It was a pitiful adventure to go through Amiens in the days of its desolation, and we who had known its people so well hated its loneliness. All abandoned towns have a tragic aspect—I often think of Douai, which was left with all its people under compulsion of the enemy—but Amiens was strangely sinister with heaps of ruins in its narrow streets, and the abominable noise of high-velocity shells in flight above its roofs, and crashing now in one direction and now in another.
One of our sentries came out of a little house near the Place and said:
“Keep as much as possible to the west side of the town, sir. They’ve been falling pretty thick on the east side. Made no end of a mess!”