It rained the night before the panzers came. Seven years on, my left knee still tells me when it will rain in May. I do not need the radio. I do not need the priest's barometer. I have my knee.

People remember the Battle of Hannut as numbers — 12 May to 14 May, 165 French tanks, 160 German tanks, the first proper armoured battle of the war. I remember it as a smell. Diesel and hawthorn. The hawthorn was blooming. It is a strange thing to be twenty years old and to notice flowers in the middle of a tank engagement, but you do, because the alternative is to notice other things, and the flowers are easier.

I came out of those three days with both feet intact and most of my hearing. I came out of an afternoon with a squirrel, seven years later, with neither.