Norwich bulletin., 1918-12-05

Fighting Northwest From Vsrdun. lColTespo of Tie Associated
 Press)
 The country over which the Amer jeans fought their way northwest from Verdun presents q picture of ruin, de- struction and deselation. The villages are uainhabited and homes seem but sepulehres.
 Torn by mines causing huge eraters, gaslied by bonba rd-aents which made hundreds Of thousands of sheii-h holes and strewn with broken or abandoned guns, wagons, heaps of aEan1unition, helmets and all the ether debris Of four years of desperate fighting, tie 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 handA are counts less strands af barbed wire most of it rusred by the rains cTaZily topsy- tuFgey onl it's supporting stakes that have fallen t6 right and left. If it takes four years to win the war" said one casual visitor to the front. Tit will take six wears to roll up the harbed wire that has been used in winning it."
 Take, for instance. the trlp from ruined. desalate Arocourt nofthward to Nalaneourt and Mpntfarcen, the scene of some of the bftterest fighting of the entire war Ayoeourt was in ruins before ever the American offen- sive started.
 For 6 solid mile nerthward the road winds across foothills that once were covered ,,,-ith green trees but now are shorn and bare Gigantic. mines have torn the road in twain and -ouged out holes fifty and more feet deep, a hum dred and more feet across, to get around or across which engineers have had to exercise their ingenuity and the surrounding country, stripped of it's wood, has furnished tlle rock. Fortu nately there is plenty Of that.
 To either side of the rad are the remains of what were once livable, comfortable dugouts and buildings. blown into thousands of pieces by dis chcaTges of explosive when the enemy 1 retfeated. Further a field as far as 1 the eye can reach across the lew hills are hundreds and thousanfs of shell l holes, their craters overlapping, big and little holes from missiles of every I character, that have torn and scared the earth almost beyond tfe hope of 1 redemption.
 Everywhere is the debris of the bat 1 tlefeld, guns. helmets, articles of 1 clothing, piles and heaps of ammunf- 1 ton, broken down and splintered wa 1 gons, caiEsens and trucks. And, if one | go over he scene soon enough, bodies l awaiting burial.
 The comparison between Malacenrt 1 and Avoeeurt is striking--heeause the | former has suffered so, much more | Buildings no longer have been a sem hlaneA of their former state. Where in l Ayocourt walls at least still stand here and there, in Malantour every thing has been razed as thought with dynamite, and the crumbling remnants are seized upon to rebuild the shat 1 tered roads and make them passable
 for the unsuitable armies ahead that
 must have more and even more ammu milton, and food and supplies.
 Neither Malancourt, nor Montfau- can, nor any one of seere' of towns
 within the secter where the Ameri. ears operated has single living in, habitant left. In every direction is {
 waste of eraters and up-tern earth. |
 is the quaintessence of !esplation ant
 nothingless.
 I The once beautiful wooded slope
 and hills are now torn and gashed l Great artillery hembarltnents havl stripped htllsides of all but the stumpI of their trees, which tower pathetical