"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.
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