There was a flash of hot light; simultaneously, the windows shattered, and a shock wave of air buffeted through the house, blowing the upper windows outwards. The soldier sitting closest to the explosion was dead immediately, thrown across the room, one side of his head blown away. The young woman standing by the inner door, caught in the blast, was thrown with such force against the wall behind that she was dead from her injuries within the hour. Within seconds, the clattering of boots was heard down the bare staircase, and the two remaining soldiers, who had been taking their turn to rest, were making their way through the smoke and dust, to burst out of the rear door.

There was a volley of shouts and orders, in both German and Polish voices: Halt! Stop! But the two soldiers ran on, weaving and dodging as bullets pinged against the brickwork on each side of the winding alley. One was shot in the back of the leg. He cursed, limped on, still running and hopping, for six yards, and then kneeled down, in agony. His comrade stopped beside him for a moment, tried to lift him, and then ran on alone. The wounded soldier, finding the strength to stand, dragged himself along a further twenty paces and then slipped through the broken palings of a woodyard.

It was six hours later that the German patrol found him, huddled in long grass behind a stack of sawn timber, unconscious. They dragged him to the local tannery, which had been requisitioned by the troops. An army doctor cleaned up his leg, and then they threw him in a compound with thirty others.

"Russian?" asked the officer who questioned him, a week later. "Lithuanian?"

"Polish."

"Citizen of the Vistula," the officer joked. "How is your leg?"

"Better."

"Does it give you pain?"

"A little. Not much."

"Would you like to sit?"

"Thank you."

He sat in the chair which the orderly pushed forward, placing his crutch by the side.

"You were wearing a Russian uniform."

"Poles have little choice for whom they fight."

"That is very true. In Silesia your General Pilsudski and his Polish Legions are fighting valiantly alongside our Austrian allies to ensure the defeat of the Russian army."

The young man shrugged. "This is not our war. If Poles fight it is only to bring about the end of the partition."

It was the officer’s turn to shrug, a little dismissively, perhaps a little indulgently at the fatuousness of the young man’s assertion. "The scale of your defeat, you and your compatriots and fellow Russians is unimaginable. The forests around here are littered with fugitive soldiers. They’re pulling them out of the lake, too. Those like you who took refuge in the town have now been all but rounded up. The question now is what do we do with you?"

The officer smiled, with a pretence of benign interest. "They’re going to call it the Battle of Tannenberg. Interesting, don’t you think?"

"Tannenberg," said the young man in disbelief. "Tannenberg is nowhere near here. Forty miles."

"These things are symbolic. Though perhaps it would be more accurate to call it the second battle of Tannenberg. If you are a Pole you will understand that?"

"1410. The defeat of the Teutonic Knights by the Kingdom of Poland."

"Yes," said the officer, with ironic satisfaction. "500 years, give or take. What is it they say? Revenge is a dish best taken cold..."