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undershirt. It was just barely dawn, the first gray light touching the curtain. He unbolted the door and opened it. “Yes?”
    Poor Madame Fitou, who worshiped propriety in every corner of the world. Clutching a robe at her throat, hair in a net, her old face baggy and creased with sleep. The man by her side wore a postal uniform. “A telegram, monsieur,” she said.
    The man handed it over.
    Who was it for? The address made no sense. CASSON, Corporal Jean C. 3rd Regiment, 45th Division, XI Corps. Ordered to report to his unit at the regimental armory, Chateau de Vincennes, by 0600 hours, 11 May, 1940.
    “You must sign, monsieur,” said the man from the post office.

A COUNTRY AT WAR
    The column came into the village of St.-Remy, where the D 34 wandered through plowed fields of black earth that ran to the horizon, to the fierce blue sky. The mayor waited in front of the boulangerie, his sash of office worn from waist to shoulder over an ancient suit. A serious man with a comic face—walrus mustache, pouchy eyes—he waved a little tricolor flag at the column as it passed. It took two hours, but the mayor never stopped. All along the village street, from the Norman church to the Mairie with geraniums in planter boxes, the people stood and cheered —“Vive la France!” The war veterans and the old ladies in black and the kids in shorts and the sweet girls.
    A unit of the Section Cinématographique, attached to the Forty-fifth Division headquarters company, headed north in the column of tanks, gasoline trucks, and staff cars. The unit, assigned to take war footage for newsreels, included the producer Jean Casson—now Corporal Casson, in a khaki uniform—a camera operator named Meneval, like Casson recalled to service, and a commander, a career officer called Captain Degrave. They were supposed to have a director, Pierre Pinot, but he had reported to the divisional office at Vincennes, then disappeared; averse to war, the Wehrmacht, or the producer—Casson suspected it was the latter. The unit had a boxy Peugeot 401 painted army green, and an open truck, loaded with 55-gallon drums of gasoline, 35-millimeter film stock in cans, and two Contin-Souza cameras, protected from the weather by a canvas top stretched over the truck’s wooden framework.
    The village of St.-Remy disappeared around a bend, the road ran for a time by the river Ourcq. It was a slow, gentle river, the water held the reflections of clouds and the willows and poplars that lined the banks. To make way for the column a car had been driven off the road and parked under the trees. It was a large, black touring car, polished to a perfect luster. A chauffeur stood by the open door and watched the tanks rumbling past. Casson could just make out a face in the window by the backseat; pink, with white hair, perhaps rather on in years. The column was long, and probably the touring car had been there for some time, its silver grille pointed south, away from the war.
    Casson had hoped, in the taxi on the way to the fortress at Vincennes, that it was all a magnificent farce—the work of the French bureaucracy at the height of its powers. But it wasn’t that way at all and in his heart he knew it. At the divisional headquarters, a long line of forty-year-old men. The major in charge had been stern, but not unkind. He’d produced Casson’s army dossier, tied in khaki ribbon, his name lettered in capitals across the cover. “You will leave for the front in the morning, Corporal,” he’d said, “but you may contact whoever you like and let them know that you’ve been returned to active duty.”
    From a pay phone on the wall of the barracks he’d called Gabriella and told her what had happened. She asked what she could do. Call Marie-Claire, he said, keep the office open as long as possible, explain to the bank. Yes, she said, she understood. There was nothing but composure in her voice, yet Casson somehow knew there were tears on her face. He wondered, for a