(39, 40 and 41)
Statements taken down, after cross-examination by a Staff Officer at General Headquarters, as to incidents in the neighbourhood at Ypres:
(1) Private B. S——, 1st Black Watch, says that he saw Germans bayonet our wounded as they lay on the ground. He was wounded in the leg himself, but, seeing this, he managed to get away.
Afterwards he was with German wounded, who told him that they had been ordered to kill all English prisoners.
(2) Private W. W——, 1st Black Watch, says that he was in a reserve trench and saw the Germans bayoneting our wounded 40 or 50 yards in front of him. He was wounded in the arm and taken prisoner, but was sent for water for wounded Germans and escaped.
Says the wounded Germans in our charge told him that they had been told to kill all English and take no prisoners.
(3) Statement of Private M——, Cameron Highlanders attached.
I saw this man, and consider him thoroughly reliable as to the facts of the case.
He says that he saw one German place the butt of his rifle on the wounded man’s chest and hold him while the other one shot him. Our reinforcements were heard coming up immediately afterwards, and the Germans ran away. The men were Prussian Guard.
“I was shot while retiring, and took shelter behind a hedge which I had fallen through. A wounded man of the Black Watch was lying close beside me groaning. The Germans came up behind the hedge and fired through it. Two came through and I saw one deliberately place his rifle to the wounded Highlander’s head and shoot him. The features of the wounded German who came into hospital with me in the same convoy are identically those of the man I saw commit the action.”