It was a scrap-heap, if you like, but not a town.

Here had been a great trampling out of the grapes of wrath, and most sorrowful was the vintage that remained.
It was a hard thing to level these Belgian houses absolutely, for they were mainly built of stone or of thick brick coated over with a hard cement.

So, generally, the walls stood, even in Battice; but always the roofs were gone, and the window openings were smudged cavities, through which you looked and saw square patches of the sky if your eyes inclined upward, or else blackened masses of ruination if you gazed straight in at the interiors.

Once in a while one had been thrown flat.

Probably big guns operated here.