The car drove on, and my thoughts dwelt with the man who was going to Villars-Carbonnel and who preferred to walk there. In viewing the countryside from the road he probably wanted to see all that had happened to the place since he was there before. Or perhaps he wanted to prolong the joyful anticipation of the homecoming. With the remembrance common to the old he was no doubt calling to mind the village which he had known all his life, the people whom he had known and loved when he dwelt there. What would the village be like now? Would it be broken down like the other villages which he had passed on the road, Villers-Bretonneux, Warfusse Abancourt, and Lamotte-en-Santerre? These were twisted out of all shape, their cafés in ruins, their streets piled with rubble, the roof beams of their many homes burned, and churches beaten almost to the ground. But no, his native village would not have suffered as these had suffered! He loved it so much that the thought of irreparable ruin hanging over his own birthplace could not certainly have entered his mind. Let him have his dreams of homecoming and he was happy. I could picture that old man in days before the war sitting in front of his house in the summer evenings with the vines trailing round the front door and the apple blossoms blooming in his garden. In the distance the mists crept up from the Somme, the village girls leading the cattle in from the pastures came down the street; the children played on the pavement, making the night glad with their innocent prattle. Possibly the church bell was then ringing out the Angelus, calling the devotees to worship, while the old man sat there smoking his long-shanked pipe with the tobacco piled high over the bowl and the gleaming threads falling down on the breast of his coat. Then, after a while, he might go into a café, drink his glass of red wine and play a game of draughts or dominoes with his neighbour. And he knew the village, knew every man and woman there. It was his native place, loved as only the French can love the spot of earth on which they were born, and known to him as a painter knows every tint of colour on the picture which he has completed. We came to a cross-road and here for a moment the driver stopped to look at his map. Round us the country stretched for miles, with here and there a ruined village or farmhouse breaking the landscape. Under us the road was a dun colour, showing that broken bricks had been used in the fashioning of the highway. Thistles grew by the roadside and through these could be seen many strands of rusted wire, with here and there a cross turning green with the rain and topped with a trench helmet or khaki cap. Flowers grew there, late flowers nodding gravely in the breeze. Not a house was to be seen, not even the ruins of a wall. Above this was a board with something written on it, and leaning over the car I could read the message. This was what it told me: HERE ONCE STOOD THE VILLAGE OF VILLARS-CARBONNEL.