Doug Bentley lived in a village to the east of Swindon. Beside the infant and junior school a squat brick building was home to a small community of the Royal British Legion. It could support the part-time services of a bar steward, and they had a committee that had met there, eighteen months before, and agreed that Doug Bentley, volunteer, should go to Wootton Bassett, on the far side of Swindon, to represent the branch at the next repatriation of a serviceman killed in action. The former Pay Corps lance corporal, a member of the armed forces for two years of National Service in which he had never been posted overseas and – of course – had never heard a shot fired in anger, had preened with pride at the award of this honour. That he had never been in action, or ‘up the sharp end’, in no way diminished, in his eyes, his right to be regarded as a veteran; he had done his time, done what was asked of him. He had the respect of his colleagues in the Legion and they’d chosen him. The same pride captivated him on this summer’s day as it had on the forty-seven previous times he had made the journey there with Beryl.

He was in a line with around a dozen others. They represented the Royal British Legion branches of towns and villages as far away as Hungerford, Marlborough, Bath and Frome, and RAF Associations, Canal Zoners, one-time paratroops and… They formed their line just on the road, off the kerb, and crowds had gathered to press behind them. Doug Bentley thought there were more photographers and cameramen than usual. He would not have admitted it to a stranger, but he always watched the TV news on those evenings after he had returned home to see himself, and was always pleased when he went down later to the Legion if members remarked that they had seen him.