There was never enough. Non-essential supplies were getting in the way of desperately needed ammunition. As one Cadian support unit landed and started to try to organise the landing craft carrying cargo that was desperately needed, a mortar shell landed in the middle of them, and within seconds the black sand was littered with dismembered bodies.

‘Get them out of the way!’ a commissar ordered. ‘Quick! Load them onto the landers! Move them!’

Medicae Banting had landed with the first wave. He’d followed the troopers up the beach, stopping every few yards to minister to one of the wounded. As soon as the battle had passed forward, Banting had set up a field hospital in the burnt-out ruins of the central pillbox.

The wounded were stacking up. Not all of them would survive evacuation. He had some tough choices to make. This battlefield had it all – mines, shrapnel, abdominal wounds, catastrophic blood loss.

The priorities were clear. Stabilise those who could be saved. Get as many onto the boats as could survive the journey. Make those who were going to die comfortable.

He’d spent hours binding wounds, splinting shattered limbs and cauterising open lacerations. He’d already worked his way through the pale faces of troopers in shock. They had been through gallons of blood plasma. In the crude operating theatre – little more than a clean sheet spread over a wooden table – there were pools of blood that the medi-matting could not soak up.

Banting saw the rank markings first and waved the carriers forward. He knew the troopers by name. Dreno and Belus.

But Banting wasn’t interested in them. He had to check the name badge. ‘Now, Lieutenant Dido,’ he said, with rehearsed calmness, in what passed as his bedside manner. ‘Looks like you’ve been in the wars.’

Dido was deathly pale. Her eyes had rolled up, but from her throat came a dreadful sucking sound. Banting didn’t know if he could save her. The nurse passed him a field dressing. ‘Hold it there,’ Banting said, ‘and press hard.’

As Banting worked on Dido, Dreno was pulled aside by one of the nurses. He took his hand and washed away the dirt.

The nurse was named Vasily, a severe-looking young man. He sprayed carbolics on the open wound and Dreno cursed.

‘Throne above!’

Vasily worked quickly to bind the wound up. He blurted out commands – turn your hand, hold this there – and then he used a pair of long, thin scissors to cut the bandage, finally wrapping the wound in tape.

‘What is your name?’ he said at the end.

‘Trooper Dreno.’

‘You will have to see the Commissariat,’ Vasily told him.

Dreno lifted his hand up. ‘Because of this?’

‘Possible self-inflicted wound,’ Vasily told him. A Commissariat cadet was standing at the end of the tent. It was the young lad, Commissar Salice, a recent graduate.

Salice stepped forward and motioned for Dreno to follow him.