“At Bignicourt-sur-Saultz thirty men and forty-five women and children were obliged to leave with a detachment. One of the men—a certain Emile Pierre—has not returned nor sent any news of himself. At Corfelix, M. Jacqet, who was carried off on the 7th of September with eleven of his fellow-citizens, was found five hundred meters from the village with a bullet in his head.
“At Champuis, the curé, his maid-servant, and four other inhabitants who were taken away on the same day as the hostages of Corfelix had not returned at the time of our visit to the place.
“At the same place an old man of seventy, named Jacquemin, was tied down in his bed by an officer and left in this state without food for three days. He died a little time after. At Vert-la-Gravelle a farm hand was killed. He was struck on the head with a bottle and his chest was run through with a lance. The garde champetre Brulefer of le Gault-la-Foret was murdered at Maclaunay, where he had been taken by the Germans. His body was found with his head shattered and a wound on his chest.
“At Champguyon, a commune which has been fired, a certain Verdier was killed in his father-in-law’s house. The latter was not present at the execution, but he heard a shot and next day an officer said to him, ‘Son shot. He is under the ruins.’ In spite of the search made the body has not been found among them. It must have been consumed in the fire.
“At Sermaize, the roadmaker, Brocard, was placed among a number of hostages. Just at the moment when he was being arrested with his son, his wife and his daughter-in-law in a state of panic rushed to throw themselves into the Saulx. The old man was able to free himself for a moment and ran in all haste after them and made several attempts to save them, but the Germans dragged him away pitilessly, leaving the two wretched women struggling in the river. When Brocard and his son were restored to liberty, four days afterward, and found the bodies, they discovered that their wives had both received bullet wounds in the head.
© Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.
THE SUPREME EXPONENTS OF GERMAN FRIGHTFULNESS
On the left, General von Bissing, military commander of Belgium. On the right, Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, who inspired the German submarine campaign.
“At Triaucourt the Germans gave themselves up to the worst excesses. Angered doubtless by the remark which an officer had addressed to a soldier, against whom a young girl of nineteen, Mlle. Helene Proces, had made complaint on account of the indecent treatment to which she had been subjected, they burned the village and made a systematic massacre of the inhabitants. They began by setting fire to the house of an inoffensive householder, M. Jules Gand, and by shooting this unfortunate man as he was leaving his house to escape the flames. Then they dispersed among the houses in the streets, firing off their rifles on every side. A young man, seventeen years, Georges Lecourtier, who tried to escape was shot. M. Alfred Lallemand suffered the same fate. He was pursued into the kitchen of his fellow-citizen Tautelier, and murdered there, while Tautelier received three bullets in his hand.