Germany's Dishonoured Army: Additional records of German atrocities in FranceMorgan, J. H. (John Hartman)
History
Germany's Dishonoured Army: Additional records of German atrocities in France
Morgan, J. H. (John Hartman)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities
=_Methods of Savages._=--The public has been shocked by the evidence,
accepted by Lord Bryce's Committee as genuine, which tells of such
mutilations of women and children as only the Kurds of Asia Minor had
been thought capable of perpetrating. But the Committee were fully
justified in accepting it--they could not do otherwise--and they
have by no means published the whole. Pathologists can best supply
the explanation of these crimes. I have been told by such that it is
not at all uncommon in cases of rape or sexual excess to find that
the criminal, when satiated by lust, attempts to murder or mutilate
his victim. This is presumably the explanation--if one can talk of
explanation--of outrages which would otherwise be incredible. The
Committee hint darkly at perverted sexual instinct. Cases of sodomy
and of the rape of little children did undoubtedly occur on a very
large scale. Some of the worst things have never been published.
This is not the time for mincing one's words but for plain speech.
Disgusting though it is, I therefore do not hesitate to place on record
an incident at Rebais related to me by the Mayor of Coulommiers in the
presence of several of his fellow-townsmen with corroborative detail. A
respectable woman in that town was seized by some Uhlans who intended
to ravish her, but her condition made rape impossible. What followed is
better described in French.
Mme. H----, cafetière à Rebais, mise nue par une patrouille allemande,
obligée de parcourir ainsi toute sa maison, chassée dans la rue et
obligée de regarder les cadavres de soldats anglais. Les allemands lui
barbouillent la figure avec le sang de ses règles.
It is almost needless to say that the woman went mad. There is very
strong reason to suspect that young girls were carried off to the
trenches by licentious German soldiery, and there abused by hordes of
savage and licentious men. People in hiding in the cellars of houses
have heard the voices of women in the hands of German soldiers crying
all night long until death or stupor ended their agonies.
One of our officers, a subaltern in the sappers, heard a woman's
shrieks in the night coming from behind the German trenches near
Richebourg l'Avoué; when we advanced in the morning and drove the
Germans out a girl was found lying naked on the ground "pegged out" in
the form of a crucifix. I need not go on with this chapter of horrors.
To the end of time it will be remembered, and from one generation to
another, in the plains of Flanders, in the valleys of the Vosges, and
on the rolling fields of the Marne, the oral tradition of men will
perpetuate this story of infamy and wrong....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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