Bombardment of Recquignies
According to the evidence of Dr. Barbey (Echo de Paris of the 20th January), the first German shells fired at Recquignies, in the beginning of the month of September, were aimed at the brewery, which the Red Cross flag upon it plainly marked as a refuge for the wounded. Four inhabitants were killed and two others were wounded.
Bombardment of Soissons
The town of Soissons was bombarded from the 13th to the 17th September almost without intermission. The post office and the Grand Seminaire are in ruins. The cemetery quarter of the town was set on fire. Happily the cathedral suffered little. But the Germans deliberately and with precise aim fired at the hospital. This bombardment was without any reason that could be admitted, for the town ought to have been protected from artillery, as the Germans occupied the hills to the north of the town when the French troops had taken a position to the south-east and did not discharge a single shell at it.
From the month of September the bombardment of Soissons was interrupted: it began again in the month of January. The Germans aimed their fire on the hospitals, the ambulances, and especially on all places where the wounded were gathered. During the bombardment, which was carried on almost every day in the month of January, the cathedral suffered a great deal; it was reckoned that in eight hours seventy-five shells of large calibre were fired at the building. The entrance, the pulpit, and one of the columns of the spire were ruined, and one of the bells broken. On the 15th January a young girl was killed in the Rue de la Barde, and many children fell victims to German barbarism.
Bombardment of Sampigny
On the 15th September and the 8th October the Germans, with the desire to wreak revenge, bombarded the private residence of M. Poincaré, the President of the French Republic. The second bombardment, in the course of which forty-eight shells were discharged at this residence, brought about its complete destruction.
It is well to note that this destruction was nevertheless denied by the Wolff agency, which declared that the story was a myth, and added that if the site upon which this residence stood had been burned, it could only have been done by the French artillery itself.