Bivouac at Lançon, September 24th, 1914.
On August 24th, during the advance of the Army Corps through Jamoigne, the Medical Corps Company received the order to take charge of the German and French wounded, who had been conveyed into a hospital and a convent. On entering the hospital the senior Surgeon and Commander were received by a Belgian civilian doctor. He declared that he had only been able to afford the wounded poor attention, because he lacked medical personnel, bandages, and provisions. Questions addressed to the Germans in hospital revealed the fact that the wounded had not been attended to by the local doctor for three days. When our senior Surgeon remarked that in practice splints ought to have been used for the wound of one of the patients, the doctor replied that he possessed no material of this kind. The non-commissioned officer accompanying the senior Surgeon opened a wardrobe and found splints inside.
The German wounded, among them the adjutant of the 1st mounted detachment Field Artillery Regiment No. 11, declared they had had little to eat. The Sisters in the convent alleged that they possessed only a meagre quantity of provisions; at the same time they informed us that women and children had been collected into the cellar after their flight from the village. These statements of theirs did not arouse any feelings whatever of distrust. After the whole of the wounded, and, at the request of the Sisters, also a few poor old folk in the village had been fed from our field-kitchen, and medical treatment of the wounded was still taking place, shots were fired at the stretcher-bearers halted in the convent garden from the tower of the convent, a thicket in the convent garden, and the roof windows of the hospital some 500 metres away.
Meanwhile a detachment of stretcher-bearers proceeded to the convent with the special order to search it thoroughly from the cellar to the attics and tower. The firing here at once ceased. In the search of the convent there were found in the cellar not only children and women, but also men, and, beside these, a particularly large quantity of eggs—three kegs holding 750 each.
Another detachment advanced towards the thicket in the convent gardens lying close by the convent. Here two elderly men were discovered standing up to their waists in a stream which flowed through the thicket. Both these men had guns which they threw into the water the instant they were caught by the detachment; the pair of them were shot outside the convent precincts.
For protection against the firing from the hospital on the other side of the principal street of the village, the Medical Corps Company went into a narrow court belonging to the convent. While this was in progress, shots were fired also from the roof windows of the houses lying opposite the convent garden and near the hospital. This fire was diverted from the Medical Corps Company by the passage through the village of a munitions column.
The Medical Corps Company quitted Jamoigne and bivouacked outside the village, taking with it the German wounded and the lightly wounded French who might still be able to bear arms. The two priests and the doctor of the village, as well as all the male inhabitants found in the cellar of the convent, were carried off to the bivouac for greater security.
With the exception of the convent and the hospital, the houses from which shots had been fired were burned to the ground. During the conflagration a great many explosions occurred. It may be assumed that in the course of the fire quantities of ammunition exploded, which had been stored in the houses.
Signed: Brettner, Captain and Column Commander.
App. 31.