The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1918-04-18
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seriously damaged it. For years after
the war there were charges against
sherman by the south and defense by
his friends. At that time no greater
crime could be thought of than for a
victorious army to apply the torch.
German kultur is indeed a modern
thing.
Man has played a gruesome trick
on nature in the land back O the
front" He has leveled her beauti-
full trees and c~riss-crossed her fair
fields and stretches of green sward
with muddy trenches. Sometimes
these winter days nature, growing
weary Of the blistered, shell-hole
otony, quilts or camouf1ages it over
with a beautiful white sheet of snow.
Nature intended that this once fair
region should be inhabited by man;
but it was not within the economy of
itat of these millions whose only bust
ness is to kill. More men swarm
along this battle line than there are
men, women and children living in
Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Mon
tana, Nevada, Wyoming and Utah.
There are jewellers in this strange
land, this part of it that was utterly
destroyed, other than soldiers. They
are the people, or a few of them, who
have come back, hunted out the spot
where once their homes stood and re-
occupied it.
Here is a woman who has found the
lot where stood her home. She has
clawed Out the burned timbers and
fallen bricks from a corner of the eel
lar. Across the top of her excavation,
which is about six feet wide, she has
thrown some sticks and boards, and
or making barley Cruel over a fire be-
tween two bricks in the open in front
of her dugout. Verify, there is no
place so humble as some homes.
Great numbers have wandered back.
Where the destroyed towns were on
, streams or rivers, they have dug caves
in the banks and here they live. Some
dwell under heaps Of fallen timbers
that were once homes or stores; some
in tents, others in shacks patched up
with old sacks and sandbags, and still
others in fragments of houses and eel
lars.
How pathetic is this, how grotesque
and how it emphasizes the love CT
man for the place where he was born,
the place where he has lived, the
place he has called home! No sooner
had the Germans evacuated these
places than the stragglers began to
return. During the summer they
cleared away small patches of ground,
scratched the surface with sharpened
sticks, broken bayonets or scraps OF
iron, and became tillers Of the soil,
unmindful of the roar of cannon in
the not far distance or the occasional
whizz of a shell overhead.
Into the lives of these broken fam.
lilies, these dwellers in the places that
God has forsaken, there has crept a
bit of satire that would be amusing
if one could forget the tragical. One
corner of a store building still stands;
a rough board on which are carved
the words "The White House" is
nailed to the wall. buckingham Pal
ace" is a chimney left standing. A
sandbagged shack is designated
"Windsor Castle"
To one village twenty pe%ople-four-
teen old men and six women-have
returned. They have cleared away
the debris from the steps to the
church, the church building being de.
stroyed. erected a rough cross made
of boards and here they Worship