App. 24.
Report of 3rd Battalion, Infantry Regiment No. 157.
Captain Rumland, Leader of the 11th Company, Infantry Regiment No. 157, declares:
When on August 22nd, 1914, I was attached to the heavy baggage, and this was compelled to halt a little way from Tintigny, I noticed a cart on which lay the body of the reservist Franke, 6th Company, Infantry Regiment No. 38. The helmet was driven in, and in Franke's skull was a square hole, caused by the pickaxe which was lying near him. This axe was smeared with blood, and the point fitted exactly into the hole in the skull. Franke had been slain in this way. Some soldiers present in Tintigny had found Franke's dead body tied to a fence, and made a report of this.
We officers held a court-martial for the examination of some twenty persons who had buried the executed Belgian civilians by the roadside, in order to investigate more thoroughly the circumstances of Franke's death. The court was presided over by the president of the Court-Martial of the 12th Division. For this purpose we brought these people with us into a field; on the way one of the prisoners sprang over a bridge into a stream with a stony bed, and was killed instantly. Our investigation was fruitless. We could not determine who was the guilty man. In my belief Franke was slain by the man who leapt over the bridge. The people who buried the executed Belgians made use of a pickaxe which exactly resembled the one which was lying near the slaughtered soldier, Franke.
Signed: Engelien, Captain and Battalion Leader.
App. 25.
Military Court Examination of Lieutenant von Lindeiner (otherwise von Wildau), Field Artillery Regiment No. 6.
Proceedings at Binarville, September 25th, 1914.
Court of Field Artillery Regiment No. 6.