THE GOTHAS AND BIG BERTHA
In the early days of the A. E. F., when I was speaking to American
soldiers in the camps, I used to leave a little time for questions at
the end of my talk. The boys always had something in their heads they
wanted to talk about. The scope and variety of their questions were
amazing. But some one was sure to ask:
"Have you ever been in an air raid?"
When I answered in the affirmative, he would say,
"How did you feel?"
For a long time I reasoned like the _poilu_, who said that if his number
was on a German shell it would find him. Herbert and I worked it out
mathematically that our chances of being hit in the enormous area of
Paris were not as great as of being knocked down by one of the crazy
Indians we had for chauffeurs. When any left-over of a man could get a
license to run a taxi-cab in Paris after a course of two days at fifty
francs, why worry about bombs dropped from an occasional Hun plane? If
we had to go, we'd rather be in our beds. Better to be warm and cosy and
run a slight risk, an infinitesimal risk, than the almost certain
alternative of a bad cold by huddling in a drafty cellar. I told the
boys that we took the raids as a matter of course--all in the day's
happenings. I explained my philosophy, which was this.
I once knew a man so afraid of germs that he made his wife wash new
stockings in disinfectant solution. He kept strict surveillance over his
children's diet. No peanuts, pink lemonade,
little-store-around-the-corner candy for them. They were taught to
exercise minute precautions in the every-day round of living. And yet,
for all the bother, they had as many ailments as other children. When
one is leading a normal life and has only imaginary or petty things to
contend with, molehills are magnified. When one is facing a great
crisis, one realizes that health is often simply a matter of lack of
physical selfconsciousness. Most of the things you think about and guard
against do not happen. I remember once seeing a play, in which a Romeo
and a Juliet held the center of the stage, oblivious to fighting in the
distance. The man said: "That is only a battle; this is love." Some
people see the honey in the pot; others cannot take their eyes off the
fly.
I still hold to this way of taking things. It saves a lot of trouble and
makes for peace of mind. But somehow it did not work out to the end in
the air raids. The Germans were finally able to reach Paris when they
wanted to and in appreciable number.
From the beginning of the war to the end of 1917, air raids did not mean
much to Parisians. We read about the awful nights of terror when the
full moon came around in London, and the heavy bombardment of cities
just behind the front lines in France. Aeroplanes did come occasionally
to Paris. But up to 1918 we experienced curiosity and excitement rather
than fear. In 1915 we saw a Zeppelin over the Gare Saint-Lazare. I can
recall nothing particularly startling about any of these raids. When
aeroplanes came and we did not wake the babies, they scolded us the next
day. They wanted to see the fun. Our balconies, looking over the city
from the _sixième étage_ of the Boulevard du Montparnasse, gave us a
wonderful vantage point for seeing the raids.
One January night at the beginning of 1918, the fire engines rushed
through the streets with their horns screaming the hysterical "pom-pom!
pom-pom!" with more vigor than usual. As was our custom, we turned the
lights carefully out and went on the balcony to watch the weird scene
that never failed to fascinate, rockets and searchlights and the firefly
effect of rising French planes. That always comforted us. We had little
thought that an _escadrille_ of German planes could reach Paris. They
never had before. The raids had been only an occasional plane flying
very high and dropping at random a few bombs which burst in different
quarters. The next day you had to hunt hard to find the damage they did.
Remembering our promise to Christine, we woke her up and took her out.
The sounds of the alarm died away. Often we had waited in vain for the
fire from the forts around Paris to warn us that the raiders had
actually arrived in the vicinity of Paris. Then there was another wait
until the first bomb fell. Christine was a bit disgusted at being waked
up for nothing. During the long silence she asked impatiently, "What is
this? The _entre'acte_?"
But Christine was not disappointed. Over our heads we heard distinctly
the harsh engine-sound that distinguished the new German Gotha from
French planes. We heard it several times. When the bombs began to drop,
it was not one or two, but dozens of explosions. We did not think of
going inside. The thought of danger to ourselves did not enter our
heads.
Although we knew the raid had been something different from any we had
experienced up to this time, there was little in the papers about the
events of the night. We thought that we must have been mistaken in the
number of bombs that had fallen. It is not always easy to distinguish
between the explosions of a shell from the _tir de barrage_ and the
explosion of a bomb. Before we got through the first month of 1918 we
had the opportunity of becoming expert in this.
We happened to be lunching with Robert and Edmée Chauvelot. Robert said,
"Did you go down to the cellar last night?"
"No, we never do."
"Why not?" cried Robert.
I explained our air raid philosophy.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Madame Alphonse Daudet, Edmée's mother, "you must
go down next time. It isn't fair to your children. Your idea sounds
spunky and American--childish you understand. When we have epidemics,
the authorities study remedies. The Huns have decided to concentrate
their energies on Paris now. You must have read the warnings in the
newspapers. The police have collected statistics. We know now that most
of the people killed by German planes were standing at windows or front
doors, or were on the streets, or remained in their top-floor
apartments. What you have been telling your soldier boys in the camps is
all wrong. No precaution ought to be neglected. It is a question of
commonsense, not fear."
"I know how to convince you," said Robert. After lunch he took us to the
Avenue de la Grande Armée not far from the Arc de Triomphe.
"There!" He pointed to a house whose top floors had been blown away.
"That might just as well have been you."
The house was a new one like ours and as solidly built of stone. The
apartment on the _sixième étage_ was pulverized, the one below it was
smashed, and the fourth floor damaged some. But the third floor was
intact. This convinced us. If air raids were now to be frequent, had we
the right to risk the kiddies? We could take the chance for ourselves.
But for them?
All Paris reasoned in the same way. The Gothas began to come every night
during the full moon periods and other times when it was clear. In the
late afternoon we grew accustomed to watch the sky and calculate the
chances of cloudy weather. If the stars came out we were sure that there
would be no undisturbed night's rest. The Government intensified the
batteries of A.D.C. cannon around the city. Patrols of aeroplanes were
multiplied. The _tir de barrage_ became formidable. None could boast any
longer of being able to sleep through air raids. Sirens were put on all
the public buildings to replace the _alerte_ of the fire-trucks. When
the sirens began to wail, not a soul in Paris could complain of not
being warned. Frequently nothing happened after the sirens, because the
_alerte_ was given each time German planes were signalled crossing our
lines in the direction of Paris. Then we would simply wait for the
_berloque_, the bugle signal "all's over," which was sounded by the
firemen riding through the streets on their hook and ladder trucks.
When the Gothas demonstrated their ability to come in numbers, as the
Zeppelins had been doing in London, the municipality, upon orders from
the Ministère de la Guerre, ordered every light out and the instant
stopping of tramway and underground services the moment the _alerte_
was sounded. Engineers went around the city examining cellars and Métro
stations. Houses with solid cellars were compelled to keep their front
doors open until the number of persons they could hold had taken refuge
inside. In front of the house placards were posted with ABRI in large
letters and the number of persons allotted for shelter underneath. The
underground railways had to shut all stations except those deemed safe.
If you were on the street or in an underground train or tramway when the
_alerte_ sounded, you had the choice of walking home or of taking refuge
in the nearest _abri_. At first the theatres and moving-picture houses
protested against being closed down. But one January night a bomb
destroyed completely a house a hundred yards from the crowded
Folies-Bergère. This was enough. After that, if the _alerte_ sounded
before opening time, there was no show. If it sounded during a
performance, theatres and _cinémas_ were evacuated immediately by the
police.
One can readily see the inconvenience of all this. If you planned to go
out for dinner or to a show, you risked a long walk home or being caught
for hours--and then the walk! For it was practically impossible to get
into the underground after the _berloque_ sounded.
On account of the children, from January to April, we went far from home
only on a cloudy or rainy night. If there were engagements we had to
keep on a clear night, there was only one thing to do--bribe a chauffeur
to stand by you with his taxi-cab all evening.
As the _alertes_ were often false alarms, we waited until the _tir de
barrage_ began. Then with servants carrying children wrapped in
blankets, we had to stumble down dark stairs. My husband was often away.
Sometimes I had to go on lecture trips. But we never left Paris at the
same time. Whenever I was out of town, I looked on clear weather as a
calamity and dreaded the full moon. The next morning I would eagerly
scan the paper for news of what happened in Paris. It was no fun.
Cellars of modern apartment houses may be solid, but they are not
spacious. Each _locataire_ has two _caves_, one for storage and coal and
one for wine. The only refuge space is around the furnace and in the
long corridors that lead to the _caves_. We were allotted space for
three hundred. Such a crowd would gather from the streets! I could not
take my children there. At first we went to the concierge's _loge_. As
explosion succeeded explosion, I telephoned the _Herald_ office and
learned the location of the bomb a few minutes after it fell. This was a
way of knowing whether they were in our quarter or across the river. But
this soon ended. For telephone service during the raid was interrupted,
and the concierge's _loge_ was deemed by the police unsafe. Bombs
falling in the street or court were wrecking ground floors. A
solidarity manifested itself among the _locataires_. Those on the first
two or three floors took in the tenants from the upper floors. I was
lucky in having the use of a first-floor apartment alone for my family.
The _locataires_ of this apartment would leave the door open for me.
They went to the cellar! Everything is relative in this life.
At first, the children objected to going down stairs. The younger ones
did not like to be wakened from their sleep. The older ones wanted to
see the raid from the balcony. We sympathized with them. We were missing
so much! After a while, as nothing ever happened to our house, I began
to regret having started to follow the advice of my friends. After all,
was the cellar safe? It was fifty-fifty. I wonder how my children will
feel about Germany as they grow up. They were old enough to have
impressed indelibly upon their minds the memory of these months. They
will never forget the sirens, the sudden waking from sleep, the _tir de
barrage_, and the explosions that sometimes shook our house. Mimi asked
once, "Do the Gothas make that siren noise with their heads or with
their tails?" Fancy the image in the child's mind: the German birds
swooping over Paris shrieking a song of hate and dropping bombs that
meant destruction and death. And when the _berloque_ sounded and we went
up stairs, we could see from our balcony fires here and there over the
city. For the Germans used incendiary bombs.
But we were to have worse than air raids.
The other day I put on the victrola a selection from "Die Walkyrie."
Wotan was singing. The orchestra thundered three motifs. The spring of
the instrument ran down before I could get to wind it up, there was a
rasping shriek. Mimi started.
"That's like an air raid!" cried Lloyd.
But they say the most potent way "to summon up remembrance of things
past" is the sense of smell. Burned toast means to me Big Bertha.
One Saturday morning I was reading the depressing news of the rout of
the Fifth British army. After nearly four years of immobility in the
trenches, the Germans had once more started the march on Paris. The two
older children were out walking with Alice, their _gouvernante_. I was
at home with the babies. It was a jewel of a day, picked from an October
setting and smiling upon Paris in March. The feel of spring was in the
air. For months we had welcomed bad weather as an antidote for Gothas.
But I was glad the morning was so fine. At least there was nothing to
fear until evening. At the end of winter it is a blessing to have the
windows open once more. Suddenly the sirens started. We went out on the
balcony. The streets were filling with people, crowding into the Vavin
Métro station opposite and looking for the houses that were _abris_.
Still the crowds in the Boulevard du Montparnasse got larger. I was
sorry that Easter vacation was starting so early. Were the children in
school, they would be in the cellar. At the Ecole Alsacienne the
children were drilled for air raids as American school children are for
fire. Would Alice take the children to her own home or come back here?
If she went to her house, could she get there in time to telephone me
before the communications were cut off? It was impossible to go out and
look for Christine and Lloyd: for I must stay with the others. Often the
best thing is to sit tight. The children came in.
"It isn't the Gothas--it's balloons. The Germans have sent a lot of them
over us. Everybody says so."
In the unclouded sky there was no sign of aeroplanes. Could they be so
high as to be out of sight? And yet there were explosions near us every
few minutes. They lasted until late in the afternoon. The rumor of a big
gun spread. The noon newspapers and the earlier afternoon ones spoke of
a long distance bombardment to explain the explosions. Shells were
certainly falling. Bits of them, different from bombs, had been picked
up. But the opinion of interviewed experts scouted the theory of a gun
that would carry over a hundred kilometers. Was a new German advance
being hidden from us? Had they reached the gates of the city?
[Illustration: Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois]
That night we had our air raid as usual. The next morning the newspapers
told us that we could now expect to be shelled by day as well as bombed
by night. It was established that the Germans had discovered a means
of sending shells from their old lines all the way to Paris.
We were in the axis of Big Bertha, as the cannon was immediately dubbed.
This was a new and more severe test for nerves. We got accustomed to it.
For the trial, the strength. The kiddies had to have exercise and you
yourself could not be home every minute of the time. But my feeling each
time a shell exploded is the most horrible memory of the war. You never
knew where it fell. On the third day when the children came home from
the Luxembourg, they told me that a shell from Big Bertha had torn away
a corner of the Grand Bassin. I tried to steel myself. One can become a
fatalist for oneself. But it is not easy to be a fatalist for your
children.
Then we had a lull. We were assured that there was only one Big Bertha
or at the most two. The life of the cannon was a hundred shots. Counting
those that fell in the suburbs, the attempt to intimidate Paris was
over.
We were thankful now that we had only the air raids.
I woke up on Thursday morning, thinking to give the children a treat. I
built a wood fire, and started to make some toast. As I sat on the
floor, cutting pieces of bread, I told myself that it would not help to
worry. Perhaps it was true that the Germans had sprung a trick they
could not repeat. At any rate, the news from the front was good. The
British had made a magnificent recovery. The French were helping them
stop the hole. General Pershing was throwing all the Americans in France
into the breach north of Paris. There was something to be thankful for.
Even if Big Bertha started up again, we were as safe from shells in our
own home as anywhere else. I said to myself, "I am going to forget Big
Bertha and put my mind on the children's treat--hot buttered toast for
breakfast." There were enough embers now to make the toast. I speared a
piece of bread with the kitchen fork and held it over the fire.
"Bing!"
The toast dropped from my fork and was burned before I could pick it
out.
Mimi, who was sleeping in the bed close by, woke up.
"Hello, Mama," she said cheerfully. "Dat's Big Bertha again. I did hear
her."