The Germans do their requisitioning in the following manner: they order, at the point of a gun, the peasants to open their doors, and when they have thus frightened them, succeed in getting everything from them. Enemy deserters who have come to our lines have confirmed the vexations to which the troops subject the people of the invaded lands. According to them, the cruelest and most savage are the Slovenes, the Bosnians and the Croatians, especially the Croatians who have indeed been known to enter a home, and at the point of a gun, take away the few provisions left to a family by the rationing committee. Often the Croatian officers themselves incite the troops to pillage and plunder. Wherever the Croatians pass they leave traces of their brutality not only on property but also on the people, both men and women, whom they treat with violence.
The same report was confirmed by a deserter from the second battalion, 23rd Regiment of chasseurs, who said:
“The people of the occupied lands are continually subjected to injuries. Almost all the food they have has been taken from them. Wherever anything is left by the official requisitioning committees, the soldiers, especially the Slovenes, steal the rest. Near Sesto al Roghena several Slovenes fired fifteen shots at a civilian who refused to let them remove his goods. He was seriously wounded.
“With my own eyes I saw near the Tower of Mos, two drunken Hungarian soldiers beating an old man who would not let them steal his cow.”
The Croatian troops were ready to steal and plunder wherever they passed. A Hungarian volunteer, taken prisoner, assured us he had seen at Rivarotta (Palazzolo) a group of Croatians threatening a priest with a stick unless he immediately procured them some girls. At Portogruaro a woman threatened to wound with a stick a corporal who attempted to do her violence.
The following impressions are taken from the afore-mentioned automobilists. Ventura and Gandolfi, who as prisoners were placed in the postal service by the Austrians, but who succeeded in escaping:
“We entered for the first time into Udine under the hands of the Austrians, on November 3, at about three in the afternoon. The city’s wounds were all still open and bleeding. There were still smouldering fires along the outskirts. Houses were thrown open, stores shattered; all that which made for a prosperous, wealthy trade, turned out onto the streets—furniture, linen, utensils, crockery, broken bottles, old papers and families keepsakes. Over the smiling, peaceful city, it seemed as if a destructive squall had swept. The automobile stopped at the hospital of the seminary. In one corner of the street three young Italian women were offering such little comfort as lay in their power with their scanty food and their most welcome presence.
“The city was full of German and Austrian soldiers hunting from house to house and from store to store for booty. The officers took part without a shame in the pillaging.
“Doors to houses were thrown in and the inhabitants compelled, by threats, to help in the plunder of their own belongings. After a short time, there was not a single family which had not been robbed and plundered.
“In the country regions the soldiers rush with impunity from one farmhouse to another leaving everywhere the traces of their rapine. The military authorities encourage the soldiers to send home to their families packages of provisions, knowing well enough that such have not been bought, but have been seized by violence. Furthermore the authorities themselves leave behind them, in exchange for horses and provisions requisitioned, receipts either with illegal signatures or irregularly compiled, or with ridiculous phrases, as for instance, ‘Fulle Kusse,’ or signed, ‘Cadorna will pay you.’