Killing of the Wounded ordered by Officers
The German wounded are many. It followed, therefore, that the German medical service was disinclined to encumber itself with relays of enemy wounded. Perhaps this is also the reason why orders were given to the soldiers to kill the wounded. General Stenger issued, on the 26th August, an order of the day giving instructions to make no more prisoners and to leave no living man behind. The authenticity of this order, the full text of which we give in the next chapter, was confirmed by the evidence of German prisoners.
The prisoners cross-examined, says the Temps, which reported the depositions, belong to the 112th and 142nd infantry regiments. They were put on oath and signed the report of their examination. A soldier of the 142nd deposed that, on the 26th August, about three o’clock, he was in the van of his battalion in the forest of Thiaville when the company order giving instructions to kill the wounded was sent along the ranks and repeated from man to man.
This prisoner added that as soon as this order was passed round, ten or twelve French wounded who were lying here and there round about the battalion were dispatched with rifle shots.
Another prisoner in the same regiment deposed that, on the 26th August, he saw a cavalry officer, unknown to him, come and give the order in question as coming from headquarters. Immediately afterwards rifle shots were heard coming from the head of the detachment in front of him.
A soldier of the 112th declared that he heard, on the 26th August, Captain Curtins, in command of the 3rd Company, say that henceforth no more wounded were to be made prisoners. Shortly afterwards he heard rifle shots fired at the French wounded who happened to be lying along the roads.
Another soldier of the 112th gave evidence that on the same day, between four and five o’clock, some French wounded who happened to be on the sides of the road from Thiaville to Saint Benoit, were killed by order of the commander of the 1st battalion.
About twenty German soldiers who were cross-examined admitted that this order had been given, but without giving details about the manner in which it had been carried out. Some prisoners, who did not know even in the field about the company order of the day, declared that they were subsequently informed of it by their comrades.
Moreover, the German soldier Karl Johannes Kaltenochner (9th company of the regiment of Count Bülow of Tervuenwist), who deserted and took refuge in Holland, declared in the Telegraaf of Amsterdam (Temps of 3rd January, 1915) that when Turcos were made prisoners the German officers did not take the trouble to send them to any place behind the lines, and gave orders to the soldiers to shoot them. He quoted Major Botwitz as having given orders to kill two Turco prisoners. It is not, then, to be wondered at that the soldier who made this disclosure accompanied it with the declaration “that the German soldiers have become like wild animals and think only of killing and pillaging.”
Finally, in the hospital at Nancy two German soldiers who were under treatment there made similar confessions. One of them, who had a wound in the stomach, confided to Dr. Rohmer that it had been caused by a revolver-shot from his officer, because he declined to kill a wounded Frenchman. The other, who was wounded in the back by a shot fired point-blank, declared to Dr. Weiss that, in obedience to the order of an officer, a soldier had fired on him to punish him for having carried several wounded Frenchmen into a village not far from the battlefield.