The station stood just beyond the walls, with a park at one side of it, but the park had become a timber deadfall.

At the approach of the enemy hundreds of splendid trees had been felled to clear the way for gunfire from the inner defenses in the event that the Germans got by the outer circle of fortresses.

After the Germans took the forts, though, the town surrendered, so all this destruction had been futile.

There were acres of ragged stumps and, between the stumps, jungles of overlapping trunks and interlacing boughs from which the dead and dying leaves shook off in showers.

One of our party, who knew something of forestry, estimated that these trees were about forty years old.
"I suppose," he added speculatively, "that when this war ends these people will replant their trees.