RUINED CITY OF LENS.

Taihape Daily Times, 22 November 1918, Page 5

RUINED CITY OF LENS.

INDESCRIBABLE CHAOS. • J 'v ! - i ! 7 . ■ _ . • Describing the utter destruction wrought by the Gomans in Lens, a British correspondent says: From where I was to-day I could look' up the broad main street which - enters the town from the Lievin direction, and cuts through it from east to wesf. It isf stf&w-n; with bricks and beams and debris of wrecked buildings. . ' ■ On either side the houses are ; mere stumps and fragments of walls, with .HQ, resemblance .tp habitations. So is all the city. The Cathedral, from-where 'I looked, was' not identifi-A able. At one plaee-there-was a sharp, jagged splinter • of- 'brick■ work, standing up somewhat higher than the surrounding ruins, with bits of heavy masonry standing, roughly enclosing the square. They may have been the remains of the Cathedral, but I had, of course, with me officers of the troops, who have made this last advance, and they have been quite unable to satisfy themselves that this is not the Cathedral, or that it has even more completely disappeared. Nor is any other large building distinguishable from the surrounding chaos. In its collapse, the city seems to have shrunk into itself and become curiously small, a mere huddle of bricks and masonry covering the low dipping ground, in which ragged, blackened tree trunks stand up conspicuously, just as in any of the blasted villages. Nearly a year and a-half ago the Germans were already beginning the work of burning and explosion, and our shells were falling at largo about the town. The outlying villages of Lievin and Angres were then undestroyed, with even rows of cottages in solid red lines, and in Lens all the notable buildings with the church towers were whole. I have seen it crumbling at ■warious stages since. To-day as I went through Lievin and Angres were no more than other villages in the battle area.

Farther to the north of the city,_ some of our troops made an exploration into the German front and sup* -*, port" lines, and found them empty. There was no fighting, nor any casualty on either side. A curious and pathetic incident was told me of the patrol work when pushing into the outskirts. One of our patrols on the south side of the town fell in with a * party of four men in khaki who. when hailed, said they were "friends." But could give no password. It turned out that, they were a parro] of other troops who had been ir- the ruins for two clays, unable to find their way out. and without food. They had been given up as missing. There had been six originally, but one was shot by a German sniper, and one, fell in' t'ho/'.cjnaT- ;