IN THE WAKE OF RETREAT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1722, 7 June 1917, Page 4

IN THE WAKE OF RETREAT.

WA NTON DESTRUCTION,

PERONNE UTTERLY DESPOILED. British troops entered Peronne on March 18th, and writing on the following day, Mr W. Beach Thomas, correspondent of the Dilily Mail, describes the town as the most thorough example of the deliberate brutality of German destructiveness. The front of every house worth the name has been blown in by mines laid and exploded over a scries of days. The town has been largely spared by French and British guns, and (lie Germans knew when they left on Saturday night that their own guns would bo out of range, yet I could find only one house with an unbroken facade. Those naked ruins are mostly rubbish heaps. Within, after long and deliberate search, I could discover nothing in furniture, metal, crockery, or any other sort, valuable enough to be worth collection by a penny tinker or a rag-a ml-bone merchant. What was not removed was hammered to pieces. In the course of my wanderings I met (he first man to enter the town, a young officer from a Midland battalion, who cut through 20ft. of German wire soon after sunrise on Sunday morning and penetrated with five men into the square. He found an absurd dummy figure of Britannia. The dug-outs and few buildings on Mount St. Quentin are destroyed with equal thoroughness, all except .one whore the half-consumed fuse of a mine was discovered. I have had no experience in the war at all like entering these silent avenues of skeleton houses. Not a sound of war was in the air till one very distant Archie (antiaircraft gun) gave a mu tiled cralm. The only live thing seen within the Avails, beyond the few engineers going about their business, was a tortoise-shell kitten that rubbed itself against my leg as I craAvled down into some deep and blackened dug-outs under the Toavii Hall, used by the Gormans,as a notp’cc ,announced, for the wounded and the ill. One other animal was taken just outside the town, an excellent cavalry pony, with full kit strapped "on to the saddle. The town is heavily defended by 30yd. bands of Avire ami good trenches, in which'some of the digging, the woodwork, stud the Aviring is quite new. The final rearguard left in these defences consisted apparently of a handful of men plentifully supplied ( Avith red, green, and Avhite lights, Avitli Avhieh they made a certain panicle, enjoying u “Brook’s Benefit” to themselves. Peronne Avas an old and specious toAvn containing many A’ory beautiful houses inhabited by rich people. It has not been bombarded or fought for like many other toAvns. To-day it does not contain a table, chair, cupboard, or jug or carpet or picture of the least use to anyone. The force of scientific barbarity neA’er went further. “Foul what you cannot have” is the German motto. Every village over the area of retreat has been so rilled, so destroyed.