Bisbee daily review., 1918-11-24
COUNTRY AROUND VERDUN PRESENTS
 VIEW 0F UTTER RUIN
AS ALLIES MOVED FORWARD THERE WAS MUTE TESTIMONY EVERYWHERE OF TIE INTENS- TTY OF THEIR SHELL FIRE AND BOMBING

WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES IN FRANCE. Oct 2S, Correspondence of the Associated Press. )-Tne cOun- try over which the Americans fought their way northwest from Verdun pre- sents a picture of ruin. destruction and desOlatiOn. The villages are un- inhabited and homes seem but sepulchres.
 Torn by mines causing huge craters, gashed by b0mbardments which made hundreds of thousands of shel-holes and strewn with broken or abandoned guns, wagons. heaps of ammunition, helmets and all the other debris os four years Of idesperate fighting, the whole route betrays the awful effect 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 count less strands of barbed wire, most Of it rusted by the rains crazily topsy- turvy on it's supporting stakes that have fallen to right and left "If it takes four years to win the war" said some casual visitors to the front. "it will take six years to roll up the barb ed wire that has been used in win ming it."
 Take, for instance, the trip from ruined. desolate Avoucourt nOrthward to Malancourt and Montfaucon, the scene of some of the bitterest fight ing of the entire war. AvocOurt was s- 1,A 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 50 and more feet deep, a 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 it's wood. has furnished the rock. Fortunately there is plenty of that
 To either side of the road are the remains of what were once livable, comfortable dueouts and buildings. blown into thousands of pieces by dis charge of explosives when the enemy retreated Farther sfield and as far as the eye can reach across the low hills are hundreds and thousands of shell holes. their craters overlapping big and little holes from missiles of every character, that have torn and scared the earth almost beyond the hope of redemption.
 Everywhere is the debris of the battlefield, guns. helmets, articles of clothing. piles and heaps Of ammuni- tion, broken-down and splintered wag- ons, caissons and trucks. And, if one go over the scene soon enough, bodies awaiting burial
 The comparison between Malancourt and AvocOurt is striking ng-because the former has suffered so much more Buildings no longer have even a semb- lance of their former state. Where in Avocourt walls at least still stand here and there, in Malancourt everything has been Tazed as though with dyna- mite. and the crumbling remnants are seized upon to rebuild the shattered roads and make them passable for the unsuitable armies ahead that must have more and even more ammuni- tiOn, and food and supplies.
 Neither Maiancourt, nor Montfau- can. nor any one of a score of towns within the sector where the Amer jeans operated has a single living in- habitant left In every direction is 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 stripped hill sides of all but the stumps of their trees, which tower pa thetically against the sky without branches or foliage, mere crippled 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 a tree cleanly.
 The reconstruction of Europe is ad mittedly going to be a long, hard task, far longer than the war that made it necessary. In time to come the mea- dOws and valleys between AvOcOurt and MalancOurt will be green again, and the trees of the ArgOnne forest will grow up as they did before 1914 But as they all look now it seems very very far in the future before the ruin, the utter destruction, can be made good and the former status of this DOT tion of France restored.