The Barn

The Barn is a French farm building that serves as a temporary refuge for Robbie Turner and his two companions, Corporal Mace and Corporal Nettle, during their desperate retreat to Dunkirk in late May 1940. It is a place of rest, shared provisions, and a crucial encounter with local farmers, but it also becomes a site where Robbie's physical and psychological wounds—his infected shrapnel wound and his traumatic memories of prison and the war—intensify, making the barn a microcosm of the retreat's desperation and the fragile bonds of comradeship.

Location and Arrival

The barn is located on a farm in northern France, near a stream and a stone bridge thick with cow dung, and is reached after the three soldiers cross a stinking ditch of slurry on a wobbling plank. They arrive at the farmyard to find an old woman who frantically tries to shoo them away, claiming her sons are "animals" who will kill her if she helps. Ignoring her protests, Robbie Turner pushes past her to the pump in the corner of the yard to drink, and the three soldiers settle in the barn for the night. The barn itself is a simple structure with straw, hay bales, and a cavernous roof, and it is here that Corporal Mace, a former warehouseman at Heal's, takes charge of arranging their quarters, stuffing sacks to make mattresses and setting up a door on brick piles for a table.

The Bonnet Brothers' Feast

The barn becomes the setting for a significant encounter with the French farmers Henri and Jean-Marie Bonnet, who arrive after dark carrying baguettes, olives, cheese, pâté, tomatoes, ham, and wine. The brothers explain that they have been searching for a young cousin and her children near Arras, and describe the horrors they witnessed: dead English soldiers in the road, burned-out tanks, and a completely destroyed hamlet. Henri Bonnet recounts how he was sick in the cab of their lorry after having to drag the bodies aside to avoid running over them. The soldiers and the brothers share a meal at Mace's improvised table, toasting the French and British armies and the crushing of Germany. The brothers are courteous but constrained, and their account of the war's devastation deepens the sense of impending doom. Robbie Turner, who acts as translator, does not mention his own haunting detail—the leg in a tree—or his injury, not wanting to add to the horror or give life to the image while it remains at a distance, held there by wine and companionship.

Robbie's Wound and Psychological Torment

After the brothers leave, Robbie lies on his back in the barn, unable to sleep despite his exhaustion. The wound on his right side, just below his rib cage, throbs uncomfortably, and he can feel something sharp and close to the surface moving inside him when he walks—a piece of shrapnel. The barn's darkness and the corporals' snores provide no comfort; instead, exhaustion makes him vulnerable to the thoughts he wants least. He thinks about the French boy asleep in his bed who was killed by a bomb, and about the indifference with which men can lob shells into a landscape. This memory triggers a deeper, more painful recollection: his three and a half years in prison, where he spent sleepless nights thinking of another vanished boy—his own vanished life. He recalls the "stupidity and claustrophobia" of prison, the "hand squeezing on his throat," and contrasts it with the barn, where there are "wooded valleys, streams, sunlight on the poplars" and hope. He touches his top pocket, where Cecilia's last letter and the poem she sent are folded, and repeats her words to himself: "I'll wait for you. Come back." This hope is what drives him to survive, but the barn, with its darkness and stillness, forces him to confront the possibility that he might not make it.

The Corporals' Comradeship and the Morning After

The barn also highlights the bond between the three soldiers. Mace and Nettle, despite their teasing, follow Turner's lead and depend on him for navigation and survival. Mace's practical skills—making mattresses, setting up a table—provide a semblance of order and comfort in the chaos. The morning after their stay, they find a clay pot with a wooden lid outside the barn, containing a loaf and a wedge of cheese left by the old woman. Turner divides the provisions with a bowie knife, murmuring, "In case we're separated." This act of preparation underscores the precariousness of their journey. The barn, then, is not just a place of rest but a crucible where the men's characters are tested, where the horrors of war are confronted, and where the fragile hope of survival is clung to against the encroaching darkness.