DEVOTED VERDUN.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 896, 23 December 1916, Page 8

DEVOTED VERDUN.

■i I A CROWN OF GLORY. CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME. All the way up the hill we could see the mirror shining through precisely the right wall of the bishop's reception room (writes Herbert Cory in an exchange). That point of burning light must, we thought, inevitably be seen by the German cannoneers. We were on our way to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame, through which a shell had crashed the other day. It had not been completely destroyed, the soldiers told us. They spoke with an air of reverence, although reverence does not come happily to a soldier. It seemed as though a miracle had happened, that a church should have escaped almost when a town was being battered to pieces around it.

"The Cathedral of Notre Dame," says Baedeker, "dates from the eleventh-thirteenth centuries, but has been much altered in the four-teenth-seventeenth, especially the interior. . . . The Bishop's palace

and the Grand Seminaire adjoin the Cathedral."

We keep step with falling shells all the way up the hill. The German gunners seemed to be enjoying a slight burst of activity. No shell fell near us, it is true. But as we mounted toward the top of this hill in which the citadel has been hollowed and which the Cathedral crowns, we could hear them detonate in the city below. Now and then we turned a corner and glanced down a street which led to the lower towns. Sometimes we could see a fresh cloud of smoke and dust rising. They fell two minutes apart. Washburn timed them.

"Big shells," said the French officer with us. "Not 38's, however. The 270's, I think." The streets were absolutely empty. Not even a soldier kept ward at the corners. When the good people of Verdun had been driven out of their homes by their military guardians they had taken their pets with them. But usually one hears birds singing in the streets—even in the most desolate and lonely streets. We had heard them singing in the shell fire in the forest of the Argonne. Here there was nothing. No sound to break this oppressive silence, except the periodic crashing of shells.

"There is that mirror we saw shining," said my companion. "On the wall of the Bishop's reception room." Bishop's Palace Wrecked. We turned an acute corner and came into the little three-cornered place where the Cathedral and the seminary and the Bishop's palace join their walls. Those who have known Verdun in other years said that the Bishop's palace had been a jewel of mediaeval architecture. They spoke of it in terms of rapture. We could only see that shells had riddled it. The roof had gone, the outer walls were shattered,the whole front had slipped down into the street. An inner wall remained, of what had apparently been a stately and severe library on the second floor. In front of that wall were heaps of white and battered stone. They had perhaps been put in place before men fought with gunpowder. On that wall a great gold framed mirror glistened, neither broken nor scratched. It seemed a frivolous thing, this mirror. It was out of place in tragedy. The grand seminary had not suffered as had the Bishop's palace. It had been struck perhaps a score of times, perhaps only a dozen times by shells. We only glanced at the holes that had been torn through these old walls, for we were anxious to enter the Cathedral. Our guides led us through one of the most charming cloisters to be found in that charming land. The groined and vaulted roof of stone —the worn stone benches on which generations of brothers had read their breviaries — an old sundial in the warm, green garden to which the seminarists escaped from the chill of stone—all these spoke of peace and dignity and loving care. The cloister had been destroyed in part. One shell had torn through a corner of the heavy Cathedral clock tower, and through the arched stone of the cloister and into the stone floor beneath.

"Not a 38," said the officer with me. "Only a 270." It is difficult to convey an exact impression of the damage done by that single shell. It seemed that it had not even been deflected by striking the corner of the Cathedral tower. The wall was perhaps two feet thick at that point, of solid stone. Both walls had been torn out

still regarded as the standard work on the subject, lie was at one time commander of the ill-fated A-1, and before that be commanded the earlier Holland submarines.

From submarines he turned his attention to the air. and he may be justly described as the maker of the Royal Naval Air Service, both before the war and after.

]le is an expert on the technical! ties of both aeroplanes and sea planes, and also of airships.

After Commodore Suetcr. Major Hetherington should have more credit than any one else for the production of the "tanks." He is chief of the Survey Department of the Royal Naval Air Service at the White City, and was formerly in command of a squadron of armoured cars—the predecessors of the "tanks." Commander Briggs has been chief engineer oHicer at the Air Department, Admiralty, since war was declared. He is responsible for the present high efficiency of aeroplane engines in the Royal Naval Air Service. He applied his engineering knowledge to assist Commodore Sueter to design the original "tanks."

at the corner. A ragged tear appeared in the tower, as though a savage animal had bitten it. This may seem an absurd simile, but it oc-: curred to half a dozen of our little! party simultaneously. The shell had even penetrated the stone roof of the I cloister and exploded on the stone floor below. A hole perhaps 20 feet j in diameter had been torn in the! cloister roof, but so solidly did those architects of the Middle Ages put up. their buildings that the explosions, which followed had not injured the ! remainder. To destroy such a build-' ing as this blow must follow blow. Church Struck by Shell.

We were taken into the Cathedral itself. Just one shell had struck the Cathedral during the bombardment. It is difficult to say why, for it stands upon the very top of the hill which makes the heart of Verdun. Its noble lines can be seen for miles in any direction from the slopes that held Verdun as in a cup. It had been obviously shelled, for the Bishop's palace had been destroyed and the grand seminaire was as full of holes as a colander, and they are practically parts of the same building. No artillerist is precise enough to aim to do such shooting to order. "It is an infernal shame," said my American companion. The one shell that had crashed through the great stone roof of this magnificent edifice had torn a hole perhaps 30 feet in diameter. One or two of the pillars that support the wonderful arched roof had fallen. The sun shone down into the cavern on the floor where the superb stained glass windows had been shattered, but bits of colour still clung in the lead frames. The more valuable paintings and altar vessels had been removed, but a few still remained in the various chapels that wi--e ranged on either side the nave. The silver was already discoloured.

Dust filled the air and sparkled in the beams of vivid light from the crushed windows. The soldiers took off their shrapnel helmets as they clattered through this desolate church. "The German shell fell just in front of the high altar," one said, as though he found in this a significance. It seemed as though the storm of shell outside was quickening. They came faster than one each two minutes now. During the time that we walked through the Cathedral and in an awed way looked at the hole made by the shell and surveyed what remained of the fine old stained windows 18 shells had fallen. The crashes seemed to be coming nearer, as though they were creeping up the hill. So that we left the church. We all breathed more freely when we were out from be' eath that stone roof and those heavily vaulted arches. All the way down the hill we could see that mirror sparkling on the inner wall of what had been the Bishop's reception room. We kept turning to look at it. It seemed that it must have inevitably been seen by the German gunners.