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Show THRILLING TALE OF PARIS RAIDS American Red Cross Inspector Describes Bombing French Capital by Germans. WASHINGTON, July 29. Writing of a German air raid on Paris, one of the American Red Cross Inspectors gives a thrilling account of how American troops and Red Cross workers work-ers gives aid to the city in such desperate des-perate moments. He describes an air raid in this fashion: "Nowhere is there any sound but tho echoes of footsteps. Not a street light is to be seen, not a single ray of light nothing but the inkiest and most impenetrable darkness. Then all of the noise of tho world seems to break loose. Clang-clang-clang booms the tocsin like a gigantic pneumatic riveter working on a collosal bell. Whooo-o shrlekes the siren, running up and down the scale in an awful wall, "The streets come to life. Doors open and slam shut. The sidewalks are full of ghostly figures hurrying towards caves, where the inhabitants have fitted up cols and banks. They get up now to take a sitting nlace for the new comers. The place fills up. Everyone looks apathetic, sleepy and bored. The children go to sleep with thoir heads on their mother's shoulders, shoul-ders, and a girl in the uniform of a street car conductor swaps war yarns with a poilu in dingy blue. In the last raid, the front trucks of her car were thrown from the rails by the displacement displace-ment of air caused by an exploding torpedo. The air and its inmates were unhurt. The poilu looks a ml to incredulous in-credulous and murmurs,, "I can well believe you, mademoiselle.' "Outside the noise continues for about three or four minutes and then subsides as a new noise starts the Archies, or anti-craft guns, which commence com-mence to bark furiously from half a dozen different points. Searchlights rake the sky. The Archies continue their clamor, but they are not firing at anything, merely keeping up a barrage bar-rage fire to prevent the boche from flying over the city. "Suddenly there in an earthrocking whoom. No more doubt as to where the boches are. Whoom, whoom, whoom. One involuntarily ducks and tries turtlewlse to cover his head with his shoulders. A hideous noise resounds re-sounds up and down the deserted street falling walls, and the tinkling and crash of showers of broken glass and roofing tiles. "Through the glass and litter of tho street an American Red Cross camoi-nette camoi-nette comes plowing its way. One of tho city firemen stands on the running board. They stop and the firemen flashes an electric lamp into the ruins, makes a hasty inspection, and then runs up the street and dives into the redlight 'cave.' '"Anybody here from No. 49 to 51?' he calls. A. half a dozen voices yell out that there is. " 'Is everybody here from those numbers? Was there anyone left in either of those buildings?' "There is an anxious calling back and forth and a rapid counting of noses. 'All here' is the answer. "Good! Not much left of those two buildings. Don't enter the ruins until they have been inspected by the en gineering department. Go to the Sisters Sis-ters of the Poor if you want food or a place to sleep." "A wail and several curses compete, com-pete, but the fireman is gone. "The Archies have stopped and there are no more whooms, but people stay in their cellars. It is only 9 o'clock, and experience has shown that the industrious in-dustrious and methodical bocbes will keep coming back again and again until un-til after midnight "A half a mile away a bright red glow gets larger and larger and lights the sky. A fire has broken out in the railroad yards and is making great headway. Several cars of oil are burning- fiercely and spreading to cars of merchandise. Half a dozen American soldiers are working feverishly trying 10 get the untouched cars away from the fire. "Two of them have got hold of a switch engine and are shunting out whole strings of cars. " 'Do you know anything about these French engines, sir?' asks I he Impromptu engineer, 'I can't find the brake.' "The fire is eating its way towards a pier on which stands a line of drums of gnsollne. "Come on, boys, roll them kegs o' gas outa.here,' yells the corporal, and the line of drums starts trundling down the pier. It is infernally ho and the average man docs not know just how hot gasoline can get bafore 11 begins to misbehavo; but the hae never wavers. '"Roll 'em along, boys' Keep 'em going. Everybody has got lo die iome-time.' iome-time.' "Little by little things becomo quieter. quiet-er. The fires die down. Tho .Archies' stop. Mere and there a workiug party par-ty still continues its laboia m the ruins. Someone is., missing, and they want to get him out of a cellar. Now the tocsin sounds again, this time with sIoav, stately, measured beats. This is the 'All's clear' signal. No more enemy planes are flying between here and the fighting lines. People come out of Iheir cellars and go home. A few cautious souls are busily putting sheets of paper and pieces of bedding across their broken windows to keep out the dreaded 'courant d'air,' Nov and then there is a small group in a doorway, recounting experiences. "The boche has dropped more than than one hundred bombs, tonight, many of them of thej600 pound size. The net damage is not very great. A few houses destroyed, many windows broken, brok-en, a few victims very few but nil loo many; a few holes blown .ih the streets, some trees uprooted in the parks and some pansy buds obliterated. obliter-ated. "I imagine that back in his quarters, the bocho cscadrille kommajidatur, after sadly cataloguing his own wounds, is writing' up an account of his glorious night's work for the edification edi-fication of the reader of tho 'Kolnis-chezeitung.' 'Kolnis-chezeitung.' His ductile pen is reeling reel-ing off: "The earth reeled and rocked and while rows of buildings went down liko card houses; the lights of the flames showed panic-stricken crowds surging through the streets toward the open country; the railroad depots were leveled to the ground and many munition dumps were blown up, and several fires were seen to break outi in the barracks and military warehouses.' ware-houses.' "Tho cscadrille kommandatur would be grieved beyond measure could he but walk through the streets tonight and Inventory the not results, and see the effect produced on the population. popula-tion. He who is now houseless shrugs his shoulders and says 'Cost le Guerre,' and once more the peaceful stars shine down tranquilly on the silent streets." |