Evening star., 1940-01-27
Douamont Awakens
Vivid Memories
OF 1918 Fighting
Battlefield Preserved
As War Memorial Now
Well Behind Lines
Ry ROBERT ]. CASEY.

DOUAMONT, France.-From up
where the war is now there had
come reports of a little action-'in-
creased patrol activity in the
Vosges-some artillery fire on both
sides during the night" But back
here, where the war used to be as
one remembered it in 1918, nothing
much was going on save the daily
mass for the dead.
Douamont, like all this part of
the old Verdun front, has changed
little in 81 years. France, looking
toward everlasting peace in those
old hopeful days that followed the
armistice, preserved one CHASTITY
geographical relic from Dead Mans
Hill to Avocourt to be a constant
reminder of war. And so, with its
crumbling trench systems and weed
growing shell craters, it remains in
ironical significance today, a sort of
preview of things to come.
You drive here through the biting
wind up the hill out of Verdun,
look at the gray desolation that the
Germans brought, read the road
directions and wonder what you're
doing back here. The effect of the
landscapes timelessness is persist
ent and uncanny. The cold, somber
dreariness of the pock-marked ridges
is just as forbidding as it always
was. One misses the noise, the
rumble and crash of shell that fell
in these valleys thousand an hour
year after year. But one gets the
impression that perhaps ones hear
ing is at fault. Perhaps one read
the calendar wrong and this isn't
really 1910 at all.
Artillery Proving Ground.
A battery comes over the horizon
bound for somewhere up on the new
front. 1t restores ones faith in the
fitness of things even though %
years ago batteries would have kept
off the skylines. There were always
batteries in here-thousands of them
when this was artillery's bloody
proving ground. One string of guns
may not completely restore the pic
ture, but it helps.
You swing corner and drive
across the brush-tangled no mans
land to the ridge and discover that
this battery is unlike any you ever
saw before. The guns look like
those you remember, and the can
onneers might Easily be the same
bright, impulsjve young opportu-
nists who used TO race you for road
crossings during the fighting around
Romagne.
But the horses! All, the horses!
They are like nothing in the heav-
ems above or the earth beneath.
They are red horses. Not roam or
brown but red-crimson shading to
scarlet the oldest vision of
equine beauty ever thrust upon the
vision of startled world. And
looking at them, one is sure at last
that this is different war.
The answer is simple as one dis
covers when he has worked up
enough courage to stop and look
at this spectacle close at hand.
France in requisitioning horses for
army use took what happened to be
at hand. And so there came to the
remount depots plentiful supply
OF white horses, all of them sound
Of wind and limb but possessed of
visibility that would make any stable
sergeant tear his hair One remem-
bers that in the old war there we're
white horses and that nothing was
done about them. In this one ap-
parently somebody thought about
adding hair dressers to the camou-
f1age squaos, and all these fine
steeds we're given henna rinses.
Danger of Death"
One can't say that the effect Is
beautiful. Red-headed horses look
much like other kinds. But one
realizes as they melt into the gloom
that they have their uses.
The road toward Douamont was
empty and silent again when they
had passed, but somehow the illusion
of the continuing presence of the
old war was vaguer and thinner.
You became aware of the incon-
gruity of the road signs: Danger
of death: don't touch duds, fused
or unfused" Danger of death:
slow down for cross-road ahead!"
Even in this memorial to massacre
they still kill people with automo-
biles.
Presently you leave the wreck
age of the old battle-ground and
come to a broad slope gardened
and terraced for a great military
graveyard, and you skirt the acres
of white crosses to the summit,
where rises the tower of the Doua-
mont Ossuarium. 1t was an i'm
pressive thing even in peacetimes,
when pilgrimages of mourners came
to it from all parts Of France. 1t is
more touching now with hundreds
of soldiers, most of them permis-
sionaries back from the front, cir
culating through it in reverent 81
lence.
A visitor cannot escape a thrill
of satisfaction when he recalls that
American cities helped to build this
place. The names of dozens of
them are over the porticos: New
York, Chicago, st. Louis, Washing
ton, Philadelphia among the num-
ber linked with Namur, Liege, Di-
nant, Verdun, Paris, London.
Relics Classified by Sectors.
You remember the story of the
place churned by big shells during
four years of war the earth of the
Verdun area gave up its dead only
in masses of unidentifiable bones.
It was decided to classify these
relics by sector, so one finds in the
great hall of the ossuarium long
procession of marble catafalques,
each marked with the name of a
definite zone-Fluery, Vaux, Avo-
court, Chene Valley, each surmount-
ed by an arch on which are listed
the men known to have fallen in
those zones. Jean Matthew,
Pierre Roget, Armand Thole. :.
One wonders what they looked like
when they were alive.
You come into the great hall bare
headed. Signs outside tell you the