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Thursday, April 18, 2019

Remembering When "Big Bertha" Long-Range Gun Killed 80 on Good Friday, March 23, 1918, at Chapel of Saint-Gervaise

From The Monroe Journal, April 18, 1919

Sketches from Europe by John Beasley

Bad Neuenahr, Germany, March 26—Recently, while in Paris, I saw the chapel of Saint-Gervaise, where 80 persons were killed on Good Friday, March 23, 1918, by a shell from “Big Bertha,” the German long-range gun, intelligence of which startled the whole world and taxed the credulity of the most ingenious persons. The spot where the missle struck though the damage had been repaired, could be plainly discerned by the contrast the new masonry presented to the old marble and stone.

Remembering the interest the people of Union county manifested in this feat, the height of German barbarism, I append the following account of the result and reception of the diabolical invention, which was written by one living in Paris at the time:

A year ago today, the 23rd March, was a Saturday. Paris, in spite of air raids and the constant German menace at her outer gates, was briskly and cheerfully engaged in her matutinal tasks when suddenly e very quarter of the city imagined that a bomb had been dropped in its midst.
Bertha had come to town.

There had been no word of warning. No one had ever dreamt of a bombardment of the capital at 40 miles range. But everybody had thought of the possibility of a daylight raid. “Ca y est,” said a million voices simultaneously, and those in the streets placidly sought shelter in the nearest abri until the iron storm should be over.

There were, however, disconcerting features about this novel Hun incursion. It had not been signaled by a lugubrious wail, so that one could only assume that the aeroplanes had escaped observation. Moreover, after the first explosion those who remained—and they numbered thousands—gazing up into the clouds could neither see nor hear anything. There was only a mysterious hush. We began to wonder if we were not the victims of some monstrous hallucination. Traffic was at a standstill. It was a city of silence.

After a quarter of an hour came the second detonation, equally unexpected, from an equally invisible source. Another short wait in a tense atmosphere of quietude and there came a third crash. No one had ever experienced precisely such an intermittent raid. We could only suppose that some murderous machine was making game of us, hiding somewhere up in the clouds, unseen by the French aeroplanes, keeping up the performance much longer than any previous visitor. Before, they had dropped their bombs madly and cut and run. Or perhaps, we argued when an hour had gone by, the Germans had devised new tactics, sending a steady stream of aircraft that could not be sighted, quarter of an hour after quarter of an hour.

Even the Government was deceived that first day. The long afternoon, regularly punctuated by explosions, wore on, and Paris, weary of waiting in cellars, went about her business, regarding the extraordinary happenings as another curious episode of the war.

Gradually the truth came to light, the incredible, staggering truth. The missiles that were picked up were bored like projectiles. Scientific experts prickled all the fantastic bubbles that were blown, and conclusively showed that Germany had found one more barbarous weapon to use against the civilian population—a gun which, pointed at an acute angle beyond the clouds, would carry through the air and reach a remote city far outside the zone of battle.

Paris took the ordeal lightly enough. She jested as is her wont. But she had also her moments of anger, when, for example, on Good Friday a kneeling multitude was buried under the shattered roof of Saint-Gervais, or when a few days later a maternity hospital was wrecked by a shell.

Paris smiled, but the corners of her mouth were twisted in bitter wrath against the desecrators and the baby-killers, who had turned their weapons against the two holiest symbols of Christian civilization.
Sometimes with short respites, the bombardment went on for months. But Paris never quailed. She took the daily sputtering of Big Bertha as part of the ordinary life of war-time. Fortunately the smashing defeat of the enemy came just in time to enable us to prevent the erection of many destructive engines designed against the capital.

And now, a year later, Bertha is coming to town again. One of the great guns is to be brought to Paris.

A part of the Army of Occupation, while enroute to the Rhine, passed the place where one of the “Big Bertha” guns had stood. A fellow, who inspected the site, told me that nothing but the cement emplacements remained, the gun having been moved.
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One is fain to believe that the Parisians minimized their danger when the shells from the long-range gun were falling in the city at 15 minute intervals. I saw several large buildings that had been hit. Large sections had been torn out of them, and the force of the impact, and the falling debris, must have been felt for blocks and blocks. Stained glass from the classic and beautiful buildings were removed and conveyed to places of safety. Some buildings of less durable material had to be bolstered up with wooden frame-work to protect them from shock. Paris will always carry scars of “Big Bertha,” but they reflect more honor to the indomitable courage of her people than to the ingenuity of the Germans.

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