AMIENS REVISITED.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17124, 20 April 1921, Page 11

AMIENS REVISITED.

OBUTEBATION OF BATTLE SCAE& 3lr Raymond >"-. Kershaw, of ">Vahroonga, New South Wales, who enlisted in 1916, and was wounded .at Vil-lers-Bretonneux,' where he won the Military Cross, and is at present at New College, ©xford, Las recently T>een touring on the Continent. "Writing to his parents, he says that after visiting Switzerland he stayed for two days at Amiens. "It really was u wonderful interlude," Air Kershaw writes. '"The first day we went up ,to Yillers-Bretonneux, and wandered over those unforgettable battlefields again. It was a strange and sad experience to visit them onco more—with something also of familiarity and pleasantness in it. ViilersBretouneus recovers but slowly from its war damage. 'Jho people live in army huts or small buildings put up by. the French Government. But already there are some 2000 back in Villers-Breton-neux as against its pre-war population of 5000. They 'are .tilling the fields again—it is marvellous; these lands wiiich were, honeycombed with our trenches are now' under the plough. Of course the actual land here was not so damaged as a little farther north—from Albert to Bapaume. 1 visited the very spot (trenches now filled" in) from which 1 'hopped over' on July 4th, and then went forward as on that day. We visited an Australian cemetery on Hill 10-I—looking down tho broad Somme Valley to Amiens—the Cathedral spire showing in the distance. ''The second day was even more wonderful; we took the train to Albert, and then walked up tho broad AlbertBapaumo road to Pozieres. It is as much a part of Australia almost, as Botany Bay. It, was profoundly affecting to traverse it once more—through La Boiselle with its gigantic mine crater that was sprung on tho first day of the Somme offensive, then onward past the road that leads off to Bezenton-le-Petit, and to Montaubun, with the shaggy remnants of Delville "Wood on the skyline. AVo went/ ou to Pozieres, sitting dark and rugged on the crest of'tho wide plateau that looks towards Bapaume. Pozieres—the old village—exists no more; there is not one stone left upon another. And yet the people are back even in Pozieres; they are living in hutments and cabins—some hundred and fifty of them—clinging desperately to the land they once cultivated. They are actually now tilling some of the land round Pozieres—■ 'Death Valley'—where w.o had a thousand guns during the Somme offensive—is being gradually reclaimed ; thoro is a ploughed field, with a thick young crop springing up, running across the head of the valley. And beyond Pozieres, just outside the village where the road to Courcelette branches off to the left, there is actually a young orchard, newly planted, with a crop of winter wheat growing beneath the trees. "To anyone who saw this count*y in its war conditions these tilings arowoll-' nigh impossible. Around tho village the peasants are busy with spade and pick and plough, filling in trenches and shell-holes, and turning up the rich, uneven soil.' "We watched a plough team making its furrow—a man was following with a pick; he dug up shell cases and wheels an<T wire, galvanised iron, piping, steel pegs, and heaven knows what else. Ho told lis that there had been no explosions there, but at Millencourt a man had been killed and another at Albert'. 1 - They are wonderful workers these French peasants; stolid, patient, toilsome, and philosophical to a degree. In fivo years' time I predict that they will have subdued this wilderness once more. But how much remains now to do. To stand on the Pozieres ridge to-day is to see, apart from the riddled barracks where the people live and their few green fields, one wide, undulating, ocean-like stretch of grey; desolation,. an unpeopled, inert, profitless country, thick with tho last..dead grass of winter, arid teeming ivithashapeless mounds iifcrid tho blurred outline of trench and shell-hole. However, it will all pass;, nothing is surer.'?. " * ' I