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Literally this town no longer existed. It was a scrap-heap, if you
like, but not a town. Here had been a great trampling out of the grapes
of wrath, and most sorrowful was the vintage that remained.
It was a hard thing to level these Belgian houses absolutely, for they
were mainly built of stone or of thick brick coated over with a hard
cement. So, generally, the walls stood, even in Battice; but always the
roofs were gone, and the window openings were smudged cavities, through
which you looked and saw square patches of the sky if your eyes inclined
upward, or else blackened masses of ruination if you gazed straight in
at the interiors. Once in a while one had been thrown flat. Probably
big guns operated here. In such a case there was an avalanche of broken
masonry cascading out into the roadway.
Midway of the mile-long avenue of utter waste which we now traversed we
came on a sort of small square. Here was the yellow village church. It
lacked a spire and a cross, and the front door was gone, so we could see
the wrecked altar and the splintered pews within.


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