The seventh book in the Jim Stringer series, 2011

I am particularly grateful to Richard Callaghan, curator of the Royal Military Police Museum, and to Lieutenant Colonel Parkinson, head of Media and Protocol at Sandhurst. I am also indebted to Bob Gratton and Dale Coton, both of the Ashover Light Railway; to Rupert Lodge of the Leighton Buzzard Railway, and David Negus of the Southwold Railway Trust; to Dr John Bourne, of the Centre for First World War Studies at the University of Birmingham; to Major David James-Roll, and to F. Martin. All embellishment of the historical facts, and all mistakes, are mine and not theirs.

The characters in this novel are completely imaginary, and bear no relation to anyone who might really have lived in York during the First World War, or served on the light railways of the Western Front, or fought with that noble body of men, the 17th Northumberland Fusiliers.

Moor View,

The Grove,

Ilkley,

Yorkshire.

October 6th, 1916

Dearest Lillian,

An unseen man’s voice gives the shout of ‘Right away!’ and the little locomotive moves forward on tracks running over what might be hard mud with pools of dark water, or a shining table top. There is darkness in the sky, or in the room, and an orange fire-glow coming from one side. There are small men inside the engine, and riding on the wagons pulled behind, but they are not quite as small as their train, and they stick out from it at peculiar angles. It is an odd accommodation: men who are perhaps toy soldiers riding in what may be a toy train. And some of them are unquestionably leaning far too far over, and seem very likely at any minute to fall, but there is nothing to be done about that. (I forgot to say, or I forgot to notice, Lillian, that the load carried consists of so many bombs.)