The German Fury in Belgium: Experiences of a Netherland Journalist during four months with the German Army in BelgiumMokveld, L. (Lambertus)
History
The German Fury in Belgium: Experiences of a Netherland Journalist during four months with the German Army in Belgium
Mokveld, L. (Lambertus)
Belgium -- History -- German occupation, 1914-1918; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities
"'On October 9th no train with two thousand wounded arrived at
the station of Landen, but only small transports whose number can
be checked accurately by the lists of wounded. Rioting by two to
three hundred soldiers near a carriage could not take place, as the
station guard was instructed to keep free a path along the train.
There is, moreover, always an officer of the station-guard present,
when a train with wounded leaves. It is impossible that the
soldiers could have aimed their rifles at the British, as the men
who get their food in the dining-hall, as also the serving military
personnel, are always unarmed. Other soldiers are not admitted to
the station. The British have neither been beaten, nor stabbed, nor
spit at; on the contrary plates full of hot soup have been offered
them which were refused by two of them. This has been confirmed by
the declarations of people who were present.'"
Of course I did not withhold my answer, pilloried the hardly serious
inquiry of the Germans, and published immediately an extensive
contradiction in _De Tijd_. I quote the following from it:--
"Only about a month after the publication of my story about what
happened at Landen, the German Government and military authorities
considered that the time had come to contradict it, after ordering
an inquiry which in reality cannot be called an inquiry at all.
From their communiqués it is clear that some soldiers were heard
who probably were privy to the act, and in any case benefited by
a denial of the villainy committed at Landen. That is to say, men
who were counsel in their own cause, and who were believed the
sooner because their declarations were desirable for the support of
German credit. But it does not appear from these communiqués that
the German authorities also examined the wounded who were present,
nor the two Netherlanders who travelled by that train: the young
Miss de Bruin, from Amsterdam, and the present writer, as also
the civilian witnesses at Landen. In opposition to the evidence
of Stores-inspector Huebner and the landwehr-soldier Krueger, of
which evidence it has not been stated that they gave it on oath, I
declare myself prepared and willing, if a complete and impartial
inquiry be instituted, to declare upon oath either to a properly
qualified committee in The Netherlands or in Germany, or to a
thereto-appointed arbiter, the following:
"'1. On Friday, the ninth of October, at noon, I stopped at Landen
about forty minutes after arriving from Louvain in a terribly long
train of passenger carriages and goods vans, with approximately two
thousand wounded. (This estimate may be wrong to the extent of a
couple of hundred, but that does not matter.) During this time the
wounded were fed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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