To reach it we ran a matter of seven kilometers
through a succession of villages, each with its mutely eloquent tale of
devastation and general smash to tell; each with its group of
contemptuously tolerant German soldiers on guard and its handful of
natives, striving feebly to piece together the broken and bankrupt
fragments of their worldly affairs.
Approaching Des Sarts more nearly we came to a longish stretch of
highway, which the French had cleared of visual obstructions in
anticipation of resistance by infantry in the event that the outer ring
of defenses gave way before the German bombardment. It had all been
labor in vain, for the town capitulated after the outposts fell; but it
must have been very great labor. Any number of fine elm trees had been
felled and their boughs, stripped now of leaves, stuck up like bare
bones. There were holes in the metaled road where misaimed shells had
descended, and in any one of these holes you might have buried a horse.
A little gray church stood off by itself upon the plain.
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