V

It’s a nuisance trying to kill every single louse when you’ve got hundreds of them. The beasts are hard, and it gets to be a bore when you are forever pinching them between your nails. So Tjaden has rigged up a boot-polish lid hanging on a piece of wire over a burning candle-end. You just have to toss the lice into this little frying-pan – there is a sharp crack, and that’s it.

We’re sitting around, shirts on our knees, stripped to the waist in the warm air, our fingers working on the knee. Haie has a particularly splendid species of louse: they have a red cross on their heads. Because of that he maintains that he brought them back from the military hospital in Tourhout, where he claims they were the personal property of a senior staff surgeon. He also wants to use the grease that is very slowly accumulating in the tin lid to polish his boots, and roars with laughter for a good half-hour at his own joke.

But today nobody takes much notice. We have something else far too important on our minds.

The rumour turned out to be true. Himmelstoss is here. He turned up yesterday, and we have already heard his familiar tones. Apparendy he was a little bit too vigorous with a couple of recruits on the training field. He didn’t know that one of them was the son of the chairman of the district council. That did for him.

He is in for a surprise. For hours Tjaden has been running through the things he wants to say to him. Haie keeps looking speculatively at his gigantic paws and winking at me. Beating up Himmelstoss was the high point of his existence; he told me that he still dreams about it. Kropp and Muller are having a discussion. Kropp has managed to nab a mess-tin full of lentils for himself, probably from the sappers’ kitchens. Muller gives it a greedy look, but gets a grip on himself and asks, ‘Albert, what would you do if all of a sudden it was peacetime?’

‘There’s no such thing as peacetime,’ replies Albert curtly.

Muller persists. ‘Yes, but if… what would you do?’

‘I’d bugger off out of it,’ grumbles Kropp.

‘ Course. And then what?’

‘Get blind drunk,’ says Albert.

‘Don’t talk rubbish, I’m being serious —’

‘Me too,’ says Albert, ‘what else would there be to do?’

The idea interests Kat. He claims a portion of Kropp’s lentils, gets his whack, then he ponders for a long while and offers the view ‘Well, you could get drunk, of course, but otherwise it would be off to the nearest train – and home to mother. Bloody hell, Albert, peacetime…’

He grubs around in his oilskin wallet for a photograph and passes it around proudly. ‘My missus.’ Then he stows it away and curses: ‘Lousy bloody war…’

‘It’s all right for you,’ I say, ‘you’ve got your wife and your lad.’

He nods. ‘That’s true, and I have to make sure they’ve got enough to eat.’

We all laugh. ‘There won’t be any problem there, Kat, you’d just requisition something.’

Muller is hungry and says he still isn’t satisfied with the answers. He shakes Haie Westhus out of his daydreams of beating up Himmelstoss. ‘Haie, what would you do if the war ended?’

‘What he ought to do is kick your arse from here to kingdom come for talking about that sort of thing here,’ I put in. ‘Where did you get the idea anyway?’

‘Where do the flies go in winter?’ is Muller’s brief answer before he turns to Haie Westhus again.

Haie is suddenly finding it all a bit difficult. He puts his freckled head in his hands: ‘You mean, when there isn’t any more war?’

‘Dead right. You’ve got it in one.’

‘Then there’d be women around again, wouldn’t there?’ Haie licks his lips.

‘That as well.’

‘Christ almighty,’ says Haie, and his expression softens, ‘the first thing I’d do is pick myself up some strapping great bint, know what I mean, some big, bouncy kitchen wench with plenty to get your hands round, then straight into bed and no messing! Think about it! Proper feather-beds with sprung mattresses. I tell you, lads, I wouldn’t put my trousers back on for a week!’

Silence all round. The image is just too fantastic. It sends tremors right across the skin. Eventually Muller gets a grip and asks, ‘And what about after that?’

A pause. Then Haie goes on, a little hesitantly, ‘If I was an NCO I’d stay in the army and sign on as a regular.’

‘Haie, you’re barmy,’ I say.

But he answers me amiably with another question. ‘Have you ever tried peat-digging? Have a go sometime.’ With that he pulls his spoon out of the top of his high boot and digs into Albert’s mess-tin.

‘It can’t be worse than digging trenches in France,’ I reply.

Haie chews and grins. ‘Lasts longer, though. And you can’t skive off.’

‘Come on, Haie, it must be better at home.’

‘Sometimes, sometimes,’ he says, and sinks into a kind of reverie, sitting there with his mouth open.

You can read in his face what he is thinking. A run-down shack on the moors, hard work on the hot heathlands from early in the morning until late at night, lousy pay, the dirty clothes a labourer wears

‘In the peacetime army you don’t have to worry about anything,’ he tells us. ‘You get your grub every day, and if you don’t you kick up a fuss, you’ve got your bed, clean sheets every week just like a toff, you do your bit of duty when you’re an NCO, you get all your gear – and in the evening you’re a free man and you can go for a drink.’

Haie is extraordinarily proud of his idea. He falls in love with it. ‘And when you’ve served your twelve years they give you your discharge settlement, and you get to be a country copper. Then you’re just out and about all day.’

This future brings him out in a sweat. ‘Just think about how they treat you then! A brandy here, a beer there – everyone wants to be on good terms with the local copper.’

‘You’ll never make it to NCO,’ throws in Kat.

Haie gives him a hurt look, and shuts up. In his mind he’s probably already enjoying the clear autumn evenings, the Sundays on the heath, the village church bells, afternoons and evenings with the girls, the buckwheat pancakes with bacon, the hours of aimless conversation in the bar —

He can’t cope with so much imagining all at once; so he just snarls angrily, ‘You and your bloody stupid questions.’

He slips his shirt down over his head and does up his battle-dress tunic.

‘What would you do, Tjaden?’ Kropp calls across to him.

Tjaden has only one thing in mind. ‘Make sure that Himmelstoss doesn’t get away.’

Probably what he would like best is to keep him in a cage and set about him with a cudgel every morning. He urges Kropp with great enthusiasm, ‘If I were you I’d make sure I got to be a lieutenant. Then you could make him run like his arse was on fire.’

‘What about you, Detering?’ Muller continues. He’s a proper schoolmaster with these questions round the class.

Detering is the silent type. But this time he does have an answer. He stares up at the sky and utters a single sentence. ‘I’d just get home in time for the harvest.’

With that he gets up and walks away.

He is worried. His wife has to look after his smallholding. Besides that, two of his horses have been taken from him. Every day he looks in the local papers that are sent to him to see whether the rain has started yet in his little corner of Oldenburg. If it has, they won’t be able to get the hay in.

Just at this moment, Himmelstoss appears. He comes straight for our group. Tjaden’s face goes blotchy. He stretches out in the grass and shuts his eyes because he is so worked up.

Himmelstoss wavers and slows down. Then he marches towards us. Nobody makes any move to stand up. Kropp looks at him with interest.

He stands right in front of us and waits. When nobody says a word, he comes out with a ‘Well?’

A few moments pass; Himmelstoss clearly has no idea how he should behave. What he would most like to do is bawl us out good and proper; but for all that, he does seem to have learnt already that the front is no parade-ground. He tries again, and instead of addressing us all he picks on one of us, in the hope of getting an answer more easily. Kropp is nearest to him, and so he gets the honour. ‘Well, well, you here too?’

But Albert is no friend of his. He gives the sharp retort, ‘I reckon I’ve been here a bit longer than you have.’

The gingery moustache twitches. ‘I suppose you lot don’t remember me, then?’

Tjaden opens his eyes. ‘Oh yes, we do.’

Himmelstoss turns to him. ‘Tjaden, isn’t it?’

Tjaden lifts his head. ‘And do you know what you are, chum?’ Himmelstoss is taken aback. ‘What do you mean, “chum”? I don’t think we’ve ever drunk ourselves into the gutter together.’ He has absolutely no idea of how to cope with the situation. He wasn’t expecting this open aggression. But for the moment he is cautious. Someone has clearly fed him that nonsense about NCOs getting shot in the back.

Tjaden has been made so angry by the crack about the gutter that he becomes positively sharp. ‘No, you were in the gutter all by yourself, pal.’

By now Himmelstoss is seething with rage as well, but Tjaden rushes to get in before him. He has to say his piece. ‘You want to know what you are, chum? You’re a shit, that’s what you are! I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time.’

The satisfaction that comes from months of waiting is shining in his piggy eyes when he comes out with the word ‘shit’.

Himmelstoss lets fly too. ‘What do you mean, you miserable little sod, you filthy bloody peasant? Stand up and stand to attention when a superior officer is speaking to you.’

Tjaden gives a gracious wave of his hand. ‘You may stand easy, Himmelstoss. Dismiss!’

Himmelstoss turns into a raging mass of drill regulations. The Kaiser himself couldn’t be more insulted. ‘Tjaden!’ he screams. ‘This is an order! Stand up!’

‘Anything else you’d like?’ asks Tjaden.

‘Are you going to carry out my order or not?’

Tjaden gives an unworried and conclusive reply, quoting (although he doesn’t know he’s doing so) one of Goethe’s best-known lines, the one about kissing a specific part of his anatomy. At the same time he sticks his backside up in the air.

Himmelstoss storms away. ‘You’ll be court martialled for this!’ We watch him disappear in the direction of the orderly room. Haie and Tjaden collapse in a great peat-diggers’ roar. Haie laughs so much that he puts his lower jaw out of joint, and suddenly stands there helplessly with his mouth open. Albert has to punch it, to get him back to normal.

Kat is worried. ‘If he reports you, there’ll be trouble.’

‘Do you think he will?’ asks Tjaden.

‘Bound to,’ I say.

‘You’ll get five days’ close arrest at the very least,’ says Kat.

That doesn’t bother Tjaden. ‘Five days in clink means five days rest.’

‘And what if they take you away and put you in jug?’ asks the indefatigable Muller.

‘Then the war is over for me until I get out.’

Tjaden is a happy-go-lucky type. He never worries. He clears off with Haie and Leer, so that when the balloon goes up they won’t be able to find him for a bit.

Meanwhile, Muller still hasn’t finished. He comes back to Kropp again. ‘Albert, if you really got to go home, what would you do?’

Kropp is full up now, and this makes him more expansive. ‘How many of our class at school would there be now?’

We reckon it up: out of twenty, seven are dead, four are wounded and one’s in an asylum. We could only get twelve together at the most.

‘Three of them are second lieutenants,’ says Muller. ‘Do you think they’d let Kantorek bawl them out nowadays?’

We don’t think they would. We wouldn’t let Kantorek bawl us out any more, either.

‘Come on, outline the tripartite plot of Schiller’s William Tell, ’ Kropp reminds us suddenly, and roars with laughter.

‘What were the principal aims of the Gottingen poetic movement in the eighteenth century?’ demands Muller with a sudden severity.

‘How many children did Charles the Bold have?’ I put in calmly.

‘You’ll never get on in life, Baumer,’ says Muller.

‘When was the battle of Zama?’ Kropp wants to know.

‘You are completely lacking in moral fibre and high seriousness, Kropp. Sit down. C-minus —’ I throw in.

‘What did Lycurgus consider to be the principal responsibilities of the State?’ hisses Muller, pretending to fiddle around with a pince-nez.

‘Is it “We Germans fear God and no one else in the world…” or “We comma Germans comma —”?’ I offer as food for thought.

Muller twitters back, ‘What is the population of Melbourne?’

‘How on earth are you going to get on in life if you don’t know that?’ I ask Albert indignantly.

But he trumps this with, ‘What do you understand by cohesion?’

We don’t remember much about all that stuff any more. It was no use to us anyway. Nobody taught us at school how to light a cigarette in a rainstorm, or how it is still possible to make a fire even with soaking wet wood – or that the best place to stick a bayonet is into the belly, because it can’t get jammed in there, the way it can in the ribs.

Muller thinks for a bit, and then says, ‘It’s no good; we’ll still have to go back to school.’

I think that’s quite out of the question. ‘Perhaps we could just sit the exams under the special regulations.’

‘You still need some preparation. And even if you pass, what happens then? Being a student isn’t much better. If you haven’t got much money, you have to study really hard.’

‘It is a bit better, but it’s still rubbish, all the stuff they fill your head with.’

Kropp sums it up for us when he says, ‘How can you take all that lot seriously when you’ve been out here?’

‘But you have to have some kind of job,’ puts in Muller, as if he were Kantorek himself.

Albert is cleaning his nails with the point of a knife. We are amazed by this genteel behaviour, but it is only because he is thinking. He puts the knife aside and says, ‘That’s the problem. Kat and Detering and Haie will go back to their old jobs because they had them already. So will Himmelstoss. We never had one. And how is this lot —’ he gestures over towards the front – ‘supposed to prepare us for anything?’

‘What you need is a private income and then you could go away and live on your own in the middle of some forest —’ I say, but at once I feel silly for coming up with such a daft idea.

‘What will become of us if and when we do get back?’ wonders Miuller, and even he is anxious.

Kropp shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Let’s just get there first and then see what happens.’

None of us really has any ideas. ‘What could we possibly do?’ I ask.

‘There isn’t anything I fancy doing,’ Kropp answers wearily. ‘One day you’ll be dead anyway, and what have you got then? In any case, I don’t think we’ll ever get home.’

‘If I think about it, Albert,’ I say after a little while, rolling over on to my back, ‘when I hear the word “peace”, and if peace really came, what comes into my head is that I’d like to do something, well, unimaginable. Something – you know what I mean – that would make it all worthwhile, being out here under fire and all the rest. But I just can’t picture what it could be. The only possibilities there are – this business with a job, studying, earning money and so on – they all make me sick, because they were always there and they put me off. I can’t think of anything, Albert, I can’t think of anything.’

All at once everything seems to me to be pointless and desperate.

Kropp takes it further along the same line. ‘It will be just as difficult for all of us. I wonder whether the people back at home don’t worry about it themselves occasionally? Two years of rifle fire and hand-grenades – you can’t just take it all off like a pair of socks afterwards —’

We all agree that it is the same for everyone; not only for us here, but for everyone who is in the same boat, some to a greater, others to a lesser extent. It is the common fate of our generation.

Albert puts it into words. ‘The war has ruined us for everything.’

He is right. We’re no longer young men. We’ve lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We’ve been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don’t believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.

There is a buzz of activity in the orderly room. Himmelstoss seems to have stirred them up. At the head of the little column trots the fat sergeant major. It’s funny how regular CSMs are nearly always fat.

Next in line comes Himmelstoss, hungry for revenge. His boots are gleaming in the sun.

We stand up. The sergeant major puffs, ‘Where’s Tjaden?’

None of us knows, of course. Himmelstoss glares angrily at us. ‘Of course you know, you lot. You just don’t want to tell us. Come on, out with it.’

The CSM looks all round him, but Tjaden is nowhere to be seen. He tries a different tack. ‘Tjaden is to present himself at the orderly room in ten minutes.’

With that he clears off, with Himmelstoss in his wake.

‘I’ve got a feeling that a roll of barbed-wire is going to fall on to Himmelstoss’s legs when we’re on wiring fatigues again,’ reckons Kropp.

‘We’ll get a good bit of fun out of him yet,’ laughs Muller.

That’s the extent of our ambition now: taking a postman down a peg or two…

I go off to the hut to warn Tjaden, so that he can disappear.

We shift along a bit, then lie down again to play cards. Because that is what we are good at: playing cards, swearing and making war. Not much for twenty years – too much for twenty years.

Half an hour later Himmelstoss is back. Nobody takes any notice of him. He asks where Tjaden is. We shrug our shoulders. ‘You lot were supposed to look for him.’

‘What do you mean “you lot”?’ asks Kropp.

‘Well, you lot here —’

‘I should like to request, Corporal Himmelstoss, that you address us in an appropriate military fashion,’ says Kropp, sounding like a colonel.

Himmelstoss is thunderstruck. ‘Who’s addressing you any other way?’

‘You, Corporal Himmelstoss, sir.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

It is getting to him. He looks suspiciously at Kropp because he hasn’t any idea of what he is talking about. At all events, he loses confidence and backs down. ‘Didn’t you lot find him?’

Kropp lies back in the grass and says, ‘Have you ever been out here before, Corporal Himmelstoss, sir?’

‘That is quite irrelevant, Private Kropp,’ says Himmelstoss, ‘and I demand an answer.’

‘Right,’ says Kropp and gets up. ‘Have a look over there, Corporal, sir, where the little white clouds are. That’s the flak going for the aircraft. That’s where we were yesterday. Five dead, eight wounded. And that was actually an easy one. So the next time we go up the line, Corporal, sir, the platoons will all parade in front of you before they die, click their heels and request in proper military fashion “Permission to fall out, sir! Permission to fall down dead, sir!” People like you are all we need out here, Corporal, sir.’

He sits down again and Himmelstoss shoots off like a rocket.

‘Three days CB,’ reckons Kat.

‘Next time I’ll let him have it,’ I tell Albert.

That is the end of the matter for now. Instead, there is a hearing during the evening roll call. Our lieutenant, Bertinck, is sitting in the orderly room and he has us brought in one after the other.

I have to appear as a witness, and I explain why Tjaden blew up. The story about wetting the bed makes an impression. Himmelstoss is fetched in and I repeat my statement.

‘Is that true?’ Bertinck asks Himmelstoss.

He fidgets a bit and eventually has to admit that it is, once Kropp has told the same story.

‘Why did none of you report this at the time?’ asks Bertinck.

We say nothing. He must know himself how much effect a complaint about something as trivial as that would have had in the army. Can you make complaints in the army at all? Anyway, he gets the point, gives Himmelstoss a dressing-down and makes it clear to him that the front is no parade-ground. Then it is Tjaden’s turn for a stronger version – he gets a full-blown sermon and three days’ open arrest. Bertinck has a twinkle in his eye when he sentences Kropp to one day. ‘Has to be done,’ he tells him with a tone of regret. He’s a decent chap.

Open arrest is quite pleasant. The jail was once a chicken-run; both of them can have visitors and we agree at once to go and see them. Close arrest would have meant a cellar somewhere. They used to lash you to a tree, but that isn’t allowed any more. Sometimes we get treated quite like human beings.

When Tjaden and Kropp have been behind the chicken-wire for an hour we go and visit them. Tjaden crows with delight when he sees us. Then we play cards well into the night. Tjaden wins, of course, the lucky bastard.

When roll call is over Kat says to me, ‘How do you fancy roast goose?’

‘Not a bad idea,’ I reply.

We climb on to a munitions convoy. The ride costs us two cigarettes. Kat has taken careful note of the place. The shed belongs to the headquarters of some regiment. I decide that I will fetch the goose, and I get instructions on how to do it. The shed is behind the wall, and only barred with a wooden peg.

Kat cradles his hands for me, I put my foot in and scramble up over the wall. Meanwhile Kat keeps a look-out.

I wait for a few moments to let my eyes get used to the dark, then pick out where the shed is. I creep towards it very quietly, grope for the peg, take it out and open the door.

I can make out two white shapes. Two geese. That’s a nuisance; if you grab one, the other one will make a racket. So it’ll have to be both of them – it should work, if I’m quick.

I make a jump for them. I get one of them straight away, then a couple of seconds later the other one. I bang their heads against the wall like a madman, trying to stun them. But I obviously don’t use enough force. The beasts hiss and beat out all round them with their wings and their feet. I fight on grimly, but my God, geese are strong! They tug at me and I stumble this way and that. In the dark these white things have become terrifying, my arms have sprouted wings and I’m almost afraid that I’ll take off into the skies, just as if I had a couple of observation balloons in my hands.

And then the noise starts; one of them has got some air into his throat and sounds off like an alarm clock. Before I can do anything about it I hear noises coming towards me from outside, something shoves me and I’m lying on the ground listening to angry growling. A dog. I look to one side, and he makes for my throat. I lie still at once and pull my chin down into my collar.

It’s a bull mastiff. After an eternity it draws its head back and sits down beside me. But whenever I try to move, it growls. I think for a moment. The only thing I can do is try and get hold of my service revolver. At all events I have to get out of here before anyone comes. Inch by inch I move my hand along.

I feel as if this is all going on for hours. Every time I make a slight movement there is a threatening growl; I lie still and try again. The minute I get hold of my gun, my hand starts to tremble. I press down against the ground and think it out: pull the gun out, shoot before he can get at me, and get the hell out as quickly as possible.

I take a deep breath and calm myself. Then I hold my breath, jerk up the revolver, there is a shot and the mastiff lurches aside, howling, I make it to the door of the shed and tumble over one of the geese, which was flapping out of the way.

I make a grab while I’m still running, hurl it with a great swing over the wall and start to scramble up myself. I’m not quite over the wall when the mastiff, which has come to itself again, is there and jumping up at me. I drop down quickly. Ten paces away from me stands Kat with the goose in his arms. As soon as he sees me, we run for it.

At last we can get our breath back. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that in a moment. We want to roast it straight away, before anyone realizes what has happened. I fetch pots and some wood from the huts, and we crawl into a small, deserted shed that we know about and which is useful for things like this. We put up a thick covering to block the only window hole. There is a makeshift cooker there – an iron plate lying across some bricks. We light a fire.

Kat plucks and draws the goose. We put the feathers carefully to one side. We want to use them to stuff two small pillows, with the motto ‘Sweet Dreams Though the Guns Are Booming’ on them.

The barrage from the front can be heard as a dull humming all around our hideout. Firelight flickers on our faces, shadows dance on the walls. Airmen drop bombs. At one point we hear muffled screaming. One of the huts must have been hit.

Aircraft roar. The ratatat of the machine-guns gets louder. But our light can’t be seen from anywhere outside.

And so we sit facing one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby battle-dress, roasting a goose in the middle of the night. We don’t talk much, but we have a greater and more gentle consideration for each other than I should think even lovers do. We are two human beings, two tiny sparks of life; outside there is just the night, and all around us, death. We are sitting right at the edge of all that, in danger but secure, goose fat runs over our fingers, our hearts are close to one another, and time and place merge into one – the brightnesses and shadows of our emotions come and go in the flickering light of a gentle fire. What does he know about me? What do I know about him? Before the war we wouldn’t have had a single thought in common – and now here we are, sitting with a goose roasting in front of us, aware of our existence and so close to each other that we can’t even talk about it.

It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young, and there is plenty of fat. And so we take turns. One does the basting, while the other gets a bit of sleep. Gradually there is a wonderful smell all around us.

The noises from outside all merge into one another, become a dream which disappears from the waking memory. Half asleep, I watch Kat as he lifts and lowers the basting spoon. I love him; his shoulders, his angular, slightly stooped frame – and then I see woods and stars behind him, and a kindly voice says words to me that bring me peace, me, an ordinary soldier with his big boots and his webbing, and his pack, who is making his tiny way under the sky’s great vault along the road that lies before him, who forgets things quickly and who isn’t even depressed much any more, but who just goes onwards under the great night sky.

A little soldier and a kindly voice, and if anyone were to caress him, he probably wouldn’t understand the gesture any more, that soldier with the big boots and a heart that has been buried alive, a soldier who marches because he is wearing marching boots and who has forgotten everything except marching. Aren’t those things flowers, over there on the horizon, in a landscape that is so calm and quiet that the soldier could weep? Are those not images that he has not exactly lost, because he never had them to lose, confusing images, but nevertheless of things that can no longer be his? Are those not his twenty years of life?

Is my face wet, and where am I? Kat is standing in front of me, his gigantic distorted shadow falls across me like home. He says something softly, smiles and goes back to the fire.

Then he says, ‘It’s ready.’

‘OK, Kat.’

I shake myself. The golden-brown roast is glowing in the middle of the room. We get out our folding forks and pocket-knives and carve ourselves off a leg each. We eat it with army-issue bread that we dip into the gravy. We eat slowly and enjoy it to the full.

‘Like it, Kat?’

‘Great. How about you?’

‘Great, Kat.’

We are brothers, pressing one another to take the best pieces. When we have finished I smoke a cigarette and Kat has a cigar. There is a lot left over.

‘Kat, how about us taking a bit over to Kropp and Tjaden?’ ‘Right,’ he says. We cut off a chunk and wrap it up carefully in newspaper. We were planning to take the rest back to our billets, but Kat laughs and just says, ‘Tjaden.’

I agree that we’ll have to take it all. So we make our way to the hen-run prison to wake up the pair of them. Before we go we pack away the feathers.

Kropp and Tjaden think we are a mirage. Then they get stuck in. Tjaden is gnawing away, holding a wing with both hands as if he were playing a mouth organ. He slurps the gravy out of the pot and smacks his lips. ‘I’ll never forget you for this.’

We walk back to the huts. There is the great sky again, and the stars, and the first streaks of dawn, and I am walking beneath that sky, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning – and beside me walks Kat, angular and slightly stooping, my pal.

The silhouettes of the huts loom over us in the dawn light like a black and welcome sleep.