New-York tribune., 1918-12-04
Country Near
Verdun Is Scene
OF Desolation
Villages Destroyed, Farms
Are Full Of Shell Holes
and Debris Of Battles Is
Scattered in Every Place

WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES
IN FRANCE, Oct. 81 Correspondence
OF The Associated Press) The coun-
try over which the Americans fought.
their way northwest from Verdun pre-
sents picture Of ruin, destruction and
desolation. The villages are uninhab-
tied and homes seem but sepulchres.
Torn by mines causing huge craters.
gashcd by bombardments which made
hundreds of thousands of she'll holes
and strewn with broken and abandoned
guns, wagons, heaps of ammunition,
helmets and all the other debris OF
tour years of desperate lighting, the
whole route betrays the awful effects
Of wal.
Everywhere, in every direction and
protecting each slightest angle and
nook, across the roads until torn away
by shells or human hands, are count
less strands of barbed wire, most of it
ruated by the rains, crafty topsy- turvy
on It's supporting stakes that have fall
en- to right and left. "If it takes four
years to win the war" said some cas-
ual visitor to the front, "it will take
six years tc roll up the barbed wire
that has been used in losing it."
Take, for instance, the trip from
ruined, desolate Avocourt northward
70 Malancourt and Montfaucon. the
scene OF some Of the bitterest fighting
of the entire war. Avocourt was in
ruins before ever the American often
sive started.
Trees Shorn and Rare
For 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 or more feet deep, hun
dred or more feet across, to get
around or across which engineers have
had to exercise their ingenuity, and
the surrounding country. stripped of
its wood. has furnished the rock. For
tunately, there is plenty of that.
TO either side of the road are the
remains of what were once livable,
comfortable dugouts and buildings,
blown into thousands of pieces by dis
charges of explosive when the enemy
retreated. Further afield and as far
hills, are hundreds and thousands of
she'll holes. their craters overlapping,
big and little holes from missiles of
every character that have TORN and
SCARED the earrh almost beyond the
hope Of redemption.
Everywhere IS the debris of the bat
tletield-guns, helmets, articles of
clothing, piles and heaps Of ammuni-
ton, broken down and splintered
wagons, caissons and trucks. And. if
one goes over the scene soon enough,
bodies awaiting burial.
The comparison between Maancourt
and Avocourt is striking the
former has suffered SO. much more
Buildings no longer have even SEM
blance of their former state Where
IN Avocourt walls at least still stand
here and there, in Malancourt every
thing has been RACED as though with
dynamite, and the crumbling remnants
are seized upon to rebuild the shat
tered roads and make them passabe
FOR the Unsuitable armies ahead that
must have more and ever more food
and supplies.
Neither Malancourt nor Montfaucon
nor any one of score of towns within
the sector where the Americans oper-
ated had single inhabitant left.
In every direction is a waste of craters
and uptorn earth. 1t is the ouintes-
sence of desolation and nothingness.
The once beautiful wooded slopes
and hills are now torn and gashed
Great artillery bombardments have
stripped hillsides of all but the stumps
of their trees. which tower pathetically
against the sky, without branches or
foliage, mere crippled relics Of their
former selves. Many Of them have
been shattered by shells as by light
ming, others cut off as though by
bungling wood choppers unable TO fell
a tree cleanly.