I opened the tin of letters to read again a hand-made menu booklet for Christmas 1943, inscribed for “Smiler Sinclair” on the front. Various comrades and two Italians, presumably a waiter and waitress, had signed on the pages inside. I wanted to see if any present at the Christmas table had died with him. I found two: Sergeant Evans and Sapper Rice. In all, seven graves for men who died on January 8, 1944, two weeks after that Christmas celebration: Brian, and his company who were working on the bomb that killed them.

How many bombs had they disarmed before this one got them? There must have been many. His war service seems to have been the antithesis of aggression. Disarming bombs in the theatre of war; rescuing injured people buried in the rubble of Sheffield before he was sent abroad. In January 1944 he was so close to, and yet so far from, the end of the war.

All along the rows of graves there are flowers and plants; yellow roses at intervals in Brian’s row. But the earth beside and in front of his gravestone was comparatively bare; only a scrubby little plant and a soft-leaved cactussy thing with a dead flower. A gardener was tending the flowers in Row C behind me, unfortunately close for comfort, but as he was so near I approached him and asked if it might be possible to plant something more there because it was bare compared with most of the rest of the bed. He said that he couldn’t, because all the planting was according to a scheme and organised by the English, and couldn’t be varied, out of respect. Of course. I understood. Later I was approached by another gardener, who seemed to be the first man’s superior. He said he understood I’d been speaking to his colleague, and explained again about the scheme. It had been so terribly hot, and it was impossible to prevent some plants dying, but every year the plants were moved along, so that what was in front of my uncle’s left hand neighbour would be in front of my uncle next year. I’m sure they don’t move the roses, but he was probably telling the truth about the other things.

He had a warm and simpatico face and manner. I told him about my uncle and what he had been doing and how he died. He pointed out two towers in the distance, and said that was where the troops had come over during the Salerno landings. He said his father had fought with the inglesi in the mountains in Calabria. If it’s true, he must have been a late baby. Though he was weather-beaten, I would have put him at 54 or 55 at most. But I was so glad to be told this. I took off my cotton glove, and he took off his gardening glove, and we shook hands.

I wandered up and down the line. Many stones had family inscriptions, unlike Brian’s. Many more other ranks than officers. One of the young officers was only 23, a Major in the Hampshire Regiment who must have died in the landings in September 1943. His father was a Major someone, and his parents’ inscription began “Our beloved only son”. It was a four-line inscription, and I wish I had written it down, but I think it ended: “Here below we struggle on, While he in glory shines.”