(3)
Private J. S——, Rifle Brigade, 1st Battalion:—On a Sunday at end of October or beginning of November, just outside Bailleul, near Nieppe, we rested for three hours, having just come out of billets. The Germans had only just left—the chalk-marks of the different regiments were still on the doors. There were a lot of refugees outside an estaminet, among them a mother and two daughters. One daughter looked scared to death, her eyes staring out of her head. She was a girl of about twenty-three, who looked rather delicate. The girl said nothing, stood there and stared like a lunatic. The mother told a group of us in broken English and partly in French—I know some French. She said, “Les Allemands couchent avec ma fille”—that the Germans—she made it appear about eight—had outraged her daughter. We did not go into the estaminet—it was forbidden.
(4)
Captain C—— W——, Bedfords, 2nd Battalion:—At Bailleul, I saw a great deal of evidence of wanton destruction—mirrors broken and furniture smashed. A German cavalry regiment had done it. I was in three different billets there, and in all three the same thing had happened.
(5)
Private S——, K. O. Scottish Borderers:—At Ypres, about a month ago, I was in the trenches and one of our men went out of the trenches to get a drink of water (from a spring about seven yards away). He was wounded in the leg, and an officer (Lieutenant S——, of B Company) sent over for the stretcher-bearers, who were at head-quarters about 300 yards from the support trenches. They were carrying this fellow away when one of the stretcher-bearers was “sniped” from about 300 yards. There was no firing at the time. Another man came of B Company, named G——, volunteered and took the wounded stretcher-bearer’s place, and then he was wounded too. G—— was put on a stretcher and was again wounded by a sniper. Cases of this kind were very common.
(6)
Private J. C——, Scottish Fusiliers, 1st Battalion:—At Locre, near Bailleul, I was billeted in the church there at the beginning of December. The church had not been shelled, but had been looted and the crucifixes had been smashed, and all the images and things of value appeared to have been torn away.
(7)
Corporal J. D. B—— (at that time Bombardier in the 49th Battery R.F.A.) now of the 40th Brigade Ammunition Column R.F.A.:—On August 23rd at Mons, we got the order to advance up a hill with our battery. We got a section of guns in action in a ploughed field, and then we had a sergeant hit with a gunshot wound in the back (it was Sergeant T——, of the 49th Battery R.F.A.). Sergeant R——, of the 49th, asked me to take Sergeant T—— to an ambulance. I took him through a wood, and on the outside of the wood I saw a girl quite naked, running for all she was worth. She appeared to me to be about nineteen years of age. Her body was covered with blood and there was blood all over her breasts. She ran into some trenches on my right. I do not know what regiment occupied them, but I heard afterwards that an officer of the Gordons got hold of her. I went straight on with the sergeant down into Mons, and took him to the field hospital.