Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 172, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1919 — COL HEALEY SEES RUINS [ARTICLE]

COL HEALEY SEES RUINS

WRITES INTERESTINGLY, TELLING OF VISITS TO CITIES DESTROYED BY HUNS.

Col. Healey writes entertainingly of what he* witnessed in the devastated regions. His letter follows: * “I 'have just had my first jfjave since entering the, service on August 5, 1917, and I have spent in largely in Paris/ although I went one day to Rheims and the Hindenburg line and then spent several days at Marseilles, Nice, Monte Carlo, Menton and along the Riviera. “Rheims is reached in three hours jby train from Paris. It was a city of 110,000 people. One day is quite sufficient to visit it, although, if the 'battle fields beyond are to be seen one might profitably spend two or even three days there. I wandered about the city for some time. It is very sparsely populated now. I doubt if a thousand people are living there, for there is no place to live, save in a few places where temporary shelters have been constructed across the walls that occasionally stand as if in defiance of the shelling that leveled almost everything in that great city. I “Without a guide, I wandered about for some little time, now and then entering a building that had partially escaped destruction. I remember the first one I entered. I was rather surprised to see that it was from the front but little damaged and I entered the open door. I counted eleven distinct shell holes through the walls of the house. To appreciate just what the effect of these exploding shells is, the reader must understand that all buildings are of stone, the walls generally from fourteen to twenty-four inches thick. A shell would tear through the wall, making tholes that a barrel could easily be passed through. Sometimes the shells had exploded inside the " house and the wreckage was extensive, but no complete. The inner walls would bd struck and torn through, floors torn out, windows and doors broken, ceilings present yawning apertures and yet the house had withstood the shocks remarkably. I was interested parIticularly in one great hole in the 1 side of the house near the roof which made an opening three feet wide and probably four feet up and oown. The shell had entered with such penetration that the hole was made without shattering the wall beyond’the general outline of the opening. I could not determine where the shell could have come from, for the side walls of an adjoining house were higher than the opening, while the opposite wall of the room wasjfcot damaged. It was a three-storF house of some twelve or fourteen rooms, hardwood floors, fine decorations. The winding stairways were as strong as ever apparently and I went up them and into each room. “If some one were to sit in the center of each room and employ an army rifle for destruction, I do not think the walls could have presented a worse appearance after a hundred shots had been fired in each room and then a hand grenade exploded iff each room, and in addition these gjreat, 'gaping shell holes through the outer walls. A large iron safe was the only piece of furniture in the house, and it had been hit apparently directly and the shell had penetrated its outer walls. I looked at the outside of the house and saw the wounds of many smaller shells or possibly of breaking shrapnel. I looked at the great hole again and decided that .it must have been made by the discharge of a shell or some explosive from the inside of the house, and possibly it was the final treatment accorded when the boche withdrew after occupying the town for a week in September, 1914, now almost five years Damaged Beyond Repair. “A little later I visited the Circue, a steel-framed building where athletic events were held in the days before the war. This had been damaged beyond repair, the paintings, some sixteen panels each about twenty feet in width and inclosing the lower part of the glass dome, were battered and torn, while the windows were practically all shot out; the seats were' split and the supports were twisted and ripped. This buildiqg was well off to one edge of the city, and a little section there was not so'completely ruined. I went from it toward the cathedral and noted in the piles of debns along the streets, plaster, concrete, laths, tile, stone, logs, metal doors and windows, radiators, iron railings, heating stoves, cookstoves, plumbing fixtures, metal beds wrecked furniture, cooking utensils A monument that had been erectec at much cost occupied the center oi a circle where several streets con ) verged, and this had been struct 'many times, the sculptured figures 'broken, the whole monument dam aged as to be of no value what ever. I. “I then went block after blocl (where not a wall was standing, th ' debris bf roofs end floors and ceil ings and side walls all in a pulver ized heap, resting on the basemen

floors and forming a mass several feet high. I saw places where owners had apparently been digging about radiators or for admission to closets or basements as though to recover some treasure that had been left in the haste of departure. At on eplace a passageway had been made to a basement or wine cellar, but the Frenchman had met disappointment, for ‘his wine had been taken and 'maledictions Were being pronounced against the 'boche invaders. Between five-story walls everything from roof to lowest floor had caved into the basement. Imagine a city like Evansville or Terre Haute or Fort Wayne being torn into shreds by such terrible shelling and not a house left habitable. I find no pictures to do it justice and words can not tell the thoroughness or the vastness of the (wreckage. “The Rheims cathedral attracts already many visitors to that wrecked city and the French tourists are visiting it, although the scheduled trips under guides are just starting. I approached the cathedral from, one side, and as I was doing so I thought that it was not greatly damaged; and, indeed, the photographs do not show the extent of the damage. A closer observation, however, shows that while the high walls and the higher towers had withstood the bombardment so far as a total collapse was concerned, they had been terribly damaged by Ithe direct hits and the exploding shells. The building is so large that complete wreckage by shelling would be almost impossible, but the towers are ‘partially wrecked, great columns being entirely shot away. The art windows are shattered, the hundreds of carved figures that adorned the front and the sides are battered, heads off, limbs off and many are stripped from head to foot of layers of stone, an irregular outer layer ,has fallen from the figures. I have no doubt that the cathedral has been struck thousands of times by direct hits and shell fragments. To repair a building so damaged seems entirely out of the question. Already there are many souvenir venders about the cathedral, but after looking for a time at the wrecked edifice and comparing your impression with that conveyed by the photographs one realizes that pictures do not convey an adequate idea of the damage. “Near the cathedral is the Palace of Justice, la massive building that has also suffered extensively. Just across a narrow street from the cathedral was a block of business buildings that had completely fallen, showing that their less massive

structure could not withstand the shelling like the stronger walls of the great church. I observed that piled in the debris of one of the buildings was a printing press, and I decided to make a closer inspection and this disclosed eight presses, three jobbers and five cylinders, all pitched into the wreckage of stone and piaster and tile and slivered timbers. It was September 3, 1914, that the Germans entered Rheims, and since the wreckage occurred mostly prior to their entry or upon their departure a week later, and as these presses had remained exposed to the weather since then, their condition can well be imagined. Not alone from the rust had they suffered, but many parts had been broken and twisted by the explosions. Apparently less heavy machinery had been moved before the 'building had been, wrecked, for I searched “ everywhere for type or any printing material, but found none. \ t Weary of Seeing Ruins. “One soon •becomes weary of seeing the ruins, all generally similar, except for the evidence now and then of special destruction or of a partially escaped building. “The Y. M. C. A. and the K. of C. each supply trucks for the benefit of military tourists, and I secured transport on one of the latter to the Hindenburg line, to which the invaders withdrew on September 9, 1914, and where they remained until driven out in the allied offensive that brought the war to a dose. One travels a winding street to Ithe north and. passes again through block after block of ruins, until the very edge of the city, where there were a few more widely separated buildings. These had ajso been ' wrecked, proving the systematic destruction carried on by the Huns. “The portion of the Hindenburg 1 line easiest to reach from Rheims is where it crossed the main road some I six kilometers away. The road is a splendid macadam highway, hned on each side < with beech -trees of equal size and equally spaced beitrween, but only a short distance from the city the trees begin to show the damage wrought by the shells.” ? c ■ ■