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 sunburned cheek, twining hands callous with work in the fields. A man broke suddenly into the arbour behind Martin and stood flicking the water off his uniform with his cap. His sand-coloured hair was wet and was plastered in little spikes to his broad forehead, a forehead that was the entablature of a determined rock-hewn face. "Hello," said Martin, twisting his head to look at the newcomer. "You section twenty-four?" "Yes.... Ever read 'Alice in Wonderland'?" asked the wet man, sitting down abruptly at the table. "Yes, indeed." "Doesn't this remind you of it?" "What?" "This war business. Why, I keep thinking I'm going to meet the rabbit who put butter in his watch round every corner." "It was the best butter." "That's the hell of it."