As soon as the parade ground was empty (before in fact; the end of the Senegalese column had not yet vanished into the company street) the fatigue party came up with a hand-drawn barrow containing their tools and a folded tarpaulin. The corporal in charge took a wire-cutter from the barrow and approached the sergeant-major, who had already cut the corporal's body free from the broken post. 'Here,' he said, handing the sergeant-major the wire-cutter. 'You're not going to waste a ground-sheet on one of them, are you?'
'Get those posts out,' the sergeant-major said. 'Let me have two men and the ground sheet,'
'Right,' the corporal said. The corporal went away. The sergeant-major cut off a section about six feet long of the rusted wire. When he rose, the two men with the folded tarpaulin were standing be-hind him, watching him.
'Spread it out,' he said, pointing. They did so. 'Put him in it,' he said. They took up the dead corporal's body, the one at the head a little gingerly because of the blood, and laid it on the tarpaulin. 'Go on,' the sergeant-major said. 'Roll it up. Then put it in the barrow,' and followed them, the fatigue-party corporal suddenly not watching him too, the other men suddenly immersed again in freeing the planted posts from the earth. Nor did the sergeant-major speak again. He simply gestured the two men to take up the handles and, himself at the rear, established the direction by holding one corner as a pivot and pushing against the other and then pushing ahead on both, the laden barrow now crossing the parade ground at a long slant toward the point where the wire fence died in a sharp right angle against the old factory wall. Nor did he (the sergeant-major) look back either, the two men carrying the handles almost trotting now to keep the barrow from running over them, on Friday toward the corner where at some point they too must have seen beyond the fence the high two-wheeled farm cart with a heavy farm horse in the shafts and the two women and the three men beside it, the sergeant-major stopping the barrow just as he had started it: by stopping himself and pivoting the barrow by its two rear corners into the angle of the fence, then himself went and stood at the fence-a man of more than fifty and now looking all of it-until the taller of the two women-the one with the high dark strong and handsome face as a man's face is handsome-ap-proached the other side of the wire. The second woman had not moved, the shorter, dumpier, softer one. But she was watching the two at the fence and listening, her face quite empty for the moment but with something incipient and tranquilly promising about it like a clean though not-yet-lighted lamp on a kitchen bureau.
'Where did you say your husband's farm is?' the sergeant-major said.
'I told you,' the woman said.
'Tell me again,' the sergeant-major said.
'Beyond Chalons,' the woman said.
How far beyond Chalons?' the sergeant-major said. 'All right,' he said. 'How far from Verdun?'
'It's near Vienne-la-pucelle,' the woman said. 'Beyond St. Mihiel,' she said.
'St. Mihiel,' the sergeant-major said. 'In the army zone. Worse. In the battle zone. With Germans on one side of it and American? on the other. Americans.'
'Should American soldiers be more terrible than other soldiers?' the woman said. 'Because they are fresher at it? Is that it?'
'No, sister,' the other woman said. "That's wrong. It's because the Americans have been here so young. It will be easy for them.' The two at the fence paid no attention to her. They looked at each other through the wire. Then the woman said: The war is over.'
'Ah,' the sergeant-major said.
The woman made no movement, no gesture. 'What else can this mean? What else explain it? Justify it? No, not even justify it: plead compassion, plead pity, plead despair for it?' She looked at the sergeant-major, cold, griefless, impersonal. 'Plead exculpation for it?'
'Bah,' the sergeant-major said. 'Did I ask you? Did anyone?' He gestured behind him with the wire-cutter. One of the men released the handle of the barrow and came and took it. 'Cut the bottom strand,' the sergeant-major said.
'Cut?' the man said.
'It, species of a species!' the sergeant-major said. The man started to stoop but the sergeant-major had already snatched the wire-cutter back from him and stooped himself; the taut bottom-most strand sprang with a thin almost musical sound, recoiling. 'Get it out of the barrow,' the sergeant-major said. 'Lively.' They under-stood now. They lifted the long tarpaulin-wrapped object from the barrow and lowered it to the ground. The woman had moved aside and the three men now waited at the fence, to draw, drag the long object along the ground and through the wire's vacancy, then up and into the cart. 'Wait,' the sergeant-major said. The woman paused. The sergeant-major fumbled inside his coat and produced a folded paper which he passed through the fence to her. She opened it and looked at it for a moment, with no expression what-ever.
'Yes,' she said. 'It must be over, since you receive a diploma now with your execution. What shall I do with it? Frame it on the par-lor wall?' The sergeant-major reached through the wire and snatched the paper from between her hands, his other hand fum-bling out the worn spectacle case again, then with both hands, still holding the opened paper, he got the spectacles on his nose and glanced at the paper a moment, then with a violent gesture crumpled the paper into his side pocket and produced another folded one from inside his coat and extended it through the wire, shaking it violently open before the woman could touch it, saying in a repressed and seething voice: 'Say you dont need this one then. Look at the signature on it,' The woman did so. She had never seen Friday it before, the thin delicate faint cryptic indecipherable scrawl which few other people had ever seen either but which anyone in that half of Europe on that day competent to challenge a signature would have recognised at once.
'So he knows where his son's half-sister's husband's farm is too, she said.
'Pah,' the sergeant-major said. 'Further than St. Mihiel even. If at any place on the way you should be faced with a pearled and golden gate, that will pass you through it too.-This too,' he said, his hand coming out of his pocket and through the wire again, opening on the dull bronze of the small emblem and the bright splash of its ribbon, the woman immobile again, not touching it yet, tall, looking down at the sergeant-major's open palm, until he felt the other woman looking at him and met the tranquil and incipient gaze; whereupon she said: 'He's really quite handsome, sister. He's not so old either,'
Tali!' the sergeant-major said again. 'Here!' he said, thrusting, fumbling the medal into the taller woman's hand until she had to take it, then snatching his own hand quickly back through the wire. 'Begone!' he said. 'Get on with you! Get out of here!' breathing a little hard now, irascible, almost raging, who was too old for this, feeling the second woman's eyes again though he did not meet them yet, flinging his head up to shout at the taller one's back: 'There were three of you. Where is the other one-his poule, what-ever she is-was?' Then he had to meet the second woman's eyes, the face no longer incipient now but boundless with promise, giving him a sweet and tender smile, saying: 'It's all right. Dont be afraid. Good-bye.'