A VISIT TO VERDUN.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8015, 13 April 1918, Page 2 (Supplement)

A VISIT TO VERDUN.

“OX XE PASSE PAS!” DRAMATIC SCEXES. (By ARTHUR MASON.) (Special Correspondent of the Empire Press Union.) LONDON, January, 1918. On two successive days, recently, a group of journalists representing India, Canada, and Australia, respectively, stood noon the heights above Verdun and walked the shell-broken streets of the town itself. We were in the midst of sights and sounds which in them- 1 selves, and apart from Verdun’s allencompassing atmosphere of heroic achievement, will long preserve those days to us as a vivid memory. The ofi: ial communique will have had its own way of describing them to the world outside. The official communique have said, no doubt. “Heavy artillery lire on both tanks of the Meuse,” and will have said no more. It is one way. For us within the gate of Verdun, howJH*r, there are other ways. We can appreciate that masterful brevity, hut we cannot imitate it. This was our first sight of Verdun and of the tremendous scenes which the name of Verdun epitomises. We cannot so dismiss those days—with a word. We found them too intensely dramatic for that, more crowded w ith living interest, indeed, than nnv we have known wherever upon the battle line we have been. ON A HILL-TOP. In every age men have been led to the crests of hills for the sake of some or other spectacle of drama or of beauty only thus to lx* fully surveyed and adequately measured. And at this moment there are scenes upon the other side of hill-tops which are as impressive as any the world has ever had to show, hut scenes t»l tragedy rather than charm, scenes that oppress rather than exalt, scenes that make overwhelming revelation of the anguish of war. Such a scene would this of Verdun be save for the one glorious fact which has transformed it. For Verdtun is a spread of ridge noon ridge and valley after valley of death and destruct on, a ghastly panorama of scarred hillsides and blasted woods stretched in miles of devastation upon both sid»*s of its winding liver. But every yard of that shelltorn shattered soil, every ravaged village, and every battered fort, is a memorial of the spirit of France and of the valour of the soldiers of France, who Mood and still do stand at Verdun indomitably firm against the invader. Bv grace ol the soldiers of France, Verdun is a scene not of catastrophe, but of triumph. “On ne passe pas!” is an abiding word: and tin* terrible battleground spread open there beneath the hills on which wo stood, is a field of immortal fame. They took us, at Verdun, to more than one of these hills of outlook. They showed ii' many things -blitekened paces that wore the wreckage of woodls and forests, tumbled stones that once had been villages, belts of grey, bare earth whipped by the incalculable fury of months of shell-fire. To seek the monument of Verdun’s heroisms one had only to look around. Ridge upon ridge in semi-circular sweeps of ridges one atave another the place lay open to us, not so much a field as an amphitheatre of battle, rising tier by tier to the sky. In the clear air of tliese dlays we could see across the hills as far as Montfuucon lift ing many miles away into its pinnacled height, while nearer the great rings of Verdun’s famous forts came one by one from the obscurity of hearsay and lived taforo our eyes. Here, low in the valley, curved the Me use, and there above it (limbed the Molt Homme of bloody memory, and Hill 304, and Hill 344, and Forges Wood, and the Crows* Wood, and Fort Vaux. and Fort Donnuiiioiit. and Fort Souville and Belleville and St. Miliiel, and the rest. It was in July, 1916, that tile enemy’s mighty hammer-blows, begun in February "i that year, finally beat themselves to pieces against the iron resistance of tile French. In July, 1916, he held his most forward positions. Since then he has been hurled tack step by Me,» until he is almost where he was when he began. Months of desperate onslaught have lengthened into years, and to-day as one stands looking down upon the unceasing artillery lire, with its thunder ot explosions and its belching® of smoke and Hume, the tremendous iccne easily re-peoples itself, becomes again the great battle of Verdun with it- interlocked masses of bunon.l- ..I thousands ol men in colossal conflict,, its heroisms, its slaughter, its agonies' and all the tumult of that gigantic struggle w hich had for audience the whole civilised world'. It is a scene that is -till aflame with the fires of tattle, and the grip of it is still intense. Long wo stood there, with the guns a sullen reverberation along the valleys and the shell-hursts a steady thunder on the hillsidxes. And we walked down from our wirnni.t to tie* river level and stayed awhile on the banks of the Meuse itself, where men i ii guard ;it the farthest verge of a Mifety which any moment of that unoeas ng plunge of high explosive may transform into sudden death. And the sun fell in the western sky. and veils of grej mist swathed and hid the hills, and batteries near and far, until now but rarely seen, revealed themselves. , wen* disclosed by shoots of vividly visible Home where their guns roared into the gathering darkness, IN A VERDUN FORT. That was one day. Another day they « look us to a fort, one of the great Verdun forts that hold the eastern gate- i way of France. In one’s near approach ! to the battle-line there is always a thrill, and on this hill-top above Ver- i dun. with a great area of attacked and i defended country at our feet, and the 1 artillery duel within it an unslaked vio- i ience of explosion, our thrill was as- < sum! to us. The fort itself was im- | pressivo enough. Its surface of solid- I ly massive walls, scarred but unshaken, i its great gun-turret and the median- t i m within it. its underground passages i leading to far spread burrowings stored with secret things—all were porten- t tons witness of strenth and power. And 1 we came out upon the summit of the r fort, climbing to it across ground that I was smashed out of recognisable sun- c stance, pits and caverns and hillocks fl and mounds of earth that had been t pulverised into this sliiapolessne** by i the shell-fire of months. Shells had < fallen here the day before. They n have fallen here across two years t of hitter fighting. Thev are P like to fall tyere at any hour on any a day. Because of shells, the surround ng I of this fort is one vast sprawl of shelE a craters, with scarcely a vud of it i:n- n disturbed earth. All Verdun field, in- I (bed. is like that as *ar as the eve can p w «‘o across the f>rre.id scene—mio’s bind t seo across the spread scene—miles and t ‘-hell-erators letting the Val- P and the hillsides, disfiguring the x " rp sts of ridges and their farther sides • >

to the levels below—thousands of shellcraters corroding and distorting the surface of the earth like an eruptive disease. The middle distance of the valley above which wc stood was filled with drama. Heavy artillery fire rolled and loared along it. The Hying high explosive screamed overhead ail instant and burst hdforo us in thunders of noise and black vomitings of smoke and debris. Shrapnel broke and scattered in mid-air with a thousandfold whipcrack of concussion. Aeroplanes, whirling within the blue of a glorious day, manoeuvred in swift swallow-flights of observation, or engaged each other in battle, their machine-guns an intermittent chatter above us, and the puffs of anti-aircraft shrapnel attacking them .suspended in the air like festoons of woolly balls, snow-white under the shining sun. There was a w inding road in the valley, clearly visible. German shells were bin sting on both sides of it. And a motor ambulance was on that road. It went at full speed, twisting and curling with its twisting and curling foothold. Seen from our height its progress was a fantastic dance upon a wavy white ribbon. The shells fell before and behind it. Fascinated by the spectacle of its flight we watched it come and go, and saw it at last far in the distance, still winding and twisting, still in the midst of danger, still winning through. And there was a “sausage” balloon quite near u«, one of the nany strung above to battle-line. Suddenly two aeroplanes swept past it. A sharp crackle of ma-chine-guns, and the balloon burst into flame. In a moment it bad vanished in surgings of smoke, out or which fell, presently, two black specks. Hovering in mid-air awhile they dropped slowly to earth. They were tin* oh.*-.-rvivrs—saved by tiheir parachutes. Drama upon drama, it seems, i in a day upon the hills of Verdun 1 And wo left tile hills to see a soldiers’ cemetery, one cemetery of ninny hereabouts, but itself containing 5,000 dead. Within the blood-stained battleground of \ erdun at which we had been gazing, 600,000 dead, we an* told, lie buried. The mind reels at thought of such a harvest of death in one small place. Rut at Verdun millions of men have fought, and the cost of France’s victory there, and the cost of Germany’s effort to retrieve it, alike are too prodigious to be understood. THE CITADEL AND ITS WATCHWORD. There is also the town of Verdun, with its wonderful citadel. It must have been a pleasant place when it lay ii peace on the hanks of its smoothlyflowing river and rose into its thicklypeopled hillsides—a large and prosperous and beautifully situated centre of happy life. To-day it is a chaos of wreckage. Hundreds of its shops and houses are no more than heaps of stones. Its cathedral, the crypt of whuh dates hack to the 10th century, .-till stands, hut is badly broken; and “tlier ancient and historic places, and most of the. modern buildings, art* smashed through street after street, end lie in melancholy array of ruin. No civilians inhabit there. Shells still fall in the town, great shells from longrange guns. Some fall upon the citadel—hilt there they fall harmless. For tie* citadel ol \ erdun is a marvel of unassailable strength. It is built far underground, beneath solid rock jo metres thick. Its rooms and passages cover more than four miles, and the floor level is reached from a road oi direct entrance or in a stairway descent from its roof or rock by way of cightvfiye steps. This immense vault”coiitains every sort of facility for the lioiuving of hundreds of men. Brilliantly lighted from its own electrical plant it is built into rooms and tunnelled into corridors. Its water machinery .supplies the forts for miles around. It has a chapel, and a theatre, a mill, an I a bakery, a hospital, a co-operative stole, and ever so much else of accommodation and equipment. To come from tile tumult outside to i his subterranean fastness was instant ly to experience a rest-cure. The guns could he heard, but ever so faintly and far, and here at least that distant echo of them was the worst they could ..riiieve. High among our memories of fins visit to Verdun the novelty and interest of our overnight stay at the Mtadcl and the hospitality of the Commandant and 1 the officers with him, and tlm mess-room with its trophies of bvg.mo and existing war. Most memorable of all. perhaps, the cluster of Allied flags upon the wall of that room above the great motto of Verdun. “On ne Passe pas!” is written there in letters ot gold—shining, ns such words lould and will. For they are immoral words. They sum up Verdun. In tile light of them the terrible battleground outside reflects, even from its Hiambles and its graves, the valiant i oul of France.