Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them — John Shaqi
Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind ThemRuhl, Arthur
History
Antwerp to Gallipoli: A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them
Ruhl, Arthur
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Late that afternoon I walked down from the Madeleine toward the river.
It was the "hour of the aperitif"--there were still enough people to
fill cafe tables--and since Sunday it had been the hour of the German
aeroplane. It had come that afternoon, dropped a few bombs--"quelques
ordures"--and sailed away to return next day at the same hour. "You
have remarked," explained one of the papers, "that people who are
without wit always repeat their jokes." And just as I came into the
Place de la Concorde, "Mr. Taube" came up out of the north.
You must imagine that vast open space, with the bridge and river and
Invalides behind it, and beyond the light tracery of the Eiffel Tower,
covered with little specks of people, all looking upward. Back along
the boulevards, on roofs on both banks, all Paris, in fact, was
similarly staring--"Le nez en l'air." And straight overhead, so far up
that even the murmur of the motor was unheard, no more than a bird,
indeed, against the pale sky, "Mr. Taube," circling indolently about,
picking his moment, plotting our death.
I thought of the shudder of outraged horror that ran over Antwerp when
the first Zeppelin came. It seemed the last unnecessary blow to a
heroic people who had already stood so much. Very different was "Mr.
Taube's" reception here. He might have been a holiday balloon or some
particularly fancy piece of fireworks. Everywhere people were staring
upward, looking through their closed fists, through opera-glasses. Out
of the arcades of the Hotel de Crillon one man in a bath-robe and
another in a suit of purple underclothes came running, to gaze calmly
into the zenith until the "von" had gone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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