“We bludgeon and transfix the wounded,” says the wretch, “for we know that these scoundrels, when we have passed by, would fire at our backs. There lies at full length a Frenchman, face to the ground, but he is shamming death. A kick from the foot of a stout fusilier lets him know that we are there. Turning round, he asks for quarter, but we say to him, ‘That is how, you ⸺, your tools work,’ and we pin him to the ground. Beside me, I hear strange crashing noises. They are blows from the butt-end of a rifle which a soldier of the 154th regiment is vigorously applying to a Frenchman’s bald head: very cleverly he used a French rifle for his work, lest he should break his own. Men with exceptionally tender hearts do the French wounded the favour of finishing them off with a bullet, but others distribute as many cuts and thrusts as they can. Our opponents had fought bravely: they were picked troops whom we had in front of us: they let us come as close as thirty and even ten metres to them: too close. Knapsacks and arms thrown in a heap prove that they wanted to take to flight, but at sight of the ‘grey phantoms,’ terror paralysed their limbs, and on the narrow path which they were taking the German bullet brought them the order to ‘halt.’ At the entrance to their hiding-place of boughs of trees they lie, groaning and asking for quarter. But, whether they were lightly or seriously wounded, the fusiliers spare the fatherland the expensive attentions which would have to be given to a crowd of enemies.”
The non-commissioned officer adds that Prince Oscar of Prussia, on being informed of the exploits of the 154th and of the regiment which with the 154th forms a brigade, declared they were both worthy of the name “King’s Brigade.” “When evening came,” he continued, “with a prayer of thanks upon our lips we fell asleep in expectation of the following day.” Then, having added by way of postscript a little bit of verse, “Return from Battle,” he brings the whole, prose and verse, to his lieutenant, who countersigns it, “Certified to be correct, De Niem, lieutenant and company commander.”
German Murder of People attached to the Medical Service and the Red Cross
No more than the wounded were people engaged in tending or transporting the wounded spared by the Germans.
We have said that in bombardments no distinction was made between Red Cross establishments and the others. But even outside these cases the Geneva Convention was so frequently violated that we are driven to attach no credence to the excuses invented in case of bombardment.
Enemy doctors, nurses male and female, ambulance workers have been often ill-treated, wounded and even killed by the Germans. We have noted one case, in reporting the murder of the French lieutenant Deschars who had been previously wounded. It is not the only one.
M. Pierre Nothomb reports several in his pamphlet, Belgique Martyre. We must also remember the testimony given by Dr. Barbey (Echo de Paris of the 20th January, 1915). Speaking of the cruelties committed by the Germans at Recquignies (Nord), this doctor says—
“On the afternoon of the 6th September German soldiers came to the ambulance; they were very much excited: two of them caught hold of me brutally and another presented his rifle at me. I explained to them that they were in a temporary hospital, where there were no arms, which was true, and, moreover, all arms had been punctiliously given up by the civilians at the beginning of the siege. The Boches searched everywhere without finding anything. Then they went off, leading the eight attendants and stretcher-bearers, whom, as they pretended, they needed to bring their wounded to Boussois. The little company set out. As they were passing before my house, which was still uninjured, the Germans, revolver in hand, compelled attendant Jus to set fire to it. They did the same with the mayor’s house, which was next door to mine.
“On the way back from this expedition, as the eight attendants, who all the time had been surrounded by Boches, were going along the railway-line from Paris to Cologne, the leader of the detachment suddenly caused a halt: the French soldiers were lined along the bank: they were ordered to raise their arms and they obeyed.