Norwich bulletin., 1917-01-11
STORIES OF THE WAR
All That War Left Was Basement
 Wall

The following letter shows what a French soldier found on feturning home:
 T was on horseback as far the town of M, and then I went alone on foot as far as Le Forest. l followed no road or path, and yet met no ob- least bit of wall, not the least iiGtle hedge. That already made up E7y mind as to what our family's home must be.
 '"The cemetery is just at the en- trance to the village, on the side where came. Poor cemetery-it Is all upturned from bottom to top, to. a depth of three yards! Without plan, you could not find the place of sin gle grave. If you did not see fere and there a few scattered bones, you would never guess that it had been a burying-place.
 "Our house was about three hun dred feet further on. Two things helped me to get my bearings and recognize the spot. A little pear tree and one apple, tree still marked what had been the yard. Of the house, nothing was left that rose above the remained but scattered pieces oe an oven.
 "Happiness of Rural Life."
 T stirred up the earth to tr.T to find something to remember. The first object I brought to light was a copybook of my younger brother By the irony of things I read on the GOV CT, under the heading Happiness of Rural Life verses from Virgil: Hap DIV the dweller Of the country, if he knows his happiness! Far from strife and battles the duly generous cath showers easy food upon him. (Fore put in English verses like there. but I can only give the French boys text literaliy.)
 Tn such place of desolation, don't you find such verses 9 piercing con trast with reality? Virgil did rot foresee that, centuries after him, civ ilization would see such horrors.
 The spirit of good and the spirit of evil are two ravening workers and the latter has crossed our home i;l it's devastation. The other must now re- pair the harm-but how?
 q gathered up next few old pos tai cards from before the war. But the find which interested me most was the little blank book of the wash lists, which belonged to my sister Sac marked down the linen she had To wash for the Boches. There were only two places where payment was marked-'received marks and re ceived 1 mark My sister indicated the owners of each bundle of linen as best she could, by their name or by their features-for example. big nose big mouth,' white eyes red eyes or again orderly in such house or officer in M and so on.
 'In the little blank book there was other writing in my sisters hand. and it must have charmed the Bocnes if they read it: We are the children of France, the country of liberty. Our motto is-Hope-and our ideal-Fra- ternity.'
 T was looking with great sadness at all these things when a sergeant came up to me; he had been ciia.Fed with the direction of road-mendtng in the village. He said to me-You must be from here. to be so moved 2 Then he told me they had foun1 at the spot where our house was, a sack of beans and another of green coffee and a school prize of my sister waen and this he gave to me
 50, from my pilgrimage, I brought away a book, a copybool, and four it. frustrated cards. If it hadn't been for ried off the church bell and things which had been on the altar,
 Nothing Left of the Town.
 'I went back and stopped at the town of M. There is nothing left of it but a basement wall emerging a foot and a half from the ground. Not 9 tree is left unbroken. The fields are full of holes like a sieve.
 How are we to go back to these ruins without tools, without buildings without money? For we must live while we wait for the first crops-rhe the fields. While waiting for tais first crop to grow, nature will bring her own first remedy, next spring, to the ruins of our poor village which the infantrymen are levehing now. Over what was once peace and rran- quillity and is to-day nothingness it will cast a veil of green. We shall be able to mow the grass, for there is not a brick to blunt the scythe-destruc- tion has spared nothing"