Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 279, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1918 — CHATEAU-THIERRY TAKES UP TASK OF RISING FROM “CUT OF ASHES” [ARTICLE]

CHATEAU-THIERRY TAKES UP TASK OF RISING FROM “CUT OF ASHES”

Refugees Returning to the Little Left by Heartless Hun—Already Small Storekeepers Are Operating at Full Blast—Germans Chased Out Too Fast to Take Their Loot With Them— Where Marines Wrote Themselves Into Fame.

Paris.— “Chateau-Thlerry,” repeated, a marine officer and smiled at me pityingly. “Yes, that was interesting a month ago. A Boche potted me there aqd I’m just going back to join my men. But you won’t find it Interestingnow. All the Germans are gone.” I But he was wrong. There are Germans marching through the -streets of Chateau-Thierry every day—German prisoners armed with shovels and picks who are claming out the wreckage and desolation they left ip their path when they evacuated the city on July 22; proud Prussians who are wielding scythes to harvest the crops in the fields that they called'“Unserland” a month ago; mild-faced boys from the south of Germany who seem to prefer jobs as chore-women with mops and scrub brushes to carrying guns for the kaiser. And as for the Interest of ChatenUThlerry, the curious have visited'the field of Napoleon’s Waterloo for several centuries. They will visiS the Waterloo of the Boch? march on Paris in 1918 for several more centuries and thrill with every century at the story of the battle on the outskirts of that city where American marines, artillery and Infantrymen started the Huns on their run for Berlin—and gave them such a good start that the goal Is getting hotter each day. .

American boys who journeyed it those July days when they started forward in the face of nfurderous machine gun fire to smoke the'Boches out-of the stronghold that assured their Tooting in Chateau-Thlerry. I climbed over graves and shell holes, through underbrush* and past isolated bits of barbed wire entam. glements into the heart of the woods, where the Boches had their dugouts. And at every step of the way, difficult to traverse even bow when it has been trampled over and cleared out since the battle, I wondered at the courage of the boys who had faced hidden machine guns and unknown horrors lurking in the shadows. A human jawbone lay at the doorway of a hunting lodge which had been desperately contested for and from the underbrush near by protruded the boots of an unburied Hun. A group of dugouts off to the right was well concealed by rocks and underbrush and I peered down into several of them. The openings were just big enough to permit a man to wriggle through pn his stomach and Inside was a little straw and perhaps a battered helmet or rotting gas mask. A good hole for a dog, if the dog wasn’t' particular—but the conducting officer with me assured me that a dugout of that size was used to accommodate five men during a bombardment or barrage. When the barrage was lifted the men would come out and go to work again with their machine guns. We saw lots of dugouts, however, from which the Germans never emerged. The opening had been filled up with earth from exploding shells and the sanitary troops that came through after the battle were spared the trouble of burying those men. Many of thp holes had a sickly greenish hire, the mark of gas which poisons even the earth, and around others were mounds of empty cartridges showing they had been used as semiprotection for machine gunners.

War Activity Everywhere. It takes Just an hour and a half by rail from Paris to reach the outposts of the battlefields of yesterday; an hour and a half that runs by like the fast reels of a cinema with hurried glimpses of'passing trains loaded with horses, with cattle, with big guns and meh; of camions crowded with soldiers wearing dust-colored uniforms; of hospital trains marked with red crosses and groups of civilians hurrying back to see whaj is left/ of their homes in the reconquered districts. At one of the stations the marine officer swung'off to Join-a k-not of men whbsebacks were loaded with marching equipment, showing that they were going “up the line.” War was written in large letters Aver every human activity, bul off to my right was the Marne, sleepy and peaceful, flowing quietly through valley fields, hiding behind gentk slopes covered with wheat and splashed with vivid popples,, and emerging again from a clump of thick trees and heavy underbrush. At La Fertg there is a great gash in the station where a Boche plane, swooping down' within a few hundred yards of the mark, dropped n half dozen bombs just a few nights ago. And from there an auto road, pockmarked by shell holes, runs through fertile country and pink-roofed tillages, lifeless and deserted, to Lucyle«Bocage and Belleau woods, where the American marines showed the world just what fighting 'stuff the United States army is made of. “Lucy” keeps open house for all comers. There are a few doors left In the'vlllage, but they sag heavily on rusted hinges. Windows v are . open spaces through vhlch the winds And rains' drite at w.ll, leaving facetious puddles about the little heaps *of broken glass that strew the ground. The few roofs left look apologetic in the midst of the ruin about them. The village huddles about a little church that has been pitilessly battered to ruin. Only bits of the walls are left but in the midst of the wreckage rises a tall crucifix unscratched The altar of the small chapel on the right side had been cleared off and the old abbe, tolling alone, was searching among the de''brls for precious relics. A prayer book and a few pathetic little ornaments of glass were all that he had found to restore in his temple. Guarded by the Dead. From Lucy-1 e-Bocage to Belleau wood the road literally Is guarded by the dead, whose bodies were covered where they fell and marked by simple wooden crosses on many of which the soldier’s trench helmet has been hung. It was the way of the cross for the

Wrote Themselves Into Fame.» When the Germans entered ChateauThierry in reached the apex of a -triangla, the other ends of which were at Sbissons and Reims. They held the city, for 52 days and were so strongly'intrenched that the French and American troops who retook the city /lid it by outflanking movements Instead of a direct drive which would, have cost many times as many lives. The marines of the American divisions which turned the scale of the fighting, wrote themselves Into fame by taking Belleau woods. The other troops of the divisions, eager for a similar chance of distinguished service, were “allowed” to take Vaux, dlto the west of Chateau-Thlerry, which became the pivot point for the scissors that squeezed the Huns from the city. American artillery battered the village to bits and’then the infantrymen, armed with maps wlftch had been drawn -by an old stone mason- of the village, marched In and corralled the Germans who had taken refuge In the cellars.

The mason knew just where the cellars of the village were located because he had built them, so’ that the “cleanup” after the artillery preparation was quickly done. And the little town is now rebuilding with equal rapidity. It lies on the main road from La Fere to Chateau-Thlerry so the people are drifting back, and as we passed through I saw carpenters and plasterers at work making houses habitable. A group of red-fezzed Moroccan soldiers were clearing out a courtyard, and further down the road were Italians repairing shell holes. Another turn and we were In the city ftself, crossing the substitute for the famous stone bridge over the Marne that the French were fen years in-the building, hut which the Americans blew up in ten minutes to hinder the German advance last June. We climbed on dp to a hilltop from

which we overlooked the river and the"" city. Malicious Destruction. JThe towering cathedral steeple had offered a gunner’s mark which had not been overlooked. The spire of the Hotel de Ville also had bwn shot and the weathercock-Aung at half'-maSL In the square about the city hall the bouses had been shelled to ruin. A radiator stood out in midair from one of them. On the second story wall of another hung a large portrait of a girl. Bombs and shells had torn thefr way through roofs and afterward when I walked through the city streets I realized that the work of destruction had been completed by malicious hands. Furniture had been smashed and thrown Into yards and streets, pictures had been ripped from frgmes. and even kitchen utensils had been thrown out to rust. A large part of the loot of the city was recovered when the Germans were hurriedly* forced out and a nurse in an American Red Cross hospital which followed the allied troops into Chateau-Thlerry told me of seeing great sacks filled with gold and sliver cups, candlesticks, tableware and ornaments of every description which had been stored there in the hospital and left in the retreat. The hospital, originally for French civilians, has changed hands five, times arid was In such a state of unspeakable filth when the Americans took it over from the Boches that it took ten days to clean Up back of the hospital are the grounds of the ancient chateau for which the city was named. They once belonged to the duke of Thlerrv, who was one of the famous selgrieurs of the early eighth century. I climbed through subterranean passages there which were built by his vassals that he might escape to the othjer side of the Marne whenever his enemies pressed him too closely, but which recently have been used by Boches as protection during air raids from French planes. The openings are partially filled up now so that they.no longer afford passage under the river, but they offer adequate protection against bombs; There are .deep built wine cellars with thousands of bottles which the Germans carried up there and emptied. And there are old stone mortars that the inhabitants claim date back to the battle of Crecy, with empty cartridges from Boche guns ly*/ Ing beside them. A city of desolation is ChateauThlerry, but a city whose wounds already are beginning to heal. It escaped total destruction because since the German troops were on one side of the river and the allled*troops on the other the artillery on both sides was prevented from direct operation; and so civilians are coming back. The newspaper proprietor of the place, having found that only one side of his house had been torn off, is inhabiting the other side and preparing to turn out news for thofce who are returning. Every scrap of cloth and linen In his house was carried off and much of the furniture destroyed, but he found the silver which he buried In his* back yard before he fled with his wife, and his wife has found a Job cooking for American military police who are stationed there. A millinery shop has opened up and there is another little store of “notions," where perfumes and nail polish are-on sale. Fruit stands and cheese shops, butcher stores and postcard venders are operating at full blast on street corners or in drafty rooms-that 'open on the streets, guiltless of protection of glass or even windows or doors In many cases. The more habitable houses have been cleaned out and are being used as headquarter# for the military ofiiclals. ,< --