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"A Boy in France" is a short story by J. D. Salinger. It is the second part of a trilogy of stories...

"A Boy in France" is a short story by J. D. Salinger. It is the second part of a trilogy of stories following the character Babe Gladwaller. The first story is "Last Day of the Last Furlough", and the third is "The Stranger". Through the three stories, the character Babe undergoes a great deal of change due to the war. "A Boy in France" is one of the few stories in which Salinger deals with combat in the war. The setting is at the front, and follows a soldier in his foxhole, trying to maintain his sanity by reading and rereading a note sent from his sister. In this last respect, Babe is a forerunner of Holden Caulfield (of The Catcher in the Rye). The story was first published in The Saturday Evening Post, March 31, 1945. It subsequently appeared in the 1946 collection Post Stories 1942 - 45, edited by Ben Hibbs. The story starts with Babe finishing his army rations. He makes small talk with a comrade and looks for a fox hole to rest in. He silently prays that he will not be hit for not digging his own trench, but he is in too much pain to dig one himself. He finds a "kraut hole" with a bloody blanket still there. He jumps into it, and tries to set up camp. However, he is soon