Beyond Revanche, page 31
“Take your time! Take your time. Stop for a moment…” Wasted words were drowned in wasted lives. “Come on, come on, slowly…slowly keep moving. The line isn’t live. You can walk across safely.” Gasping for air, Mathieu and Jacques tried to reassure the wounded, broken, lifeless, and seriously injured to pick up their beds and walk, but there was no biblical reprieve. Seven men, twenty-nine women and thirty children were declared dead on the platform. The injured went uncounted.
Her nose bloodied, her body bruised and trembling from fear, a child called Justine sat unattended, on top of an old man’s body while all around the dead and dying lay as if scattered carelessly by an unseen force, some clearly broken in unnatural positions, some as if asleep. Many held themselves awkwardly, moaning in pain but glad to have breath in their lungs. It was the nightmare of Marseilles revisited on the underground. This time the child was alive but her mother was sprawled over the final step and the false safety of the Bolivar’s platform.
“Mama…Mama,” she cried through snot and tears. “Mama,” she sobbed until she fell asleep exhausted, wrapped in cold comfort. An elderly couple passed by and the disheveled man lifted her gently in his arms. He turned to his shocked wife and said, “She must be lost. We’ll take her home.”
* * *
A pram stood buckled where it had been summarily abandoned at the top of the Bolivar entrance. Forever empty.
“How the hell?” Roux’s sleep had been interrupted as he had instructed it must in an emergency, but the air raid had ended three hours before and he had just managed to turn over and go back to sleep. The body count from Bolivar made it the worst single incident in the war on Paris to date. So many women and children. Jacques flinched on the other end of the phone. He had asked himself repeatedly how they had failed to anticipate the problem. The death-trap which sat at the bottom of the steep entrance steps were gates which opened outwards towards the street. Once shut they had to be reopened from the platform.
“Sir, the bureau of information want to know what we should tell the press. How should I respond?”
“Give them the truth,” was all that Roux said.
* * *
When Mathieu struggled home Agnès was able to update him. “The crush injuries are desperately dangerous. We ran out of x-rays and the best we could do was bandage those poor people and send them home if they could walk.” The hopelessness of war engulfed them. They were both empty, emotionally; so far drained that the reservoir had dried. Mathieu wondered if he’d suffered a crush injury on the barge and was about to ask Agnès, but the moment passed. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, a painful day had little promise of improving.
By early morning, reports had to come in from every part of the stricken city.
“Listen to this.” Jacques held a written police complaint in his right hand, the froth of his anger almost choking his voice. “You couldn’t make it up. While those poor women and children were being crushed to death in the Metro shelter, the audience at the Comedie-Française refused to budge and demanded that the performers continued to entertain them despite the air-raid. Bloody typical, eh? The innocents are slaughtered but the drunks and sloths that ignore all the rules of survival get away with it. The proprietor claims that he didn’t hear the sirens for the laughter. Can we shut them down?”
“Probably not, but send the local gendarmes to threaten them anyway.”
Chief Superintendent Roux called Mathieu to his office. “We’ve been given a special assignment. The prime minister wants to see the damage caused by the bombing.”
Jacques, who was Clemenceau’s designated driver, sat with a military aide by his side. The prime minister and chief superintendent were ensconced in the back seat with reinforced glass to protect them. Mathieu stood on the fender, alert to the many dangers which could arise. Clemenceau’s rotund figure claimed most of the Renault’s back seat. Roux had to squeeze himself into a limited space but appeared not to notice. The prime minister’s reddened face boasted a white walrus moustache overhung by thick part-grey eyebrows. His cheeks, once full, were stretched by age and responsibility, so that his high jawbone was visible, as if to warn that behind the charm lay a no-nonsense predator. His forehead was lined but not with worry. Mathieu had never met a more positive, confident, and capable politician than the Tiger.
The morning-after syndrome lay over the Capital. Regret was mixed with the pain of visible hurt inflicted on a people close to the edge of toleration. The sin of the voyeur did not stop hundreds taking to the streets to see for themselves the destruction of their precious Paris. First stop was at the old cemetery at Vincennes in the eastern inner-suburbs. One explosive had transformed a row of marbled tombstones to crumbling rubble, with a single obelisk stubbornly rooted in its place as if to say that a mere bomb couldn’t disrupt the eternal peace of those interred below. Two women had already begun to put back the broken marble from their family tomb, angry-voiced and frustrated. The prime minister doffed his hat and approached them cautiously lest he was disturbing a private grief, but they greeted him as a welcome visitor. Within a minute they were laughing heartily and shaking hands. He kissed both on their cheeks with the utmost propriety and returned still laughing to himself.
“Boys.” He always addressed his Tigers that way when in private. “Never underestimate the capacity of strong women to catch the moment. When I offered my condolences, the elder said, ‘Monsieur Prime Minister, the German bombs did not kill Alphonse. Absinthe was the cause of death on his certificate. He would have been the first to say that it was a far better way to go. Anyway, better the bombs fall on the dead and spare the living.’ That’s the spirit which will help Paris survive, no matter what they throw at us.”
Clemenceau was forced to stop further along Rue de Lille where an enormous crater split the thoroughfare. A ladder pointed from the hole as if it was a natural entrance to the underworld, but the rank odor indicated that the sewers had been breached. They did not linger. A fine block of apartments in the Haussmann-style had suffered a direct hit. The partly demolished rooftop had been brutally caved in. Planks of wooden rafters hung limply from the top two floors where the cornices and domes once epitomized the sheer opulence of a Parisian boulevard. It looked as if a giant fist had punched the building from top to bottom. This time the damage spread to both sides of the street with windows blown out and shredded curtains hanging askew, open to the vagaries of the elements.
Every site which Clemenceau visited drew an appreciative crowd. His message of defiance was openly shared with those who would listen. Paris stood firm.
30
Late March 1918 – The Boches Gun
The team, which included Jubert, Jacques-Francois, Dubois, and Mathieu, had reported early for duty, aware that the prime minister intended to go to the war office. Two days previously, the Germans had launched yet another major offensive, earlier than anticipated. Logic argued that they were determined to win a quick victory before the bulk of the American army disembarked in France, and their projected line of advance between the British and the French forces pointed directly at Paris.
“A quick victory, indeed. After four years of failed quick victories, you might think the generals on both sides would concoct a better story than that.” Dubois’s sarcasm was entirely justified. The bombing raids had continued to inflict local damage in the center of the Capital and citizens had come to accept that when the sirens sounded, they took cover. The chief superintendent approached, the pungent smell of his customary Gauloises preceding him like incense might a prelate’s procession. He had barely begun to outline the prime minister’s agenda when a dull, deep blast interrupted his flow. Everyone in the room turned to the window, brows furrowed. A strange silence followed.
“Might have been a gas explosion.” Jubert’s suggestion rang false. It carried an essence of hope which was not realistically deserved. “It’s, what, half past seven?”
“Air raid?”
“Couldn’t be. No warning sirens. Out of a blue sky?” Mathieu stood at the nearest window and faced as clear a spring morning as he could remember. He turned to the chief and tried to read his inscrutable face.
“Anyone guess where that noise came from?” No one spoke. Jacques licked at suddenly dry lips.
Jubert shook his head in disbelief. “It can’t be.”
Roux sat down heavily. His seat squealed in protest, his temples thumping, his worst fears pushed from skepticism to certainty in a single shell burst. He blew his cheeks out and exhaled the words, “From one hundred and twenty kilometers.”
Mathieu voiced what they all suspected. “The Boches gun.”
“Right, gentlemen, to work. Firstly, we had best make sure that the prime minister is aware of the situation in person. Jubert, inform the president’s office, then follow us over to the Ministry of War.” Despite the urgency, Clemenceau was not immediately available. He had taken a call from Marshall Foch, the appointed head of all the allied armies in France. The British, under Haig, had been forced back by the German attack, and naturally the prime minister demanded regular updates.
As they waited in the ante-room, a second and third muffled eruption was audible through the enormous windows. A war ministry secretary handed Roux a press release. He despaired of official stupidity. It was almost pandemic.
“NO, NO, NO,” he boomed, deliberately increasing the volume in the hope that Clemenceau would hear him. He did.
“Monsieur Roux,” he scolded when they were ushered into his private office, “what is the reason for your very vocal annoyance?”
“This, Sir.” He handed him the sheet and waited for a reaction.
“So…what’s the problem?”
“It’s a falsehood. In fact, it’s worse than a lie…it’s an ignorant lie.””
“You are about to explain.” Clemenceau put the offending press release on the marble Louis Quinze table and fixed his stony eyes on Bernard Roux.
“That explosion, indeed, those explosions which you may or may not have heard, Sir, are not the product of an air raid. Furthermore, there were no German planes hovering over the Capital, and to make matters worse, according to the official statement which bears your name, no French squadrons ever took to the skies to chase them off. Paris is being bombarded from a range of one hundred and twenty kilometers away, and there is nothing we can do to stop the Boches. Nothing.”
Georges Clemenceau froze, his mouth slightly ajar, his mind racing. “Would someone please explain this to me slowly?”
Roux nodded consent to Mathieu who began from the start. “Prime Minister, the explosions this morning come from German shells, fired from an enormous Krupp’s gun one hundred and twenty kilometers away. I assumed that you have been informed about this.”
Clemenceau’s jaw dropped, his color changing hue as the enormity of the situation hit home. “I heard rumors, but they were never confirmed.”
“The Germans appear to be firing randomly every fifteen to twenty minutes. But this official communiqué makes us all look foolish. There was no air-raid this morning. No bombs have fallen on the city. The story about our air squadrons chasing them back across their lines is pure fabrication. It started over an hour ago, and the sirens haven’t gone off. People are walking around the city, coming and going to and from work was if it was a normal day.”
“What!” Clemenceau exploded. The air was rent with a volley of expletives which would have barely been acceptable in an overcrowded brothel. He picked up his phone and instructed some unfortunate to put him through to the Paris fire service and ordered the alert. Within half a minute sirens wailed across the city. It had taken one hour and thirty five minutes to warn Parisians of the severe danger they faced. Only then did the trams stop on the boulevards and grand streets; only then did the buses pull into the side of the road so that their passengers could take appropriate cover; only then did the metro trains have their power cut so that the people could shelter on the broad platforms, the main line stations empty, the munitions factories close down. Only then. One thing was certain. The government would be blamed for the lies and the impossibly slow reaction from officials. Hundreds of thousands of working men and women had been put at risk as they made their way to work, exposed to the random chance of an unexpected explosion, let down by their own.
“We still don’t know where the bloody gun is?” Clemenceau’s tone betrayed the answer he expected.
“The Americans had a vague idea that the Boches were building a super-gun. Krupps, definitely, but they have worked hard to keep its location secret. Right now, with a full frontal attack across the north, I doubt our allies can do anything.”
“I’ll call an immediate Cabinet meeting. I want you there, Bernard, to spell this out clearly. If the people lose confidence in us, Paris will fall. No matter what…only the truth.”
What Clemenceau meant was only the censured truth, but at his insistence a second communiqué was issued admitting that the Germans were bombarding Paris with a long-range gun, though, as always, the numbers killed or injured were watered down towards insignificance. From that day forth, shells were flung into Paris with wanton abandon until the populace learned to live with the possibility that one might hit them.
* * *
Agnès, beautiful Agnès of the beatific smile, was not by any means a hardline Catholic, but she went to mass, and confessed her sins in churches and chapels where she was unknown. Mathieu knew her faith in God did not waver in plain view of the misery of war’s carnage for that was, in her mind, the work of the Devil. Her real passion was not religion, but religious music. She had described it to him several times, but Mathieu had long been unimpressed by religion and its trappings. Nightmare images of dead babies and slaughtered families sat ill at ease with a generous God. She, on the other hand, had been smitten in a very singular way.
The echoing tenor-bass of Gregorian chant which had survived the Middle Ages cast a spell of historic certainty around her own belief. The delicate joy of Palestrina filled her soul with sensual pleasure; aural and physical. A sung high mass was worth leaving Mathieu’s bed because she was guaranteed to return filled with a holy spirit which he could more than amply quench; and she told him so. La grande theatre of Easter Week she found sublime with its stage-managed drama; the rubric from Maundy Thursday through to the rousing Victimae paschali laudes of the risen Lord on Easter Sunday thrilled her absolutely. Over the last two years she had managed to talk her way into Saint-Gervais for the Good Friday service, the most cherished of all. She was reduced to tears by the symbolism of Christ’s death on the cross and the pageantry of the special mass. The people of Paris filled the church. Parishioners were guaranteed free entrance, but those who sought simply to enjoy the music were required to wait outside until the final third of the program. With due ceremony, the singers filed in from the North transept, and holy song reached up to heaven. Parishioners lined up to kiss the feet of Christ crucified, held reverentially by a surpliced acolyte on the edge of the altar steps. Divine. The choir paused to enjoy the silence of absolute approval. Applause was unthinkable. Agnès’ contemplation was itself a thing of beauty.
As far as she could later recollect, she saw the Abbe Gauthier rise to intone the office of the day when a “thunderbolt” struck Saint-Gervais as if the Anti-Christ had been summoned to wreak havoc. The explosion hit the side of the church catching a weakened pillar which brought down the vaulted arch. Plaster, stone, wooden beams, and cornices rained from above. Acrid grey dust swept the aisles like a dry snowstorm. The central pillars were shaken, but did not stir. Death ran amok like a wild fox in a chicken coop, tossing bodies in the air, crushing the unsuspecting at prayer, burying parishioners and the paying congregation, choking life from the faithful and the faithless alike. Agnès fell, the inert body of the pious acolyte pinning her to the floor, the foot of the alabaster Christ-crucified left dangling over a smashed pew. She could hear groans and cries above her, but was blinded for some moments by the dust and powder. What a catastrophe. Had the roof given way, collapsed under the weight of the city’s collective sorrow? That smell. Was that gunpowder? Agnès struggled to her feet, raised up by the black biretta-headed priest who simultaneously anointed the dying acolyte with the last rites of his church. It took several moments more for the awful sight to sink in. Saint-Gervais had been struck by a deadly shell hurled by the evil Kaiser some one hundred and twenty kilometers away. Well, that was how the newspapers would portray this escalation in modern warfare. She focused, controlled her breathing, let her professional training switch to automatic and turned to assist the twisted body beside her.
Jacques heard the blast first. He looked up but could see nothing. Strange. Toussaint, at the front door was shaken from his idleness and looking north saw a great cloud begin to rise from the church across the river. He screamed in horror, “They’ve hit Saint-Gervais… It’s Saint-Gervais…look…look.” A whispering pall of smoke and dust rose and thickened across the Seine through the ancient church roof as if it had been superimposed on a grumbling volcano.
“Saint-Gervais has been hit,” Jacques echoed and grabbed his jacket which had been abandoned on the chair opposite. “Captain? Chief?…did you hear, Saint-Gervais has been hit.”
Doors were flung open and policemen of all ranks, ages, and shapes scrambled down corridors and stairs to see what they could do. Jacques jumped into the Renault with Mathieu and the chief. He took off before the rear door was securely closed and within a minute they had crossed the Seine at the Point d’Arcole, driven by a mad-man along the bank of the river and into Rue de Brosse. The Gothic majesty of Saint-Gervais appeared almost untouched but the great door hung open at an unnatural angle and the historic painted glass windows had disappeared. Inside, a rescue of sorts had begun.
