FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159  
160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   >>   >|  
re, also, commanding the road, stood a ruined fortress of an obsolete last-century pattern. Shellfire had battered it into a gruel of shattered red masonry; but German officers were camped within its more habitable parts, and light guns were mounted in the moat. The trees thereabout had been mowed down by the French artillery from within the city, so that the highway was littered with their tops. Also, the explosives had dug big gouges in the earth. Wherever you looked you saw that the soil was full of small, raggedy craters. Shrapnel was dropping intermittently in the vicinity; therefore we left our cars behind the shelter of the ancient fort and proceeded cautiously afoot until we reached the frontmost trenches. Evidently the Germans counted on staying there a good while. The men had dug out caves in the walls of the trenches, bedding them with straw and fitting them with doors taken from the wreckage of the houses of the village. We inspected one of these shelters. It had earthen walls and a sod roof, fairly water-tight, and a green window shutter to rest against the entrance for a windbreak. Six men slept here, and the wag of the squad had taken chalk and lettered the words "Kaiserhof Cafe" on the shutter. The trenches were from seven to eight feet deep; but by climbing up into the little scarps of the sharpshooters and resting our elbows in niches in the earth, meantime keeping our heads down to escape the attentions of certain Frenchmen who were reported to be in a wood half a mile away, we could, with the aid of our glasses, make out the buildings in Rheims, some of which were then on fire--particularly the great Cathedral. Viewed from that distance it did not appear to be badly damaged. One of the towers had apparently been shorn away and the roof of the nave was burned--we could tell that. We were too far away of course to judge of the injury to the carvings and to the great rose window. Already during that week, from many sources, we had heard the Germans' version of the shelling of Rheims Cathedral, their claim being that they purposely spared the pile from the bombardment until they found the defenders had signal men in the towers; that twice they sent officers, under flags of truce, to urge the French to withdraw their signalers; and only fired on the building when both these warnings had been disregarded, ceasing to fire as soon as they had driven the enemy from the towers. I do not vouc
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159  
160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
trenches
 

towers

 

French

 

Germans

 

Cathedral

 
Rheims
 
officers
 

window

 
shutter
 

scarps


sharpshooters

 

reported

 
climbing
 

Viewed

 
resting
 

elbows

 
keeping
 
attentions
 

escape

 

meantime


niches

 

distance

 

Frenchmen

 

glasses

 

buildings

 

signalers

 

withdraw

 

bombardment

 

defenders

 

signal


driven

 
ceasing
 

building

 

warnings

 

disregarded

 
spared
 

purposely

 
burned
 

Kaiserhof

 
damaged

apparently
 

injury

 
version
 
shelling
 

sources

 

carvings

 
Already
 

highway

 
littered
 

artillery