The New York Times Current History, A Monthly Magazine: The European War, March 1915Various
History
The New York Times Current History, A Monthly Magazine: The European War, March 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
On the 22d of August a detachment of Germans arrived in the vicinity
of Bouvillers in the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle at the farm of
La Petite Rochelle, where the owner, M. Houillon, had lodged some
French wounded soldiers. The officer in command ordered four of his
men to go and finish off nine wounded who were lying in the barn. Each
one was shot in the ear. Mme. Houillon begged mercy for them, and the
officer, placing the barrel of his revolver to her breast, told her to
be silent.
On the 25th of August the Abbe Denis, cure of Remereville, tended in
the evening Lieut. Toussaint, who last July headed the list of
candidates who left the School of Forestry. As he fell wounded on the
battlefield this young officer was struck with bayonets by all the
Germans who passed near him. His body was covered with wounds from
head to foot.
At the hospital at Nancy we saw the soldier Voyer of the --th Infantry
Regiment, who still bore traces of German barbarity, having been badly
wounded in the backbone outside the Forest of Champenoux on the 24th
of August, and paralyzed in both legs as the result of his wound. He
was lying on his face when a German soldier turned him over brutally
with his gun and hit him three times on the head with the butt of his
rifle. Other soldiers passing by kicked him and hit him also with the
butts of their guns. Finally one of them with a single blow caused a
wound of about three or four centimeters under each eye with what Dr.
Weiss, head doctor and Professor of Faculty at Nancy, thinks must have
been a pair of scissors.
A hussar who was treated by the same doctor relates that, having
fractured his leg falling off his horse, and being unable to extricate
himself, he was assaulted by Uhlans, who stole his watch and chain
after having taken his carbine and shot him in the eye with it.
Seven French soldiers, also treated by Dr. Weiss, told him that they
had seen the enemy finish off the wounded on the battlefield. As they
had feigned death to escape massacre, the Germans belabored them with
the butts of their guns to see if they were still alive.
In the same hospital a German soldier wounded in the stomach told Dr.
Rohmer that his wound had been caused by a revolver shot fired by his
own officer because he had refused to finish off a French wounded
soldier. Again, another German, wounded in the back, the result of a
shot fired point-blank, told Dr. Weiss that a soldier had fired at him
by order of an officer to punish him for having carried into a village
near the battlefield several French wounded soldiers.
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