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I waited for him there on the beach, kneeling on the sinking sand, red water sloshing about my boots. It made sense that he would come then, woken carry this morning, grinning out of the blood and the noise and the churned-up sand. Happy and at home.

So I knelt there and wondered if he'd think I was praying, and, if so, who to.

Truth was, I was just kneeling. My senses were shattered like the scraps of soldier lining the beach. I felt that, like theirs, my mind was shrieking to be made whole, pleading with anyone who might listen not to let them die. It was an invocation, I felt, my senseless head and their senseless creaming, and we were all waiting, dead and dying together.

I thought of my men. All of them held in high security before the off, sweating it out, looking round the fields lining their camp, knowing they'd never see them again. Job to do, and orders were orders. Fine lads in the Fifth. All those boys, sitting shivering and vomiting in the largest armada ever assembled. June 1944 and liberation was in sight. Liberty was never achieved without sacrifices. What ritual then was tearing their bodies and heads apart so their minds could slosh through the holes and out into the wet sand? I couldn't see it, I couldn't see it at all. It was chaos, and there is only one so pleased by chaos. He would look kindly on our sacrifices.

Leading the way, the minesweepers had gone out first, then the submarines, then the three British battleships. It was a rough crossing as we ploughed through the sea. I remember the stench as we scrabbled down the rigging from the battleships to the landing craft. The floor was covered in sick, we slipped and skidded on it as we launched out, eleven miles from an invisible shore. The faces around me, young, pale, nervous.

Holding on for dear life as we were tossed around for hours, explosions exciting the sea still further, the noise, the bloody terrible noise that thundered around us. We none of us knew where we were going. The men looked to me for guidance, but I knew only that we were heading for the beach. That was all. I took them all in, my men, all huddled together and comfortless as we pitched forward and back, our boat like a child's toy in the waves.

Through smoke and confusion the shore came to us unbidden in the end.

Stakes were smashed into the water as if an army of undead lay vanquished beneath the sea. So many obstacles as we came in. People began to die in the back of the boat as the bullets came in range. The show had begun, although the crowd of metal bars rising jauntily out of the water to observe us stood silent as we launched into the waves to take the beach. 'Move in!' I remember shouting, though it didn't sound like me.

These were orders, and orders carried out always pleased. The men understood that, as they stared wildly around in the smoke and the bullets and the bombs, half their number already taken, bobbing around in the water. Just move in, move in. Keep going forward and don't die.

I watched them stare around and wade forward, the absolute shit scared out of them. Individuals, whole units, taking it all into their own hands. How could you hope to co-ordinate that? This had been our great and mighty plan for deliverance from evil. Throw enough men at a beach and they'll fill it. If you have to die, boys, move in and die!

I'd come through so much. You could say I was something of a hero; if you did, I wouldn't mind, although I might smile a little. I like to feel that my actions then were pleasing. On the beach it made perfect sense to me that he'd come then. It was the only thing that did make sense. The end was in sight, now, one way or another.

I'd glimpsed him more frequently, too. The damnedest thing - the air would... shimmer, almost, like it did over the valleys back home, and I'd see them all: their men, our men, all of us with demons on our backs, faceless imps, weightless and fat, tugging at us while we were too scared ever to notice. It's when I realised we were all the same, regardless