Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/310

292 every moment to crash through. All along the route the French populace greeted the great battery train with one long cheer, and at the towns and villages the girls decorated the long muzzle of the gun with flowers. But there were other spectators than the French. Expertly as this unusual train had been camouflaged, the German airplane observers had detected its approach. As it neared the objective the shells that had been falling on Paris ceased; before the Americans could get to work, the Germans had removed their mighty weapon, leaving nothing but an emplacement as a target for our shells. Though our men were therefore deprived of the privilege of destroying this famous long-range gun, it is apparent that their arrival saved Paris from further bombardment, for nothing was heard of the gun for the rest of the war.

The guns proved exceedingly effective in attacking German railroad centres, bridges, and other essential positions; and as they could be fired from any point of the railroad tracks behind the Western Front, and as they could be shifted from one position to another, with all their personnel and equipment, as fast as the locomotives could haul them, it was apparent that the more guns of this design that could be supplied the better. These qualities were at once recognized by the Army, which called upon the Navy for assistance in building a large number of railway batteries; and if the war had continued these great guns would soon have been thundering all along the Western Front.

From the time the naval guns were mounted until the armistice Admiral Plunkett's men were busy on several points of the Allied lines. In this time the five naval guns fired 782 shells at distances ranging from 18 to 23 miles. They played great havoc in the railroad yards at Laon, destroying large stretches of track that were indispensable to the Germans, and in general making this place practically useless as a railroad centre. Probably the greatest service which they rendered to the cause of the Allies was in the region north of Verdun. In late October three naval batteries were brought up to Charny and Thierville and began bombarding the railroad which ran through Montmedy, Longuyon, and Conflans. This was the most important line of communication on the Western Front ; it was the road over which the German army in the east was supplied, and there was practically no other line by which the great German