The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1915-06-16

.uins. These particularly impressed
ne. They were so friendly, and not
he least shy or Unconscious. They
;ried hard not to laugh at my French.
The most impressive sight of the day
vas the hundreds, and I might say,
thousands, of graves that I passed for
niles and miles. Each French grave
with its little t~ri-colcr and flowers,
md each German with its little wood
en- cross and stenciled "Allemande"
md fowers-always the flowers.
The fields were all under cultivation
md very green and fresh loking. One
could hardly visualize the scene of a
few months ago. About Is miles
from Meaux we passed along the his
toric mile of poplar lined road (my
idea of "France"D so we'll described
by R. H. Davis in his with the
Allies" Here the trees two and
three feet in diameter at the base
were literally shot of, and still lie
sprawled in the bitches. The limbs
hanging down looked very much like
the blazes we made as kids in Cash
iers, to mark a trail, only these twigs
were Is inches in diameter. Many
uneXploded shells still appear high
up, imbedded in the trunks, and
others passed through two feet Of
live wood, leaving holes as smooth
and round as if made with an auger.
For a mile the trunks at the height
of a mans head were fuzzy" from
the frightful rifle and machine gun
fire that ragged here for 48 hours. I
saw dozens of the red French caps in
the bitches and fields. Here and
there a gray German overcoat, or
what was left of it, showed as a re-
minder of that awful day.. 1t is re-
ported that 1000 mer were killed in
this mile of road those two days, and
in one grave there lie over a thous-
and Germans killed in a wheat field
300 yards from the French machine
guns (Which were invented by an
American and refused by our army
Over this big grave a huge cross had
been erected by boiling a 20-foot log
blown from a poplar by a German
shell, to the trunk it came from. At
the foot were the inevitable flowers,
placed there by the people the Ger
mans came to wipe out. You can't
beat the French. While I stood there
an old priest came up the road, head
uncovered, and passing the German
grave, he stopped and mumbled q
prayer. He then saluted us for
several seconds, and walked off. Over
a single grave, someone had spread a
gray German o%vercoat, and there it
has been since the fight. I wanted a
German button, but not bad enough
to take it here. 1 wonder how many
women and children that big German
grave means everything to. They will
never know where those poor fellows
lie, as the day was hot and unless a
menace to their own health, the Ger
mans ignore their dead. Hence the
French buried them, and heller skel-
ter, as hot weather was not over, and
they had no time to catalogue the
little zinc numbers attached to each
mans wrist. But afte. all, that's a
small matter. They are missing"
and that word serves to keep hope
going, and perhaps it halps-I don't
A Word as to Trenches.
I could go on and on, and tell much
of inspecting the new trenches Joffre
is digging across France, but 1 must
stop somewhere. However, a word as
to the trenches. These are wonder
fully constructed, and built for five
years. Owing to u uniforms we got
down in them, and took pictures ad
lib. Standing in the trench as it is
nov built, my eyes were about Is
inches below the edge. By standing
on a shelf, I could just see over-so
how these Frenchmen expect to, 1
can't say. The walls give my Shout
ders about II inches on either side,
and are covered with willow osiers,
wicker work." to prevent washing.
The floors are paved with gravel and