A soldier's tale

the long version

Normandy, 1944. In a small village near Bayeux, a young soldier comes across an isolated farmhouse, where a woman waits alone. As they talk, three grim-faced Frenchmen arrive to take her away for 'questioning', telling him she betrayed their Resistance colleagues to the Gestapo, through her SS lover. The soldier is armed, and forces them to leave her -- but they all know he will eventually have to move on, and the woman will be theirs. What follows has been described as both appalling and the finest love story -- the grain of sand in which one can see all war.