IN THE WAKE OF THE HUNS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7914, 4 August 1917, Page 2 (Supplement)

IN THE WAKE OF THE HUNS.

THE REMAINS OF A FRENCH VILLAGE. From a Special Correspondent in tho Field. Owce more we have changed 1 ’ our modes of life and have given up billets in houses for bivouacs in the open. Our progress to this remnant of a French village was through the battened remains of four others. In. the first there was the fXhell of a church only; but even that disappeared violently one evening exactly a month after the Germans had left. Their legacies include mines under churches and in cellars* so that one lias to be careful. It did not dawn upon us in passing through these devastated villages that we were to be called upon to live in one; but we were soon disillusioned. We halted outside the remains of a substantial villa A set of stone steps led up to the four bare walls, the interior being piled up with debris. Climbing over this, I was taken into the garden, half of which was occupied by fhe fallen wall of the adjoining house. I: had simply flopped over in one solid mass. The other half of the garden was covered with trees, which had either been sawn across or bodily uprooted. “There’s a cellar down there,” said the officer. “ You had better make sure of a place for yourself.” I went down tlio -stone steps and found two Tommies who had arrived an hour earlier fixing their l>eds for the night. They had appropriated a Gorman stove or fe/ldofen, and, with loose timber, had lit a fire and got the place throoughly heated. A fourth man joined us, and then*wo had tc cry “house full.” ONLY THE CELLARS LEFT. In the daylight I got some idea of the damage caused by the Germans. Standing on the raised front of our skeleton of a house, I looked across the street, and saw three sets of stone steps leading to nowhere. The houses had disappeared. There is not a habitable room, not to speak of a house, on the surface of the* ground in the entire village. The only place in which one might live arc the cellars; and we were making ourselves very comfortable in them until orders suddenly came that every cellar was to Ik* evacuated, and that nobody was to live or sleep in any place within 50 yards of a cellar. Then 'began a great resurrection. Hitherto we had thought cur “Little mob” in sole possession of the village. It is true that as we passed in and through and over the ruins of the houses we sometimes oaro.e across a hit of piping sticking out of a hole in flic wall—the only sign of a residence—or. from a flight of steps, a volume of smoke would indicate that officers or men, or both, were living below. One officer was conducting ’his official business iij the stripped and windy sacristy of the church, with cellars and vaults all about. An officers’ mess was in a tiny cellar. But all had to leave their fancied evo-curi-ty, and set to work making bivouacs and weirdly-shaped and mysteriouslylooking shacks in the open. Instead 1 )f there being onlv a few soldiers in too village as we thought, battalions began to slowly emerge from the cellars, burdened with logs, boards, iron sheeting, scraps of canvas—all heading for the green slopes of the village. Hammers and nails were at a premium, but. by nightfall there was a collection of gipsy creations on the edge of the village which led one to think of the Eosom Downs on the night before Derby Day. Fortunately, we had leaped from winter into scorching summer; and we revelled in the welcome change. THE RETURN. Tn the midst of all Hi© compulsory “ flitting” 1 was surprised to see two old Frenchmen wandering slowly tip the road. I felt like Robinson Crusoe is said to have done when lie discovered tho footprint of Friday. 'They stopped me and asked me whero “lo Maire” was. I gasped, and said they were the only two civilians wo had seen. They seemed perfectly dazed at the. desolation about them. One of them owned tho “house” from whose collar we 'had been {evicted; and the other was a proprietor of a largo shop which had stood close by. The poor man said, “ It’s all sky ; there is nothing left.” They told me they had been hiding for three weeks in a neighbouring village, and.had only just crept back to see what the Germans had left. 1 hailed a French gendarme, and suggested that he should take the men to our A.P.M., who might possibly be able to give them a clue to the whereabouts of “lo MairC.” And thus I left them.

Tho church at tho end of the village faces a slope which runs down to the main road. The front entrance and supporting walls are smashed in, and the slope in front is filled wit’ll stones and beams, on the top of which lies tho huge clock face which fell with the tower. From tho side entrance to tho church, a mass of drebris 20ft. -high mounts from the floor to the front walls, while all! tho heavy masonry in in the nave had crashed down as if cut with groat knives. Within 20ft. of the shattered front wall of the church high above the side entrance hangs a gigantic crucifix, the figure and framework absolutely untouched). From tho miain road, in through the gaping walls of the church, this great crucifix can be easily seen; but it has escaped shells and splinters alike. ROBBING THE DEAD. In the churchyard I found a family vault opened, and a ladder still' left in position where the covering stone had been broken. A tablet inside the church indicated that fivo interments had taken place in tho vault. There are six spaces or shelves on each side of tho vault; Gut neither coffins nor bodies aro now to he seen. The vault has been stripped. All that could be seen is tho ladder, tho tools the grave-robbers had used, and an empty wine bottle! What impressed one in going about this desolate place was tho pettiness and spiteful ness which tlio Gormans displayed ill their lust for destruction. Women’s shoes and slippers are found carefully hung on nads on some of the fjew walls left; a child’s Teddy hear I found ripped and torn; and under a fuchsia tree 1 discovered a doll’s wicker cradle crushed by somo heavy hoof,hut still covered by a beautifully worked coverlet. On another garden edge 1. saw the remains of what must have made up a complete dinner set; but not a fragment was left that was useful. Heaps of empty wine bottles Lie on every site of a. house, but very few of those aro broken.

And yet, as if in judgment, against tho Huns, tho trees which they have cut are flowering and blossoming a.s tljgy lie sevored on the roads and in the gardens, Dahlias, narcissi, fuchsias, pansies, and forget-me-nots also arc vicing with the fruit trees in producing their best; and Tommy has his litt'lo bouquets at and about his bivouac. Amidst all this welter of destruction stands tho only orderly place the Germans have left—the isolated cemetery, where 500 of their dead lio buried. It is approached by an imposing set of stone steps, and each grave has an elaborate wooden cross over it, with inscriptions showing that tlue interments range over a period from Septemilier, 191.6, to February of this year. “Daily Mail.”