The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1917-12-10
TRAIL OF THE HUN
IS DISSOLUTION
Scattered Dumps of Rubbish Mark the
Sites of Once Populous Villages
in France.
(By Frederic William viii of the Vigil
lantes)

tby Frederic William VIII OF the Nlgl
lantes.)
Somewhere in France never mag
ined in the widest flights of fancy about
war that to gain an objective under
modern battle conditions an army has
not to lay waste a position or a village
but practically countryside. You can
motor nowadays for hours in the region
generally known as the British front,
sweep the landscape for miles in every
f, direction, and see nothing but ruins of
what used to be human habitatons
Your guides point to scattered dump
discriminate rubbish of all sorts, lin
iof brick, mortar, twisted timbers, in
| ing either side of the roadway along
which you are spinning. Here and there
at irregular intervals the bare, charrcd
remains of what once were trees stick
up from amid the debris and the chaos.
There is not suggestion of a standing
wall anywhere, nor even of door or
window frame, and, of course( no sem
blance of a roof. There are only cellars
into which houses, shops, churches, stores,
schools everything- been thrown
into crazy holdall of a town wide
grave.
I'VE are now going through-----."
remarks our military chaperone, laconi
cally, and we recognize the name of
place prominent in the fighting during
some important push" weeks or months
ago--now wiped from the face of the
earth as etfectually as if honest French
peasants and villagers had never striven
through the generations to make com
Portable abode for themselves and theirs
One hopes that the ministering angels
permitted them to evacuate the town be |
fore their homes were splintered and !
crushed by l5-inch death dealers. One !
wonders how many human remains may
stu lie buried beneath the wreckage of /
beams and sandstone. One speculates !
whether men, women and children who |
eontrived to escape the shells will ever
again be able to start life with their
dwellings, places of business and cult
waited fields mangled and devastated. One
is persuaded that stupendous as is the
work OF destruction wrought by twenti-
eth century warfare, the task of recon
will be enormously more gigan-
tic still. Towns that took years to
make have been shot to pieces in an
hour.
have heard of towns in our own wild
and woody west that have been shot
up. But--is surely the last word
m complete and scientific perforation. In
July 1914, it was a happy, thriving com
nunity of $4,000 or 10000 inhabitants.
, smiling town, with a wonderful Grand
Place and picturesque Petit Place,
noble Gothic cathedral and splendid |
own hall. Round the Grand Place ran |
! quadrangle of colonnaded houses of I
architectural beauty. For /
he rest, the town was typically French, 3
~ which mean a complex of neat stores /
md dwelling houses, churches and fac. :
cries, schools and estaminets (cafes) {
Today there is not solitary building of '
ny kind in the whole town that is not '
ntirely or partially wrecked There is
ot single thing of wood brick or B
tone that is intact. Not more than /,
90 or 1000 people live there now, and :
hey must hide in cellars most of the
ime, lest Boche shells search them out.
Ieath turks In every street, even though
he British have held it for more than
wo years and extended their lines be- ,
ond 1T considerably during the past
nw months, Though they have long |
nee turned the town into scraps of its
primer seff, the Germans seem filled with
n Unsuitable lust to flatten out even
ne scraps. You walk through the Grand
lace, hugging close to the walls by or
er of your army guide, in perpetual
anger that souvenir from Krupps will
md at your feet and send fragments of
on flying into the ethereal eternal. But
on are only living the life that the
ritish garrison and indomitable little
william rearguard of 1900 or 1000 PEG. i
e-mostly old men and women too :
agile to seek safer abode further be.
md the lines-are living day in and day
1t. s
This thought occurred to me while sur :
wing the tumbled- down cathedral and !
ince meated town hall and the limtless
I'D of desolation and devastation lying S