Signed: Koch.
Witness was thereupon sworn.
Signed: Schweinitz. Signed: Lips.
C. App. 25.
Short Report to the Regiment of the 2nd Battalion, Infantry Regiment No. 178, on the fighting at Leffe.
February 14th, 1915, 5 p.m.
In the advance on Leffe the battalion came across a mill or factory. The advance guard, in which was the Regimental Staff as well as the Staff of the 3rd Battalion, Infantry Regiment No. 178, were received by a heavy fire from the factory. In the same way the battalion was fired on from the surrounding heights. The foremost (9th) company stormed the factory; here were found, despite a close search, only about twenty men in civilian clothes without any military badge or uniform, and some women, but no Belgian or French soldiers. The patrols sent out on the heights also reported that they had seen only single fugitive civilians, but no soldiers. The civilians captured in the factory were shot by order of the Regimental Commander because they had been firing. The battalion thereupon continued its advance towards the Meuse unmolested. When the head of the battalion reached the Meuse fire was opened on it from the opposite bank. The battalion deployed in the town. The locked-up houses had to be opened by force by the companies in order to bring the enemy under fire from the gardens in the rear on the Meuse bank. For this moment the population seems to have waited, for they suddenly opened fire on us from all sides with rifles and pistols. The companies were now obliged to contend against two fronts, on the one side against the enemy on the opposite bank of the Meuse, on the other against the population. One of the first victims was Captain Franz of the 11th Company of the regiment, who was shot through the leg from a cellar window. The civilian was fetched out of the cellar by Captain Lücke of the 9th Company of the regiment, single-handed, and, as he was caught with a weapon in his hand, was immediately shot. In the course of further operations six men of the battalion were killed and a larger number were wounded in the interior of the town, in places, in fact, where the fire of the troops on the other side of the Meuse could not have reached them. The losses were to be ascribed solely to the attack of the inhabitants. From the circumstance that Belgian military rifles were found with the greater number of the prisoners and Belgian infantry cartridges in their pockets, it may be concluded that Belgian soldiers, after discarding their uniforms, had also taken part in the attack. Hunting-rifles, obsolete and modern pistols were found in the possession of the others. Whether women or children participated in the fighting is beyond my knowledge; at any rate, none were intentionally shot. I had given the order to hand over all women and children to the abbot of the monastery in Leffe; this was also done. How many civilians were shot in the street-fighting, I am unable to state.
The correctness of the foregoing statements can be testified to by numerous persons belonging to the battalion who have taken part in the fighting.
Quarters of Infantry Regiment No. 178, March 3rd, 1915.
Present:
President of the Military Court, Schweinitz.
Secretary to the Military Court, Lips.