VERDUN.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160812, 20 November 1920, Page 5

VERDUN.

RECONSTRUCTION WORK

INSUPERABLE OBSTACLES, - Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received—NoV. 20, 9.35 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 19. The Daily . Telegraph’s Paris correspondent says that France is meeting with insuperable obstacles in connection with reconstruction work in the Verdun district. One stretch of the battleground is so holed with craters and filled with bodies and shells that twenty-two villages, which once stood on the site, will not be rebuilt because it would take years to clear the land. Eight hundred thousand bodies, half being Frenchmen, fill this area. Ninety thousand bodies have been recovered in the last two years, onefourth of which have been identified. Every mile of ground contains a thousand bodies. The land is regarded as sacred, and will be left untouched, but a decade hence it, may be converted into pasture; lands.