The German defences were formidable and deep, so that the capture of the first and second lines brought little advantage and no respite from the carnage. On every side of him there were dead and wounded but there was no going back, just forward even though it was into the mouth of the beast. Shells were bursting overhead, timbers and clay from the trenches were being thrown into the air and the machine-gun fire was merciless. He thought he had seen it all at Mons in the first weeks of the war but even though this wholesale annihilation was worse, still he found himself shouting, ‘Come on, forward, forward,’ because that was what officers did, wasn’t it? Damn it, that’s what they did. Every one of them, officers and men, were just pawns in some sick game the Kaiser and the generals had thought up.

As he pushed on, men stumbling and falling behind him, the barbed wire they’d been told would be destroyed tore at his uniform and hands, trying to catch him and pin him so that the enemy had a sitting target. The noise was indescribable, guns and shells and shouts and screams – some from dying and wounded men and some from officers trying to give orders. It was Mons all over again.

He didn’t feel any pain when the explosion lifted the ground from beneath him, just a force like a mule kicking him in the chest, so when he got to his knees and tried to lift his rifle he experienced a feeling of surprise when his right arm wouldn’t obey him. It was then he realized it was all but gone, blood pouring from a wound above his elbow and the flesh beneath and his hand looking like something on a butcher’s block. Somehow he got to his feet and staggered a few more yards only to go headlong into a German trench which fortunately had already been taken by their lads. There were bodies of Germans and some British soldiers strewn here and there along the dugout, and he fell onto one, before rolling over and trying to sit up with his back to the wall of the trench. His blood was soaking his uniform and everything was going hazy, and it was then a voice said, ‘Major Bembridge, is that you?’ and one of his own men was kneeling in front of him. ‘Let me look, sir, I’ve done first aid.’

He didn’t protest, he couldn’t have; he was losing consciousness fast and it was a blessed relief to go into the darkness, his only thought being, ‘Sorry, my love. Sorry, Rose, I promised I’d come back to you,’ before he sank into oblivion.