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58 WITH THE GERMAN ARMIES IN THE WEST
town looked by no means dead and deserted, for a large
proportion of its inhabitants had returned after the heavy
hand of war had moved further westward, and life had begun
to settle down again in its old groove.
Outside the town stand the naked walls of a house ravaged
by fire. The German troops had been fired upon from its
windows and in accordance with the custom of war it had been
set fire to. We are travelling a little too fast to gather more
than a hasty impression, but wherever I look I see the devastat-
ing effects of battle, I think to myself as we go along that the
sooner I get accustomed to such sights the better. On both
sides of the roads, in fields and ditches, French knapsacks
and tattered fragments of uniforms are lying about. An
upturned motor-car lies by the roadside, evidently flung
aside so as not to be in the way of the trafhc, and a little
further on is a motor-lorry in the same position. Here we
see broken bits of rifles and ammunition wagons, or the
crescent-shaped shield of a field-gun. A grave with a wooden
cross strikes the eye, then another and yet another, a whole
row of graves—here is the resting-place of soldiers who have
fallen in the fighting. In the middle of the road are a couple
of shell holes filled with rain water—these are dangerous, for
one is apt in the hurry to take them for shallow puddles. But
von Gwinner has travelled this way several times and knows
the road.
To the right and left of the road are deep, narrow trenches
with shallow parapets ; but the soldiers have gone away
by now and the plain is silent—silent where not a month
ago 300,000 soldiers were fighting for their lives. In many
fields the harvest has been brought in by German troops to
supply their own needs. By the side of ditches, in woods and
copses, small, low huts are still standing, built of branches
and boughs, in which the French soldiers had sought pro-
tection from rain and cold. The German infantry, on the
other hand, is equipped with shelter tents. Each man carries
with his equipment a part of the brown tarpaulin, which,
joined together, forms a temporary shelter for a certain
number of soldiers.
We now pass through a stretch of wooded country. The
French are very clever in maintaining their positions on wooded
ground. They often succeed in contriving concealed positions
for machine-guns in the leafy tops of trees. Ravines with
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