The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1919-09-26

| NEW, YORK, Sept. 26.-Edward Il.
zones, writing from Verdun under re-
cent date to The Times says: More
than a year ago the wet blackness of
midnight was broken by thousand
and one spurts of flame, as many
cannon swelled into a mighty roar
along line from the Argonne forest
over east to the Meuse river. 1t was
the first American army introducing
itself to the Germans. On that rainy
cold morning a hundred thousand
fighting men from across the sea-
many of them strangers to battle
waited in the mud of deep-cut trenches
for the word to go forward against
the Hindenburg line, called by its
makers impregnable, and having prov
ed that reputation against more than
one bitter assault Of the troops Of
France and Britain. In the sickly
light of the dawn of an ugly day they
went ahead. In the five weeks that
followed they fought out that heart
rending battle, until on November I
they broke through the last of the
German defenses. And soon after the
war ended.
those men-except those who sleep
on the sloping hill southeast of the
Romagne-have gone back home. I
was with them on that morning they
started, and came back today to the
scene of the greatest battle in which
troops of America were ever engaged.
Over the hills northwest of Verdun
silence reigns. 1t is not the silence OF
peace; it is the silence of death.
have seen the western battle front
To Cx1y}t1 nd 7
seen the war-torn mud of the fields of
Flanders, the stretches of nothing in
the valley of the Somme, the tortured
terrain where was Observation-Disclosures,
the ruins of Ypres, the remnants of
Scissors, the tragic she'll of Rheims,
but there is no scene so desolate, so
stricken, so dead, as the hills north
west Of Verdun, over which the Yam
KEGS fought to victory year ago.
Have Filled In the Trenches.
They have filled up the trenches on
many of the fronts of France, and
nature and the plowman have blotted
out many of the scars. The people
have come back to many of the wreck
ed villages of other parts Of France,
and children play amid the wreck and
ruin while their parents patch up
shelled houses. But not so IN the
Meuse-Argonne. No one has been so
hardy and so brave as to try to restore
that barren stretch. The trenches
are there yet, and the wire entangle-
ments, and the old dugouts, and the
spots of ground stained yellow by hate
full mustard gas. 1t Is there as war
left 1t. No trees to grow and no
flowers to bloom. Stand atop Dead
Mans hill and look as far as eye can
see and there is nothing living. No
human being moves in sight. The
countryside has died and its resur-
n cticn is not yet.
There Ia no scene so dismal. Pic
ture II you car the view Hill after
rolling bill stretch away in all direc-
lions from this highest Of them all.
Innumerable brown traces OF trenches
wrigg,e across them in thousand
twists. Rows of tree stumps tell where
a road once wound it's way. Rusty
wire In symmetrical lines runs in all
directions. The onetine fields are
rotted az Il by smal,pox--like tho face
of a man who bad died from the dis
ease. Millions on millions OF shells
did thst. Down there in a valley is
sort Of white smudge. 1t was once the
village Of M"lancourt. It's stones now
make inc Itdu / yNot SdAAC W. AASAS
and there sticks the head Of q German
pillbox, more than one Of them torn
by a big shell which left the iron
skeleton sticking up in rusty ugliness.
The debris of war lies about Here
an abandoned wagon; there an old
overturned water car. There lies a
broken rife; here a denied helmet
whose wearer paid the price.
Over atop another hill rise the ruins
of Montfaucon, from which the crown
prince watched his costly and vain eff
fort to take Verdun. 1t cost many
good American lives to drive the Ger
mans from that stronghold Every
foot of the land IL historic. Every
foot Is filled with tragic stories. Here
a dugout has caved in and from the
ground sticks the thigh bone, the arm
bone and three crazy skeleton fingers
of disinterred soldier man. In spots
weeds grow-but not many. Mostly
the terrain unfolds brown and barren
and dead. Everything is dead. The
impression is the impression of death.
1t wasn't the same feeling when one
saw that land filled with life, with sol
diers going ahead and coming back,
with conveys on all the miserable
roads, with the air filled with scream
Ing SuellS anu all pldueS. II ScchICu
a fitting arena for the mighty struggle.
But now they are all gone Every
thing that lived has gone Every
thing Is left dead.
Over to the west one sees the wood
ed side of the Argonne and invo,un-
tarily one listens for the rat-tattat of
the machine guns heard so often in
the dreary weeks it took the Ameri-
cans to clean out the Germans. One
wonders how goes it in the elaborate
and fanciful German dugouts built on
the northern slopes of those wooded
hills. What ghosts play in the old
motion picture theater over there
north of the Four de Paris. Is the
yellow old sheet hanging crafty from
the stage wire as it was twelve months
ago? Is the stream still bubbling
where the members Of the lost Bat.
talon braved death to quench their
thirst? Is it still muddy over there
Thinking about that and almost
starting that way, one sees in the dis
lance the Stars and Stripes at the
top Of white pole and remembers
that is the great American cemetery
at PomaDpa and one decides to 90