Murders
In the story of the murders committed by the Germans, of which women have been the victims, we see almost always that these were surprised in the midst of their common daily tasks. The horror of the crime committed against them is enhanced. It is still worse when the massacred women were about to perform some act of charity. At Tamines, in Belgium, a woman was killed in the middle of the street as she was carrying a sick old man. At Mayen-Multien a woman named Laforest was seriously wounded, in the beginning of September, by a German horseman to whom she and her husband had been obliged to give hospitality. His excuse was that they were too long about serving him. At Hazebrouck, in the middle of the month of October, a German soldier, who was riding a bicycle, seeing in a corner a poor mother seated with her child sleeping on her knees, transfixed the latter with his bayonet, and at the same time wounded the mother in the thigh, without any of his comrades interfering. At Audun-le-Roman, Mlle. Tréfel was struck at the very moment when she was giving a drink to a German soldier.
Examples of such acts are innumerable. The most striking instances were those which took place at Malines, Gerbeviller, Audun-le-Roman, Boortmeerbeck, Neuville-en-Artois, Hériménil. At Hériménil, Mme. Truger, twenty-three years old, was shot by order of an officer. At Boortemeerbeck, the maid-servant of Mlle. van Hoorde was killed because she was accused of having assassinated an officer. This officer had committed suicide, after leaving on his table a letter in which he declared his intention. At Lunéville a young girl of sixteen years, Mlle. Weill, was killed in her own house by her father’s side.
In the same town a woman aged ninety-eight years was killed in her bed and thrown into the flames; at Triaucourt, Mme. Maupoix, aged seventy-five years, was so violently kicked that she died some days afterwards. Two other old women of the same place were shot dead. During the following night the Germans played the piano near the corpses. At Nomény several women were forced to make a long march on foot; an old woman, who was just on the verge of a hundred years, fell down in a state of exhaustion and died. At Hofstade, another old woman was found dead by the Belgian soldiers. She had been bayoneted several times as she sat down to sew. At Gerbeviller, widow Guillaume, aged sixty-eight years, was killed by a shot fired point-blank.