In those days after the lapsing of DORA, it seemed the duty of every pub to be open just a little bit later, of its lights to burn just a little bit brighter, of its ale to be just a little bit stronger -- making up, as it were, for those years of privation. Men gathered to talk, as in the old days, but even with the war concluded it was still on everyone's lips. What were the bloody Russians up to now? When would the next cemetery be consecrated? Where were all the jobs that had been promised?

What did everyone expect? And what did everyone remember?

The one-time private Thomas Atkins, now demobbed, sat in his usual place by the fire at the Princess Helena. He massaged his left leg absently -- a bullet on the Somme had left a deep gouge there in '16, and in cold weather the wound always made sure to remind him of its presence. Other former messmates from the East ______ers shared the table, swapping stories from their time in the line and recalling the days that had been, if in no way wonderful, at least the most vivid and consequential of their comparatively young lives. Men were made in those trenches even as others were unmade -- and sometimes in the same instant.

David Powys-Jones, whose overt Welshness nobody ever let him forget, had once again managed to produce an awkward silence. This was his habit, and usually by using language that would have made even a colour sergeant colour very noticeably indeed. This time was different, however; he had not speculated about anyone's sexual organs or suggested certain anatomical impossibilities. He had not blasphemed the deity.

He had said a name.

Thomas Atkins continued to massage his aching leg, his mind already calling up the image of the young Jamie Carr. Tall and schoolboy-awkward even in his early twenties, Jamie had always had a cheerful word and a toothy smile for anyone who passed his way. He hadn't smiled at the end, though. Nobody had.

"Who's this Jamie, then?" asked a stranger who had served with the Artists' Rifles. His own smile faltered as he looked around at the suddenly somber faces at the table.

Atkins signaled for another pint and leaned forward. His voice was low, but level.

"Was you ever on a court martial that took it all the way?"

The stranger blanched, and shook his head.

"But you'll have heard of it, I've no doubt."

A nod. Everyone had. This had been rather the point.

"Bloody disgrace if you ask me," growled a plump man in a bowler hat who was sitting on the outskirts of the group. "Waste of a good man, and just a Hunnish thing to do full stop. What was the point of it all? Where was the justice?" He looked around, ready to share in the nods.

None came.

"And who," said Atkins quietly, "did you serve with?"

The man stammered something about bone spurs in his feet, damnable luck, had to sit the whole thing out. The men of the East ______ers found reasons to look away.

Atkins managed a rueful smile.

"Well, I won't say it always were the best choice -- but I wasn't there at all those trials, then, was I? I don't know what they all did. But I will say that I knew, personally, two men who did get taken out at dawn with the blindfold and cigarette, and I ask you to tell me about your sympathy and justice when you hear about 'em."

He received his new pint gratefully and began:

"The first was another East ______ cove, the Jamie you asked about. They did for him in '17 after he raped a French girl and tried to kill an MP when they came for him. The big, galloping fool; none of us could believe it, right? They bound him up like a hen and dragged him back to brigade, and I saw it all, you see, because I was in a detachment sent with the lieutenant to sort it all out. He kept blubbing like a baby, Jamie did, just saying 'I never meant it, I never meant it o god I never' over and over, like, until one of the guards belted him and he stopped.

"Now the lieutenant, he says 'Jesus, Jamie, what DID you mean then?' and he couldn't answer that. I never saw the trial but I hear from the lieutenant that it was the same throughout, 'I didn't mean it, she wanted it, it wasn't my fault, o o o,' on and on and on. And then they read out the sentence and I won't repeat the things he said then. No man should have that remembered of him. Didn't take a blindfold, spat out the cigarette, screamed and screamed and screamed. The lads they chose for the squad said they were more embarrassed about it than else."

Atkins paused, a strain clear in his face.

"There isn't a man left of the East ______ers who don't remember that, and I wager most of their mates know all about it too. A story like that has legs, if you catch my meaning."

The man in the bowler hat looked thoughtful.

"The other one... well, now, I only met the man once. He was one of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, I think it was, and I spent an evening with him and some of his mates in an estaminet once, and I will tell you now entirely that I have never been less surprised to hear a man had been shot in my life. All bloody evening it was revolution this and boojwah that, and he threatened, all playful like, to poison his company commander who was an excellent wallah from what everyone else had to say.

"Well anyhow he deserted one night, right, sort of melted off into the gloom. The red-hats caught him two miles behind the lines with a bottle of champers and a pistol that wasn't his, but they let him off with Field Punishment 1, which for those of you as don't know"--he looked pointedly at the man in the bowler--"means he got himself taken back to the rear and had to spend an hour or two each day tied to the wheel of a gun, just sitting there like a dog. Never firing or anything, mind, just the humiliation of it. When he got back to his line he was deadly quiet about it all and was gone again two nights later. This time they had to charge him, right? They had no choice.

"So my cousin Bill, who was the clerk for 'em the whole time, he tells me that this trial was one of the worst he'd ever been involved in. This bloke was a trench lawyer like you would not believe, he says, citing rule this and regulation that and all the time appealing to 'the rights of man' like this was f---ing France. And of course it was, but we weren't, right? And then it all ended in uproar when he got sentenced; one captain threatened to resign his commission on the spot, others almost came to blows, lots of bad feeling all around. The president of the court had to be transferred out after, and I am told that some held it as a blot on his copybook even when the war ended."

Atkins steeled himself for what was to come. The bowler-wearing man seemed unable to blink.

"And on the morning of it they led him out to the post, him all saintly and quiet like. He refused the blindfold, told them he didn't smoke, and just stood there to take it like he was an ancient martyr and they were a pack of lions. They say he had a smile on even when they fired. And then the company chaplain, he wrote that little notice for one of the London papers about how we can find a Christian example even in the midst of depravity, and then the Times picked it up, and the Mail denounced it as treason, and you remember how the rest of it all went. Absolute shambles.

"All that from one grumbling fool who would not simply attend to his duties and watch his mouth."

Atkins drained the last of the pint, visibly weary of the evening. The man in the bowler did remember that case, as it happened, and had expressed many strong opinions in support of the "trench lawyer" to his colleagues at the office. Phrases like "a modern saint" and "a true hero" had once escaped his lips, and were ready to do so again -- but discretion, he felt, was the better part of valour.

Atkins concluded with venom:

"So what of this sympathy and justice, I ask you? These two were monsters in their own ways, and I won't say everyone who ever put on a blindfold were, but these two were and I say we're well rid of 'em. And they were put down clean, right? They got to make their peace, and then a quick round, and then off they went. My brother Charlie's pal Sandy, he got done in after his sergeant shoved him out of the way while rushing down the trench, and Sandy's head was a bit too high and a sniper laid him out flat."

Atkins stood up, with some difficulty; Powys-Jones reached out to steady him, but the hand was swatted away. The rest of the pub grew quiet as Atkins' voice rose.

"My mate Tom Sheffield lay in No Man's Land for two f---ing days with his leg shot off, screaming at us for help, screaming at anyone to help, and he only stopped after a bullet put him out of his misery -- and I won't say it were a German one, either. What tears do you want from me over the men with the blindfold when all that was happening, day in and day out, to thousands and thousands of brave, decent men who didn't do nothing wrong that no one else did?"

He raised his hand as if to strike the man in the bowler, who flinched away. He paused. He deflated.

Atkins dug in his pocket and deposited a few coppers on the table.

"Yeah, mate, it's harsh. It's war. I need to see my wife."

He turned and left the pub, and the darkness of the evening received him.