The Chickasha daily express. (Chickasha, Indian Territory [Okla.]) 1899-current, 1915-11-29
SOLDIERS BURIED
in OWN TRENCHES
Bodies Of $4,000 Germans Thus
Inferred; New Cemetery Made
for Fallen French Fighters;
Gruesome Debris Removed
By WILLIAM PHILIP SIMMS.
U. P. staff correspondent.

D1 w t4<l<ltn A1ll<lI OtmM0-
U. P. staff correspondent.
WITH THE FRANCE ARMY IN
CHAMPAGNE, Oct 24.-(By mail -
Cleaning up battlefield is a whooping
big job. The battle of Champagne be-
gan month ago and several regi-
ments are still trying to make it pre-
sentable.
This battlefield, which will be known
in future textbooks as in many ways
unique, is Is miles long and miles
wide, running east and west As the
French advanced they faced the Ger
mans at its southern edge of it, their
trenches, cut in chalk white as curds,
being so to 200 yards apart.
Two months before their drive the
French began to accumulate ammuni-
ton; mass artillery. dig trenches, built
narrow and standard gauge railways;
wide, well graded rock-and-gravel high
ways and other things of the sort.
September 22 the French artillery
turned loose hell's fury of shells. A
German officers letter, interrupted by
death, said the shelling resembled the
collapse Of a world. Practically every
square yard of this As square miles OF
chalky ground was tossed into the air
by explosives. White as sepulchre,
it is hard to believe that ever again
will man be able to make his home
amid these fields.
For three days the French poured
melinite and chedite into the Germans
barbed-wire entanglements. steel tur-
rets, machine guns. armored trenches.
secret traps, hidden defenses, invisible
wire coils with cutting edges, centers
Of resistance, fortified woods and what
not
The Germans, their food supply cut
off because supply trains could not
approach huddled at the bolton. or
their bomb shelters, twenty feet under
the ground, while their trenches were
blown to nothing. Some companies
lost half their men during the bonn
bardment alone. Underground ammu-
milton stores exploded; shelters were
ripped up as though they were rooted
with paper instead of yards of stone
and earth. The world never saw such
shell fire.
At 9:15 o'clock a. M. on the twenty
fifth the French infantry charged, and
at 9:15 and half the house-cleaning
began. AS the attackers entered what
was left of the German first line
trenches, the cleanup began with the
bayoneting all remaining Germans who
offered resistance and making prison
ers Of those who surrendered. Then
the dead were thrown out and the posi-
tion turned around for possible coun-
ter-attack.
The dead Germans were buried in
their own trenches have heard that
twenty to twenty-five thousand bodies
we're thus disposed of. while bodies at
the bottom of cave-ins, under de-
stroyed bomb shelters and in like
places we're left in the graves Of their
own choosing.
Brand new cemeteries we're made for
the French who fell. The new graves
are curious. There being no time to
place crosses or headstones to mark
the graves. a wine bottle, with name
and mat-iculation number corked in
side. is stuck down in the middle Of
each new mound. In cases where iden-
tification was impossible, the dead are
buried in a common grave with some
such mark as this serving for all:
"Here lie the bodies of 2S French
soldiers who died for their country"
The dead removed, the cleaning-up
continues. Broken transports. shat
tered wheels. splintered planks, cloth
| ing. German and French helmets. am
nlunition. guns, swords. books, shoes.
revolvers and numberless other odds
and ends including arms and legs lie
promiscuously about on the churned-