M. ODENT'S GRAVE AT CHAMANT
M. Odent returned to his companions in captivity, gave them his papers and money, shook hands with them, and bade them a dignified farewell. He then went back to the officers. At their command two soldiers dragged him about ten yards further off and put two bullets through his head.
The ground was hastily hollowed out and the body was laid under such a thin layer of earth that the feet were not covered. It was here that the cross shown in the above photograph was erected. The tourist can visit it when passing through Chamant (see p. [66]). A few hours before the mayor's death six other hostages had been shot and buried in the same field. M. Odent's companions were more fortunate, they were sent back to Senlis the next day. On September 12 the bodies of the mayor and the six other victims were exhumed and taken to the cemetery in the town (see p. [52]). Other hostages narrowly escaped death. At about eight o'clock in the evening, in the tailor's shop at the corner of the Rue du Châtel, in front of the town-hall, three inhabitants were seized and taken to Chamant. To these, in the course of the journey, were added a dozen others. They were about to share the fate of the preceding hostages when one of them, who spoke German, succeeded in inducing the Headquarters staff to set them free.
By the Rue Vieille de Paris (a continuation of the Rue du Châtel) we descend to the lower part of the town. (In 1358 the "Jacques," masters of Senlis, drove back the nobles who had entered the lower end of the road by rolling down the slope heavily laden wagons which overturned anything that happened to be in their way.)
In front of the old Convent of the Carmes, No. 3 of the Rue Vieille de Paris, stand Megret's Baths, to which a café is attached. In the afternoon of September 2 some Germans smashed in the door and demanded drink. It was no doubt at that time that other German soldiers entered the café Simon, a little further on (see p. [43]). The two proprietors suffered the same fate. Mégret had barely finished serving the patrol with a dozen bottles of wine when a shot, fired point-blank, felled him to the ground.
On page [49] appears the photograph of three young German soldiers belonging to that column of incendiarists and murderers who did so much damage to Senlis. With threats they forced the photographer, M. Rozycki, to whom we are indebted for the views taken during the German occupation, to take the photograph we have reproduced.
PICTURE IN THE TOWN HALL
[Execution of Hostages in 1418]
A little way past the Convent of the Carmes (which is turned into barracks, its chapel being used as a clothing store), we follow, on the right, the line of ramparts that goes from the Rue Vieille de Paris (where the Paris gate used to be) to the Place de Creil (where stood the gate of the same name).