der."

The third-class car, joggling along on a flat wheel, was full of the
smell of sweat and sour wine. Outside, yellow-green and blue-green,
crossed by long processions of poplars, aflame with vermilion and
carmine of poppies, the countryside slipped by. At a station where the
train stopped on a siding, they could hear a faint hollow sound in the
distance: guns.

* * * * *

Croix de Guerre had been given out that day at the automobile park at
Chalons. There was an unusually big dinner at the wooden tables in the
narrow portable barracks, and during the last course the General passed
through and drank a glass of champagne to the health of all present.
Everybody had on his best uniform and sweated hugely in the narrow,
airless building, from the wine and the champagne and the thick stew,
thickly seasoned, that made the dinner's main course.

"We are all one large family," said the General from the end of the
barracks ... "to France."

That night the wail of a siren woke Martin suddenly and made him sit up
in his bunk trembling, wondering where he was. Like the shriek of a
woman in a nightmare, the wail of the siren rose and rose and then
dropped in pitch and faded throbbingly out.

"Don't flash a light there. It's Boche planes."

Outside the night was cold, with a little light from a waned moon.

"See the shrapnel!" someone cried.

"The Boche has a Mercedes motor," said someone else. "You can tell by
the sound of it."

"They say one of their planes chased an ambulance ten miles along a
straight road the other day, trying to get it with a machine-gun. The
man who was driving got away, but he had shell-shock afterwards."

"Did he really?"

"Oh, I'm goin' to turn in. God, these French nights are cold!"

* * * * *

The rain pattered hard with unfaltering determination on the roof of the
little arbour. Martin lolled over the rough board table, resting his
chin on his clasped hands, looking through the tinkling bead curtains of
the rain towards the other end of the weed-grown garden, where, under a
canvas shelter, the cooks were moving about in front of two black
steaming cauldrons. Through the fresh scent of rain-beaten leaves came a
greasy smell of soup. He was thinking of the jolly wedding-parties that
must have drunk and danced in this garden before the war, of the lovers
who must have sat in that very arbour, pressing sunburned cheek against