I went with him. We came to the church. We entered with difficulty. A bell blocked us from passing, and shells had broken down the vaulting in many places. We went on our way, but always with difficulty. We saw the crucifix which had the feet broken by blow on blow from the butt-end of rifles. We still went on, and saw the pipes of the organ lying on the ground. We came in front of the tabernacle (the box which holds the sacred vessels). There we counted eighteen bullet holes which had perforated the door around the lock. The displacement of air produced by the bursting of the bullet had forced the screws to jump out. "They" had not thought that this little dwelling-place was a strongbox and that it had flat bolts, both vertical and horizontal. We were now agitated to see if anything else had taken place in the tabernacle.
Monsieur, the Abbé Bernard, took a hammer, and as gently as he could he succeeded in making a little opening just large enough for one to see that there was something else inside. With the barrel of an unloaded gun, he then made a full opening. The ciborium, the sacred vessel, was uncovered and had been projected against the bottom. The cover, fallen to one side, had a number of bullet marks, as the ciborium itself had.
The bullets in penetrating the front of the tabernacle had made everywhere little holes, and these holes were in a shape nearly symmetrical around the lock. At the rear there were many much larger holes.
Monsieur, the Abbé, took those sacred things and the cover of the altar and carried them to the chapel.
The 17th and the 60th Bavarian Regiments were the ones that did this work. One-third at least of these men were protestant, and among them were many returned convicts.
One of our sisters saw a book of a German officer who was nursed here, and noticed that he was from Bitsch.
(Bitsch is a Roman Catholic town in Lorraine which long belonged to France, and which held out against the Germans almost to the end of the Franco-Prussian War).
"How is this?" she asked. "You are from Bitsch, and yet it is you who dare to do the things that you have done."
"We are under orders," he answered. "The further we go into France, the worse we shall do. It is commanded. Otherwise we shall be killed ourselves."