AUSTRALIAN BATTLEFIELDS IN FRANCE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 307, 23 September 1919, Page 5

AUSTRALIAN BATTLEFIELDS IN FRANCE

IMPRESSIONS OF A VISITOE. ' ' i

■_ . , ; 'j ' London, September 20. \ A special correspondent visiting .„ the ,' Australians' old battlefields' in France j and Belgium snys: "The peasants are. j striving to'again raise corn,- amid the j shell-holes and smashed redoubts. Weeds j grow thigh'high amid the ruins of. j the tumbled earth. The War Office has 200,000 Gonnans. and 85,000 Chinese un- I der British [officers clearing up the fields, ■■ ' j ami, collecting rusty iron,- barbed wire,* .', old sheila, and rails. They dynamite the j German redoubts for the steel girders. ■ Old villagers dig among the ruins for- I hidden treasures. The chink of the de- j molishers' tools resounds acrosa the wide valley • where formerly battles raged, ! Souvenirs can still bo found in tho woods "i and fields in the shafte of tattered tuii- ( forms and scattered crosses used 'for marking graves. As :i general rule, along J tho whole front where the ground was > ■ not heavily shelled agriculture'is begin- t mug ufr.v.ii, but ckc.vliore there is no | sign, indeed, no nope, of resettlement. ■] Every yard of the shell-tortured earth. . \ will "have to bo labnriousl) treated.— ' j Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. .. >