At his post, Erich glanced up, watching the foreign stars beginning to twinkle into obscurity. ‘It is cold, yes?’ ‘Yes.’ His companion was talkative. A private named Janz. Twenty-two or twenty-three years old but still wet behind the ears, as far as Erich was concerned. ‘You think they will come today?’ Erich shrugged a noncommittal reply. Who knew? Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. Sometime soon, that was certain. ‘They say there are reinforcements on their way from the north.’ His companion reached for a cigarette. ‘Put that away, idiot! Do you want to bring the whole British army down on us?’ ‘Sorry.’ Janz’s fingers, numb with cold, fumbled the cigarettes back into his shirt pocket and the silence of the desert settled again. Erich stared into the growing dawn, watching the light slowly ooze along the landscape and across the rolling dunes towards them as the invisible sun climbed towards the horizon.
