Then at last silence, broken soon by the rumble of ambulances as they
started on their quest for the dead and the wounded. And Emil was
wrong. There was no Zeppelin. The night raid on Dunkirk was history.
The lights did not come on again. From that time on for several weeks
Dunkirk lay at night in darkness. Houses showing a light were fined by
the police. Automobiles were forbidden the use of lamps. One crept
along the streets and the roads surrounding the town in a mysterious
and nerve-racking blackness broken only by the shaded lanterns of the
sentries as they stepped out with their sharp command to stop.
The result of the raid? It was largely moral, a part of that campaign
of terrorisation which is so strangely a part of the German system,
which has set its army to burning cities, to bombarding the
unfortified coast towns of England, to shooting civilians in conquered
Belgium, and which now sinks the pitiful vessels of small traders and
fishermen in the submarine-infested waters of the British Channel. It
gained no military advantage, was intended to gain no military
advantage. Not a soldier died. The great stores of military supplies
were not wrecked. The victims were, as usual, women and children. The
houses destroyed were the small and peaceful houses of noncombatants.
Pages:
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102