But as we approached the corner where we had waited
for news of de Broqueville one of these shells burst very close to us
and ploughed up a big hole in a field across the roadside ditch. We
drove more swiftly with empty cars and came into the streets of
Dixmude. They were sheets of fire, burning without flame but with a
steady glow of embers. They were but cracked shells of houses,
unroofed and swept clean of their floors and furniture, so that all but
the bare walls and a few charred beams had been consumed by the
devouring appetite of fire. Now and again one of the beams broke
and fell with a crash into the glowing heart of the furnace, which had
once been a Flemish house, raising a fountain of sparks.
Further into the town, however, there stood, by the odd freakishness
of an artillery bombardment, complete houses hardly touched by
shells and, very neat and prim, between masses of shapeless ruins.
One street into which I drove was so undamaged that I could hardly
believe my eyes, having looked back the night before to one great
torch which men called "Dixmude." Nevertheless some of its window-
frames had bulged with heat, and panes of glass fell with a splintering
noise on to the stone pavement.
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