The deep ditches on either side of the road were clogged with such things.
The dropped caps and the abandoned knapsacks were always French caps and French knapsacks, cast aside, no doubt, for a quick flight after the melee.
The Germans had charged after shelling the town, and then the French had fallen back--or at least so we deduced from the looks of things.

In the debris was no object that bespoke German workmanship or German ownership.

This rather puzzled us until we learned that the Germans, as tidy in this game of war as in the game of life, made it a hard-and-fast rule to gather up their own belongings after every engagement, great or small, leaving behind nothing that might serve to give the enemy an idea of their losses.
We went by the church.

Its spire was gone; but, strange to say, a small flag--the Tricolor of France--still fluttered from a window where some one had stuck it.

We went by the taverne, or wine shop, which had a sign over its door--a creature remotely resembling a blue lynx.