German Murder of People attached to the Medical Service and the Red Cross
No more than the wounded were people engaged in tending or transporting the wounded spared by the Germans.
We have said that in bombardments no distinction was made between Red Cross establishments and the others. But even outside these cases the Geneva Convention was so frequently violated that we are driven to attach no credence to the excuses invented in case of bombardment.
Enemy doctors, nurses male and female, ambulance workers have been often ill-treated, wounded and even killed by the Germans. We have noted one case, in reporting the murder of the French lieutenant Deschars who had been previously wounded. It is not the only one.
M. Pierre Nothomb reports several in his pamphlet, Belgique Martyre. We must also remember the testimony given by Dr. Barbey (Echo de Paris of the 20th January, 1915). Speaking of the cruelties committed by the Germans at Recquignies (Nord), this doctor says—
“On the afternoon of the 6th September German soldiers came to the ambulance; they were very much excited: two of them caught hold of me brutally and another presented his rifle at me. I explained to them that they were in a temporary hospital, where there were no arms, which was true, and, moreover, all arms had been punctiliously given up by the civilians at the beginning of the siege. The Boches searched everywhere without finding anything. Then they went off, leading the eight attendants and stretcher-bearers, whom, as they pretended, they needed to bring their wounded to Boussois. The little company set out. As they were passing before my house, which was still uninjured, the Germans, revolver in hand, compelled attendant Jus to set fire to it. They did the same with the mayor’s house, which was next door to mine.
“On the way back from this expedition, as the eight attendants, who all the time had been surrounded by Boches, were going along the railway-line from Paris to Cologne, the leader of the detachment suddenly caused a halt: the French soldiers were lined along the bank: they were ordered to raise their arms and they obeyed.
“‘Shoot them,’ commanded the leader. A volley rang out. The eight men fell. Without troubling further about them the bandits went off at once, shouting, for they were drunk… Fortunately, so drunk, in fact, that their bullets had nearly all missed. Only four of our attendants were wounded: Private Hacrien; Private Caudren, who had his leg broken; a private who was a native of Perenchies, and who had a bullet through his thigh, and a fourth private who sustained a not very serious wound on the knee. When the Boches were gone the four attendants, who were unhurt and who had been shamming death, lifted up their comrades and brought them to the ambulance.
“On the following day all the wounded under treatment in this ambulance were brought, without food, to Beaumont in Belgium, where a kindly major had them collected in a convent which had been transformed into a hospital. There I left them, as I had been authorised to go back alone to France.
“I set out on foot, without a copper, on an empty stomach. On the way, I met with a German patrol; without parley, the savages belaboured me with the butt-ends of their rifles and left me for dead, having just stripped me of all I had left—namely, my clothes.”
M. Herriot, Mayor of Lyon, on his part, in a letter to a French minister, declares that “he knows ten French doctors whose ambulances had been bombarded and their attendants killed,” and that “the Chief Rabbi of Lyon was killed as he was endeavouring to get the wounded out through the window of an ambulance which had been set on fire by shells.”
On the other hand, the French Commission of Inquiry states in its report that, on the 25th August, at Einvaux some Germans had opened fire at 300 metres on Dr. Millet, surgeon-major of the colonial regiment, just when, with the help of two bearers, he was dressing the wounds of a man who was lying on a stretcher. As his left side was turned to them they saw his brassard perfectly. Besides, they could not have been mistaken about the kind of job on which the three men were engaged.
“At Xivry-Circourt,” writes M. Bonne, senior curé of Étain, in a report which he drew up, “the Germans seized an ambulance and a convoy of wounded, only the first carriage of which succeeded in escaping, in a hail of bullets.”
In a report on the outrages and crimes committed by the Germans at Arras, M. Briens, prefect of the Department of Pas de Calais, remarks: “The most painful feelings have been roused by the taking away of all the wounded under treatment at the hospitals whom it was possible to carry… The surgeon-majors of the Medical Service and the Red Cross attendants were attached to this convoy of prisoners.”
Finally, before Lunéville, a French Red Cross nurse, Mme. Prudennec, while on the look-out for wounded on the battlefields, tended a German officer who, to show his gratitude, gave her a sabre thrust in return. The nurse was injured in the leg, and for five days remained wounded in the hands of the Prussians. But when the time came for them to retreat the Germans left behind the nurse (who was unable to walk), and so it came to pass that she was saved by French soldiers.
CHAPTER X
ILL-TREATMENT OF PRISONERS OF WAR
By common consent good treatment of prisoners of war is a law imposed on civilised nations. American instructions, in their article 56, do but put into words the feelings of civilised mankind when they say, “A prisoner of war must suffer no penalty in so far as he is a public enemy; no suffering, no dishonour will be intentionally imposed upon him by way of reprisal, neither imprisonment, nor deprivation of food, nor mutilation, nor death, nor any barbarous treatment.” Such is the line of conduct which belligerents long have followed in this matter; such is the idea they entertain of their duty in war.