The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1918-01-10
Escape German Shell When One
of Party Stops to Dig Up
Relic.
See SCENES OF DESOLATION
Once Richly Cultivated Valleys
Speci<ied With Happy Villages,
Now But a Sodden Panorama
of Churned-Up Soil.

With the French Armies in the Field.
If one of the party hadn't stopped to
dig up BOche bHyonet from the road
side, this piece wouldn't have been
written.
Ehe French Officer-chaperone and his
charges had tarried on the way back
to Verdun from one of the outlying
forts to chat with a bunch of Red
Cross men, and incidentally to watch
the antics of a flock of German air.
planes as they lodged in and out
among the feathery puffS of shrapnel.
The usual daily artillery strafe had
been on for some hours Hundreds of
tons of metal had been bowling above
our heads from both sides, far up and
down the line. At times there was
shot for every second. But SO far the
BOche targets had been located COM
Portable distance away.
Our officer had given the word to re-
sumo the journey, and the chauffeurs
were cranlzing up, when the oppor-
tInity of gathering in another battle
field souvenir interviewed. 1t is still
there.
Careful figuring, conducted very
shortly thereafter in one of the Red
Cross dugouts nearby, convinced the
whole party that if it hadn't been for
the bayOnet episode our cars would
have coilided with the big Boche shell
just at the moment of its explosion
about block down the road.
The experience had merely supplied
vivid final touch to impressions al
ready acquired-of what the soldiers
of Verdun have been undergoing in
the last eighteen months. In this re-
giCn Nature has been given no oppor-
tunity, as she has, for example, on
the battlefield Of the Somme, to repair
as best she can the ravageS of war.
From the top of one of the battered
forts that now forms an unbreakable
ring about Verdun-recaptured from
the Germans with a valOr and at a
sacrifice of life that will make its name
immortal in histOry-stretches out, as
far as ten-ply, made-in-Germany binoc-
uIarS can reach, a vista of utter devas-
tatiOn.
Once thickly forested hills and rich
ly cultivated valleys speckled with
happy villages; now a sodden, grayish,
mOnOtonous panorama of churned-up
soil, criss-crossed here and there with
trenches, and only an occasional stump
or pile of crumpled stones to evidence
its former beauty. It's like Notre
Dame de Lorette. Vimy, Wytschete,
Messines and Passchendaele Ridge all
scrambled together.
All the forces of nature-fire, flood,
hurricane and earthquake-could not
have wrought such havoc. Only man
could do it. Even looking backward,
the only discernible color is the green
of the distant hills, the shattered red
tiled roofs of the fortress city, and the
clusters of purple-wreathed graves
where sleep the men who made the
motto of Verdun-"On ne paSSe pas"
mo trespasserS allowed Ia reality.
The Germans now occupy much the
same line as that from which the
crown prince launched his costly but
futile attack upon this stronghold. Pre-
viousiy we had traversed the valley of
the Marne whose landscape bears am
pie testimony to the characteristic
French traits of dash, mobility and re-
SourcefulneSs; just as Verdun's pitt
fully narrowed hillsides will always be
a monument to the hitherto less famil-
iarly known French qualities of tire
less energy and logged stubbornness.