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Updated: June 12, 2025
The noise had grown louder and louder, and when I returned to my post of observation, I found most of the servants assembled, all craning their necks. On came the Taube, and there we stood, gaping, never realizing an instant that we were running the slightest risk. The machine passed directly over our heads, not low enough, however, for us to distinguish its contents with the naked eye.
In a field was a wrecked aeroplane, a white and yellow taube, with its right wing reaching into the air, looking like some gigantic, wounded bird. Towards sunset, an automobile passed along the road through this terrible desolate valley of death.
And just as I came into the Place de la Concorde, "Mr. Taube" came up out of the north. You must imagine that vast open space, with the bridge and river and Invalides behind it, and beyond the light tracery of the Eiffel Tower, covered with little specks of people, all looking upward. Back along the boulevards, on roofs on both banks, all Paris, in fact, was similarly staring "Le nez en l'air."
They were glad even that a Taube should come now and then, so that they, the women of Paris, might run some risks in this war and share its perils with their men, who every day in the trenches la-bas, faced death for the sake of France. "Our chance of death is a million to one," said some of them. "We should be poor things to take fright at that!"
There were not many people who saw the "Taube" the German dove make its swoop and hurl its fire-balls. There was just a speck in the sky, a glint of metal, and the far- humming of an aerial engine. Perhaps it was a French aviator coming back from a reconnaissance over the enemy's lines on the Aisne, or taking a joy ride over Paris to stretch his wings.
"Captain Fink," he stated, "destroyed the Frascati airship shed near Metz, where there was a Zeppelin which was wrecked. He also destroyed three Taube aeroplanes, which were also in the shed."
At the end of the Gurkha line I was met by Colonel Wolley Dod, who took me round the fire trenches of the 86th Brigade. The Dublin Fusiliers looked particularly fit and jolly. Getting back to the head of the Gully I rode with Hunter-Weston to his Corps Headquarters where I had tea before sailing. When I got to Imbros the Fleet were firing at a Taube.
A few days before the fall of Antwerp a Taube flew over the city in the early afternoon, dropping thousands of proclamations printed in both French and Flemish and signed by the commander of the investing forces, pointing out to the inhabitants the futility of resistance, asserting that in fighting Germany they were playing Russia's game, and urging them to lay down their arms.
And straight overhead, so far up that even the murmur of the motor was unheard, no more than a bird, indeed, against the pale sky, "Mr. Taube," circling indolently about, picking his moment, plotting our death. I thought of the shudder of outraged horror that ran over Antwerp when the first Zeppelin came. It seemed the last unnecessary blow to a heroic people who had already stood so much.
I saw the same girl stand out in a field while this little drama took place: The French artillery in the field were well covered by shrubbery. They had been pounding away from their covert till the Germans grew irritated. A German Taube flew into sight, hovered high overhead and spied the hidden guns. It dropped three smoke bombs.
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