There are, of course,
innumerable allusions and partial records, and it is from these that
subsequent ages must piece together the image of these devastations.
The phenomena, it must be remembered, changed greatly from day to day,
and even from hour to hour, as the exploding bomb shifted its position,
threw off fragments or came into contact with water or a fresh texture
of soil. Barnet, who came within forty miles of Paris early in October,
is concerned chiefly with his account of the social confusion of the
country-side and the problems of his command, but he speaks of heaped
cloud masses of steam. 'All along the sky to the south-west' and of a
red glare beneath these at night. Parts of Paris were still burning,
and numbers of people were camped in the fields even at this distance
watching over treasured heaps of salvaged loot. He speaks too of
the distant rumbling of the explosion--'like trains going over iron
bridges.'
Other descriptions agree with this; they all speak of the 'continuous
reverberations,' or of the 'thudding and hammering,' or some such
phrase; and they all testify to a huge pall of steam, from which rain
would fall suddenly in torrents and amidst which lightning played.
Drawing nearer to Paris an observer would have found the salvage camps
increasing in number and blocking up the villages, and large numbers
of people, often starving and ailing, camping under improvised tents
because there was no place for them to go.
Pages:
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208