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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