"How do you know?" For I saw trees but no guns.
"Aeroplanes," "the friend of the Cathedral" explained. Another turn of the screw brought a church steeple into view.
"The French are now using this church steeple for observation purposes," the battery commander said. "The observer is reported to me every morning. He is getting to be too shameless. I shall take a shot at that steeple this afternoon in all probability. And then I suppose they will again call us barbarians. I saw the fellow myself this morning. He sits in that little arched window there." I saw the window quite distinctly, and only regret that the culprit had climbed down for the luncheon intermission, which is religiously kept by both the French and German artillery.
A tour of the wrecked fort followed and among other interesting sights the guide pointed out the trail of the famous freak shot that killed the cow. The shell went first through a glass window, then through the wall at the back of the room, into a second chamber, where, without exploding, it had amputated a hind leg of the milch cow whose loss is still mourned by two batteries of heavy artillery.
Up to now, war as experienced from the vantage ground of a high hill overlooking Rheims seemed a pleasant picnic, for the German arsenal was well stocked with plenty of good food, while the Chief of the Division Staff, with typical German hospitality, had sent along his adjutant armed with two baskets of Teuton sandwiches, which added to the picnic illusion and claimed far more attention than the Cathedral of Rheims. The frequent sight of Generals down to high privates taking hearty nourishment all along the front in France with the same comfortable enjoyment as in their own homes was more convincing than all official bulletins that they are not worrying about the outcome in the West, for morale and meals are synonyms.
The luncheon interval over, the French batteries woke up and began sending over shells with Gallic prodigality, the Germans replying sparingly, and as if in invitation, for my benefit, a French aeroplane no bigger than a Jersey mosquito appeared and circled over the German positions trying to locate the cleverly concealed heavy batteries, while down on the plain back of the hills a German motor aeroplane gun popped away for dear life trying to connect with the inquisitive visitor. Little cottonball clouds of white smoke, like daylight fireworks, hung high in the air, where the French flier had been, also black "smoke pots" to help the gunners in getting the range, but the Frenchman managed to dodge all the shrapnel that came his way, and escaped.
By request, "the friend of the cathedral" led the way (a long and strenuous one) to his 15-centimeter howitzer battery, concealed with amazing cleverness even against the observation of aviators, and pointed out the gun that had fired "the shot heard round the world." He would gladly have fired a sample shot, but the guns of the battery were already set for the night (although it was only noon!) that is, aimed at certain portions of the landscape which French troops would have to cross if they attempted to make a night attack on certain of the German trenches, so that no time would be lost in aiming the guns—all they had to do was to fire the moment the telephone bell rang a night alarm.
"Was there any connection between his iron crosses and the Rheims Cathedral?" he was tactfully asked. There was not, but modest heroes are a nuisance journalistically, and "the friend of the cathedral" required a lot of coaxing before he told that he had won both the first and second class sometime before and elsewhere, the second for galloping his heavy howitzer battery into action like field artillery and by getting it to work at close range, "smearing" a desperate French attack; first class for continuing to direct the fire of his battery from the roof of a building until it was literally shot from under his feet. "The friend of the cathedral," is also an experienced aviator and when business is dull in the howitzer line around Rheims, kills time by aerial reconnoitring. "Be sure and send me a copy of your paper," he laughed, when I beat a hasty strategic retreat to the rear to keep the Wilsonian neutrality from being violated, for after lunch French shells have a habit of raining alike on the just and the unjust.
The strategic retreat led through a village where in a farmyard was seen one of the most curious freaks of the war. A French shell had exploded here, and the terrific air pressure had lifted a farm wagon bodily and deposited it on the roof of the stable, where it still perches.
Half a mile beyond was something even more curious—a subterranean village built in the woods by German pioneers, and consisting of many small block houses of fir logs, sunk three-quarters of the way into the ground, the rest covered over with mounds of dirt and laid with sod. The idea, it was explained, was to have a cozy and safe place of retreat when the French batteries, as occasionally happened, took the village ahead under fire.