DEVASTATED FRANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18995, 17 October 1923, Page 4

DEVASTATED FRANCE.

TRIBUTE TO WAR GRAVES COMMISSION. CARE OF CEMETERIES. In a letter to friends in Dunedin a lady who visited France in August writes as follows: “Last month my boy and 1 were taken to France by some friends. We were a week there, and motored from Amiens to Ypres, visiting Thiepval, Albert, Beaumont Hamel, Bupaumc, Aohict-le-Grand, La Boisselle, Delville Wood, Lens, Hill GO, Vimy Ridge, and Notre Dame do Lorelle, with its great searchlight to mark the hill where GO,OOO French died in one great defence; Loos, H’ohenzollorn Redoubt, Armcntiercs, Messincs Ridge,. ‘Plugstreel,’ and Pa-sschendacle. “It was a most wonderful trip, and we returned more full of admiration for our men than ever—and of the pluck and determination of the French. 'They have rebuilt their villages and towns, levelled their fields, and cleaned the roads, and where ruin was spread you now see new red-brick villages and waving cornfields. Peasants are continually being blown up when they are ploughing in the fields, but the others work on. Lens 18 months ago was an area redbrick town of 60,000 inhabitants. You see one street just a lump of ruins, in the next « row of small huts and sheds, and the next a handsome modern street. You see what was a. lovely old chateau, levelled to the ground, every tree and plant dead; next to it a hut where the baron or count has lived and next that again a red-brick villa which he is building. “We went to the New Zealand memorial, which is a very fine one, between Albert and Bapanme, and in any military cemetery which our friends visited we always looked for the graves of New Zealanders. The, little cemeteries everywhere among the cornfields arc most beautiful, and, if you know anyone especially interested, I can assure you that every grave is most tenderly cared f or —green English lawns, perfectly kept flowers in masses, and the rows of white tombstones. Atony of these last cannot bo named, and they boar the words ‘A Soldier of the British Empire,' and underneath, ‘Known Unto God.' “The Graves Commission is doing a. wonderful, and often very dangerous work, and there is nothing they will not do out there to help 'pilgrims.’ The poor they take out free, and one of the padres will take photographs for anyone. Kad it all is, and yet my chief impression is of admiration for (ho amazing pluck of the French in regaining their farms and homes.”