At Lunéville
The murders at Lunéville were committed, according to the French Commission of Inquiry, under the following circumstances—
“On the 25th August, after firing two shots from the inside of the Worms tannery, to make it appear that they had been attacked, the Germans rushed into a workshop of this manufactory, in which an artisan named Goeury was working in company with Messrs. Balastre, father and son. Goeury was dragged out into the street, stripped, and brutally ill-treated, whilst his two companions, discovered in the lavatory where they had sought refuge, were shot.
“On the same day the soldiers came and called for M. Steiner, who was concealed in his cellar. His wife, in dread of some disaster, tried to keep him back. As she clasped him in her arms she was struck by a bullet in the neck. Some moments afterwards Steiner, having obeyed the command which had been given him, fell mortally wounded in his garden. M. Kahn also was murdered in the garden of his house. His mother, aged ninety-eight, whose body was burnt to a cinder in the fire, had previously been killed in her bed with a bayonet thrust, according to the story of an individual who was acting as interpreter to the enemy. M. Binder, who was going out to get away from the flames, was also struck down. The German by whom he was killed admitted that he had wantonly killed him when the poor man was quietly standing before a door. M. Vernier met with the same fate as Binder.
“About three o’clock the Germans, breaking the windows and firing shots, forced an entrance into a house in which were Mme. Dujon, her daughter, aged three, her two sons and a M. Gaumier. The little girl just missed being killed; her face was singed by a shot. At this moment Mme. Dujon, seeing her youngest son lying on the ground, begged him to get up and flee with her. She then noticed that he was holding with full hands his intestines, which were dropping out. The house was on fire and the poor lad was burnt to a cinder, as was M. Gaumier, who had been unable to escape.
“M. Wingstermann and his grandson, aged twelve, who had gone to dig potatoes a little way off from Lunéville, at a place called ‘les Mossus,’ in the Chanteheux district, had the misfortune to meet the Germans. The latter put them both against a wall and shot them.
“Finally, about five o’clock in the evening, some soldiers went into the house of a woman named Sibille, in the same place, and without any excuse seized her son, dragged him off 200 metres from the house, and massacred both him and a M. Vallon, to whose body they had bound him. A witness who saw the murderers just when they were dragging off their victim saw them return without him, and declared that their bayonets were covered with blood and pieces of flesh.
“On the same day a male nurse, named Monteils, who was tending a wounded enemy officer at the Lunéville hospital, was struck by a bullet in the forehead as he was watching through the window a German soldier firing rifle shots.
“On the following day, the 26th, M. Hammann and his son, aged twenty-one years, were arrested at their house and dragged outside by a gang who had broken in the door and entered. The father was unmercifully beaten, and as for the young man, when he tried to struggle a non-commissioned officer cracked his skull with a revolver shot.
“At 1 p.m. M. Riklin, a druggist, who had been told that a man had fallen about thirty metres from his shop, went to the spot and recognised in the victim his own brother-in-law, M. Colin, aged sixty-eight years, who had been struck in the stomach by a bullet. The Germans alleged that this old man had fired on them, but M. Riklin formally denies this statement.
“Colin, he told us, was an inoffensive man absolutely incapable of any act of aggression, and quite ignorant of the use of firearms.
“The mind refuses to believe that all these massacres took place without excuse,” continues the French Commission of Inquiry. “That, however, is the case. The Germans, it is true, have always given the same excuse, alleging that civilians were the first to fire on them. This allegation is false, and those who have made it have been unable to make it appear probable, even by firing rifle shots close to dwelling-houses, as they were in the habit of doing so that they might be able to declare that they had been attacked by unoffending civilians upon whose ruin or massacre they had decided. On many occasions we obtained proof of this; the following, for example, is one of many others. One evening, when a report rang out while the Abbé Colin, curé of Croismare, happened to be with an officer, the latter exclaimed, ‘That is sufficient reason, M. le Curé, why you and the burgomaster should be shot and a farm burnt. Look! there is one burning.’ ‘M. l’Officier,’ replied the priest, ‘you are too intelligent not to recognise the crack of your rifle. For my part, I do recognise it.’ The German did not insist.”