Crossing a sunken road, where trenches for riflemen to kneel in and fire
from had been dug in the sides of the bank--a road our guide said was
full of dead men after the fight--we came very soon to the site of the
French camp. Here, from the medley and mixture of an indescribable
jumble of wreckage, certain objects stand out, as I write this, detached
and plain in my mind; such things, for example, as a straw basket of
twelve champagne bottles with two bottles full and ten empty; a box of
lump sugar, broken open, with a stain of spilled red wine on some of the
white cubes; a roll of new mattresses jammed into a natural receptacle
at the root of an oak tree; a saber hilt of shining brass with the blade
missing; a whole set of pewter knives and forks sown broadcast on the
bruised and trampled grass. But there was no German relic in the lot
--you may be sure of that. Farther down, where the sunken road again
wound across our path, we passed an old-fashioned family carriage jammed
against the bank, with one shaft snapped off short. Lying on the dusty
seat-cushion was a single silver teaspoon.

Almost opposite the carriage, against the other bank, was a cavalryman's
boot; it had been cut from a wounded limb. The leather had been split
all the way down the leg from the top to the ankle, and the inside of
the boot was full of clotted, dried blood. And just as we turned back
to return to the town I saw a child's stuffed cloth doll--rag dolls I
think they call them in the States--lying flat in the road; and a wagon
wheel or a camion wheel had passed over the head, squashing it flat.

I am not striving for effect when I tell of this trifle. When you write
of such things as a battlefield you do not need to strive for effect.
The effects are all there, ready-made, waiting to be set down. Nor do I
know how a child's doll came to be in that harried, uptorn place. I