His arm muscles were now in constant agony.

They arrived back at the dressing station for the second time. The place was now frantically busy, the floor crowded with men groaning and crying, bloody bandages everywhere, Weiss and his assistants moving quickly from one maimed body to the next. Erik had never imagined there could be so much suffering in one small place. Somehow, when the Führer spoke of war, Erik never thought of this kind of thing.

Then he noticed that his own patient’s eyes were closed.

Major Weiss felt for a pulse then said harshly. ‘Put him in the barn – and for fuck’s sake don’t waste time bringing me corpses!’

Erik could have cried with frustration, and with the pain in his arms, which was beginning to afflict his legs, too.

They put the body in the barn, and saw that there were already a dozen dead young men there.

This was worse than anything he had envisaged. When he had thought about battle he had foreseen courage in the face of danger, stoicism in suffering, heroism in adversity. What he saw now was agony, screaming, blind terror, broken bodies, and a complete lack of faith in the wisdom of the mission.

They went back again to the river.

The sun was low in the sky, now, and something had changed on the battlefield. The French defenders in Donchery were being shelled from the far side of the river. Erik guessed that farther upstream the 1st Panzers had had better luck, and had secured a bridgehead on the south bank; and now they were coming to the aid of the comrades on their flanks. Clearly they had not lost their ammunition in the forest.

Heartened, Erik and Hermann rescued another wounded man. When they got back to the dressing station this time they were given tin bowls of a tasty soup. Resting for ten minutes while he drank the soup made Erik want to lie down and go to sleep for the night. It took a mighty effort to stand up and pick up his end of the stretcher and jog back to the battlefield.

Now they saw a different scene. Tanks were crossing the river on rafts. The Germans on the far side were coming under heavy fire, but they were shooting back, with the help of reinforcements from the 1st Panzers.

Erik saw that his side had a chance of winning their objective after all. He was heartened, and he began to feel ashamed that he had doubted the Führer.

He and Hermann kept on retrieving the wounded, hour after hour, until they forgot what it was like to be free from pain in their arms and legs. Some of their charges were unconscious; some thanked them, some cursed them; many just screamed; some lived and some died.

By eight o’clock that evening there was a German bridgehead on the far side of the river, and by ten it was secure.

The fighting came to an end at nightfall. Erik and Hermann continued to sweep the battlefield for wounded men. They brought back the last one at midnight. Then they lay down under a tree and fell into a sleep of utter exhaustion.