France. Armée. Légion étrangère; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
Again, in the hospital at Pont de Veyle, a young man on a neighboring
cot told me, “Yes, I am from the invaded country. My name is La Chaise.
Before the war, my father was Inspector General of railroads for the
Department of the North, with headquarters at Lille. When the Germans
advanced he was taken prisoner. I ran away, joined the French Army, and
my mother and sister were left at our home. A German Colonel billeted
himself in the house. He liked my sister,—she was very beautiful. This
is her photograph, and these are tresses of her hair when she was twelve
and eighteen year of age. This is her last letter to me. One night the
Colonel tried to violate my sister. She screamed, my mother ran in, shot
him twice with a revolver and killed him. The sentry entered, took my
mother and sister to prison; and, next morning they were lined up
against a wall and shot.”
One night at Madame’s,—the bake-shop across the road from the hospital
at La Croix aux Mines, with Leary, an Irishman, Simpson, a New
Zealander, and an Englishman who was in charge of the Lloyds Ambulance
service, we listened to Madame.
“Yes, the Germans descended on us from the hilltops like a swarm of
locusts, ate and drank up everything in sight, hunted us women out of
our houses into the road and told us it was our last chance for liberty.
We ran and the Germans followed. We did not know we were being used as a
screen, that we were sheltering the Boche behind. The French would not
shoot at us but they got the Germans just the same, from the flank. I
shall never forget our selfishness. All we thought about was getting to
our French friends, and we were covering the advance of our enemies! If
we had known, we’d have died first.”
The Englishman, who had been in the retreat from Mons, drawled
out,—“Yes, you Americans think the Germans are not bad people. I used to
think so, too, but when I listened to the Belgians telling how some
little girls were treated, though I felt they were telling the truth, it
was too horrible to believe. So three of us Red Cross men went out one
night,—where they told us the girls were buried. We dug them up; and,
let me tell you, no person on earth will ever make me associate with a
German again.”
At Nestle, they carried away 164 women. The official German explanation
was that they should work in Germany, while the cynical officers said
they would use them as orderlies. On August 29, 1914, when the Germans
entered the city, a mother of seven children was violated by three
soldiers. Later, she was knocked down and again assaulted, by an
officer. Five inhabitants were lined up against a wall to be shot, when
a French counter-attack liberated them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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