The second great influence on him was Mr. Midgeley, his history teacher at Oldbury Wells Comprehensive. A red-haired Lancastrian with an acerbic wit who was deeply proud of his Rochdale roots, Midgeley recognized the intellectual potential in the young man. Giving him extra tuition, he inspired in him such a passion for history that he ended up getting into Oxford, the first in his family to gain a place at any university.

After Oxford he’d worked in the family business for a year, out of loyalty to his parents, before life as a small-town butcher palled and he’d been accepted by the Army—much to Hunter’s delight, who took to calling him “Sir” and pretending to salute whenever they saw one another. A year of officer training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst had followed and he had been commissioned in front of his proud parents into the Mercians, his local regiment; a tough, experienced, no-nonsense line infantry regiment, with an impressive operational record in Afghanistan.

Two years as a platoon commander came next and then eighteen months at a Training Regiment, teaching those hard-learned infantry skills back to young recruits. Then he found himself back at 1st Battalion, the Mercians, commanding Recce Platoon, the most coveted job for a young officer in the battalion. But, try and remain enthusiastic as he might, there was a growing sense of “same old, same old” creeping in.

But at least this training team in Latvia was fun, or had been until a few moments ago when, exercise over, Sergeant Danny Wild—his number two and a tough veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, with a Military Cross to his name—had announced he’d just received an email from the Battalion confirming his application to sign off had been accepted.

“You’re what?” Morland asked in astonishment, when Wild had told him he was leaving the Army. “But you can’t leave. You . . .” And even as he said it, he realized how stupid he sounded. Of course Wild could and would leave the Army, just like so many of the best officers and NCOs in the battalion were doing in ever-increasing numbers these days.

It was the ones with brains and initiative who left, Morland thought, those who knew they could use their training and skills to make a success of civvie life. It was either the truly dedicated or the ones who lacked initiative and drive, all too often, who were the ones that stayed. He wondered where that put him.

“Why?” he asked lamely, realizing that he should have known and should have at least tried to talk his sergeant out of it.