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followed Hitler, Jocho Horndorff hadn’t questioned it because his loyalty belonged not to the political head of the state but to his commander-in-chief. With the rapid expansion that had followed he had come into his own, because the hard core of regulars had been given increased responsibility and now he was a major at thirty and had a strong suspicion that before the war was over he’d be at least a colonel.
    It was what he’d trained for all his life, and his body under his dusty clothes was as hard as steel: Man for man, he considered himself a match for anyone, either in combat or in bed. There was a girl who lived at Koblenz, as fair and handsome as he was, whom he’d intended to marry the previous September. Because of the war, he’d put it off and it hadn’t pleased either of them very much because they’d been sleeping together for six months and their parents were good Rhineland Catholics, stiff in their attitudes to sexual freedom. On his first leave early in the year the wedding had had to be put off again because of the death of his father, and it had been put off a third time because of Operation Sichelschnitt, the advance into the Ardennes and through the Low Countries and France. The campaign was going so well now, however, Horndorff had little doubt that he’d be back home again before the summer was out to make everything right.
    He was still thinking about the future when a scout car came up alongside and an officer stood up in the back.
    ‘We’re moving?’ Horndorff said.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why in God’s name did they stop us?’
    ‘Because the spearheads have had fifty per cent losses – battle and wear and tear – and they’re afraid of losing more in the flooded areas up by the Aa Canal.’
    Horndorff made a derisive gesture. ‘The attack’s lost momentum,’ he said. ‘We could have collared the whole of the BEF’
    The officer in the car shrugged. ‘It’s over now, anyway. First Panzers are on the coast, Second at Arnecke, and Sixth and Eighth near Hazebrouck. Twentieth Motorised are near Cassel and the Hoth Group’s trying to cut the Tommies off at Armentières. You’re to head towards Vitry. Lorried infantry and tanks up there seem to be in trouble.’
    Horndorff reached for his microphone, and an hour later Vitry lay just in front of him over the brow of the hill. He could see houses and the spire of the church and, as he glanced at his map, he saw that it was on a crossroads, with one route leading directly north where the Tommies were trying to withdraw to the coast, the other east where they were still trying to scuttle back from their fatuous adventure into Belgium.
    Something seemed to have gone wrong at Vitry, however, because in the open area in front he could see columns of smoke crawling skywards like black treacle and burning tanks and several tiny figures running back, their clothing on fire. As he watched, a rising pall told him another tank had been hit, but he was quite calm as he passed the word to the rear, giving the proper coordinates and calling for help from the Luftwaffe. Horndorff was a regular soldier, not a death or glory boy, and it wasn’t his job to get his tanks knocked out to capture a wretched little village.

    Those Stukas that Horndorff was calling up were to have a profound effect on the life of nineteen-year-old Marie-Josephine Berthelot.
    Although her home was at Saméaon far to the east, at that moment Marie-Josephine was in Bout-Dassons just to the west of where Horndorff waited. The last fortnight had been a nightmare of noise, smoke and terror, and she was wishing she hadn’t quarrelled with her family before she’d left Saméaon. Her parents had been unable to appreciate that the world had moved on from the days when a girl accepted without question whomever they put forward for a husband and, as she was a teacher of English, not a peasant, the quarrel had been going on for weeks.
    ‘I will not marry Monsieur Ambry,’ she announced