ECHO OF WORLD WAR I

Chronicle (Levin), 4 March 1949, Page 5

ECHO OF WORLD WAR I

(N.Z.P.A.

—Reuter,

Underground Hospital Buried By Shell Unearthed

Copyright)

Received Friday, D.45 a.m. PARIS, March 3. Searchers today dug into a subterranean army field hospital buried since the doctors and patents were killed or died of suttocation when a shell sealed»off their communications trench in 1918, says the Associated Press' Arras correspondent. Skeletons of patients were found in their cots, lined up in rows along the wails. German rifles and helmets were stacked by the door. This underground hospital was found yesterday by a rafobit hunter when his t'oot broke through the dugout's crumlbling roof, which was overgrown with foliage. With other cit»zens of Arras, the hunter dug his way into the hospital to be greeted by, a grim and grisly scene. Rows of cots lineu the sheet metal walls. Each cot contained a skeleton — an occasionai one minus an arm or a leg. From the position of three of the skeletons, it appeared that they belonged to two doctors and a patient on whom they were operating when bhe shell landed in the communications trench. The Mayor of Roeux Arras, about one mile from Arras, said that the dugout will be sealed off. No one wili be al-lowed to enter it and it will /be turned over to the Graves Registration Cornmand of the French Army.