Ypres to Verdun / A Collection of Photographs of the War areas in France & Flanders

by Alex. B. W. Kennedy

XI.—RHEIMS, THE AISNE, SOISSONS

(PLATES 88 TO 97.)

Rheims shares with Ypres and Verdun the glory of having successfully withstood a continuous four years' siege, and with Ypres the additional distinction of having been for a long time the central point in an extraordinarily narrow salient, surrounded by the enemy practically on three sides. It is truly an ancient storm centre, unsuccessfully besieged by the English in the fourteenth century, taken by them in the fifteenth (perhaps more by intrigue than by fighting), and held until Joan of Arc turned us out after nine years' occupation. It was entered by the Germans on the 4th of September, 1870, and again on the forty-fourth anniversary of that day in 1914. But while after 1870 they held the city for two years, in 1914 they had to evacuate it after nine days only. They commenced immediately to shell it, and, according to the universal opinion in France, to shell particularly the cathedral, in spite of official assurances that it was not used for observation purposes, which anyone but a Prussian would have believed. The north tower, unfortunately, was under repair in 1914, and covered with timber scaffolding. An incendiary shell set fire to this a week after the Germans had left the city, and the whole of the roof of the cathedral was burnt. Later on the vaulting over the transept and the choir was badly but not irreparably damaged (the statement is made that a number of Germans—the church being used as a hospital—were killed by a shell which penetrated the vaulting), and the chevet at the east end is very badly knocked about. The west end, happily, has not suffered so much, the direction of firing being generally from Brimont and Nogent l'Abesse, respectively north and east of the city. One is glad to know that it was found possible to save a certain amount of the fine stained glass.

In thinking of the fate of Rheims from the point of view of the French, it is to be remembered that to them the cathedral stands in much the same relation as does Westminster Abbey to us. It is not perhaps the finest, nor the most beautiful, nor the largest of the glorious churches of France, but it is the one which, more than any other, represents in itself and its associations the faith and the history and the life of the country over many centuries and through endless changes and vicissitudes. Considering the mentality of the Germans—as judged by the sentiments of their newspapers at the time—it may probably have been the very consciousness of the special affection of the French for the cathedral that induced them to make it their special target.

The figures which are given as to the number of shells fired, and specially the number fired at the cathedral in 1914, and on certain days in 1917, are almost unbelievable.[37]

The city has, or had before the war, about 115,000 inhabitants and some 14,000 houses. Of the latter an English visitor in 1918 informed me that about 2,000 had escaped with little damage and were more or less habitable, 2,000 more might be said to be still standing, while the remaining 10,000 were entirely destroyed. (As a comparison it may be remembered that in the Great Fire of London about 13,000 houses are said to have been burnt, or destroyed to limit the flames.)

Plate 88 is simply an example of the state of the greater part of the city, after, of course, the wreckage had been cleared off the roadways and things in general "tidied up." Plates [89] and [90] show respectively the west end of the cathedral, with its towers, and the chevet at the east end seen across a mass of ruined houses. I am afraid that the glass of the great rose windows was destroyed very early, before it could be removed, and at the east end much of the tracery of the windows has been smashed. It is in no way to the credit of the Germans, either in their intentions or in their shooting, that the damage has not been immensely greater. One may be permitted to hope that in the reconstruction of the city, which is proceeding apace, advantage will be taken of the clearance which has become unavoidable to leave such space round the building as will allow its magnificence to be more fully seen than has hitherto been possible.

After having to evacuate the city in 1914, the Germans made a very determined stand to the north at the Fort of Brimont, six miles away, as well as on the east at about the same distance, and even the desperate fighting of April, 1917, failed to move them. For the greater part of the war the French and Germans were facing each other on a north and south line a little to the east of the road from Rheims to Laon. But on their side the enemy succeeded in getting closer to the city, and the shelling must often have been at very close range, a condition of affairs more like that at Ypres than at Verdun. At one time in 1917 the Germans actually got for a day into the northern cemetery, just outside the city and only a couple of miles from the cathedral.