"Why, even the roads have all been obliterated," Tom was telling himself, as he looked, overcome with a feeling of horror.
Every sign of humanity had been swept away; roads and woods were gone utterly; and where the restful French villages once nestled, nothing could be seen but gray smears where stone walls had tumbled together.
Still further along he discerned Fort Vaux and Fort Douaumont, scenes of desperate fighting when the great German forward movement had reached this pinnacle, but not fated to remain always in the hands of the invaders—not while Frenchmen lived to clutch their weapons and say: "They shall not pass!"
Still further they sailed.
Now Tom could see the uneven lines that marked the trenches of the enemy, though as a rule these were so well hidden under "camouflage" that it required a practiced eye to pick their location out.
Columns of muddy smoke spurting up here and there told where high explosives were still tearing further into this area. All this and much more Tom saw on that first visit of his to the upper currents above the long fiercely contested field of Verdun where the German Crown Prince had seemed ready to sacrifice a million men if necessary, in order to attain the object he had in view.
