Imperial Valley press., 1922-03-16
Hopeless Desolafion Marks
BdfflereLds OF Great War

RHEIMS, March 6.-Utter, hopeless
dcsolation, mile after mile, hour after
hour!
Such is the lasting Impression Of a
drive across the battefields of the
Champagne and Argonne today.
Like n vast brownish scar across the
fertile fields of France, these battle
fields still lie, scarcely touched by hu-
man hands three years after the last
shot was fired.
Only in the towns and villags are
there many visible signs of revival.
There the tenacious peasants have
flocked back and patched up their
shattered hemes. They are eking out
a bare living. As for the thousands
whose homes were wiped off the
earth, nobody seems to know what has
become OF them.
But it is in the wide stretches be
tween the villages that the full horror
of what happened here can still he ap-
preciated.
Throughout one whole forenoon the
United Press correspondent rode across
the desolate country from Fort Pom
peile to the center of the Argonne,
seeing few human beings or signs of
human habitations. AS far as the eve
could reach lay desolation. The land
looks as though a scourge had passed
over. Here and there the ridges show
jagged outlines against the sky-en
tirely denuded by terrific shellfire wit
only a few shattered dead stumpS
showing where once was a thick wood
Along the line of the front for miles
the fields lie almost as they did the
last day Of the wa~-still norman s.
land, covered with scraggly weeds in
terwoven with tangles of rusty harbed
wire. Shells have turned up the
chalky sub-soil and only the hardest
weeds grow.
On the low ridges where the she'll
fire was heaviest the soil is literally
dead-the churnmg by explosions and
repeated gassings have killed the fer
tility so that nothing viii ever grow.
The old trench lines and dug-out
shelters have fallen in, but in many
places the old lines of barbed wire
entanglements. sometimes fifty yards
in width, still stand, choked by dry
weeds.
just beyond Fort Pompelle three
rusty direlct tanks used by the Ger
mans in an attack upon the Fort lie
in exactly the positions where they
were halted by French shell-fire.
In this region the earth is literally
criss-crossed with old trench systems.
and covered with the debris of war.
Only the barest start has been made
in reclamation, evidenced by the piles
of knotted barbed wire stacked up
alongside the road. Nearer Rheims
gangs of men are working to clear the
ground of explosives.
The famous Fort Pompelle, the scene
of some of the fiercest fighting of the
war, is now merely a pile of chalky
hummoeks at the top of a hill DOM
mating the surrounding country for
miles. Occasionally one will find a
mangled length of steel girder or the
ehoked mouth of an underground pas
sage-the only indications that this
chalk-heap was ever fort. Sometimes
the two-inch thick steel is pierced with
holes like a kitchen collander. The
base of the hill is interlaced with row
after row of barbed wire entangle
ments.
The city of Rheims itself is ''com-
ing back. To the casual observer the
task looks well-nigh hopeless. Out of
$4,000 houses, 5000 We're utterly des
troyed and the remaining 5000 more
or less damaged. But in the outskirts
rows of hastily-bui shacks like a
western mining town are housing thou