On this particular night, in such a village, an eighteen-year-old boy sat in the orderly room of a regimental headquarters, which was housed in a once pretentious but now sadly decrepit house. Rain leaked through the tiled roof and dribbled down into the room. Windows were long ago shattered and through cracks in the rude board barricades which had replaced the glass a rising wind was driving the rain. The boy sat at a rough wooden table waiting orders. Two weeks previously a letter had come, saying that his mother was seriously ill. Since that he had had no further word. He was desperately homesick. There had been as yet none of the danger and none of the thrill which seems to settle a man down, to the serious business of war.
A passing soldier had just told him that in a village some twelve kilometers distant two Salvation Army women were operating a hut. He longed desperately for the comfort of a woman of his own people and, sitting in the drafty, damp room, he wished that these two Salvationists were not so far away--that he could talk with them and confide in them. At last the wish grew so strong that he could no longer resist it.
He got up quietly, and silently slipped out into the rainy night. The darkness was so thick that he could not see objects six feet away. Walking through the mud was out of the question. He stumbled down, the street, once falling headlong into a muddy puddle, finally reaching the horse-lines, where, saying that he had an errand for the Colonel, he saddled a horse and slopped off into the night.
For a while he kept to the road, his horse occasionally taking fright, as a truck passed clanking slowly in the opposite direction, or a staff car turned out to pass him like a fleeting, ghostly shadow. By following the trees which lined the road at regular intervals he was fairly sure to keep the road. He was very tired and soon began to feel sleepy, but the driving storm, which by this time had assumed the proportions of a tempest, stung him to wakefulness. Once, at a cross-roads a Military Police stopped and questioned him and gave him directions upon his saying that he was carrying dispatches.
He went on. He dozed, only to be sharply awakened by a truck which almost ran him down. He must be more careful, he thought to himself, feeling utterly alone and miserable. But in spite of his resolution his eyes soon closed again. He was awakened, this time by his horse stumbling over some unseen obstacle. He could see nothing in any direction. The blackness and rain shut him in like a fog. He turned at right angles to find the trees which lined the road, but there were no trees. He swung his horse around and went in the other direction, but he found no trees--only an impenetrable darkness which pressed in upon him with a heaviness which might almost have been weighed. He was lost--utterly lost.