Arizona republican., 1921-08-22
Arizona Student Gives Graphic
 Description Of War Torn France

The Republican has just received from Franklin D. Walker, an Arizona boy, Rhodes scholar at the Univer- sity of Oxford. a description of bat tletorn France. He Is a son of Prof. J. F. Walker of the Northern Arizona Normal. He was appointed to the Rholes scholarship nearly year ago. He is an alumnus of the University of Arizona. MT. Walker now at St. Edmnud Hall, Oxford, spent some time the battlefields of the Western front. At the time of writing he was about to return to Paris to study. He expects to visit Spain, Italy and per- haps Russia the coming year.
 He says Of sections of the Western front:
 There have been many memorials erected since the great war; each will lage and halet throughout Europe and one might say the world, has re- membered it's lost ones with the plac- ing of bronze tablets, church win dows, or in some equally fitting manner.
 London, Paris and Washington have their cenotaphs and every morning sees the freshening of the flowers on the grave of the unknown
  the greatest and most impressive monument which is found today is in the battlefields of France and Bel gium.
 A few months will mark the elapse of three years since the signing of the armistice, which caused the ces- sation of hostilities in Europe. but three years have done little to ob literate the traces of that struggle in those countries which suffered most. Thousands of acres of dead land in the less damaged districts have been reclaimed, but many more thousands in the Somme, Ypres, Rheims. and Verdun districts lie as great barren wastes-the trenches and dug-outs as they were yesterday, but for the weeds and grass which are aiding Nature in retaining that which Man has destroyed. Where once were pretty little French villages, now re- mains nothing but a mass of bricks; woods are but stalking groves of naked poles planted in desolation of shell holes and trenches. One has only to visit Rheims or Arras to see the wretched remains of what once were beautiful cities. One may look for the home of the French people. who are struggl ling to ger on their feet once more, but will find nothing bat inhabited cellars or huge iron cul- verts closed in at the ends to form human novels.
 On a recent visit to France I had | the opportunity of visiting one of the worst of these areas-the Somme district. I made the trip by motor. | entering the lines from Amiens at l Albert and travelling up them through | Bapaume. Arras, Vimy and Lens. 1 The picture which was impressed on my mind will never be forgotten. It | was one of the utmost desolation one l can imagine. In place of the wal l time thunder of big guns and all the noise and clamor of the conflict there is a quietude which is impressive l above everything else. Not a living l thing is seen or sound is heard for miles, and this breeding silence is never broken but by the occasional | firing of "dud" shells, which are be- l ing cleared away. The trenches are l strewn with hand grenades, unex- l ploded shells, mangled metal of al descriptions, and a vast and intricate network of rusting barbed wire. l Albert, once a busy and quite i'm I portant French village. is nothing but | a pile of debris. The old cathedra where the figure of the Virgin Mary hung suspended for so many years 
 | standing out in a wilderness of bricl and plaster. One new house ha been built. and railroad platform bears as sign assuring the strange that this swas once Albert.
 | Near Alberto at Boiselle Is huge mine crater, large enough to hide Z fair sized house. It is the result O the extensive mining campaign
 which were carried on at the begin q ing of the 1916 drive. At this poin the opposing trenches were so clos
 together that subterranean mininl
 was resorted to by both sides: it i | doubtful whether the results vii eve
 be entirely removed.
 Farther along on the Albert Ba
 paume road, we passed the Butte O
 Walincourt, a small elevation whic
 was taken and retaken Is times dur
 ing the first Somme drive. Its side
 have been saturated with the bloc
 of Australians and Germans. for
 is here that the Durhams and ten
 of thousands of others were killed
 On the top are three crosses-tw
 Australian and one German, left b
 the comrades of those who fell in tn
 fierce onslaughts. The butte remain
 a battered mound honeycombed t
 trenches and shell holes.
 Bapaume is gone. Like many (
 the villages in the war area all tha
 remains is number of cellars,
 mazework of ruins, and sing boar
 which declares that it was once th
 site Of many homes. In Bapaum
 as in many famous French village