Others, worn out and emaciated, and bearing the
brand of the German army, had been mercifully destroyed; but the
greater number of them were the farm horses of peasants, still
wearing their head-stalls or the harness of the plough. That they
might not aid the enemy as remounts, the Germans in their retreat
had shot them. I saw four and five together in the yards of stables,
the bullet-hole of an automatic in the head of each. Others lay beside
the market cart, others by the canal, where they had sought water.
Less pitiful, but still evidencing the wastefulness of war, were the
motor-trucks, and automobiles that in the flight had been abandoned.
For twenty miles these automobiles were scattered along the road.
There were so many one stopped counting them. Added to their loss
were two shattered German airships. One I saw twenty-six kilometres
outside of Meaux and one at Bouneville. As they fell they had buried
their motors deep in the soft earth and their wings were twisted
wrecks of silk and steel.
All the fields through which the army passed had become waste land.
Shells had re-ploughed them.
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