The German bombardment of Reims Cathedral began on September 19, 1914 during the initial German advance toward Paris. The Second Reich armies deliberately targeted the twelfth-century Gothic cathedral, the traditional coronation church of France, as an act of psychological warfare. The wooden roof was set alight; the lead-covered timber vaults burnt away; the exterior sculptures of the west front — including the celebrated 'Smiling Angel' — were shattered.
During the initial fires of September 19 and the subsequent shellings of 1915–1918 (in which over 300 shells struck the cathedral), a large baroque wooden crucifix that had hung in the north transept since the seventeenth century was buried under falling debris. It was recovered by German prisoners of war during the cleanup of 1919; the wooden corpus was intact, and the sacristan Fr. Landrieux — who had also directed the rescue of stained-glass panels — reported that the wound in the side of the corpus, when the crucifix was moved, exuded the scent of freshly cut wood, as though the sculpture had been carved that morning.
The cathedral was formally reopened in 1938 after two decades of restoration financed by American donors led by John D. Rockefeller Jr. The wooden crucifix is displayed in the cathedral's treasury museum; its role in the wartime fires is commemorated on a plaque installed in 1938 by Cardinal Suhard.