The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-08-20

road i now came up. Here and
there sticks the head of a German
pill-box, more than one of them
torn by 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 broken rifle; here a dented
helmet whose wearer paid the
price.
Over on top another hill rise the
ruins of Montfaucon from which
the crown prince watched his cost
ly and vain effort to take Verdun.
1t cost many good American lives
to drive the Germans from that
stronghold Every foot of the land
is historic. Every foot Is filled
with tragic stories. Here 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. Most
ly the terrained unfolds brown and
barren and dead, everything Is
dead The impression is the i'm
preston of death. 1t wasn't the
same feeling when one saw that
land filled with life, with soldiers
going ahead and coming back, with
conveys on all the miserable roads,
with the air filled with screaming
shells and airplanes. 1t seemed a
fitting arena for the mighty strug
gle But now they are all gone.
Everything that lived has gone.
Everything is left dead.
Over to the west on esees the
wooded side Of the Argonne and in
voluntarily one listens for the rat
tat-tat of the machine guns heard
SO often in the dreary weeks 1t
took the Americans to clean out
the Germns. One wonders how
goes it in the elaborate and fanci-
full 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 Tour de Paris. Is the
old yellow sheet hanging crafty
from the stage wire as it was two
years ago? Is the stream still
where the members of
the Lost Battalion" braved death
to quench their thirst? Is 1t still
muddy over there? Thinking about
that and almost starting that way,
one sees in the distance the Stars
and Stripes at the top of the white
pole and remembers that is the
great American cemetery at Ro-
mango and one decides to go that
way.
Still Seems No Mans Land.
Up the road the Yankee engin-
GERS built from ruined villages
across what for almost four years
les what had been no mans land.
It is bunny and full of holes. No
)ne has paid any attention to II
since the Americans finished using
t. The chalky stone makes it lie
white and crooked in the sunshine.
Up toward Montfaucon, past the
I'D ammunition dump, just this
ide of the hill, where one time
American wounded lay for fifty
hours in trucks, while many died, ]
shoot up hill where lies the re
mains of the town. There on the
forth side is the house which
hields the entrance to the crown
'rince's dugout and where the
Third division once placed its
headquarters. | had to spend
hree hours there once because so
many shells were falling atop the
ill 1t would have been madness to
ry to get away. One remembers
ow the walls of that dugout rang
Then the German heavies lit
earby.
Down the north side of the hill
carcely a trace Is left of the road
own which so many American
upply trucks rolled in view of the
nemy, and one sees pieces of
lem still there In Nantillis there
ras one old Frenchman pottering
bout in a manner which seemed
, say that he found his job
carcely worth while Up another
i'll to Cunel and one finds few
rench soldiers.
A kilcmeter westward and there
tretch over twenty acres that look
Ike a white blanket. Closer one
ees the whiteness is the white
es of thousands and thousands OF
hitp crosses Line after line they