GRAVEYARDS OF FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1919, Page 6

GRAVEYARDS OF FRANCE.

A PATHETC JOURNEY. MANY UNIDENTIFIED BURIAL PLACES. The following extracts arc taken from a letter written under date August 3 by a Dunedin widow who crossed the seas to visit the grave of her soldierhusband in France. After describing the many difficulties experienced in London in securing the necessary permits and passports for herself and her soldier brother, the writer states that they eventually arrived in Anas. "I did feel sore when I saw that town. It has been a beautiful place, but is now a mass of ruins There are many people living there now, but mostly in ruined houses and cellars. You see a house with two sides to it and no windows, hut they rilled up the other two sides and Windows with waterproof (inen paper—really a masterpiece." The soldier husband is buried at Boisleux. There are about 400 or 450 graves in the cemetery, but only two New Zealanders are buried there—the Dunedin soldier and Gunner Oreenhough, NZ.F.A. who was killed the same day. "We visited Boisleus St. Marc and Boisleux la Mont, but there is not a stone left standing—both villages absolutely destroyed. We were extremely fagged by this time, and had until 8 p.m. to fill in doing nothing, so we called at a prisoner of war camp and the two English officers there made us welcome. They showed us over the camp, and the officer commanding presented ns with a cigarette ash tray which a Herman prisoner had just finished making for the. colonel It is made out of a shell, and has a horse's head inside a the famous Bossignol Wood, where so many New Zealand boys were killed, and where Mrs. Black's husband was- killed, and where Sergeant Forsyth got his V.C, being killed immediately after by a sniper, and where F—d (her brother) passed such a lot of his time. I took his photo standinsr by some barbed wire entanglements which he had helped to put there. Nothing as yet has been shifted; it was just as the boys evacuated and advanced. There arc dozens of lonely graves dotted alt round there, mostly New Zealanders, and when walking alonn we came upon An unburied Tommy; it was very pitiful. Some of the crosses have on them: 'An unknown soldier.' We started on, and in time came to Gommecourt, where Lieutenant Black is buried. We went down into ft deep dugout, where F—d had often been and sat on the corner where he used to meet his fatigue parties, There it sot

even a stone left in Gommecourt, which has been quite a decent-sized village. We took some photos of Lieutenant Black's grave There are ruins at Hebuterne, and nearly 50 people have returned and are camped in tin huts sold by the British Government. We passed' Lassigny Farm and Sally au Bois and the Chateau de la Haie. Lassigny Farm was where the New Zeaianders made that big attack. Since we left Arras we had passed prisoner of war camps all the way along—thousands of prisoners." The ruined town of Albert was visited. Not one whole houss, but a. few tin huts are erected, and a few people living in cellars and suchlike. The party then left for Amiens, where they had a narrow escape from missing the train to Boulogne, and in due course reached London.