Things had been happening. Divisions were moving. There had been,
there was going to be, a stunt. A battalion marched over the hill and
sat down by the road. They had left the trenches three days march to
the north and had come to a new country. The officers pulled their
maps out; a mild breeze fluttered them; yesterday had been winter and
to-day was spring; but spring in a desolation so complete and
far-reaching that you only knew of it by that little wind. It was
early March by the calendar, but the wind was blowing out of the gates
of April. A platoon commander, feeling that mild wind blowing, forgot
his map and began to whistle a tune that suddenly came to him out of
the past with the wind. Out of the past it blew and out of the South,
a merry vernal tune of a Southern people. Perhaps only one of those
that noticed the tune had ever heard it before. An officer sitting
near had heard it sung; it reminded him of a holiday long ago in the
South.
“Where did you hear that tune?” he asked the platoon commander.
“Oh, the hell of a long way from here,” the platoon commander said.
He did not remember quite where it was he had heard it, but he
remembered a sunny day in France and a hill all dark with pine woods,
and a man coming down at evening out of the woods, and down the slope
to the village, singing this song. Between the village and the slope
there were orchards in blossom. So that he came with his song for
hundreds of yards through orchards. “The hell of a way from here,”
he said.
For a long while then they sat silent.
“It mightn’t have been so very far from here,” said the platoon
commander. “It was in France, now I come to think of it. But it was a
lovely part of France, all woods and orchards. Nothing like this,
thank God.” And he glanced with a tired look at the unutterable
desolation.
“Where was it?” said the other.
“In Picardy,” he said.
“Aren’t we in Picardy now?” said his friend.
“Are we?” he said.
“I don’t know. The maps don’t call it Picardy.”
“It was a fine place, anyway,” the platoon commander said. “There
seemed always to be a wonderful light on the hills. A kind of short
grass grew on them, and it shone in the sun at evening. There were
black woods above them. A man used to come out of them singing at
evening.”
He looked wearily round at the brown desolation of weeds. As far as
the two officers could see there was nothing but brown weeds and bits
of brown barbed wire. He turned from the desolate scene back to his
reminiscences.
“He came singing through the orchards into the village,” he said.
“A quaint old place with queer gables, called Ville-en-Bois.”
“Do you know where we are?” said the other.
“No, said the platoon commander.”
“I thought not,” he said. “Hadn’t you better take a look at the
map?”
“I suppose so,” said the platoon commander, and he smoothed out his
map and wearily got to the business of finding out where he was.
“Good Lord!” he said. “Ville-en-Bois!”