It is July 2, 0730 hours. A man leans back and lowers his rifle. An hour with an eye pressed to the scope has gone by and he has not fired a single shot.
He had seen heads and occasionally shoulders but felt no inclination to pull the trigger.
Why bother? He knew he could do it - he was very good that's why they had made him a sniper. Funny word that sniper/sniping - mechanical, like the noise a machine might make.
Settling his back against the wall of the trench he lit a cigarette. He had good eyes and a steady hand with a rifle. The rabbits on the neighbouring farm never had time to surrender.
He had spent his 19th birthday looking for signs of human movement across what seemed like empty fields of green and wild flowers aiming for the death of an enemy.
Part of him knew they were young men, probably much like him, far from home with girlfriends and families. He did not know their names, but knew them as "Fritz". It was all of no consequence.
No man's land was now covered in death among the wild flowers, harvested in the mad assault that took his mate. Ned had gone down just ahead of him, hit and thrown down by the roaring, clattering and he had tripped over him, falling below the strafing machine guns.
He had lain still by Ned all day, with the sun shining down as if nothing had happened. He had been so angry with its ignorance of what lay around him in the gentle warm sunlight.
When darkness came he had crawled back to the trench, taking care to navigate the maze of crying wounded, quietly dying and unmoving dead left by the charge toward the line at dawn.
He rolled a smoke. He had tried to get the knack of rolling with one hand from watching his father do it but it remained one of things about his father that he had never got a handle on.
All was still and quiet. He inhaled deeply and the smoke lingered in the air.
He had tried to drag Ned back with him in the dark but he was lifeless and gone, and the weight was too much so with a farewell grasp of a cold dead hand he had left him in no man's land.
No man's land - that was exactly right - no place for a man. It was so obvious. Lives measured out in yards won and lost.
All the prayers in the world could not protect a man from the metal hail. No amount of "Hail Marys" could ward off shrapnel and bullets.
As a child he had understood that God was watching over him and he would be kept safe.
He had sung "All things bright and beautiful ..." in church watching his mother as she played the wheezy old organ and he had believed it was true.
Slowly, as the weeks in the trenches had passed, he had become a celestial orphan. He had given up praying and taken to swearing and berating the faith he felt had tricked him ... but he had prayed for Ned before leaving his body behind in no man's land.
He needed to tell Ned's family. They would get a letter telling of his death and read it with bewildered tears. It would be better if he could tell them.
He had spent a lot of time at the school house where they lived. They had been friends for as long as he could remember. Ned's parents, both teachers, would be shattered by their son's death.
Together with Ned, he had signed up and sailed out across the world, far from the school house, the wooden church, the farm and family.
The excitement was huge at the time. They could feel it beating inside them as they sailed away - it was a grand adventure.
Now what would he say to Ned's mother and father?
He stepped onto the observation ladder and looked out over the top of the sandbags. He could see the mountain in the distance. He had not seen it before but now there it was so clear on the horizon.
He could tell it was far away from the touch of blue haze but it stood strong and still. He could see it.
He stashed his rifle behind him against the wall of the trench and stepped out over the top and started walking. He could see it.
He heard sounds behind him. Voices shouting: "What the hell - come back." "Get down, stupid bastard." The calls went by him, carried on the breeze - they were for someone else.
He walked on. He was going home. He saw the wild flowers and the soft green grass between the shattered earth. He passed the dead but did not see them as he walked towards the mountain.
As he walked he sang. The waiata was one he had learned as a boy. He sang it for his koro, hearing that warm, sleepy voice. He sang it hearing the call of his mother at dinner time. He sang it as he had sung it when walking beside his father.
He walked between the dead finding a line towards the horizon. The shouting had stopped and he sang louder and stronger to tell the mountain he was coming. The air grew still. He wove his way through the gaps hammered out of the barbed wire by shellfire the day before.
Yesterday Ned had been trying to act nonchalant and calm, but as the moments towards the call to go got closer, he had said he was afraid. They had rolled a smoke and talked about girls. Ned had always been the one for the girls - where he had hesitated, nervous and unsure, Ned would just confidently stroll over and start talking.
That girl Edith was a stunner, great dancer, and Ned said she was the one for the kissing. He walked towards the mountain knowing he would have to tell Edith.
Around him the air was calm. He stopped singing for a moment and tested the silence.
The sky was pale, like blackbird's eggs. He still had the collection nested in a box by the window. He would have been 10 then, climbing trees to gather them until he saw the baby birds, beaks open and calling for worms and he had stopped collecting. There was silence; he could not see or hear any birds.
He crossed the first of the defensive mounds thrown up by the furious digging of human moles making shelter in the ground, and stopped briefly to orient himself. The mountain was blue, white and distant.
He began to sing again. This time it was a song he had learned from his sister, who was into all that modern stuff, knew all the words and could knock them out on the piano.
She was good enough to play down at the hall, and all the guys used to talk about her. He would tell them she was much too good for them and once fought a man who was talking dirty about her. He was going to see her. He would ask her to play, they would sing together.
The sound of voices came up from nearby. They shouted but he could not understand them. "Ihr ist entweder verrückt oder einen Engel." "Bleib stehen oder schießen wir." "Nein lass es. Die mann hat ausgeflippt und weiß nicht was ihr tut." "Lass ihm durch - Irgendwann wollen wir alle weg aus diese holle."
The men looked up at him in silence as he passed. They had lowered their rifles and were listening to his voice as he sang a waiata to the mountain about the love of the sky for the moon. They did not understand but they knew it was a love song.
He walked on, singing as he moved with steady steps across a broken, foreign land towards the mountain. Going home.