Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 152, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 June 1915 — CLARK VISITS SCENE OF ONE OF MOST DESPERATE BATTLES OF WAR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CLARK VISITS SCENE OF ONE OF MOST DESPERATE BATTLES OF WAR

Correspondent Describes Plain of Vaux-Marie, the Last Spot Contested by the German Crown Prince in His Retreat After the Firpt Advance on Paris —Shell-Tom and Fire-Scathed Villages on Every Side —Spirit of French Is Undaunted.

By EDWARD B. CLARK.

Staff Correspondent of the Western Newspaper Union. _ Near St. Mlmel, Prance —It is at St. Mlhlel that the German fifth army.

commanded by the crown prince, is holding a salient, shaped like a spear point, and which cuts into the valley of the Meuse. Ever since last September when the Germans retreated to this place after their flrfft advance, and which they had already prepared for defense, the men of the crown prince’s forces , have succeeded i n keeping their

grip on the spear handle against all the efforts of the French to wrest it from them. On the plain from which I am looking at the light smoke wreathing over the, batteries there was fought one of the most desperate battles of the present war. This field is called the plain of Vaux-Marie. It. marks the last spot contested by the crown prince in the retreat which he was forced to make to keep his lines in touch with the retreating armies on his right flank, armies which occupied a long front ex-tending-from this place almost to the gates of Paris. f

Dotted With Graves. This plain, with its dotting graves of German and Frenchmen, newly dug, and with its great gaping holes made by the falling shells, marks the present high tide in this section of the French advance from the Marne. The fighting, cigarette-smoking, almost debonair soldiers of the republic on this battle front are still on the offensive and are throwing themselves forward daily under the, cover of a screen of shell fire in desperate endeavor to drive their enemy from the

natural and man-made defenses, behind which he stands still resolute and still apparently possessed of the high-hearted purpose, when the opportunity offers, to go forward once more over the ground which he gained last summer only to lose when the leaves turned in the fall. The round of the battle today is in my ears. The distance to the line of the fighting is nothing, but as the military men sense it. the grappling place is a long way bff. According to the conceptions of men who fight under modern conditions, the man who is only within range of the heavy artillery is not in the battle at all. When the chance of being hit is only one in twenty a man, according to the modern idea, is in no danger. He must be under the hell fire of shrapnel, facing the driving rain of small arms’ bullets, or with bayoneted rifle in hand, must be guarding and thrusting against an enemy whose breath he can feel on his cheeks. When the chances of the lottery are all against fctm a man in these days is accounted as being in real peril. Gigantic French Captain. I am here under the chaperonage, so to speak, of the same army officer with whom I visited otbnr points of the field of operations, and with whom I looked'on the devastation and desolation which rule in the shell-torn and fire-scathed villages of the Marne and Meuse. This French officer is Capt Gerard de Ganajr. Before this, I have

written something of my military companion. His mother was an American. He stands six feet three in his campaign socks. He is dressed today as always, in his “horizon blue.” This color melts into the sky screen, and as my eyes seek the captain out when he is at a distance, I feel that no ambitious artillery man can make an adequate mark of him, loomingly big though he is.

There are so many shell-made cavities in this plain that I wonder it was necessary for either French or German to pause here to use the spade for grave-making for their dead. The fallen here are in great numbers. Many of the burials have been mgde within a few days. ‘ The survivors of the battle lay their comrades away tenderly. At the head of one long, mounded trench there is an inscription which says that within rest 67 soldiers of France. On a cross at the head of the trench, roughly written by some kindly hand which in the battle time must make haste with its task, are the word, “Honneur aux Heros.” Supplies Constantly Arriving.

From bases which I must not name and lying well to our rear, supplies constantly are being brought up in gray motors and in heavy army wagons for the French armies battling along this line from St. Mihiel to the Argonne forest. I know that the last French official report has reported gains in the region of the Argonne forest, which lies only a few miles to my left and from which every few minutes I can hear the bellowing of heavy guns. It spems from what I hear that the high hope of every trooper in the forces of Generals Langle de Carry and Sarrail is that the effort and the success along this line will be in keeping with the marked advances, which, rumor at least has it, the French and the British armies are making in the far northwest, where flank on flank as we hear it here, they are well into the first stage of the long-heralded spring drive. *

There are no motor buses left in Paris. Today I know why. They have been pressed into the service for supply transport purposes all along this part of the rear of the French

lines. One of these buses, whose ordinary work is the carrying of a few native Parisians and of a great number of American sight-eeers along the boulevards of the big city, has just passed me on the way to the front In big letters on its side appear the words “Place de la Bourse.” Today it is not going to the fighting line of the financiers, but to the camp kitchens of the embattled troops of France. It is loaded with fresh beef. An army must still fight on its stomach. and so this rackety Paris bus Is carrying a cargo more serviceable than shells for the “seventy-fives,” and more useful, in a way, than the explosives for the sapper and the miner. Industry of French Peasants. Ever since I came into this field of operation I have been struck by the fine-souled way in which the old French peasants, aged men who cannot go to the fighting line, and the women and the children, have followed the army and have* fitted the blade of the plow into the track of the advancing machine gun. The old men, the women and the children of this land are cultivating the fields almost up to the points of contact of the battling armies. So earnest was the peasantry in its endeavor to make every acre of the soil yield its toll against the day of possible need, that it actually carried its tilling and planting work into the fields where the sheila still werefaSing. 1 The military authorities finally were

compelled to call a bast 01 the cultivating ambitions of the French peasants. They admired the spirit which prompted the aged ones and the women and the children to dare death in order to make a full crop possible, but they did not think that a few extra bushels of wheat or of potatoes would compensate France for further losses among its peasantry. It was necessary, therefore, to call a halt on this fine but dangerous farming endeavor. The toilers did not mind the hell of shell fire any more than the soldiers did, but there are some sacrifices which are needless. So It is that the peasant toll of today must manifest itself only up to the inside limit of danger from dropping projectiles. Thus it is that the plain on which I am standing has not yet been turned by the plow. Nature has been at work here ever since it felt the first warming touch of spring’s Bun. This battlefield today is covered witH dowers, dandelions, daisies, forget-me-nots and violetu. The deep pits dug by the earlier fallen shells are now sunken gardens. White and gold, yellow and blue and crimson, enter into the color scheme of the battlefield. I never knew before the knifelike sharpness of contrast. War and death are in the valley, and peace and life are on the commanding hill. The guns are pounding while over my head two skylarks are soaring and singing. The fast growing grass affords the birds shelter for their nests, and above them always is the sky againßt whose foundations artillery is vainly used. Reminders of the Battle.

All along the edges of this plateau the trenches are deeply out They are used for shelter by the men of both armies during the sweeping fire on this open plain. Today they are somewhat back of the rearmost trenches of the present fighting line. It is easily learned how savage was the fight in this place where today one picks •flowers and listens to the larks singing in defiance of the noise of the cannon. Reminders of the battle that has moved qn apace are everywhere. German shells and French shells expended either vainly or to awful purpose are an incumbrance to one’s footsteps. When one .follows the track of modern war he wonders that any man engaged in It can live to write its history. It is hard to turn away from this field near St. Mihiel. There have been horrors enough along the line of the way to make one hate war for all time, but yet there is something about it which grips the Interest and the imagination. This battlefield of Vaux-Marie is one point of two meeting lines of a triangle, within whose compass the fighting has been at its fiercest and whose edge is still fanned by the hot breath of battle. I have said that this triangle is out of the present fighting, but one cannot so sense it while the ground shakes •With the roar of artillery. France is high-heartedly hopeful today that the line of this fighting will continue to recede northward and north-eastward, and that the recession will become quicker paced day by day as the spring and the summer advance. As it is the fragments of villages within this triangle, and which are still shaken by the gunfire, feel seemingly that their future safety is as assured as if they were removed a thousand leagues from the clashing armies in the valleys of the Aire and the Meuse. The few villagers who have come back have full confidence in the prowess of the French soldiers who are bulwarking the land. More Desolate Villages.

Near this field of the fighting there are several desolated places which I have seen, but of which I have not written, so like Is their condition to that of scores of other villages which I have visited and whose pathos appealed. Pretz and Vassincourt are gone. Louppy le Chateau Is a pile of ruins. At Revlgny nothing Is left but the walls of the church and one saint’s statue, from which destruction In some way or another was warded off.

We see these places as we pass from the battlefield to a village still standing, at least in part, and where we may rest, and where* we might forget war were It not for the distant rolling of the gunß along the line where men are killing men. We are going back to Paris and from there later I hope to go under the same guidance to another part of France, where, as along this line, the armies are at death grips.

Edward B. Clark.

After the Battle.