She felt no rancour to these Huns; time had washed away from her any anger at the man, the regiment, the Hun Army, the nation that had taken Sam's life.

Her resentment was against those who had come later, and whom she refused to dignify with the amicable name of Hun. She hated Hitler's war for diminishing the memory of the Great War, for allotting it a number, the mere first among two. And she hated the way that the Great War was held responsible for the latter, as if Sam, Dennis and all the East Lancashires who fell were partly the cause of that business. Sam had done what he could – he had served and died – and was punished all too quickly with becoming subservient in memory. Time did not behave rationally … she blamed it on 1939–45.