On the bank of the Meuse, between the river and a garden wall, there lay close to the left of the pontoon bridge a heap of civilians who had been shot; how many I do not know—I estimate the number at from thirty to forty. I do not know who had shot them. I have heard that the Grenadier Regiment No. 101 had carried out an execution there. Among those who had been shot were also some women; by far the majority were young lads. Under the pile I discovered a girl of about five years old, alive and quite uninjured. I took her out and brought her to the house where the women were. She accepted some chocolate, was quite pleased and evidently quite unconscious of the gravity of the situation. I thereupon examined the pile of corpses to see if any more children were among them. I only found further a girl of about ten years with a wound in the leg. I had her bandaged and lodged her with the women also. The next morning she was almost without pain. It turned out that the mother of the girl was among the women who had come from Dinant. The mother and daughter were very grateful to me.
The pile of corpses was so situated that it could not be seen from the house in which the women and children were lodged. When I was getting ready at 9 o'clock the next morning for marching off, Pioneers were about to dig a common grave for the bodies behind the garden wall, before which they lay. It was in an orchard. I convinced myself personally and by daylight that only the dead lay there. Any mistake of burying alive is precluded.
Further, I will cite the following:
In the course of the night I was requested by a Grenadier officer to take a wounded civilian from a house in danger of fire into a safe place. The man had a bullet wound in the upper thigh; he belonged to the better class. He told the Grenadier officers that he had been shot by Belgian francs-tireurs because he would not grant them a hiding-place in his house. He had been bandaged by our people, and was now carried into the house to the women.
The next morning, after crossing the Meuse, we rode along the left bank in order to gain the road to Onhaye. The bank lying opposite, as well as the houses of Dinant, seemed deserted. Only in the doorway of some hotel stood a civilian who aimed a rifle at us and fired, without making a hit. When we replied with revolver shots he disappeared.
Read over, approved, signed.
Signed: Dr. Petrenz.
The witness was thereupon sworn.
Signed: Schweinitz. Signed: Lips.
C. App. 52.