"No Man's Land Near Lens, France"

"No Man's Land Near Lens, France"

Look as carefully as you can over this field of desolation and carnage and you will find hardly an inch of ground that has not been blasted over and over again by explosive shells. Those stumps, the remains of a beautiful orchard, show what kind of ground this No Man's Land was before the Allies and their foe came to grips here in the tremendous battle that raged for the channel ports in Northern France and Belgium.

Shell holes without number as far as the eye can reach, filled with stagnant gas-filled water, as deadly as the wells that the Germans poisoned as they retreated. At the edge of the hole nearest to you is discernible a rifle and bayonet; at your feet is a helmet still covering the head of its owner.

Farther on toward the largest tree stump you can see the body of one of the dead. Hundreds like this soldier have lain between the lines of the armies, for days, weeks, months, even when the fighting, fiercer than ever before, raged all about them. On the extreme right there are the remains of another of the men who strove in the dusk of some grey morning to make his way to the enemy's lines.

If you had gone the length of the line held by the British in France, you would have seen miles and miles of terrible desolation like this, "where all is still and cold and dead."

Copyright The Keystone View Company
Series 75/100/200/300
Position 11/13/28/41

Photograph