There were big shell-holes
in the flower-beds, and trees had been torn down and flung across the
pathway, and there was a broken statue lying on the grass. Some French
and English soldiers tramped past. Then there was no living soul about
in the place which had been so crowded with life, with pretty women
and children, and young officers doing their shopping, and the
business of a city at work.
"It makes one understand what Rome was like after the barbarians had
sacked and left it," said a friend of mine.
"There is something ghastly about it," said another.
We stood round the Hotel du Rhin, shut up and abandoned. The house
next door had been wrecked, and it was scarred and wounded, but still
stood after that night of terror.
One day during its desolation I went to a banquet in Amiens, in the
cellars of the Hotel de Ville. It was to celebrate the Fourth of July,
and an invitation had been sent to me by the French commandant de
place and the English A. P. M.
It was a beau geste, gallant and romantic in those days of trouble,
when Amiens was still closely beleaguered, but safer now that
Australians and British troops were holding the lines strongly
outside, with French on their right southward from Boves and Hangest
Wood.
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