The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1918-10-09
TRACES OF
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to the ranks of the enemy. A German
soldier found in ruined village sur
rendered, trembling with fear.
What are you afraid Off" his captor
inquired. "We are not going to harm
you"
With the acid smell of blackened
masonry in his nostrils, with smoke
rising from village fired by his COM
panions in plain sight and with puffs
Of blue smoke from German poison
GUS shells marking the line of the
Suippe a little farther back, the cap
tive rejoined:
"But what will the French soldiers
do when they get into Germany"
His interrogation merely remarked
that it was noticeable that the Ger
man soldier who has fired a French
peasants home after taking shelter
in it for four. years has no word OF
sympathy, excepting for his own peo-
pie to whom the war is coming nearer
and nearer with every advance the al
lies are making.
Girls Work In Vineyard.
With the crumbling line along the
Aisne canal north of Rheims, and the
line along the Vesle to the east, the
Germans abandoned Nogent-la-Ab-
besse, to the east of Rheims, and Bri-
have been the jailers of Rheims for
four years. Nogent-la-Abbesse had
been an observation point from which
the Germans had watched the city
and country over a wide area and d.
reted artillery fire which wrecked vii
lagos that nestle among the mountains
of Rheims and took aim at the wine
growers cultivating vineyards on the
slopes, and the peasant girls gathering
the grapes that grew in spite of the
neglect enforced by the war. Thirty
of these peasant girls came back to-
day for the fifth war harvest. In one
of the localities that has been most
intensely beaten by the German shrap-
mel they were working today.
"The picking is meagre," one said.
"but if the wine is scarce it Is all the
more precious, for this is the vintage
of victory
It was from in front of this formid-
able position that the American boys
Of the Foreign Legion fired their first
shots for France in the fall of 1914.
The trenches where they were sta
toned during the first winter cam
paign are still plainly visible in the
chalky clay. .s
Traces Of the four years Of fight
ing are found all over the ground east
Of Rheims, from Pompelle fort around
the mountains. 1t was possible dur
ing visit today to see what it had
cost the Germans to hold the posi-
tions they were finally obliged to give
up for nothing.
Villages Intact.
All the villages on the main road
from Rheims eastward are more or
less intact, for the fighting there was
at too close quarters to enable either
side to use heavy guns. They all
showed traces Of repeat struggles
from street to street and from house
to house. Every wall of every house
or inclosure is pitted by machine gun
bullets and by shrapnel.
Long stretches of wires before the
trenches are almost intact, running
through streets or cutting between
houses to mark the lines where the
Germans were still at close grips with
the French two days ago. Streets
and roads are lacerated by earth
works and are in some places up
heaved by mines, and impossible.
The work of destruction done by the
enemy in his hurried flight was in
comparably less than that of else
where, for it had long ago been al
most complete.