It was worse than anything I ever saw -- worse than anything I ever shall see, I think.
These hollow shells about us were like the picked cadavers of houses.
Ends of burnt and broken rafters stood up like ribs.

Empty window openings stared at us like the eye sockets in skulls.

It was not a town upon which we looked, but the dead and rotting bones of a town.
Just over the ragged line that marked the lowermost limits of the destructive fury of the conquerors, and inside the section which remained intact, we traversed a narrow street called--most appropriately, I thought--the Street of Paul the Penitent, and passed a little house on the shutters of which was written, in chalked German script, these words: "A Grossmutter"-- grandmother--"ninety-six years old lives here.

Don't disturb her." Other houses along here bore the familiar line, written by German soldiers who had been billeted in them: "Good people.

Leave them alone!" The people who enjoyed the protection of these public testimonials were visible, a few of them.