The German Army in Belgium, the White Book of May 1915Germany. Auswärtiges Amt
History
The German Army in Belgium, the White Book of May 1915
Germany. Auswärtiges Amt
World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Belgium
Our mounted escort set out from Taviet at three in the afternoon, made
a halt for some time to the south of the Sorinnes-Dinant road, and
carried out the descent to the Meuse in the ravine which leads to Les
Rivages. We reached this point when it was already dark. In the night
there came here a large number of women and children who really wanted
to go still farther south. As this was attended with great danger,
because everything on the way was burning, we detained them there
and sheltered them in a large empty house, just opposite the pontoon
bridge, where they were safe from the danger of fire. Besides myself, a
number of Grenadier officers of the (Guards) Grenadier Regiment No. 100
also looked after the sheltering of the women and children. The next
morning, at my request, all the women and children were provided with
warm coffee by Captain von Criegern.
On the bank of the Meuse, between the river and a garden wall, there
lay close to the left of the pontoon bridge a heap of civilians who
had been shot; how many I do not know--I estimate the number at from
thirty to forty. I do not know who had shot them. I have heard that the
Grenadier Regiment No. 101 had carried out an execution there. Among
those who had been shot were also some women; by far the majority were
young lads. Under the pile I discovered a girl of about five years old,
alive and quite uninjured. I took her out and brought her to the house
where the women were. She accepted some chocolate, was quite pleased
and evidently quite unconscious of the gravity of the situation. I
thereupon examined the pile of corpses to see if any more children were
among them. I only found further a girl of about ten years with a wound
in the leg. I had her bandaged and lodged her with the women also. The
next morning she was almost without pain. It turned out that the mother
of the girl was among the women who had come from Dinant. The mother
and daughter were very grateful to me.
The pile of corpses was so situated that it could not be seen from
the house in which the women and children were lodged. When I was
getting ready at 9 o'clock the next morning for marching off, Pioneers
were about to dig a common grave for the bodies behind the garden
wall, before which they lay. It was in an orchard. I convinced myself
personally and by daylight that only the dead lay there. Any mistake of
burying alive is precluded.
Further, I will cite the following:
In the course of the night I was requested by a Grenadier officer to
take a wounded civilian from a house in danger of fire into a safe
place. The man had a bullet wound in the upper thigh; he belonged to
the better class. He told the Grenadier officers that he had been
shot by Belgian francs-tireurs because he would not grant them a
hiding-place in his house. He had been bandaged by our people, and was
now carried into the house to the women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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