshal Haig’s calculation, some four thousand yards of enemy territory in the first day.

Alexander and Philip had privately agreed that this would take a miracle to achieve, but orders were orders and the officers had to present a united front to the men however they felt about leaders who seemed to have no real grasp on reality.

Alexander began to walk along the duckboards and he saw Philip doing the same, speaking to the men and encouraging them. Hopkins was right behind him as ever, and he heard his batman joking with a sergeant about having a beer or two when they reached their new quarters. He grinned to himself. He was sure every man present felt like him, sick to their stomach, but one would never have known. It wouldn’t be guns and bombs and military power that won this war, he told himself, but the spirit represented right here.

At seven twenty-eight he joined up with Philip again and they stood together for a moment. ‘Good luck.’ They spoke at the same time and both smiled. Then they parted to take up their positions and await the countdown. Strangely, now the moment was here, Alexander found he didn’t feel anything – not fear or relief or panic or resignation – nothing. It wasn’t exactly a numbness and neither was it peace, it was . . . unexplainable.

All along the trenches sergeants were bellowing, ‘Thirty seconds, twenty, ten,’ and then, as the artillery barrage stopped right on cue, ‘Over, over, over.’

Alexander didn’t know that in the first five minutes of the battle thousands were cut down by relentless enemy fire; he was just aware that he had walked into hell and his men were following him. The bombardment of previous days meant to destroy and weaken heavy barbed-wire obstacles hadn’t done its job, and sweeping machine-gun fire mowed down men without mercy. All around him they were screaming and falling and being blown apart; it was slaughter at its most spectacular and it went on and on and on. A shell exploded near him and he was thrown to the ground, but he was up again in a moment, his ears ringing and dirt in his mouth. He turned to speak to Hopkins but all that remained of his batman was his upper torso and head; the shell had scored a direct hit.