The moon had risen. Down
in the square the dead were still being piled
into trucks and driven away, so that, in the morning, when the Minister of Public Enlightenment issued a statement minimising the importance of the whole affair, no sceptical foreign newspaperman would be able to refute his casualty
figures. The few surviving wounded were
already in sick quarters at the garrison barracks, and therefore inaccessible.
The disabled tank had been hauled
onto a transporter and removed. The other tanks had been
retired, together with the self-propelled
eighty-eights. The square was being patrolled by two small armoured
cars. Now and again there would be a faint rattle of fire
from the outskirts of the city as stragglers or would-be escapers
were rounded up and killed. The building next door
had nearly burned itself out.
Text: Eric Ambler, The Night-Comers, London, William Heinemann Limited, 1956
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