Weekly journal-miner., 1918-12-04
DESOLATION OF A GHASTLY SORT IS
 WAR ZONES FATE

WITH THE AMERICAN FOR ] CES IN FRANCE, Nov. 30. - The country over which the Americans fought their way northwest from Nerdun presents a picture of ruin, destruction and desolation. The viii
 lages are uninhabited and homes
 seem but sepulchres
 Torn by mines causing huge crat- CTS. gashed by bombardments which
 made hundreds of thousands of she'll holes and strewn with broken or
 abandoned guns, wagons, heaps of
 ammunition, helmets and all the
 other debris of four years of desper-
 ate fighting, the whole route betrays the awful effects of war.
 Everywhere, in every direction and protecting each slightest angle and
 nook, across the roads until torn
 away by shells or human hands, are
 countless strands of barbed wire,
 most of ii rusted by the rains craz- fly topsy-turvy on its supporting
 stakes that have fallen to right and left. "If it takes four years to win"
 said some casual visitor to the front,
 it will take six years to roll up the
 barbed wire that has been used in
 winning il.
 Take, for instance, the trip from ruined. deSolate AVoncourt north
 ward 10 Maancourt and Montfaucon, the scene of some of the bitterest
 fighting of the entire war. Avocourt
 was in ruins before ever the Ameri-
 can offensive started.
 For a solid mile northward the road winds across foothills that once were covered with green trees but now are shorn and bare. Gigantic
 mines have torn the road in twain and gouged out holes fifty and more feet deep. a hundred and more feet across, to get around or across which engineers have had to exercise their ingenuity and the surrounding coun- try. stripped oi ite wood, fas fur nished the rock. Fortunately there is plenty of that.
 To either side of the road are the remains of what were once livable, comfortable dugouts and buildings, blows into thousands Of pieces by discharges of explosive when the enemy retreated. Farther afield and as far as the eye can reach across the Io-,. L ;1I or b,,,j-aie ,,J ,bouea,Je of shell holes, their craters overlap ping, big and little holes from mis- siles O fevery character, that have torn and scared the earth almost be- yond the hopes of redemption.
 Everywhere is the debris of the battlefield. guns, helmets, articles of clothing, piles and heaps of ammuni- ton, broken-down and splintered wagons, caissons and trucks. And, if one go over the scene soon enough, bodies awaiting burial
 The comparison between Malan- court and Avocourt is striking-be cause the former has suffered SO much more. Buildings no longer have even a semblance of their former state. Where in Avocourt walls at least still stand here and there, in | Malancourt everything has been rag ed as though with dynamite, and the crumbling remnants are seized upon to rebuild the shattered roads and i make them passable for the unsuitable | armies ahead that must have more and ever more ammunition and food | and supplies.
 Neither Malancourt, nor Mont faucan, nor any one of a score of towns within the sector where the operated has a single liv ing inhabitant left. In every direc- ton is a waste of craters and up- torn earth. It is the quintessence of desolation and nothingness.
 The once beautiful wooded slopes and hills are now torn and gashed. Great artillery bombardments have hillsides of all but the stumps of their trees, which tower against the sky without ba Oi NlippiNh relics of their former selves. Many of them have been shattered by shells as by lightning, others cut off as though by bungling wood choppers unable to fell tree cleanly.
 The reconstruction of Europe is going to be a long, hard ask, far longer than the war that made it necessary. In time to come he meadows and valleys between Avoucourt and Malancourt will be green again, the trees of the Argonne Forest will grow up as they did be- ore 1914. But as they all look now t seems very, very far in the future before the ruin, the utter destruction. an be made good and the former tatus of this portion of France re- stored.
 EODMED ADIznNaNY lf