‘What you been doing with yourself? The last time I saw you…’ At last his hand released mine and for some reason headed for the tip of his nose. ‘Ah, yeah. Germany – remember when we were on exercise in Germany?’

No, not a clue. ‘Shame about Tenny, eh?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What exactly happened – anybody know?’ I scanned the group for a face that might give Mr Pincombe some context.

He shook his head. ‘He kept wanting to go out on the ground with the rifle companies. I heard he was next on the list for a cabby on the Javelin. That’s when he got zapped.’

I smiled, and he smiled back. We both knew what that meant. The Javelin anti-armour rocket was a great bit of kit, and there was always a queue of guys wanting to have a go. Originally designed to take out tanks, it was now antipersonnel, anti-car, anti-bicycle, you name it. No job too small. And over long distances, too. Its optics and second-generation thermal-imaging technology could see in the dark or through rain and smoke. It was an infantryman’s dream. Once you’d acquired a target and locked it on, you kicked off the rocket and that was that. Most brilliant of all, it cost seventy-six grand a pop.

Everyone wanted to lob the military equivalent of a Porsche at the enemy. There was a list, and everybody put their name up. When it was your turn, it was your turn, whether you were an eighteen-year-old rifleman or a forty-eight-year-old colonel. If there was nothing between you and a target up to 2,500 metres away, it kicked off and flew line-of-sight, with pinpoint accuracy. If you had a moving target, say a car, you could select top attack mode and the missile went up into the air, climbing 150 metres before striking down to penetrate the roof – just as it would do to a tank, hitting it at the point of least armour protection.

Pincombe took a mouthful of Stella. ‘He got up onto the wall, took aim, and was just about to kick it off when…’ He supplied the impact site with his finger. ‘Taliban round, straight through the launch unit and into his nut. Simple as that.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and came out with the predictable, ‘At least he died the way he would have wanted.’