Later this scene was followed by the “inevitable looting” of abandoned mechtas: … We turned the village over like a field. After a while, unable to find anything, we amused ourselves by smashing the whole place, through sheer joy of destruction. Old wedding dresses, which we discovered carefully folded at the bottom of every box, were hung derisively from trees in grotesque shapes, and then dragged through the mud. Some dressed themselves up in women’s clothes.…The waste was so great that there was nothing left to eat amongst the rubbish. Picture of a gone age. But then war is ageless.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 520