Report of Lieutenant von Manstein, commanding 1st Squadron, Dragoon Regiment No. 4.
August 27th, 1914.
On August 9th the patrol, while evading two French squadrons in the direction of Behême, was fired upon by inhabitants of this village.
A communication dated August 8th was seized, in which the Chief of the Gardes Forestiers writes to the Burgomeister that Gendarmes and Verderers were instructed to organise the inhabitants for armed resistance. An inhabitant of Chiny informed me on August 10th, in answer to my questions—he took me for a Frenchman or an Englishman—that on the previous day the Garde Civile had been in the village and carefully instructed the inhabitants in the handling of weapons and the defence of the village.
On August 24th the inhabitants of Peissant had placed strong barricades across all the entrances to the village, shut the doors and window-shutters of every house, and furnished them with loopholes. They refused to open me a passage through, because they knew I wanted to avoid a company of English infantry, which was quite close to the village, and had with me only a single dispatch rider. During the night they then divulged to the English artillery the names of the farms occupied by the 1st Squadron, Uhlan Regiment No. 1, and the 1st Squadron, Dragoon Regiment No. 4, and also the houses in which our valuable goods had been stored, so that the next morning the English artillery brought these farms and houses under shell-fire.
Signed: von Manstein, Lieutenant, Uhlan Regiment No. 10,
commanding 1st Squadron,
Dragoon Regiment No. 4.
App. 53.
Military Court Examination of Lieutenant of Reserve Bohme, Infantry Regiment No. 165.
Court of the 7th Infantry Division, Cherisy.
Present:
President of the Court, Dr. Welt.
Secretary, Lorenz, as Recorder of the Court.