The times-news., 1938-11-11
New Land Rises
In 20 Years On
World War Scene
Amistice Finds Once Des-
olate Battlefields in
France Thriving
By HAROLD ETTLlNGER
t.;oI Press Staff Correspondent

United Press Staff Correspondent
PARIS, Nov. IL. (UP).-Amlo
the deSolate battlefields of North
ern France, where cease firing
was sounded on November II,
1918, a new land has risen IN ~
years.
The war left deep crates as bar
rem and cold as possibly those on
the moon. For miles there was
not village, not Il. tree nor a
blade of grass, not even a weed
Today the pilgrim going through
that country, 20 years after, finds
\ peaceful countryside, fields and
forests and small but busy vii
lagos. Crops have risen where
once there was nothing but shell
holes. Pine woods have sprung
uu in places where nobody believ-
ed anything would ever grow
again.
But there are reminders of the
war. In every little village there
is a monument bearing the names
of its war dead, and around every
one of those today there was
ceremony of remembrance. Here
and there are war cemeteries,
some of them small and marked
by craving wooden crosses, other
erS landscaped and. more impress
sive, like the resting places OF the
Americans at Belleau Wood and
Romagne.- At all of them thou
sands flocked to leave flowers to-
day.
SOME SCARS REMAIN
Every so often, despite the dill
gencc of the peasants in rebuild
ing their homes and reclaimlng
their land from the chaos of barb
ed wire, shell fragments and hu--
man bones, one still finds small
piece of ground so hopelessly torn
that nothing could be done with
it..
One of the most battered places
was the country between Belli-
court and Gouy. There the Amer
lean 9th division of New York
and the 30th division of Carolina
and Tennessee, reinforced by Aus
tralans, broke through the Hin
denbmg line in September, 1918,
What they found was almost be-
vord description. The Germans
had destroyed towns and villages
in tue entire sector around st.
Quentin. Trees which still stood
after months of she'll fire had
been sawed down. That pl"cc
locked like a lunar landscape. 1t
seemed as though life could never
come again to a land which had
seen horror and -deSoIation wOr-
thy of Eante'S Imagination.
But the peasants began to flock
back almost. on the last note of
that final bugic call.
THE hives were gone. but the
bees .rCturned.' one peasant re-
marked. And they set to work as
Though thc hives were still there"
LIVED IN DUGOUTS
They took shelter in fragments
of. houses, in dugouts, in tents
anything they could find, and they
began to clear the land. One year
later they had taken away the
she'll, leveled the holes, removed
the barbed wire. and filled the
trenches on 100000 acres of land.
They had plowed a third of that
area and Sown a sixth of it. In
two more years 10000 acres
were planted.
FarmhOuSes sprang up like
mushrooms, it seemed. Villages
reapEearcd where nothing had re-
manned to the former inhabitants
but horrible memories. Industry
came to the towns. Roads again
we've cut through. Green fields ap-,
peared where the war had left
brown mud, and life began again.
Today it is as normal outwardly
as though there had been no war.
Only occasionally farmer will
find, reminder - fragments of
bones or shell castings turned up
by his piOw. The bones are always
carefully collected and taken TO
the great ossuary ut DouaUmont
or some other fitting place.
The region about Eerdun was
the same as the country on the
Hindenburg line. Vegetation was
blasted and trampled away, and
roads disappeared The land le-
senbled a desert without the
smOothncsS Of the sand in the first
years after the war. But there,
too, the farmers came back.
Farms again Sprang up, crops
grew where men Rad fought in
the most costly 1attles of the war.
Where thousands had lost their
lives there arc fields and clumps
Of trees today. Roads cut across
once namcleS Sstretches, and vii
lageS have again grown up in
what was no maa's land.