Many were buried in French cemeteries. At Neufchateau a section was set aside for the use of our American army. When I visited it there were about one hundred new-made graves all plainly marked, and fresh flowers on each grave.
Of course most of the French cemeteries were Catholic, and Protestant bodies could not be granted burial within the walls. A touching story is told of an American Protestant soldier buried close outside the wall of a Catholic graveyard. During the night French civilians tore down the wall at that place and rebuilt it around their comrade of a different faith. It was a beautiful symbol of the new dawn of peace when all nations and all creeds shall recognize the common brotherhood of all God's children.
France a Great Scrap Heap
Now that the war is over, France is a vast junk heap of arms and equipment that cost a mint of money and the brains and lives of millions of men.
For generations to come the soil of France will be disclosing to the peasants who till her fields, the fragments of war's destructive power and the bones of heroes who bled and died.
On the battlefields I saw innumerable quantities of equipment, together with guns and ammunition, which had cost millions to produce but were valueless in so far as their future use was concerned. I saw the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries Garden in Paris packed with one thousand captured German guns and more than a score of Boche planes and observation balloons. On one great pile were three thousand Boche helmets, carefully wired together and closely guarded so that souvenir hunters could not slip them away. It seemed a terrible price to pay for object lessons for the great celebrations commemorating the overthrow of autocracy. But having paid the price it was right to use the trophies.
As the boys went into battle they left behind them great salvage piles of things they would not need in the fight. As they came out of the battle they left great piles of salvage which they fervently hoped the world would never need to use again.
With the world's war bills mounting into the billions, and the value of the salvage piles an almost negligible amount, the material waste of war is appalling. If it will teach the nations to be as generous toward the great reconstruction program as they were toward the overthrow of that autocracy which threatened the world's freedom, then the waste of war has not been in vain.
At Bar le Duc I saw great warehouses under management of the French government stacked to the roof with auto tires and tubes. I had driven with our Division Y.M.C.A. chief, Dr. Norton, from Neufchateau to exchange an auto load of tires which our half dozen cars had worn out, for an equal number of new tires. And I knew that these great piles formed but a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of rubber shoes needed for the vehicles of war.
I visited the great Renault automobile plant at Nancy, which the French government had taken over for a repair station. Literally thousands of army trucks and official cars were passing through this station in a constant stream, either to be quickly repaired or thrown into the junk heap. Our own case was typical. Our Renault truck had broken down at Luneville, twenty miles from Nancy. No local man could make the repairs. Through our American army headquarters at Nancy we applied to this French repair station. At eight o'clock next morning I was on hand to pilot a heavy wrecking truck to our car. A towing hawser was attached; their second pilot took charge of our truck, load and all; and before noon we were safely landed at the repair station. A hasty examination by a Renault expert revealed the fact that ten days or more would be required to make the necessary repairs. A day or two was the longest time they could allow any car to remain. So after searching in vain for another garage that would undertake the repairs, we towed the truck to our Y.M.C.A. garage and stored it, that it might be salvaged at some future time.