Robbing the Dead and Wounded
The universally admitted obligation not to plunder an enemy who has fallen on the field of battle has been, like so many others, repudiated by the Germans. The personal belongings, silver, jewels, etc., of the dead and wounded have been not merely coveted, but actually plundered by them. Examples of this infamous conduct were numerous, chiefly on the battlefields of France.
On the 8th August, on the spot where a small cavalry engagement had taken place, at Beuveille (in Champagne), a French lieutenant of dragoons, who was wounded and lying unconscious on the ground, was robbed (for his own account of the incident see the Matin of the 22nd August, 1914) of a sum of 250 francs in gold by the leader of a German platoon, M. de Schaffenberg, of the Trèves light infantry. His orderly, a dragoon, also wounded, lying a few paces away from the French lieutenant, was robbed of some money that he had by the same German officer. A French hussar who was attended by Dr. Weiss at the Nancy hospital told this doctor that he had broken his leg by falling from his horse, and that, as he was lying under his mount, he was attacked by Uhlans, who robbed him of his watch and chain.
Similar cases were so frequent that the French troops scarcely wondered when they captured, near Senlis, a horseman of the German imperial guard, accompanied by three German subjects who spoke French very well, and as they knew the district served him as guide and accomplices in the work of brigandage in which he engaged. The numerous articles which they found in the pockets of these wretches left no doubt on this point: they were, therefore, brought before a court-martial at the same time as several other German prisoners who had been guilty of similar thefts; in particular, a Death’s-head hussar, who had been found in possession of a roll of bills stolen in Belgium, a considerable sum of French gold, and many jewels.