SHIVERY WAR EXPERIENCE

Hokitika Guardian, 28 May 1928, Page 4

SHIVERY WAR EXPERIENCE

TJOIJIiOUJ.SCM TJJAT FAIIyKI). Paris lias been recalling with a shiver that it was just tan years ago last month .since Big Bertha began dropping slieils into her midst. That is the kind of memory which gives real meaning to talk of disarmament and security. For there is no 011.0 who lived through that first morning of Bertha’s performance who will over recall it without the earnest hope that it will never occur again.

Tt was at breakfast time—B.3o exactly—when the first explosion went off with a hang which was heard distinctly all over the city. Immediately firemen sounded the air raid alarm, and those who had not gone to work decided they would stay home out of the streets until the supposed raid was over.

A quarter of an hour passed and then there was another hang. Everybody began to he mystified, and when another quarter of an hour passed without further signs of attack the streets began to fill, though all public traffic stopped and people went their way afoot watching a fleet of French airplanes which filled the sky, and it was supposed, had driven the daring attackers away. At 10 o’clock the Ministry of War issued a communique which stated blandly that a few enemy airplanes which had crossed the lines

at a great altitude and dropped some 1 t bombs’on tho city had been driven j off. But every fifteen minutes there J ; came a new explosion. They were all in tho north-east section of the city. THE PEOPLE LEARN THE TRUTH. J.fc was not until 3 o’clock that a telephone call to the editor of the “Temps” gave tho truth to the mystified people. The “Temps ’ was just ready to go to press when tho Ministry of War rang up. “Hold on to the table.” said the voice of tho officer in charge of official information, “1 have news for you that wifi surprise you.” Then he dictated a new official communique telling the Parisians that they were being bombarded. M ith the usual official optimism the communique added: “Measures are being taken to destroy the enemy gun.” It was, however, only sixteen days later that Bertha ceased fire, and then because she was worn out. She had curious habits. Sho started firing regularly every morning at the same time, halted two hours for lunch and continued again until sunset. Very soon Paris was quite accustomed to the noise and sense of danger. Many thousands of women and children were sent out of the city, hut even on the first afternoon crowds wandered up and down the boulevards interested and excited but far from showing any signs of alarm. During those first sixteen days 183 shells fell in Paris and 120 in tho suburbs. They killed 100 men, 132 women, and 1-1 children and wounded 621 people. Like much that the Germans did, the bombardment was a mistake. It stiffened rather than dismayed the civilian population and when the bombardment began again some weeks later Focli’s offensive had begun and neither night airplane raids nor day bombardments could repress the now wave of optimism which began to sweep tho country. But if Frenchmen are always worrying about the “next, time” it is not to he wondered at.