Evening Star Newspaper, April 27, 1930, Page 84

x THE .SUNDAY. STAR, WASHINGTON, D. €, APRIL 27, 1930. Last Shots of Germany’s Long-Range Guns — By — LIEUT. COL. HENRY W. MILLER. In the first two artscles Liewt. Ceol. Miller described the effects of the leng-range shelling of Paris whsch began March 23, 1918, end reached a climax when the Church of St. Gervass was struck six days later on Good Friday, with a loss of 88 lsves. Thiriy hours after the first projeciile hit the city, French artillery officers had known that the gun was firing from the Crepy Woed, scveral wmiles behind the German lines and 75 miles from Parss. zenith of the Pa:is gun's effee- tiveness can well said to have been reached on that Good Friday after- noon when the third shot from pesi- tion 2 struck the Church of St Gervais. That gun had worn out a few days Jater, and while a new one was spasmodically peppering Paris with fewer daily bursts than any preceding guns, the great German offensive was in full and successful swing. In spite of enormeus but strategic infamtry reverses, the French artillery all during the month of April made matters almost intolerable around the firing gun position. No one doubted that they had the range, and to avoid the in- evitable direct hit the Germans, coincident with the wearing out of the second gun at pesition 2, fdecided to evacuate the whole position—and avail themselves of a shorter range by firing from the newly won territory further south. The morale-breaking campaign was progress- ing beautifully. Eight air raids on Paris since January, in which 318 bombs had been dropped on the city. And 183 shells had been fired into city since March 23. Well authenticated said that more than a half million peo- left Paris since January; the city re- a besieged fortress, and the belief morale-breaking campaign should be concentrated on Paris had been amply justified. which was 68.6 miles from Paris; range meant that less powder would be used and the gun would have a correspondingly longer life. By the end of April work was under way and when the last shot had been fired from Crepy on May 1 and most of the personnel there released, things progressed rapidly in the Corbie Wood east of she little village of Beaumont. Intricate camouflage ar- rangements were made, including a fake rail- way branch leading to an imitation emplace- ment and gun to delude enemy aerial observers. The real railway branch and gun were as- siduously hidden from view. 'I‘fl!htwrymmnnduh-dbecnwm that the next offensive for which the gun would have to be ready would be late in May. Rheims, including these cities If ' possibie. At 7:27 on the morning of May 27, 6 hours and 27 minutes after the famous Rheims-Vesle- Soissons offensive had been ushered in by the grushing effectiveness of the German artil- Bry, the new gun boomed its first shot toward Paris. Fifteen shells were sent forth on their mission by noon, without-a single hitch. The gun behaved beautifully. Measurements of progress of erosion showed that the rate far less than that with the other March 23 the first gun had shown signs of wear, was one-third worn out was beginning to perform erratically by fifteenth shell. On this morning the for every shot showed normal or over pres- sure. The order to cease firing was given with the fifteenth shot at 11:25. Let us picture what was happening in the objective, Paris. The first shot of the morning struck on the Rue Cabanis, at the Asylum of St. Anne, near the southern wall of the city. All within earshot recognized it as a projectile from the long-range gun—the first in 27 days and with- out doubt a part of the program of the offen- sive starting in the East; no one was hurt. The next one struck over the city, in Mont- youge. A third burst far over the city in Fontenay-aux-Roses. That killed one. Pive more followed in rapid succession. The eighth, which struck on the Rue Linne, killed two and wounded 11 pedestrians. The confusion, amounting almost to a rout, in a gale. The few shots spotted by the Ten! Army rangers, who were able to devote attention to the matter, came from the to Corbie near the village of Beaumont. information came into the artillery Paris late in the aftermoon. map showed this position miles from the target. promptly ordered up to peigne-Noyon Railway to be Concluding Installment of Lieut. Col. Miller’s Article Tells of the Beginning of the End. Paris Would Not Admit Defeat While Suffering From Great Shells. 3f el g8 selint gl Jot.ndm-ue unbounded when it was learned in the evening that the crown attacks had been appalling. A momentous cenference was in progress at Grand Headquasters. The Kaiser, the Crown Prince, Gens. Hindenberg and Ludendorfl were considering a question that they recognized to be of the utmost gravity. Combat orders from Ludendorfl had set the Vesle as the objective of this offensive. It had been passed every- where before evening and, though Soissons had not yet been taken, the center of Boehn’s army was just outside the city and it would fall in the morning. Practically all divisions had reached and passed their objectives and were digging in. But there was no opposition, no organiszed resistance before them practically from Soissons to Rheims. With the desperate need to keep up the morale of the German people to the end, which in spite of every favor of fate would prove most costly, could the general staff afford to neglect this opportunity to exploit an unlooked- for success to the limit, perhaps to a debacle of the allied armies? So before midnight the order went as rapidly as possible to all division headquarters, and by phone, runmers, flash - signals to' compdnies everywhere: “The attack will be pressed.” No limit to ebjectives.. The . Inside the Church of St. Gervais, where 88 were, killed. exploit successes to the limit wntil A momentous decision. i during May 29 and 30, last five shots being sent off to the accom- the exhilarating news that the made wonderful progress. They the Marne. And the line directly gun position had broken down to d beyond Noyon. long-expected counter-bombardment during the next day with some heavy . shells dropping in and about the wood, but nowhere near the gun position. Obviously the French gunners had only the sound rangers’ The reports of the evening indicated that substantial gains had been made from Noyon southeast past Soissons to the Marne. The German army was in possession of the north bank of the Marne from the Jaulgonne bend, During the next several days the long-range gun fired constantly at its objective. June 5 was a beautifully clear day and French airmen were over constantly. It seemed certain that they were securing numerous photographs of the region. . The next day’s counter-bombard- CONOKRN over the general situation was approaching hysteria in Paris. Though could do but little, perhaps nothing, to the flood in the center of the line, Gens. and Petain were beginning to take vigorous to make the German gain as precarious them as possible. The most serious concern was not over the rapid advance of the German front, no matter what alarming significance it might and did have to the public, to the capital, which saw the German army advancing on it as in 1914. The generals were vitally concerned and feverishly active in executing that old tactic of stabilized warfare—of keeping the corners past which the advancing armies were stream- ing from melting away as the earth on the edges of a break in the banks of a river. If they could make the original corners “stay put,” or nearly so, then the front might take care of itself. Those corners were Soissons on the west and Rheims to the east. Because of difficulty with replacements, ad- vance men outrunning their source of supply, and roads being choked with confusion—the problem of supply is so much easier for those on the defensive; they simply use an existing Vicious fighting was in progress all about the great Marne salient without registry of real gains of territory from the night of May 31 through Saturday, June 8. This period, ush- ered in by the valiant defense of Chatean Thierry by Americans and French, also covered the illustrious counter attack by the Ameri- can Marines on June 6 and 7 when they secured possession of Bouresches and pushed into Belleu Wood to Hill 181. A delicate situation was brewing; the situ- i that Ludendorff had foreseen on the eve- ' when the momentous ques- decision and the council to push on without saw clearly now on had comprehended fully them of holding on to the Cotterets, and the dconsolidated a line corners. immediate attempt was break down at least one of these - Sunday, June 9, Hutier's 18th Army attempted to beat in the Soissoms corner. He advanced, but there were no such gains as (“The Butcher”) from the west, and on the 13th, the battle, which was going badly, was called off. It was obvious that heavy prepa=- ratien was necessary to breack down either corner. The Parisgun battery had fired 12 shots on Sunday, 5 on Monday and 1 on Tuesday. Only three of these 18 showed pressures sufficient to send the shells into the city. This made a record of 102 shots from the Beaumont gun, a vastly superior record to that of any previous gun. Orders were received on Tuesday, June 10, to cease firing and prepare to move battery. The German armies were in just that predica= ment which Ludendorff had predicted. Some- how the allies had held the Soissons and Rheims corners against a persistent and grueling hammering. Between June 11 and 18 while Ludendorff and his generals were perfecting plans for a surprise attack with Rheims as an objective, now that they had been completely frustrated in their efforts to dislodge the allies from Vil- lers Cotterets section, the Paris gun crew at Beaumont had removed the gun from the car- riage and sent it back to Essen for a second reboring. By the 18th the position had been evacuated and all of the material, with a new gun to follow later, was on the way south to- ward Soissons, the only port of entry into the Soissons-Marne-Chateau Thierry-Rheims tri- angle. [CIOUS rainy weather from the 18th to the 25th prevented anything except pere functory and ineffectual activity on both sides, but the weather cleared on the 25th and be- tween that date and July 14 intense activity prevailed on the entire Marne front, with the advantage distinctly in favor of the allies. Soissons, now in German hands, was violently shelled every day and the Americans had cap- tured the entire north corner of Belleu Wood The hills north and south of Cutry were taken by the French, which meant that Soissons was seriously threatened. In the meantime the Paris gun had been em- placed at the south end of the Valchretien farm, in the Bois de Bruyeres, between Bruyeres and Trugny. Everything was made ready to start firing on July 15, the date set for the great secret attack at Rheims. The range to Paris from the Bois de Bruyeres was onlv 5€.6 miles. The Germans had literally staked eve: thing on the July 15 attack, planned to crush ~he Rheims salient, flatten out the critical tr - angle, advance toward Paris on a broad front. ‘The attack was to be the turning point of the war. Ludendorff had stressed that its success depended upon secrecy. German artillery fire was to start at 1:10 in the morning, but sharply at 1 o’clock the entire allied Marne- Rheims front burst forth in one livid belch of artillery fire. Ten minutes later the German artillery fire was a distinct and comparatively ineffectual anti-climax. The allies had been tipped off. The Paris gun began operations four minutes after the German artillery started, but after the first shot enemy planes appeared : no more firing was done until 5 in the mc :ing when nine shots were fired between 5 and 9. ‘The next day enemy planes kept the crew from firing more than four shots at Paris. On the 17th, so constantly were enemy planes harasse ing the crew that no firing wa- ¢~ - from the Paris gun. The allies, quick to grasp their opportunity on the Marne-Rheims front, soon launched a terrific counter-attack, which had the immediate effect on July 19 of forcing the Germans te withdraw to the north bank of the Marne, and to abandon all efforts to capture and flatten the Rheims sector This was the beginning of the end. The installation of the Paris gun on» its oM position was by coincidence completed on Au- gust 4, the day that Foch had called a tem- porary halt to the great allied counter drive, During the next three days a total of 47 shots were fired on Faris. On August. 8 the British army launched a tremendously effective surprise attack on the Amiens front and by the next evening the'situation demanded the immediate evacuation of the Beaumont Paris gun position. It was just possible, said some of the officers who were most depressed over the turn of af- fairs, that the famous Paris bombardment was finished. The great retreat, which began on July 19, but which had not yet been recognized as such, continued. The British and French armies re= gained all their losses of March, April, May and June, while American reserves arrived at the rate of 25 divisions a month, and on Sep- Continued on Twenty-third Page