, not a sign.

The sense of loneliness and remoteness that the absence of the civil
population produces everywhere in eastern France is increased by the
fact that all the names and distances on the mile-stones have been
scratched out and the sign-posts at the cross-roads thrown down. It was
done, presumably, to throw the enemy off the track in September: and the
signs have never been put back. The result is that one is forever losing
one's way, for the soldiers quartered in the district know only the
names of their particular villages, and those on the march can tell you
nothing about the places they are passing through. We had got badly
off our road several times during the trip, but on the last day's run
Rechamp was in his own country, and knew every yard of the way--or
thought he did. We had turned off the main road, and were running along
between rather featureless fields and woods, crossed by a good many
wood-roads with nothing to distinguish them; but he continued to push
ahead, saying:

"We don't turn till we get to a manor-house on a stream, with a big
paper-mill across the road." He went on to tell me that the mill-owners
lived in the manor, and were old friends of his people: good old local
stock, who had lived there for generations and done a lot for the
neighbourhood.

"It's queer I don't see their village-steeple from this rise. The
village is just beyond the house. How the devil could I have missed the
turn?" We ran on a little farther, and suddenly he stopped the motor
with a jerk. We were at a cross-road, with a stream running under the
bank on our right. The place looked like an abandoned stoneyard. I never
saw completer ruin. To the left, a fortified gate gaped on emptiness; to
the right, a mill-wheel hung in the stream. Everything else was as flat
as your dinner-table.

"Was this what you were trying to see from that rise?" I asked; and I
saw a tear or two running down his face.

"They were the kindest people: their only son got himself shot the first
month in Champagne--"

He had jumped out of the car and was standing staring at the level
waste. "The house was there--there was a splendid lime in the court. I
used to sit under it and have a glass of _vin cris de Lorraine_ with the
old people.... Over there, where that cinder-heap is, all their children
are buried." He walked across to the grave-yard under a blackened
wall--a bit of the apse of the vanished church--and sat down on a
grave-stone