Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1918-11-11

Refugees Returning
To Homes In To,r,,s
Captured BY Yarks

Correspondence Of Associated Press. ]
Paris. Oct. 2S-Carrying their little
bundles Of household possessions the
French refugees are returning to their
homes in Chateau Thierry and the
little French villages around It, to
vaux. Lucy, Belleau and the rest
places now part of American his
tory.
They arc coming back to ruins OF
villages and houses demolished by Ger
man or American artillery. to live in
cellars and in the shelter of totterins
walls until they can rebuild their
homes and their return is pitiful
spectacle.
Sometimes they find no home at all.
Never do they find any furniture
Often they find no food and then the
American Red Cross steps in and helps
them. The woman who can dig out
her stove from a heap of dirt and plas-
ter and patch it up again so that 1t
will burr. counts herself inordinateiy
lucky One woman found remaining
of all her household goods just one Dig
salt cellar. Forks are worth their
weight in gold and feather bed is
priced above rubies. Five thousand
five hundred blankets to the Red Cross
shipped out to returning refugees In
single week.
NOT
a:,le to spend the winter in their own
villages. The villages on the banks OF
the little Marnc are too utterly bat
tered by shells to afford human hab-
itations during the winter weather
How, while days are warm and skies
are blue. their owners can find some
iny corner or other to live in, but the
rain and mud ana chilly damp OF a
French winter will drive them, or II
it does not a paternal government
will send them back to their temporary
homes in. the .sinxadeds proyinces to
wait for spring.
One purpose in sending them home
so quickly was to harvest the whea'
crops but there was no food, so the
Red Cross, established canteens in
many villages and served two meals q
day free to those too poor to pay while
others paid small sums. Forty car
loads of food were sent to the Marne
and the Aisne in single month. =
grocery store has been opened IN
Chateau Thierry which already Is
busy town again, tho the walls OF It's
houses have been shattered and tori
by shells. To keep intruders out tne
residents scrawl on their homes II
chalk proprietor returned or "houst
occupied"
Rolling stores on trucks tour thrt
villages in the valleys of the Oisn'
and Aisne to supply the returning
refugees with food. clothing anc
household utensils. Demands come fol
coffee mills. scrubbing brushes. pals
knives. forks. spoons, and pots for the
people taking up housekeeping again
as literally all that they left behint
them when they fled has been de-
stroyed or carried away to Germany.
To AIniens the refugees are just be
ginning to return but they will COM
| soon in large numbers. and they vii
| find the Red Cross ready to receiv'
them. There is big building IL
Amiens that was a boys school i
those half forgotten days when the
city was not under shell fire. 1t be-
longs to the Red Cross now, and it
class rooms are turned to strange
uses. There is big "salle de recep
I ton" where the returning refugees
| are sorted out and their needs ascer
I tanned. There is a canteen that serve
| two hot, nourishing meals day
! There is a long 'dormitory with bed
for the weary ones who come back t.
| find empty rooms and roofless houses
There are two dispensaries. and dis
pensary doctors find much to do In {
country where people live precarious
| hand to- mouth existences.
| The Red Cross workers furnisl
clothing to the shivering shabb!
people, warm flannel shirts and under
| wear, stockings and shoes and sabots
Twelve thousand garments went ou
from Paris in a single day. And the!
furnish work for people, who mus
have little money II they are to live
| They have an extraordinary way
those Picardy peasants OF accepting
facts. They go back to live under i'm
! possible conditions as II 1t were tn
most natural thing in the world.
never occurs to them to do anythin;
else. There may be only one wall O.
a house left but It il home. "Ther
are few ways in which American re-
source and energy can be better EN-
ployed than in strengthening a phil
osophy and courage like that" say
one Red Cross worker.