The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1917-11-16
DEsoLArIoN OF FRANCE
interesting Letter Received by Mr.
and Mrs. C. n. Harrington.

and Mrs. G. h. Harrington.
Mr.. and Mrs. Chelsea FL. Harring-
ton of this village have received an
interesting letter from Lieut.. A. 7,
Hoyle. former yardmaster for the
Rutland railroad at Rutland now with
the railway engineers in France. The
letter which is largely devoted to the
desolation wrought in France by the
war is published below, minus some
of the paragraphs of personal inter
est to the recipients:
"Somme' where in France,
October %. 1917.
Mr.. and Mrs. Harrington,
Bennington, Vermont, U. S. A.
My dear Friends:
Expect you were somewhat sur
prised to learn of my being real
soldier, but | just couldn't resist the
temptation to come over here and do
my little bit" and indeed l am very
happy to be here.
Lonesome? Oh, yes. get lonesome
What poor human being would not?
For / have a great many friends in
dear old u. S. A. and feel mighty
proud of most OF them. OF course,
when they offered me a commission
as 1st lieutenant, | accepted it, and
feel very proud of that too. But! |
do hope you will never be drafted n
have to come Wer to Sunny? ~
france, for wherever the war mas
been, one can certainly never picture,
by pen, the desolation and destruc-
ton it has wrought in this poor
country. For all you are able to see
is destroyed cities, villages, and
woods and farms-not semblance OF
civilization left at all. Why, a living
tree is a curiosity. and as for build
ings-there are none left at all, hard
ly one brick left on another. (Aii
the buildings here are of brick).
And where there was once a woods,
nothing but the stumps OF trees are
left. Truly, 1t is wonderful the
destructive power of one of those
large shells. When they burst, they
will take off a tree as clean as one
could cut it, even when 1t is two feet
in diameter. You can hardly see a
limb on any of them And the des-
truction of the land has been even
more complete-large deep holes
where shell has burst, and If were
to tell you, that one may hardly step
without going into one of them, you
would hardly believe it. But it's
Gods truth and some of them are 20
feet deep, and OF course, vary In dia-
meter. owing to the nature of the
ground, as it is nearly ell of yellow
clay. When it rains, and it has been
doing it now nearly every day this
month-why, one picks up hundred
pounds of it on his feet and starts to
walk off with 1t. But he doesn't get
very far. Oh. it is really very laugh
able and we ell of us have many a
hearty laugh at each other about run
ming off with some mans farm. And
it is mighty slippery too.
But this must have been beauti-
ful country prior to this war. as the
lay of the land ir-Sicates it from
every point of view, and there we're
so many villages about the size of
Bennington, only a short distance
apart. These same villages were full
Of trees, but what inc: term woods,
we would call clump Of trees.
We rarely see any civilians, would
YOU believe it? Have seen only one
woman in over four weeks. She
came back here week ago Sunday,
looking for her home. Came before
8 a. m, and it took her hours to To-
cate it, for there is not semblance
of street left. And when she final
ly did find where her home was they
dug down in the cellar and found
their gold ell there and jewelry too.
They went away very happy and it
really did my heart good to know
they found what they came after.
was in a destroyed town only
last Friday and another woman,
(school teacher) came back. She
could talk very good English and
told me and also pointed out there
where her school was. Then she
said, my lovely home stood out
there" and began to cry. ] had to
take out my handkerchief as well.
There was not sign of either school
house or home left. AS she went
away she shook her head many times.