Evening star., 1926-04-11
MORE MODERN CITY REPLACES
VERDUN, DEVASTATED in WAR
Hardly Trace of Old Town Remains While
Villages and French Battefields Have Taken
ON New Tone.

glimpse Of what has taken place in
stice.
New City Rises.
OF Verdun itself 1t Is perhaps
enough to say that the city and the
suburbs have already taken on the
appearance, not, to be sure, of the
old town, but of new city. One has
rather the impression of seeing the
consequences of a real estate boom,
of Florida expansion, than Of the re-
building of a town more than 1000
years old and recently wiped out com
pletely by artillery.
Broadly speaking, the reconstruc-
ton has been completed and Verdun
Is a new city with hotels, stores, all
the circumstances of a modern town.
end from the visitors point Of view
rather disappointingly little Of the
devastation which might recall the
historical episode. There is still an
air Of boom in the appearance, a
sense Of something unusual happen
ing, but by contrast even with a city
like Scissor, the work Is done.
1t Is only when one climbs the hills
to the east and visits the actual
scenes Of battle-of the French bat
tie, for the Americans fought far
to the north and west-that some
thing Of the wartime desolation pre-
walls. Yet even here the grass and
shrubs have grown up, the shell holes
are half buried in underground and
the once familiar lunar aspect is gone
forever. Monuments are beginning to
appear, a vast cemetery is in con.
struction hard by Fort Douaumont,
a narrow-gauge railway has been con-
structed across the saddle Of Fleury,
where the German waves were finally
mastered.
Reconstruction Progressing.
But 1t is not Of this field or phase
of the Verdun countryside that
velous after all Is that broad sweep
of country extending from the Meuse
to the Argonne, north of Verdun, the
open country which begins with the
village Of Varennes on the edge of
the Argonne and ends at the Meuse
near the mouth of the Forges Brook.
This was the old front Of our attack
upon the Germans on September 26,
1918.
Every American soldier who
shared in any part Of that great
struggle will recall one or many of
the little villages which lay in the
midst Of the hills, most If not all of
which had been reduced to powder
during the struggles of the Ameri
can or French epoch. On the pres.
ent occasion my route lay north
through Varennes, through Cheppy
Eclisfontaine, to Romagne, Brieulles
by the river and by Nantillois to
Montfaucon and then by Malancourt
Haucourt, Bethincourt, over Hill 304
and beside Dead Mans Hill.
Looking out upon this country
once a desert marked by ruins, one
had the most amazing impression OF
reconstruction so general as tc
seem almost new settlement. Look
ing through the rather dim, misty
atmosphere, the red roofs of the new
farm houses and of the new villages
gave almost the notion of fires. Not
one or two villages, but practically
all villages were not only in the
toward completion. Varennes, which
was a complete wreck, had taken or
the outward semblance Of a totally
new and almost completed city.
Battlefield Marshes Drained.
In the No Mans Land before Deat
Mans Hill and Hill 304, where the
FORCES Brook comes down, where foul
years Of war had created an enormou.
marsh and our troops advanced, leav
ing the engineers to construct 6
bridge with the remaining fragments
of vanished houses, where our triff1t
stuck inextricably for days, thu
marsh has been drained, Haucourt
and Malancourt, with Bethincour
farther east, have been reconstructed
the roads rebuilt, the first long steps
taken to regain all this land for tn,
agriculturists.
I had heard it said that whil
wonders had been accomplished in tn
industrial North, in the relatively poo
lands of the Meuse the work Jagged
Yet I confess never have I seen any
thing which struck me as NOR
miraculous than what had been &C
complished since / saw this old Ameri
can front north of Verdun. In anothe
five years I hazard the forecast tina
there will be little or nothing left t.
remind the returning soldiers Of wha
they saw on this front. Moreover, a
always, the French villages and farm
are being rebuAlt with the obvious pur
pose to last another thousand years.
Not less impressive was the visit t,
that other battlefield, the scene of tn
victory of st. Mihiel. OF many vii
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