As for the Germans, checked as they had been in their rush on France by
a foe whom they had regarded as too puny to count as a factor in the
war, they sacrificed themselves by hundreds and thousands to win
breathing space behind standing walls until their great seventeen-inch
siege guns could be brought from Essen and mounted by the force of
engineers who came for that purpose direct from the Krupp works.
In that portion of the town lying west of the Meuse we counted perhaps
ten houses that were leveled flat and perhaps twenty that were now but
burnt-out, riddled hulls of houses, as empty and useless as so many
shucked pea-pods. Of the bridges spanning the river, the principal one,
a handsome four-span structure of stone ornamented with stone figures of
river gods, lay now in shattered fragments, choking the current, where
the Belgians themselves had blown it apart. One more bridge, or perhaps
two--I cannot be sure--were closed to traffic because dynamite had made
them unsafe; but the remaining bridges, of which I think there were
three, showed no signs of rough treatment.
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