A band of marines was playing far below them as Harry and Jackson stood to attention on deck with the rest of their platoon, part of this army of men returning to Britain to defend the homeland. They were sunburned a dark brown by the Indian sun in contrast to the civilians below, waiting for the gangplank to be lowered and the soldiers to come on to dry land. They had been in transit for weeks, going the long way round by Cape Town rather than risk coming through the Suez Canal and crossing the Mediterranean Sea. There was no war as yet but the threat of it was ever present though some members of the government still thought it could be averted. The August sun was shining, a pale imitation of what they were used to in India. But to the men on the deck of the ship it was infinitely preferable to what they had left behind in Bombay. England, thought Jackson. Everything about it was different. The smells, the feel of the air, the noises. They would be in barracks for a few nights, but next week, always supposing war wasn’t declared, they’d be on their way north, with rail vouchers which would take them all the way home.
