Meeting the Bonnet Brothers

The Meeting the Bonnet Brothers is a crucial episode in Robbie Turner's retreat to Dunkirk, where the exhausted soldier and his two companions, Corporal Mace and Corporal Nettle, find shelter at a French farm and are confronted by the brothers' hospitality, their mother's hostility, and the brothers' harrowing account of the war's devastation, deepening Robbie's trauma and his resolve to survive.

Arrival and the Hostile Farmhouse

After a day of walking through the French countryside, the three soldiers—Robbie, Corporal Mace, and Corporal Nettle—arrive at 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. She tells Robbie, in French, "C'est impossible, M'sieur. Vous ne pouvez pas rester ici." Robbie insists they will stay in the barn and need water, wine, bread, cheese, and anything else she can spare. She repeats, "Impossible!" When he says softly, "We've been fighting for France," she replies, "You can't stay here." He says they will be gone at dawn. She reveals the true danger: "It's not the Germans, M'sieur. It's my sons. They are animals. And they'll be back soon." Robbie pushes past her to the pump in the corner of the yard, near the kitchen, and drinks. While he fills his canteen, a girl of about ten and an infant brother holding her hand watch him from the doorway; when he smiles at them, they flee. The woman clutches his elbow, and he tells her to bring what he asked for or they will come in and get it themselves. She warns, "My sons are brutes. They'll kill me." He says he will talk to them, and she replies, "And then, M'sieur, they will kill you. They will tear you to shreds."

The Corporals' Comfort and the Brothers' Arrival

In the barn, Corporal Mace, a former warehouseman at Heal's in the Tottenham Court Road, sets about arranging their quarters with a knack for comfort. He finds a heap of sacks and, with Nettle's help, stuffs them to make three mattresses. He makes headboards out of hay bales, which he lifts down with a single hand, and sets up a door on brick piles for a table. He takes out half a candle from his pocket. "Might as well be comfy," he keeps saying under his breath. The three men lie on their beds, smoking and waiting. They hear each other's stomachs rumbling and squirting in the gloom, and it makes them laugh. Robbie tells them about the old woman's warning about her sons. Nettle suggests they are fifth columnists, or French Nazis, German sympathizers like Mosley. Mace adds, "Or like they all are in the country, bonkers from marrying too close." Robbie tells them to check their weapons and have them handy. He checks his pistol and puts it within reach. The corporals prop their Lee-Enfields against a wooden crate. Presently, the girl brings a basket and sets it down by the barn door, then runs away. Nettle fetches it, and they spread out a round loaf of brown bread, a small piece of soft cheese, an onion, and a bottle of wine. The bread is hard to cut and tastes of mold. The cheese is good but gone in seconds. They pass the bottle around, and soon that is gone too. They chew on the musty bread and eat the onion. Nettle says, "I wouldn't give this to my fucking dog." At the sound of footsteps, they turn and see two men standing in the entrance, each holding something in their hands—a club perhaps, or a shotgun. The voice is soft: "Bonsoir, Messieurs." Robbie replies, "Bonsoir." As he gets up from his straw bed, he takes the revolver. The corporals reach for their rifles. He whispers, "Go easy." The men ask if they are English or Belgian. Robbie says English. One says, "We have something for you." The men come closer and raise what is in their hands. Shotguns, surely. Robbie releases his safety catch. He hears Mace and Nettle do the same. He murmurs, "Easy." The figure who spoke reaches into his pocket, brings out a torch, and shines it not at the soldiers but at his brother, at what is in his hand: a French loaf. And at what is in the other hand, a canvas bag. Then he shows them the two baguettes he himself is holding. "And we have olives, cheese, pâté, tomatoes and ham. And naturally, wine. Vive l'Angleterre." Robbie replies, "Er, Vive la France."

The Brothers' Story and the Evening's Revelations

The Frenchmen, Henri and Jean-Marie Bonnet, sit at Mace's table, which they politely admire, along with the mattresses. They are short, stocky men in their fifties. Henri wears glasses, which Nettle says looks odd on a farmer. Robbie does not translate. As well as wine, they bring glass tumblers. The five men raise them in toasts to the French and British armies and to the crushing of Germany. The brothers watch the soldiers eat. Through Robbie, Mace says he has never tasted, never even heard of, goose liver pâté, and from now on he will eat nothing else. The Frenchmen smile, but their manner is constrained, and they seem in no mood to get drunk. They say they drove all the way to a hamlet near Arras in their flatbed farm truck to look for a young cousin and her children. A great battle had been fought for the town, but they had no idea who was taking it, who was defending it, or who had the upper hand. They drove on back roads to avoid the chaos of refugees. 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. It must have been a big machine-gun attack, perhaps from the air, perhaps an ambush. Back in the lorry, Henri was sick in the cab, and Jean-Marie, who was at the wheel, got into a panic and drove into a ditch. They walked to a village, borrowed two horses from a farmer, and pulled the Renault free. That took two hours. On the road again, they saw burned-out tanks and armored cars, German as well as British and French. But they saw no soldiers. The battle had moved on. By the time they reached the hamlet, it was late afternoon. The place had been completely destroyed and was deserted. Their cousin's house was smashed up, with bullet holes all over the walls, but it still had its roof. They went in every room and were relieved to find no one there. She must have taken the children and joined the thousands of people on the roads. Afraid of driving back at night, they parked in a wood and tried to sleep in the cab. All night long they heard the artillery pounding Arras. It seemed impossible that anyone, or anything, could survive there. They drove back by another route, a much greater distance, to avoid passing the dead soldiers. Now, Henri explains, he and his brother are very tired. When they shut their eyes, they see those mutilated bodies. Jean-Marie refills the glasses. The account, with Robbie's running translation, has taken almost an hour. All the food is eaten. Robbie thinks about telling them of his own single, haunting detail—the leg in a tree—but he does not want to add to the horror, 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 at the beginning of the retreat, during a Stuka attack. He does not mention his injury because he does not want the corporals to know about it. Instead, he explains how they are walking cross-country to Dunkirk to avoid the air raids along the main roads. Jean-Marie says, "So it's true what they're saying. You're leaving." Robbie says, "We'll be back," but he does not believe it. The wine is taking hold of Corporal Nettle, who begins a rambling eulogy of what he calls "Frog crumpet"—how plentiful, how available, how delicious. It is all fantasy. The brothers look at Robbie. He says, "He says French women are the most beautiful in the world." They nod solemnly and raise their glasses. They listen to the night sounds they have grown used to: the rumble of artillery, stray shots in the distance, a booming far-off explosion—probably sappers blowing a bridge in the retreat. Mace suggests asking them about their mum. Henri explains that they were three brothers. The eldest, Paul, her firstborn, died near Verdun in 1915. A direct hit from a shell. There was nothing to bury apart from his helmet. The two of them were lucky; they came through without a scratch. Since then, she has always hated soldiers. But now she is eighty-three and losing her mind, it is an obsession with her. French, English, Belgian, German—she makes no distinction. They worry that when the Germans come, she will go at them with a pitchfork and they will shoot her.

Farewell and the Weight of Shame

Wearily, the brothers get to their feet. The soldiers do the same. Jean-Marie says they would offer hospitality at their kitchen table, but to do that, they would have to lock her in her room. Robbie says, "But this has been a magnificent feast." Nettle, whispering with Mace, takes from his bag two cartons of cigarettes. It is the right thing to do. The Frenchmen make a polite show of refusing, but Nettle comes round the table and shoves the gifts into their arms. He wants Robbie to translate: "You should have seen it, when the order came through to destroy the stores. Twenty thousand cigarettes. We took whatever we wanted." A whole army is fleeing to the coast, armed with cigarettes to keep the hunger away. The Frenchmen give courteous thanks, compliment Robbie on his French, then bend over the table to pack the empty bottles and glasses into the canvas bag. There is no pretending that they will meet again. Robbie says, "We'll be gone at first light. So we'll say goodbye." 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?" Robbie 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.