One hundred years ago this week the biggest news of the war was still Germany's first aerial attack on England. They'd bombed Yarmouth and other defenceless Norfolk seaside towns.
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Sydney's Mail reported that "telegrams from Berlin describe the wild enthusiasm of the populace when an Admiralty statement was issued announcing that 'naval airships [the sinister Zeppelins] undertook an attack on some fortified places on the English coast'. The Emperor telegraphed his congratulations to Count Zeppelin, whom he addressed as 'Commodore of my Fleet.' "
The Mail reported that the Huns (how like them!) had made special targets of churches, and that they'd been assisted on the ground by traitors or spies who had used car headlights to pick out targets for the Zeppelins to bomb.
The bombs dropped on St Peter's church in Yarmouth had "evidenced extraordinary potency".
"One of them, double the size of a coconut, demolished two cottages and shattered the windows of 50 houses and shops. While the attacks were in progress a green light was seen at sea from Yarmouth, and it is conjectured that this was a signal to the aircraft, showing the position of a German vessel ready to assist the aeronauts in case of disaster."
Just along the coast, at Sheringham, "A child had a wonderful escape. She had been put to bed, but cried, and her parents brought her downstairs. A few minutes later a bomb fell through the bed where the little one would have been sleeping."
