Chapter 2

A Westphalian prisoner states, "The commanding officer ordered us to shoot two women, and we did so. One of them was holding a child by the hand, and in falling she dragged the child over with her. The officer gave orders to shoot the child, because it could not be left alone in the world." At Rouves, a Government clerk refused to tell a Bavarian officer the numbers of the French regiments in the neighbourhood. The officer killed him with two shots from his revolver. At Crézancy, another officer shot with his own hand young Lesaint, 18 years old, "to prevent his being a soldier later on." At Emberménil, Madame Masson was shot for having, in absolute good faith, given some wrong information. As she was obviously in a state of pregnancy they made her sit down on a bench to meet her fate. At Ethe, two priests were shot "for having buried some weapons." At Marquéglise, a superior officer ordered the arrest of four young fugitives. Learning that two of them came from Belgium, he exclaimed, "The Belgians are filthy people," and without more ado took his revolver and shot them one after the other. Three were killed outright, the fourth expired the following day.

From the crowd of fugitives which left Louvain in flames, the priests were singled out, and searched. On one of them, a Jesuit father, by name Dupierreux, they found a note-book containing the following note in French, "When I used to read about the Huns under Attila devastating towns, I smiled. I smile no longer now that I have seen with my own eyes the hordes of to-day setting fire to the churches and library of Louvain." In front of the assembled troops the priests were placed in a semi-circle round the Jesuit Father. The incriminating phrase was read out, and then translated into German. The lieutenant said that it constituted an incitement to murder, and that the Jesuit must be shot on the spot. The sentence was carried out forthwith, and the other priests, his companions, were made to bury him where he fell.

At Pin, some Uhlans found two young boys on the road. They tied them by the arms to their horses and galloped off. The bodies of the poor lads were found a few miles away--their knees were "literally crushed"; one had his throat cut and both had several bullets in their heads. At Sermaize, a labourer, named Brocard, and his son, were arrested. His wife and daughter-in-law, mad with terror, threw themselves into a neighbouring stream. The old man broke away, and ran to try and save them. The Germans dragged him away.... Four days later Brocard and the son, on being liberated, returned home, and after a search, found the bodies. The two women, while still in the water, had been shot several times through the head. A parish priest named Dergent was taken to Aerschot, stripped, and tied to a cross in front of the church; his fingers and toes were crushed and broken with the butt-end of a rifle. The inhabitants were made to pass in front of him and were each compelled to urinate on him in turn; then he was shot and his body thrown into the canal.[10]

At Hériménil, during the pillage, the inhabitants were shut up in a church, and kept there for four days without food. When Madame Winger, 23 years of age, and her three young servants, one girl and two boys, were too slow in leaving her farm to go to the church, the captain ordered his men to fire on them. Four more dead bodies!

The Germans arrived at Monchy-Humières. A group of inhabitants watched them marching past. No provocation whatever was offered, but an officer thought that he heard someone utter the word "Prussians." He at once called out three dragoons, and ordered them to fire upon the group--one killed and two wounded--one of the latter being a little girl of four.

At Sommeilles, when the fire--which destroyed the whole place--broke out, Madame X. took refuge in a cellar belonging to M. and Madame Adnot, who were there, with their four children, the eldest a girl of 11 years. A few days after, on returning to the village, our soldiers found the seven bodies in the cellar lying in a pool of blood, several of them being horribly mutilated. Madame X. had her right arm severed from her body; the little girl's foot had been cut off, and the little boy of five had his throat cut.

At Louveigné a certain number of men were shut up in a blacksmith's shop; in the afternoon the murderers opened the door as if it were a pigeon-shooting competition, drove the prisoners out, and shot them down--a ghastly group of 17 corpses.

At Senlis the heroic Mayor, M. Odent, and six members of his staff were shot.

At Gerbéviller they forced their way into the house of M. and Madame Lingenheld; seized the son, aged 36, exempt from service, and wearing the badge of the Red Cross, tied his hands, dragged him into the street and shot him. They then returned to look for the father, an old man of 70. Meanwhile the mother, mad with terror, made her escape. On coming out she saw her son lying on the ground. As he still showed signs of life, they threw paraffin over him and roasted him. The father was shot later on with fourteen other old men. More than 150 victims were identified in this parish.

At Nomeny, M. Vassé provided shelter for a number of neighbours in his cellar. Fifty soldiers got in and set fire to the house. To escape the flames the refugees rushed out and were shot one by one as they emerged. Mentré was killed first; his son Léon, with his little eight-year-old sister in his arms, fell next: as he was not quite dead they put the barrel of a rifle to his ear and blew his brains out. Then came the turn of a family named Kieffer. The mother was wounded; the father, his boy and girl, aged respectively 10 and 3, were shot down. They fell on them with fury. Striffler, Guillaume, and Vassé were afterwards massacred. Young Mlle. Simonin, 17 years old, and her small sister, afraid to leave their refuge in the cellar, were eventually driven out by the flames, and immediately shot at. The younger child had an elbow almost blown off by a bullet; as the elder girl lay wounded on the ground, she was deliberately kicked by a soldier. At Nomeny 40 victims were identified.

And now we come to some of the _wholesale slaughters._ At Louvain, more than 100 victims; at Aerschot, over 150; at Soumagne, 165; at Ethe, 197; at Andenne, over 300; at Tamines, 400; at Dinant, upwards of 600, of whom 71 were women, 34 old men of over seventy, 6 children from five to nine years old, and 11 under five. At Aerschot, a first batch of 78 men were taken out of the town, and ordered to advance in groups of three, holding each other by the hand, when they were made to pass in front of some German Military Police, who shot them all at short range with revolvers. Others had their hands bound so tightly that many screamed with pain: they spent the night lying on the ground, and were shot the next day. Many, before execution, were compelled to dig their own graves. At Dinant, the victims were placed in two rows, the first kneeling, the second standing. Then came the order--"Fire!" At Tamines, several hundred men were massed in the Place Saint-Martin, on the bank of the Sambre. The assassins stood ten yards away and fired a volley. All fell, but some were not wounded. The officer in command ordered them to "stand up." A second volley was fired. As soon as the firing finished, there was a frightful scene which lasted until the evening--the killing of the wounded. Many soldiers, some wearing the badge of the Red Cross, approached their victims by the light of small lanterns, and passed through their ranks, clubbing them with the butt end of their rifles, and stabbing with bayonets. A perfect shambles!

In these horrors we do not discern the musical note, or the acknowledgment of the "Old German God." Yet, here is a specimen:--

At Andenne, Colonel Schumann, in command of the Potsdam Rifles, organised a grand concert in the evening at the Place des Tilleuls. The entertainment ended with a prayer!

It now remains for us to publish a few extracts from note-books found upon officers and privates. Some are short items like the following:--"Pepinster, 12th August. Burgomaster, Priest and Schoolmaster shot, and houses burnt to the ground. We resume our march." Another, "Villers-en-Fagne, village in flames. The population had notified the French of the approach of the grenadiers; thereupon the hussars set fire to the village, the Parish Priest and others being shot."

Others enter into details of the executions. "_Leffe._ We shoot everyone who fires on our men. We put three, one behind the other, and a Marburg rifleman kills them outright with a single shot. It is war to the knife."

Another expresses something other than enthusiasm for such work. "Considering that the King (of the Belgians) has given orders to defend the country by all possible means, we have been ordered to shoot every male inhabitant. At Dinant more than 100 were collected in a crowd and shot. A dreadful Sunday." Another, an aesthete, writes as follows: "During the night many more civilians were shot, so many that we were able to count over 200. Women and children, with lamps in their hands, were compelled to witness the horrible sight. We afterwards ate our rice among the dead bodies. Sadly beautiful." He adds (in shorthand) "Captain Hermann was drunk."

Again another: "_Dinant._ We have been firing on everyone who showed himself, or on those thrown out of the houses, men or women. The bodies lie in the streets, in heaps a yard deep."

A Saxon officer writes: "My company is at Bouvignes. Our men behave like vandals: everything is upset; the sight of the slaughtered inhabitants defies all description; not a house is left standing. We have dragged out of every corner all survivors, one after another, men, women, and children, found in a burning cloister, and have shot them 'en masse.'"

The following depositions on the massacres at Nomeny are made by prisoners, one a Bavarian officer in the Reserve, the other a private in the same regiment. The lieutenant says: "I gathered the impression that it was impossible for the officers at Nomeny to prevent such acts. As far as I can judge, the crimes committed there, which horrified all the soldiers who were at Nomeny later on, must be put down to the acts of unnatural brutes." The soldier says, "At five o'clock regimental orders were received to kill every male inhabitant of Nomeny, and to raze everything to the ground; we forced our way into the houses." Here is a more detailed account of a massacre near Blamont. "All the villagers fled: it was terrible; their beards thick with blood, and what faces! They were dreadful to look at. The dead were all buried, numbering sixty. Among them were many old men and women, and one unfortunate woman half confined--the whole being frightful to look at. Three children were clasped in each other's arms, and had died thus. The Altar and the vaulting of the church were destroyed because there was a telephone[11] communicating with the enemy. This morning, 2nd September, all the survivors were expelled. I saw four small boys carrying away on two sticks a cradle containing a baby of five or six months. All this is dreadful to see. Blow for blow: thunder against thunder! Every thing is given up to pillage. I also saw a mother with her two children; one had a big wound on the head, and one eye knocked out."

FOOTNOTES:

[8] They have decorated the pirates who sank the _Lusitania_. They glory in the crime, and have even struck a commemorative medal in its honour.

[9] In this case, and many of the following ones, the reader is requested to note, and remember, the _motive_ for the murders.

[10] This cruel treatment of the Abbé Dergent, priest of Gelrode, near Louvain, is reported by a neutral witness, Father G., a student at Louvain. The German soldiers accused the Belgian priests of every conceivable crime; the Assistant-Priest of Sainte-Gertrude (Louvain), who was remonstrating with a soldier, received this reply: "We are Catholics too, but you are pigs and black devils." In Belgium about one hundred of the clergy were massacred. Note further that in this unfortunate country _doctors_ were particularly ill-treated; thirty-seven being shot in the small parishes, while more than one hundred and fifty disappeared altogether from large towns.

[11] To whom did it belong, and where was it? Telephones exist in every district of Meurthe-et-Moselle. Besides, our army installed field telephones which were not all destroyed at the time of their retreat. It is a most foolish pretext, yet where can one find a more stupid one than this? A German official communiqué, in order to prove that the general rising of the people had been organized for a long time, declares, "that depôts of arms were installed, where each rifle bore the name of the man for whom it was intended." It is absolutely clear that this applies to arms taken from civilians by order of the local authorities in Belgium and France, and deposited at the Town Hall, every weapon bearing the name of its owner. Would they have taken that for an arsenal? No, stupid as they may be, they are not so foolish as that. They feign stupidity simply because they know very well that the conscience of the civilized world is beginning to be moved.

OUTRAGES ON WOMEN AND CHILDREN

We might write a long and heartbreaking chapter on this pitiful subject, but let the following suffice. The Report of the French Commission of Enquiry concludes with these words, "Outrages upon women and young girls have been common _to an unheard-of extent_." No doubt the bulk of these crimes will never come to light, for it needs a concatenation of special circumstances for such acts to be committed in public. Unfortunately and only too often these circumstances have existed, _e.g._, at Beton-Bazoches and Sancy-les-Provins, a young girl, and at St. Denis-les-Rebaix, a mother-in-law and a little boy of eight years old, and at Coulommiers a husband and two children, were witnesses to outrages committed on the mother of the family. Sometimes the attacks were individual and sometimes committed by bodies of men, _e.g._, at Melen-Labouxhe, Margaret W. was violated by twenty German soldiers, and then shot by the side of her father and mother. They did not even respect nuns.[12]

They did not even spare grandmothers (Louppy-le-Château, Vitry-en-Perthois ...).

Nor did they respect children.... At Cirey, a witness (a University professor), whose statements one of us took down a few days after the tragedy, cried to a Bavarian officer, "Have you no children in Germany?" All the officer said in reply was, "My mother never bore swine like you."

Now and then they let themselves loose on a whole family; at Louppy, the mother and her two young girls aged thirteen and eight, respectively, were simultaneous victims of their savagery.

The outrages sometimes lasted till death. At Nimy, the martyrdom of little Irma G. lasted six hours till death delivered her from her sufferings. When her father tried to rescue her he was shot, and her mother was seriously wounded. Indeed, it was certain destruction to any frenzied parent who tried to defend his child. A clergyman of Dixmude says, "The burgomaster of Handzaeme was shot for trying to protect his daughter." And how many other cases have occurred! We have not the heart to continue the list.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See the report of the French Commission (vol. i., page 35). See also, in the "Reply to the White Book," p. 500, the moving letter of Cardinal Mercier to von Bissing: "My conscience forbids my divulging to any tribunal the information, alas, only too well substantiated, which I possess. Outrages on nuns have been committed ..."

KILLING THE WOUNDED

There are _great numbers_ of wounded who, on their solemn oath, have related how, when lying on the field of battle, they saw their wounded comrades "finished off" by rifle or revolver shots, or by blows from butt-ends, or by bayonet stabs, or kicked to death by German soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and even by officers.[13]

We cannot pause to analyse these innumerable depositions. There is other evidence. How often, when a counter-attack has put us in possession of ground lost the day before, have we found poor fellows "finished off"--with their throats cuts, as in the case of the two sergeants of the 31st Chasseurs at the Pass of Sainte-Marie, or "with their own bayonets driven into their mouths," like the poor little fellow of the 17th. The enemy often runs amok like this:--"On August 23rd, the Curé of Réméréville tended Lieutenant Toussaint (who passed out first at the Forestry School in July). When he fell in battle, this young officer was bayoneted by all the Germans who passed near him, and his body was a mass of wounds from head to feet." At Oudrigny "a German officer met a French vehicle showing the Red Cross flag, and loaded with ten wounded. He deployed his company, and fired two volleys at it." At Bonviller, an officer murdered nine French wounded, stretched helpless in a barn, by shooting them through the ear. On 23rd August at Montigny-le-Tilleul, M. Vital was caught in the act of tending a French soldier, L. Sohier by name, wounded in the head and side. Such a crime deserved punishment, and the wretches first shot the orderly and then the patient.

At Ethe they set a shed on fire and roasted more than twenty wounded who were lying there.

We all know the celebrated order of General Stenger in the region of Thiaville (Meurthe-et-Moselle):--"No prisoners are to be taken. All prisoners, whether wounded or not, must be slaughtered."

It was not only in Lorraine that such orders were given. Listen to the depositions of a German soldier: "The same day we saw eighteen other Frenchmen. Lieutenant N. told us to shoot them as he did not know what else to do with them."

Read this letter found at L'Éçouvillon in a German trench which we recaptured: "Every day we take many prisoners, but they are shot at once as we no longer know where to put them."

Think of the diary in which a German soldier near Peronne recorded his impressions of the day: "They lay in heaps of ten or twelve, some dead and some still living. Those who could still walk were marched off. Those who were wounded in the head or lungs, and could not lift themselves up, were finished off with a bullet. That is the order which we got."

A German soldier, while being nursed in a hospital at Nancy, confided to Dr. Roemer that the wound in his stomach "had been inflicted on him by a German N.C.O. because he refused to finish off a wounded Frenchman."

Wounded were not only massacred on the field of battle, but field hospitals were also the scene of atrocities. At Gomery, in a casualty clearing station, under Dr. Sédillot, there were numerous wounded remaining in the German lines. A German officer with twenty-five men visited the place and inspected it and retired, saying that all was in order. But a N.C.O. and a party of soldiers remained in the street outside. They were excited and kept shouting, "It is war to the death," and making signs of cutting throats. They rushed in and with their revolvers shot down Dr. Sédillot (who happily survived, with others, to give evidence), and set fire to the place. Maddened by the flames, the wounded (many of whom had had amputations performed on them that very morning) leapt from the windows on the first floor and fell into the garden, where the executioners picked them up, gathering them in a bunch, and shot them. In this way Lieutenant Jeannin and Dr. Charette were murdered, and from one hundred to one hundred and twenty officers and soldiers--whose wounds should have made them sacred--perished from shot or fire after terrible sufferings.

When all is said, however, it is better to kill wounded soldiers by fire or sword than by starvation, as the following incident shows: One hundred wounded Frenchmen, together with Dr. Bender, were brought to the Stenay barracks, and one hundred and eighty more came in shortly afterwards; the latter, having been left out unattended on the battle-field for five days, were in a terrible condition. Dr. Bender in vain begged the Germans for help in getting the wounded men out of the ambulances into the hospital. The Boches refused, and simply went on sucking their pipes. Though wounded himself, the doctor, with the aid of two male nurses (Frenchmen both), had to do the whole thing himself. For several days the Boches gave them no food at all. "Our poor fellows screamed with hunger,"[14] says the doctor, on oath, and adds, "I had sixty badly wounded with me, and begged the German army doctor to operate, but he said he had no time. I then asked his leave to operate myself, but his reply was, "You are in the German lines, and must conform to our rules." The doctor ends his pathetic evidence with the words, "Nearly all these unhappy men died of neglect."

We have seen doctors, like Professor Vulpius, actually steal money; but of all the types of Boche doctors, the most hideous is the hero of the following tale, taken from the deposition of Dr. Bender. "A French soldier, at Stenay, was under my treatment. He had a wound in his foot--not very severe, which did not need an operation at all. What was my astonishment to find that a German army surgeon had amputated his thigh? I could not help expressing my indignation, and the surgeon's only reply was, "He will be a man the less against us in the next war."[15] They will deny these crimes to-morrow, but in 1914 they gloried in them.

On the 18th of October a Silesian newspaper published an article sent from the front by a N.C.O., in which he says, "Men who are particularly tender-hearted give the French wounded the 'coup de grace' with a bullet, but the others cut and thrust as much as possible. Our enemies fought bravely ... whether they are slightly or badly wounded our brave Fusiliers spare the Fatherland as far as possible the expensive trouble of looking after numerous enemies. In the evening, with prayers of thanksgiving on our lips, we go to sleep." Are these mere boastings of crimes? No. The article was submitted to the Captain of the Company who certified it as correct and counter-signed it. The N.C.O., the Captain, the Silesian public, the whole German nation were delighted to see this abominable story of murder and shame appear in the paper under the heading, "A Day of Honour for our Regiment."[16]

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Report of the French Commission, vol. iii.

[14] He adds that certain orderlies--Lorrainers, belonging to the German Army--supplied them with food on the sly.

[15] French chivalry could hardly believe that a doctor would amputate a wounded enemy's limb without absolute necessity and in mere revenge, but such cases are, alas, not rare. See the awful tales of torture in the "Journal d'un Grand Blessé en Allemagne," by Charles Hennebois (pp. 137, 146), and the statement of a German doctor (p. 87), "Your doctors in France perform amputations as they please on our wounded. The order has therefore been given to amputate without hesitation, as reprisals, every damaged limb."

[16] Let us quote, to show the mental "make-up" of certain Germans, the conditions in which Captain Coustre of the 108th and Captain Lesourd of the 50th met their deaths. They were wandering over the battle-field where the enemy had been repulsed. They heard a cry for help. There was a soldier in one place and an officer in another who asked for a drink. They stopped and leant over them to give them a drink from their flasks when the wounded men blew their brains out.

SHELTERING BEHIND WOMEN