Healing Wounded Europe New Cities in War Zones

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 584, 9 February 1929, Page 19

Healing Wounded Europe New Cities in War Zones

Mr. J. M. N. Jeffries , special correspondent of the “Daily Mate/’ describes in the article printed below—the record of a trip along the British front —the wonderful revival and change achieved in the ten years since the war ended in the principal battle towns of France and Flanders.

ffianvan HE passage of ten years since the war came to an eni * k as had an effect upon the zone of tSSSOIiJ the battlefields not easily to be realised. Those who fought there will have read, indeed, of the reconstruction of the devastated areas, but it is diflicult to see how they can imagine the present condition of a countryside which, when they knew it, looked as if it could never come hack to be town or village or field again. But that inconceivable change has come. There is the gable of a villa —a farmer’s house, perhaps, but in characteristic French villa style—looking over the edge of Mametz Wood, which has grown into a sizeable spinney, and I stopped to admire the glow of autumn tints upon Vimy Ridge. Mametz and Vimy and so many other great disembodied names have taken form again; in the Somme district only Thiepval, I was told, must be reckoned as lost. The New Albert The most striking changes, however, have come to the towns which so many British soldiers knew in total or in partial ruin. They would not too easily recognise Albert to-day. Albert is glowing back to prosperity, a railway depot, a town of regular streets and well-stocked shops. The basilica is rising again, a replica of its pre-war self. The outer shell is completed, the sanctuary is again rich with shining gold mosaics, and workmen are now engaged upon the very summit of the great tower, where the renowned statue of the Blessed Virgin, which hung so long aslant till its fall indicated the approaching end of war, is once more to be placed. Albert’s chief relic of the war remaining is the town ball, which is still an army shed upon the wide Place Faidherbe, where so many roads to and from the front crossed. There are very fine schools built on one side of this square now. Those who recall the wrecked monument here to the men of Albert who fought in the Franco-Prussian war will be interested to learn that it has been set up again, all broken and gashed by shell j fire as it is, upon its old pedestal ; within a neat, new railing-bordered plot. Only so much new work has been inserted as will enable the monument to stand with safety. Not alone in Albert, but elsewhere, too. monuments of 1870 are being reerected with their wounds. There is a proud device, which they

bring to mind, upon a shop in the reconstructed main square of Peronne. “Founded 1792. Destroyed IS7O and 1916. Rebuilt 1873 and 1924,” reads the inscription and contrasts with the shop’s ephemeral stock in trade which consists of suits aud overcoats upon those odd wax figures of messieurs tres-elegants which a#e the delight of French outfitters. Generally speaking, of all the towns in the front which I saw when passing through, Pdronne is tlie phoenix. It has risen from its ashes with greatest dignfty, even with some beauty. The town hall has been remade round the charming portal on the side-, street which escaped injury, in perfect reproduction of its former seif, statues in niches and all. The banks and many of the business premises which adorn the Marche aux Herbes are satisfactorily built, but it is the lovely new-old Gothic church which will be the glory of Pgronne. Its almost oval white tower shows already like a finger of light over the downs of the Somme. The ancient church is being remade with as much of its battered self as can be used. A splendid mediaeval gate is being rebuilt, too, in brick, so that at Pfironne to-day you have something of the sensation of the people of olden days when mediaeval work was new. Bapaume Itself shows rather more of the war, I thought, than Albert anti Pgronne. This is because its centre is still a little unkempt. But it has a nicely-built hotel, the Sheffield, and is now a busy little town. Arras, almost certainly, will be the town, or city rather, which will longest show the traveller In France the vision of the ravages of the war. The vast cathedral, four-fifths of it, is still a riddled and bird-haunted ruin. With quiet persistence and excellent art twenty-five workmen are engaged on the restoration of the north transept frontage. The English Look The houses which were destroyed in the beautiful Spanish square have not been rebuilt yet. either. One frontage, the House of the Angel. No. 35, is propped up with beams whicli themselves are now blackened with time. On the outskirts of Arras, the large factory on the banks of the Scarpe and the flourmill of Sainte Catherine are in their old ruined state. A number of new dwelling-houses have been built on the outskirts of the city. | however. The surroundings of Loos and Lens would seem, to those who fought there, miraculously changed. A great mining model-city covers the scene of j bitter and bloody battles; street upon ! street upon street of red brick neat dwellings, with touches of half-timber. ; so that the whole has a semi-English look, as is perhaps not unbefitting. Lens has a most astonishingly | settled air: it is all but impossible to believe that the huge central square of the town is an erection of the last years only. Any suggestion of v has gone from here for ever.