It was too early to go back to barracks, and they walked about the narrow, spice and dust-filled streets a bit longer, filled with a curious restlessness, an uneasy lightness. Harry put his finger on it, eventually.
‘You realise, Eddie, that we’re walking around? In the light, upright, not keeping our heads down? No b****y snipers and no damned water duty.’
‘Not on the lookout for bombs coming over the parapet and not digging any b****y graves either.’
‘No. It feels, I dunno, almost wrong,’ said Harry, warily exploring the feelings that made him frown. He knew to his bones the brutal outlines of the peninsula, the sandy treachery of its ridges and gullies, and the absolute, abrasive comradeship of the trenches. Anything could have happened while they were gone. Anyone could have been ki
