I arrived for duty and was told to sign for a Dingo scout car, a small two-person armoured vehicle with enough power to get out of trouble quick — or into it, depending on one's level of competency. I duly picked up the scout car and waited for nearly an hour, standing in a tent with a lot of other drivers, talking and laughing, drinking tea and telling unlikely stories. It was a chilly day but I was glad I was doing this instead of daily orders, which generally meant cleaning up the camp and other tedious tasks.

'Corporal Next?' said an officer who poked his head into the tent. 'Drop the tea — we're off!'

He wasn't handsome but he was intriguing, and, unlike many of the officers, he seemed to have a certain relaxed manner about him.

'Good morning, sir,' I said, unsure of whether he remembered me. I needn't have worried. I didn't know it yet, but he had specifically asked Sergeant Tozer for me. He was intrigued too, but fraternising on active duty was a subtle art. The penalties could be severe.

I led him to where the Dingo was parked and climbed in. I pressed the starter and the engine rumbled into life. Landen lowered himself into the commander's seat.

'Seen Anton recently?' he asked.

'He's up the coast for a few weeks,' I told him.

'Ah,' he replied, 'you made me fifty pounds when you won the ladies' boxing last weekend. I'm very grateful.'

I smiled and thanked him but he wasn't paying me any attention — he was busy studying a map.

'We're going here, Corporal.'

I studied the chart. It was the closest to the front lines I'd ever been. To my shame, I found the perceived danger somewhat intoxicating. Landen sensed it.

'It's not as wildly exciting as you might think, Next. I've been up there twenty times and was only shelled once.'

'What was it like?'

'Disagreeably noisy. Take the road to Balaclava — I'll tell you when to turn right.'

So we bumped off up the road, past a scene of such rural tranquillity that it was hard to imagine that two armies were facing each other not ten miles away with enough firepower to lay the whole peninsula to waste.

'Ever seen a Russian?' he asked as we passed military trucks supporting the front-line artillery batteries; their sole job was to lob a few shells towards the Russians — just to show we were still about.

'Never, sir.'

'They look just like you and me, you know.'

'You mean they don't wear big furry hats and have snow on their shoulders?'

The sarcasm wasn't wasted.

'Sorry,' he said, 'Ididn't mean to patronise. How long have you been out here?'

'Two weeks.'

'I've been here two years,' said Landen, 'but it might as well be two weeks. Take a right at the farmhouse just ahead.'

I slowed down and cranked the wheel round to enter the dusty farm track. The springs on a Dingo are quite hard — it was a jarring ride along the track, which passed empty farm buildings, all bearing the scars of long-past battles. There was old and rusting armour and other war debris lying abandoned in the countryside, reminders of just how long this static war had been going on. Rumour had it that in the middle of no man's land there were still artillery pieces dating from the nineteenth century. We stopped at a checkpoint, Landen showed his pass and we drove on, a soldier joining us up top 'as a precaution'. He had a second ammunition clip taped to the first in his weapon — always a sign of someone who expected trouble — and a dagger in his boot. He had only fourteen words and twenty-one minutes left before he was to die in a small spinney of trees that in happier times might have been a good place for a picnic. The bullet would enter below his left shoulder blade, deflect against his spine, go straight through his heart and exit three inches below his armpit, whereupon it would lodge in the fuel gauge of the Dingo. He would die instantly and I would relate what happened to his parents eighteen months later. His mother would cry and his father would thank me with a dry throat. But the soldier didn't know that. These were my memories, not his.

'Russian spotter plane!' hissed the doomed soldier.

Landen ordered me back to the trees. The soldier had eleven words left. He would be the first person I saw killed in the conflict but by no means the last. As a civvy you are protected from such unpleasantries but in the forces it is commonplace — and you never get used to it.

I pulled the wheel hard over and doubled back towards the spinney as fast as I could. We halted under the protective cover of the trees and watched the small observation plane from the dappled shade. We didn't know it at the time but an advance party of Russian commandos were pushing towards the lines in our direction. The observation post we were heading for had been overrun half an hour previously and the commandos were being supported by the spotter plane we had seen — and behind them, twenty Russian battle tanks with infantry in support. The attack was to fail, of course, but only by virtue of the VHF wireless set carried in the Dingo. I would drive us out of there and Landen would call in an air strike. That was the way it had happened. That was the way it had always happened. Brought together in the white heat and fear of combat. But as we sat beneath the cover of the birch trees, huddled down in the scout car, the only sound the coo of a partridge and the gentle thrum of the Dingo's engine, we knew nothing — and were concerned only that the spotter plane that wheeled above us would delay our arrival at the OP.

'What's it doing?' whispered Landen, shielding his eyes to get a better look.

'Looks like a Yak-12,' replied the soldier.

Six words left and under a minute. I had been looking up with them but now glanced out of the hatch at the front of the scout car. My heart missed a beat as I saw a Russian run and jump into a natural hollow a hundred yards in front of the Dingo.

'Russkie! I gasped. 'Hundred yards twelve o'clock!'

I reached up to close the viewing hatch but Landen grabbed my wrist.

'Not yet!' he whispered. 'Put her in gear.'

I did as I was told as Landen and the soldier twisted around to look.

'What have you got?' hissed Landen.

'Five, maybe six,' the soldier whispered back, 'heading this way.'

'Me too,' muttered Landen. 'Go, Corporal, go!'

I revved the engine, dropped the clutch and the Dingo lunged forward. Almost instantaneously there was a rasp of machine-gun fire as the Russians opened up. To them, we were a surprise ruined. I heard the closer rattle of gunfire as our soldier replied, along with the sporadic crack of a pistol that I knew was Landen. I didn't close the steel viewing hatch; I needed to be able to see as much as I could. The scout car bounced across the track and swerved before gathering speed with the metallic spang of small-arms fire hitting the armour plate. I felt a weight slump against my back and a bloodied arm fell into my vision.

'Keep going!' shouted the soldier. 'And don't stop until I say!' He let go another burst of fire, took out the spent clip, knocked the new magazine on his helmet, reloaded and fired again.

'That wasn't how it happened—!' I muttered aloud, the soldier having gone way over his allotted time and word count. I looked at the bloodied hand that had fallen against me. A feeling of dread began to gnaw slowly inside me. The fuel gauge was still intact — shouldn't it have been shattered when the soldier was shot? Then I realised. The soldier had survived and the officer was dead.

I sat bolt upright in bed, covered in sweat and breathing hard. The strength of the memories had lessened with the years but here was something new, something unexpected. I replayed the images in my head, watching the bloodstained hand fall again and again. It all felt so horribly real. But there was something, just there outside my grasp, something that I should know but didn't — a loss that I couldn't explain, an absence of some sort I couldn't place—