As a reason
for his refusal he said that explosives in the buried magazines were
beginning to go off, making it highly dangerous for spectators to
venture near them. However, he had no objection to our going to a
certain specified point within the zone of supposed safety. With a
noncommissioned officer to guide us we climbed up a miry footpath to the
crest of a low hill; and from a distance of perhaps a hundred yards we
looked across at what was left of Fort Loncin, one of the principal
defenses.
I am wrong there. We did not look at what was left of Fort Loncin.
Literally nothing was left of it. As a fort it was gone, obliterated,
wiped out, vanished. It had been of a triangular shape. It was of no
shape now. We found it difficult to believe that the work of human
hands had wrought destruction so utter and overwhelming. Where masonry
walls had been was a vast junk heap; where stout magazines had been
bedded down in hard concrete was a crater; where strong barracks had
stood was a jumbled, shuffled nothingness.
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