As a fort it was gone, obliterated, wiped out, vanished.

It had been of a triangular shape.

It was of no shape now.

We found it difficult to believe that the work of human hands had wrought destruction so utter and overwhelming.

Where masonry walls had been was a vast junk heap; where stout magazines had been bedded down in hard concrete was a crater; where strong barracks had stood was a jumbled, shuffled nothingness.
Standing there on the shell-torn hilltop, looking across to where the Krupp surprise wrote its own testimonials at its first time of using, in characters so deadly and devastating, I found myself somehow thinking of that foolish nursery tale wherein it is recited that a pig built himself a house of straw, and the wolf came; and he huffed and he puffed and he blew the house down.