When the cannonade began the inhabitants concealed themselves in cellars, but shortly afterwards they fled. Several among them took refuge in Antwerp. Many houses in the town were destroyed and a certain number of people were wounded. A shell even struck a hospital and killed nine persons.
Bombardment of Mars-la-Tour
The village of Mars-la-Tour, in Lorraine, was bombarded by the Germans on the 16th August, the anniversary of the battle which took place in 1870. They cannonaded the memorial church, Abbé Faller’s Musée patriotique, and the monument to commemorate the battle of 1870. The bombardment lasted a full hour, and took place with mathematical regularity. Only one house was damaged, which proves that the buildings mentioned were the carefully chosen target of the German guns; two persons, an old mechanic and a woman, were fatally injured. The other inhabitants took refuge in the cellars.
Bombardment of Étain
On the 24th August, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the bombardment of Étain began. Suspended for some hours, it began again at nearly eleven p.m. and lasted until two a.m. The results were frightful. The next morning half the town was in ashes; the other half was falling into ruins. The Red Cross hospital in particular was aimed at. The first shell struck down the white flag, while Dr. Proust was operating on the wounded: the latter had to be hidden away in the cellars, whence they were driven to Verdun (Report of Mme. Paul, President of the Committee of the Association des Dames Françaises at Étain).
Bombardment of Albert
The bombardment of Albert took place on the 30th August. We may judge how violent it was from a photograph of the ruins which appeared in L’Illustration for the 10th October. Whole streets disappeared, and the whole Place d’Armes was demolished: the Germans made a target of Notre Dame de Brébières, the basilica which the inhabitants call the Lourdes of the North, and to which so many pilgrimages make their way each year. This church was completely ruined by the sacrilegious fire expressly aimed at it, and the Statue of the Miraculous Virgin which crowned it is to-day thrown down and lies upon the ground. All around there is nothing but building material that has fallen in, half-burnt beams, charred walls, houses without roofs, broken tiles, doors broken in, cut up by grapeshot.
Bombardment of Nancy
The French Commission of Inquiry, in its report, published in the Journal Officiel of the 8th January, 1914, states that the capital of Lorraine was bombarded “without previous warning during the night of the 9th to 10th September. About sixty shells (continues this report) fell on the central and southern-cemetery districts—that is to say, on places where there is no military defence. Three men, a young woman, and a little girl were killed, thirty people were wounded, and serious damage was done.”