PERONNE A SHELL.

Hokitika Guardian, 31 May 1917, Page 3

PERONNE A SHELL.

Wanton Ruin. (From W. Beach Thomas.) Wae Correspondent’s Headquarters, 7' France, March 3. I have just returned from Peronne after crossing the Somme most pra* eariously on piles. The town is the most thorough example seen or imagined of tho deliberate brutality of German destructiveness, The front of every house worth the name has been blown in by mines laid and exploded over a series of days. The town has be3n largely spared bv French and British guns, and the Germans knew when they left on Saturday night that their own guns would be out of range, yet I could find only one house with an unbroken facade.

These caked ruins are moa'ly rubbish heaps. Within, after long and deliberate sea ch, I oould discover nothing in fnrnitnre, metal, crockery, or •ny other sort, valuable eaough to be worth collection by a penny tinker or a rag-aad-bone merchant. What was not removed wss hammered to pieces.

In the course of ray wat-dentigs I met the first matt to enter the town, a young officer tram a Midland ba'taHou who cur through 20st of German wire Boon after smima on Sunday morning and psnet'a ed ■vnb five nleu into the square. He found an abauid dummy figure of Britannia. Beyond the town the tracks of the German transport were visible on the fresh rime. One prisoner was taken in aUhg-out, a magnificent-looking soldier from the Danish frontier whodLapproved c f the war in all its bearings..

The dug-outs and few building l ? on Mount St Quentin are destroyed with equal thoroughness, all except ooe where tbe half-consumed fuse of a mine was discovered. KITTEN IN A DUG-OUT. In a neighbouring cellar were two coffins I have had no experience in the was - at all like enteting these silent avenues of skeleton houses. Not a sound of war waa in the air till one very distant Archie (anti-aircraft gun) gave a muffled crack. The only live thing seen within the walls, beyond tbe few engineers going abont their business, was a tortnise-abell kitten that rubbed itself against my leg aa I crawled down into some deep and blackened dug-outs under tbe town hall, used by ?he Germans, as a notice announced, for the wonnded and the ill. The kitten has been delivered to a battalion mesa, where it will be adopted, One other animal was token joat outside tbe town, an bxcellent cavalry pony, with fall kit strapped on to the saddle. The town is very heavily defended by thirty-yard bands of wire and good trenches, in which eome of the digging, the woodwork, and ths wiring is quite new. The final rearguard left in these defences consisted apparently of a handful of men plentifully provided with red, graon, and white lights, with which they madeaosrtain parade, enjoying a Benefit” to themselves. ' !

Peronne was an old and spacious town containing many very beautiful houses, inhabited by rich people. It has not been bombarded or fought for like many ether towns To-day it does not contain a table, chair, cupboard, or jag or carpet or picture of the least use to anyone. The force of ao T entifio barbarity never went further. “Foul what you cannot ha7e ” ie tbe German motto, Every village over the area of retreat has been so rifled, So destroyed.

OUR bridge-builders’ feat.

Foe has nlayed a email part in Peronne, I saw only one house and a few dug-outs in flimes. I have no time to give any longer description of the destroyed districts or further news of the pursuit of tbe enemy by our cavalry, bet a word must be said for the prompt and workmanlike energy of cur engineers, who certainly surpassed the records in the throwing of the first bridge across tbs Somme Canal. ,#