‘I worry, too,’ said Erik.

Surprisingly, the Germans held the Seelow Heights for another day and night.

The dressing station got no warning that the line had collapsed. They were triaging a fresh cartload of wounded when seven or eight Soviet soldiers crashed into the church. One fired a machine-gun burst at the vaulted ceiling and Erik threw himself to the ground, as did everyone else capable of moving.

Seeing that no one was armed, the Russians relaxed. They went around the room taking watches and rings from those who had them. Then they left.

Erik wondered what would happen next. This was the first time he had been trapped behind enemy lines. Should they abandon the field hospital and try to catch up with their retreating army? Or were their patients safer here?

Dr Weiss was decisive. ‘Carry on with your work, everyone,’ he said.

A few minutes later a Soviet soldier came in with a comrade over his shoulder. Pointing his gun at Weiss, he spoke a rapid stream of Russian. He was in a panic, and his friend was covered in blood.

Weiss replied calmly. In halting Russian he said: ‘No need for the gun. Put your friend on this table.’

The soldier did so, and the team went to work. The soldier kept his rifle pointed at the doctor.

Later in the day, the German patients were marched or carried out and put into the back of a truck which drove away east. Erik watched Werner Franck disappear, a prisoner of war. As a boy, Erik had often been told the story of his Uncle Robert, who had been imprisoned by the Russians during the First World War, and had walked home from Siberia, a journey of four thousand miles. Erik wondered now where Werner would end up.

More wounded Russians were brought in, and the Germans took care of them as they would have of their own men.

Later, as Erik fell into an exhausted sleep, he realized that now he, too, was a prisoner of war.

(iv)

As the Allied armies closed in on Berlin, the victorious countries began squabbling among themselves at the United Nations conference in San Francisco. Woody would have found it depressing, except that he was more interested in trying to reconnect with Bella Hernandez.

She had been on his mind all through the D-Day invasion and the fighting in France, his time in hospital and his convalescence. A year ago she had been at the end of her period at Oxford University and planning to do a doctorate at Berkeley, right here in San Francisco. She would probably be living at her parents’ home in Pacific Heights, unless she had an apartment near the campus.

Unfortunately, he was having trouble getting a message to her.

His letters were not answered. When he called the number listed in the phone book, a middle-aged woman who he suspected was Bella’s mother said with icy courtesy: ‘She’s not at home right now. May I give her a message?’ Bella never called back.