On a windy day in Georgia, a wife watches an army band procession and thinks about her husband, Lieutenant John Marsh, who will lead his division. His call to serve as Second Lieutenant first came a year ago, and he brushed it off as nothing serious. He said that he had accepted his reserve commission on a whim during college and would not actually go. He believed that the war in Europe with Hitler would not escalate. Now, his wife sits with all the other army wives and mothers and hears the band strike up a tune. She knows that her husband will not come home. As she watches her husband’s division join the procession, she is filled with despair when she notices how many people have been added to his battalion. The new men have been added with the expectation that the battalion will lose many of their men in the war. Marsh's wife sickens at the thought and listens on to the music.