And through the door we saw half a loaf of bread and several bottles on a table.

We went by a rather pretentious house, with pear trees in front of it and a big barn alongside it; and right under the eaves of the barn I picked up the short jacket of a French trooper, so new and fresh from the workshop that the white cambric lining was hardly soiled.

The figure 18 was on the collar; we decided that its wearer must have belonged to the Eighteenth Cavalry Regiment.

Behind the barn we found a whole pile of new knapsacks--the flimsy play-soldier knapsacks of the French infantrymen, not half so heavy or a third so substantial as the heavy sacks of the Germans, which are all bound with straps and covered on the back side with undressed red bullock's hide.
Until now we had seen, in all the silent, ruined village, no human being.

The place fairly ached with emptiness.