The Use of Dum-dum Bullets on French Soil
The first instance of the use of dum-dum bullets on French soil goes back to the early days of the war. It was denounced by the French Government in the protest which they addressed (21st August, 1914) to the signatory powers of the Hague Convention.
This protest points out that “on the 10th August, 1914, after an engagement between French and German troops, a surgeon-major sent to the general in command of the Infantry Brigade” a case found on the road to Munster “close to the German Custom-House,” which contained five cartridges primed with cylindro-conical bullets cut at the end, the nickel cover of which was incomplete and left bare the upper portion of the lead slug.
This was not the only instance. On the 14th September, Dr. Chas. Lavielle, superintendent of the auxiliary hospital of Baignots-à-Dax, sent to the sub-prefect of the department of Landes a report on the operations which had been performed on patients, and declared that four of them had been struck by expanding bullets. Photographs were appended to the report.
Doctor Napieralski, physician-in-chief of the 7th auxiliary hospital of the third French army corps à Pont Audemer, noted the case of a foot soldier wounded in the shoulder with a huge scar as big as an open hand. It was not an ordinary wound.
The wounded man’s name was Adrien Bousquet, the foreman of some electricity works at Verdalles. He related (said the report) that on the 2nd November, in a battle to the East of Ypres, he found himself cut off with his section from the rest of his company.
For three days his comrades and he fired from a trench, but at last, on the 5th November, they were outnumbered. The majority surrendered. Bousquet, however, not wishing to be made prisoner, tried to escape towards the main body of his troop. He was fired at from different sides. All at once he felt in his shoulder so violent a concussion that it actually turned him round. Still, it was only a bullet which had struck him.
Dr. Napieralski noted that there could be no question of a wound caused by a bursting shell, for the wound showed no trace of powder nor any blackish stain of metallic oxide.