photographs do not give any idea of the indescribable mass of ruins
to which our guns reduced it. The chaos is so utter that the very
line of the streets is all but obliterated.

"It was indeed a scene of desolation into which the Rifle
Brigade--the first regiment to enter the village, I believe--raced
headlong. Of the church only the bare shell remained, the interior
lost to view beneath a gigantic mound of débris. The little
churchyard was devastated, the very dead plucked from their graves,
broken coffins and ancient bones scattered about amid the fresher
dead, the slain of that morning--gray-green forms asprawl athwart
the tombs. Of all that once fair village but two things remained
intact--two great crucifixes reared aloft, one in the churchyard,
the other over against the château. From the cross, that is the
emblem of our faith, the figure of Christ, yet intact though all
pitted with bullet marks, looked down in mute agony on the slain in
the village.

"The din and confusion were indescribable. Through the thick pall
of shell smoke Germans were seen on all sides, some emerging half
dazed from cellars and dugouts, their hands above their heads,
others dodging round the shattered houses, others firing from the
windows, from behind carts, even from behind the overturned
tombstones. Machine guns were firing from the houses on the
outskirts, rapping out their nerve-racking note above the noise of
the rifles.

"Just outside the village there was a scene of tremendous
enthusiasm. The Rifle Brigade, smeared with dust and blood, fell in
with the Third Gurkhas with whom they had been brigaded in India.