Photograph of a French heavy mortar in action.
"It was frightful there wasn't a shelter that could have withstood them they made holes that were 29 paces across and 4 to 5 meters deep it was beyond anything one could imagine. I left at the regular time and had to throw myself down flat on my stomach several times when I arrived [at the battery] I saw them falling all around . . . With every falling shell I threw my bike to the ground and threw myself flat on the ground finally I made it to my destination but what a spectacle with all these shell holes everywhere there is an enormous one two meters from our canteen at the very spot where I usually put my bike."
Excerpt from a letter from Paul Pireaud to his wife Marie from Martha Hanna's Your Death Would Be Mine, based on the couple's correspondence during World War I. On June 26, 1917, Paul was serving with the 112th Heavy Artillery Regiment when his battery came under fire. In April, the unit had fought in the Battle of the Hills, or the Third Battle of Champagne, attacking east of Reims in an action of the Second Battle of the Aisne, itself part of Robert Nivelle's great — and failed — spring offensive of 1917. No one in Paul's unit was harmed, but two men in an adjacent battery were killed. Paul hoped the Germans would follow their usual practice of waiting two or three weeks before launching another heavy bombardment.
Your Death Would Be Mine; Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War by Martha Hanna, page 211, copyright © 2006 by Martha Hanna, publisher: Harvard University Press, publication date: 2006
1917-06-26, 1917, June, artillery barrage, Pireaud, Paul Pireaud, French heavy mortar, bicycle, bike
