CATHEDRAL A TARGET
The Cathedral of Notre Dame is now no more than an empty shell of charred and blackened walls. The fire started between four and five o’clock Sunday afternoon, September 20, 1914, after shells had been crashing into the town all day. Over five hundred fell between early morning and sunset.
The cathedral had been turned into a hospital for the German wounded, to secure for the building the protection of the Red Cross flag. When the first shell struck the roof everyone believed it was a stray shot, but later in the day a German battery four miles away, began making the great Gothic pile its target. Shell after shell crashed its way into the old masonry and stonework that had stood the storms of centuries.
At 4.30 some scaffolding around the east end of the cathedral, where repairs were going on, caught fire and soon the whole network of poles and planks was ablaze. Then the roof of old oak timbers caught fire and soon the ceilings of the nave and transepts were a roaring furnace.
The blazing piers of carved woodwork crashed to the floor, where piles of straw had been gathered in connection with the work of the field hospital. As soon as this caught fire the paneling of the altars, the chairs and other furniture were devoured.
Twenty wounded Germans would have perished by the efforts of their own countrymen if several French army doctors, with their bearers, had not carried them one by one at their own risk out of the church by one of the side doors.