At Gerberviller, at the home of Lingenheld, they searched for his son, a stretcher bearer of the Red Cross, tied his hands, led him into the street and shot him down. Then they poured oil on the body and roasted it. Then the father, of 70 years, was executed, along with fourteen other old men. More than fifty were martyred in this commune alone.
Sister Julia, Superior of the Hospital Gerberviller, reports: “To break into the tabernacle of the Church of Gerberviller the enemy fired many shots around the lock, the interior of the ciborium was also perforated.”
Statement of Mlle. ——, tried and acquitted for the murder of her infant, in Paris.
“At Gerberviller, I worked in the hospital. Going to the church one night, three German hospital stewards caught and assaulted me. I did not understand their language. I thought they were men. I did not know they were brutes.
“Yes, I killed the child; I could not bear to feel myself responsible for bringing anything into the world made by the workings of a German.”
In Belgium alone, more than 20,000 homes have been pillaged and burned. More than 5,000 civilians, mostly old men, women and children, with fifty priests and one hundred and eighty-seven doctors, have been murdered.
At Timines, 400 civilians were murdered.
At Dinant, more than 600 were martyred, among them seventy-one women, 34 old men, more than 70 years of age, six children of from five to six years of age, eleven children less than five years. The victims were placed in two ranks, the first kneeling, the second standing, then shot.
The foregoing statements, vouched for by the most responsible representative men in and near the invaded district, are some of the cases continually being brought to public attention.
This evidence is accumulative, convincing, damning proof, it is furnished by the bodies of the victims, by neighbor eye witnesses, by devastated, homes, and by mutilated wrecks, who survived—some being recaptured by French troops, others, repatriated as useless, sent back to France via Switzerland.