Somme that was higher than this swede. He grew the tallest thing for
miles and miles. He dominated the waste. Two cats slunk by him from a
shattered farm: he towered above them contemptuously.

A partridge ran by him once, far, far below his lofty leaves. The
night winds mourning in No Man's Land seemed to sing for him alone.

It was surely the hour of the swede. For him, it seemed, was No Man's
Land. And there I met him one night by the light of a German rocket
and brought him back to our company to cook.

Weeds and Wire

Things had been happening. Divisions were moving. There had been,
there was going to be, a stunt. A battalion marched over the hill and
sat down by the road. They had left the trenches three days march to
the north and had come to a new country. The officers pulled their
maps out; a mild breeze fluttered them; yesterday had been winter and
to-day was spring; but spring in a desolation so complete and
far-reaching that you only knew of it by that little wind. It was
early March by the calendar, but the wind was blowing out of the gates
of April. A platoon commander, feeling that mild wind blowing, forgot
his map and began to whistle a tune that suddenly came to him out of
the past with the wind. Out of the past it blew and out of the South,
a merry vernal tune of a Southern people. Perhaps only one of those
that noticed the tune had ever heard it before. An officer sitting
near had heard it sung; it reminded him of a holiday long ago in the
South.

``Where did you hear that tune?'' he asked the platoon commander.