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A fresh breeze blew, the fog disappeared, the sun beat down and the gun-fire stopped. Bion lay huddled in the shell-hole with the moaning boy beneath the shelter of his side. The waving poplars of the Amiens–Roye road stood revealed as tall grasses on the opposite side of the trackway in the brilliant, clear light. The transformation was so complete that the scene appeared to be utterly unrelated to the black night that had preceded it. Everything was quiet except for the moans that had now become more inarticulate. Occasionally he could distinguish the word, ‘Mother’, but that was all.
A party of stretcher-bearers came down the road with some wounded. He called to them, ‘Will you take this man?‘
‘No, sir’, came the reply, ‘we haven't any stretchers left. Can he walk?‘
‘I don't suppose he can walk at all’, said Bion, but one of them came over and, lifting Sweeting up, it appeared that some fresh reserves of strength were released in a body that seemed to be too
torn and broken even to maintain life. Before he could realize what was happening, Sweeting, supported by two stretcher-bearers, was tottering down the road in the train of the small RAMC party towards the casualty station.
Well, thank God he's gone, thought Bion, filled with passionate hatred of himself for his hatred of the wounded man.
Time to go, he said to himself as he stretched out of his cramped position. Even the very grasses seemed to scare the life out of him. He worked his way over to the left flank. He thought, it's now far too late to make the rendezvous with Asser at the estaminet at Berle au Bois. I may just as well find out what has happened to Greene's tank, and Hauser's.
In the distance, towards the Amiens–Roye road, he saw a stationary tank; there was now apparently no fighting going on at all. The sun beat down, the trees waved gently in the stiff breeze. Walking across the springy turf without seeing any sign even of infantry, he felt totally lonely and lost. As he approached the tank, he w