The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1918-01-08
BAY0NET SAVES
AMERICAN LIVES
Escape German Shell When One
of Party Stops to Dig Up
Relic.
SEE SCENES OF DES0LA1ION
Once Richly Cultivated Valleys
Speckled With Happy Villages,
Now But a Sodden Panorama
of Churned-Up Soil.

OF Cnurneo-OP OOH.
With the French Armies in the Field.
If one of the party hadn't stopped to
dig up a Boche bayonet from the road
side, this piece wouldn't have been
written.
The French officer-chaperone and his
charges had tarried on the way back
to Verdun from one Of the outlying
forts to chat with bunch Of Red
Cross men, and incidentally to watch
the antics of a flock of German air.
planes as they lodged in and out
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 a
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 cranking up, when the oppor-
tunity 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 collided with the big Boche shell
| just at the moment of it's explosion
about a block down the road.
The experience had merely supplied
a 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-
gion 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
sacrifice of life that will make it's name
immortal in hiStory-StretcheS out, as
far as ten-ply, made-in-Germany binoc-
ulars can reach, vista of utter devas-
tation.
Scene of DesoIation.
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
it's former beauty. It's like Notre
Dame de Lorette Vimy, Wytschete,
Messines and Passchendaele Ridge all
scrambled together.
All the forces of nature-fre, 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"
(No trespassers allowed D-a 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-
viously we had traversed the valley OF
the Marine 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-
VI, J., oh Of tirQs
less energy and logged stubbornness.
Land Grimly Held by French.
Then on through the forest of the
VosgeS down to where France in the
early days Of the war plucked, and still
tightly clutches, a bit of what used to
be hers. It's only few square miles
just about equal to the plot of
ground that Belgium now holds of her
own ravished country-but entirely
sufficient to exemplify and justify an
)ther fine French trait, intense pride
IF accomplishment.
"Alsace Reconquisep proudly reads
he sign over little shop fronting the
BADLY scared old church in the public
square of Thanh. Nearly all the old
signs have been changed from German,
tut some have been retained just for
In this corner of the "lost
PROVINCES" there is no doubt how the ]
,eople stand.
Are the people of France war-weary?
7es; so are those of all Europe. But {
hey are not weary to the point of 2
ven thinking of giving up the strug- !
lie, despite or, rather, because of, the
act that of all the allies Frances bur- ..
lens and her sacrifice in blood and des-
lated homes has been the greatest.
In tour of the war zone and of the
PROVINCIAL towns behind the lines, from
he channel to Switzerland, one may