Bonnet Farm
Bonnet Farm is the French farmstead where Robbie Turner, accompanied by Corporal Mace and Corporal Nettle, takes shelter during the chaotic retreat to Dunkirk in late May 1940. It is here that the three soldiers encounter the brothers Henri and Jean-Marie Bonnet, whose hospitality and harrowing account of the war deepen Robbie's sense of shame and his resolve to survive. The farm becomes a site of temporary respite, shared food and wine, and a confrontation with the human cost of the military collapse, as well as a place where Robbie's physical and psychological wounds are brought into sharp relief.
Arrival and the Hostile Welcome
After crossing a stinking ditch of slurry on a wobbling plank and passing through a swarm of bees, the three soldiers emerge into a farmyard where dogs bark and an old woman runs toward them flapping her hands, as though shooing hens. She is frail and energetic, with a gnarled, man-in-the-moon face and a wild look, and she tells Turner sharply, "C'est impossible, M'sieur. Vous ne pouvez pas rester ici." When Turner insists they need water, wine, bread, cheese, and anything else she can spare, she repeats that it is impossible. He tells her softly, "We've been fighting for France," but she replies, "It's not the Germans, M'sieur. It's my sons. They are animals. And they'll be back soon." Turner pushes past her to the pump in the corner of the yard, and while he drinks, a girl of about ten and an infant brother holding her hand watch him from the doorway before fleeing. The woman clutches at his elbow, and when he threatens to come into the house for supplies, she warns, "My sons are brutes. They'll kill me" and then, "And then, M'sieur, they will kill you. They will tear you to shreds." Despite the threat, the soldiers settle in the barn, where Mace, a cook in the same RASC unit as Nettle, sets about arranging their quarters with a practiced hand, stuffing sacks to make three mattresses, making headboards out of hay bales, setting up a door on brick piles for a table, and taking out half a candle from his pocket. "Might as well be comfy," he keeps saying under his breath.
The Bonnet Brothers and Their News
Later, the girl brings a basket of food—a round loaf of brown bread that tastes of mold, a small piece of soft cheese, an onion, and a bottle of wine—which is quickly consumed. As the soldiers lie on their straw beds, two men appear in the barn entrance, each holding something in their hands, perhaps a club or a shotgun. They are Henri and Jean-Marie Bonnet, short, stocky men in their fifties, and they have brought baguettes, olives, cheese, pâté, tomatoes, ham, and more wine. "Vive l'Angleterre," they say, and the soldiers reply, "Er, Vive la France." The five men sit at Mace's table, which the Frenchmen politely admire, and raise their glasses in toasts to the French and British armies and to the crushing of Germany. Through Turner's translation, the brothers explain that they drove all the way to a hamlet near Arras in their flatbed farm truck to look for a young cousin and her children. They saw farmhouses burning, and then they came across a dozen or so dead English soldiers in the road. They had to get out and drag the men aside to avoid running over them, but a couple of the bodies were almost cut in half, likely from a big machine-gun attack. Henri was sick in the cab, and Jean-Marie drove into a ditch. They borrowed two horses from a farmer to pull the Renault free, a task that took two hours. By the time they reached the hamlet, the place was completely destroyed and deserted. Their cousin's house was smashed up, with bullet holes all over the walls, but it still had its roof; they were relieved to find no one there. All night long they heard the artillery pounding Arras. Now, Henri explains, he and his brother are very tired. When they shut their eyes, they see those mutilated bodies. The account, with Turner's running translation, takes almost an hour. Turner thinks about telling them of his own single, haunting detail—the leg in a tree—but he doesn't want to add to the horror, and nor does he want to give life to the image while it remains at a distance, held there by wine and companionship. Instead, he tells them how he was separated from his unit during a Stuka attack. Jean-Marie asks, "So it's true what they're saying. You're leaving." Turner replies, "We'll be back," but he doesn't believe it.
The Old Woman's Story and the Brothers' Farewell
When Mace asks about the old woman, Henri explains that they were three brothers; the eldest, Paul, her firstborn, died near Verdun in 1915 from a direct hit from a shell, with nothing to bury apart from his helmet. Since then, she has always hated soldiers. Now she is eighty-three and losing her mind, and it is an obsession with her. She makes no distinction between French, English, Belgian, or German soldiers. They worry that when the Germans come, she will go at them with a pitchfork and they will shoot her. Wearily, the brothers get to their feet. Jean-Marie says they would offer hospitality at their kitchen table, but to do that, they would have to lock her in her room. Turner says, "But this has been a magnificent feast." Nettle takes from his bag two cartons of cigarettes and shoves the gifts into the brothers' arms, explaining that when the order came through to destroy the stores, they took whatever they wanted. The Frenchmen give courteous thanks, compliment Turner on his French, and then bend over the table to pack the empty bottles and glasses into a canvas bag. There is no pretending that they will meet again. As they shake hands, Henri Bonnet says, "All that fighting we did twenty-five years ago. All those dead. Now the Germans back in France. In two days they'll be here, taking everything we have. Who would have believed it?" Turner feels, for the first time, the full ignominy of the retreat. He is ashamed. He says, with even less conviction than before, "We'll be back to throw them out, I promise you." The brothers nod and, with final smiles of farewell, leave the dim circle of the candle's glow and cross the darkness toward the open barn door, the glasses chinking against the bottles as they go.
Aftermath and Robbie's Vigil
After the brothers leave, Turner lies on his back smoking, staring into the blackness of the cavernous roof. The corporals' snores rise and fall in counterpoint. He is exhausted, but not sleepy. The wound throbs uncomfortably, each beat precise and tight. Exhaustion makes him vulnerable to the thoughts he wants least. He thinks about the French boy asleep in his bed, and about the indifference with which men can lob shells into a landscape. He thinks of his own vanished life, the three and a half years in prison, and the hand squeezing on his throat. He thinks of Cecilia's last letter in his pocket and her new address. This is why he has to survive, and use his cunning to stay off the main roads where the circling dive-bombers wait like raptors. Later, he gets up from under his greatcoat, pulls on his boots, and gropes his way through the barn to relieve himself outside. Ignoring the snarling farm dogs, he finds his way along a track to a grassy rise to watch the flashes in the southern sky—the approaching storm of German armor. He touches his top pocket where the poem she sent is enfolded in her letter. The gun flashes are everywhere but the north. The defeated army is running up a corridor that is bound to narrow, and soon must be cut off. There would be no chance of escape for the stragglers. At best, it would be prison again. Prison camp. This time, he wouldn't last. When France falls there will be no end of the war in sight. No letters from her, and no way back. The prospect would be of a thousand, or thousands of incarcerated nights, sleeplessly turning over the past, waiting for his life to resume, wondering if it ever would. He turns and begins to make his way back down the slope, but thinks better of it. Guided by the corporals' snores, he shuffles back to his bed. But still sleep will not come, or comes only in quick plunges from which he emerges, giddy with thoughts he cannot choose or direct. They pursue him, the old themes. Here it is again, his only meeting with her at the Joe Lyons teahouse in the Strand in 1939. He lies on his side, staring at where he thinks the barn's entrance is, waiting for the first signs of light. He is too restless for sleep now. He wants only to be walking to the coast. There is no cottage in Wiltshire for them. Three weeks before his training ended, war was declared. All leave was canceled. He thinks of her words: "I'll wait for you. Come back." She was quoting herself. She knew he would remember. From that time on, this was how she ended every one of her letters to Robbie in France, right through to the last, which arrived just before the order came to fall back on Dunkirk.
