New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 / April-September, 1915

by Various

ANDENNE.

Andenne is a small town on the Meuse between Liège and Namur, lying opposite the village of Seilles, (with which it is connected by a bridge over the river,) and was one of the earlier places reached on the German advance up the Meuse. In order to understand the story of the massacre which occurred there on Thursday Aug. 20, the following facts should be borne in mind: The German advance was hotly contested by Belgian and French troops. From daybreak onward on the 19th of August the Eighth Belgian Regiment of the Line were fighting with the German troops on the left bank of the Meuse on the heights of Seilles. At 8 A.M. on the 19th the Belgians found further resistance impossible in the district, and retired under shelter of the forts of Namur. As they retired they blew up Andenne Bridge. The first Germans arrived at Andenne at about 10 A.M., when ten or twelve Uhlans rode into the town. They went to the bridge and found it was destroyed. They then retired, but returned about half an hour afterward. Soon after that several thousand Germans entered the town and made arrangements to spend the night there. Thus, on the evening of the 19th of August, a large body of German troops were in possession of the town, which they had entered without any resistance on the part of the allied armies or of the civilian population.

About 4:30 on the next afternoon shots were fired from the left bank of the Meuse and replied to by the Germans in Andenne. The village of Andenne had been isolated from the district on the left bank of the Meuse by the destruction of the bridge, and there is nothing to suggest that the firing on the left came from the inhabitants of Andenne. Almost immediately, however, the slaughter of these inhabitants began, and continued for over two hours and intermittently during the night. Machine guns were brought into play. The German troops were said to be for the most part drunk, and they certainly murdered and ravaged unchecked. A reference to the German diaries in the appendix will give some idea of the extent to which the army gave itself up to drink through the month of August.

When the fire slackened about 7 o'clock, many of the townspeople fled in the direction of the quarries; others remained in their houses. At this moment the whole of the district around the station was on fire and houses were flaming over a distance of two kilometers in the direction of the hamlet of Tramaka. The little farms which rise one above the other on the high ground of the right bank were also burning.

At 6 o'clock on the following morning, the 21st, the Germans began to drag the inhabitants from their houses. Men, women, and children were driven into the square, where the sexes were separated. Three men were then shot, and a fourth was bayoneted. A German Colonel was present whose intention in the first place appeared to be to shoot all the men. A young German girl who had been staying in the neighborhood interceded with him, and after some parleying, some of the prisoners were picked out, taken to the banks of the Meuse and there shot. The Colonel accused the population of firing on the soldiers, but there is no reason to think that any of them had done so, and no inquiry appears to have been made.

About 400 people lost their lives in this massacre, some on the banks of the Meuse, where they were shot according to orders given, and some in the cellars of the houses where they had taken refuge. Eight men belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close to a machine gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body home on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked it, and piled up all the eatables in a heap on the floor and relieved themselves upon it.

A hairdresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was sitting with a child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. After this came the general sack of the town. Many of the inhabitants who escaped the massacre were kept as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of corpses and bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the Germans had built across the river, and were so used to prevent the Belgian forts from firing upon it.

A few days later the Germans celebrated a Fête Nocturne in the square. Hot wine, looted in the town, was drunk, and the women were compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing "Deutschland über Alles."