Their Crimes | Page 9

...).
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