On Sept. 8 eighteen inhabitants of Vareddes, among whom was the priest, were arrested without cause and led away by the enemy. Three of them escaped. None of the others had returned up to Sept. 30, the day we were there. From information collected, three of these men were murdered. Anyhow, the death of one of the oldest among them, M. Jourdain, aged 73, is certain.
Dragged as far as the village of Coulombs and being unable to walk further, the unfortunate man received a bayonet wound in the forehead and a revolver bullet through the heart.
At about the same time a man of 66, named Dalissier, living at Congis, was ordered by the Germans to give up his purse to them. When he proved unable to give them any money, he was tied up with a halter and ruthlessly shot. The marks of about fifteen bullets were found on his dead body.
On the 3d of September, at Mary-sur-Marne, M. Mathe, terrified at the arrival of the German troops, attempted to hide himself under the counter of a wine shop. He was found in his hiding place and killed by a thrust of a knife or bayonet in the chest.
At Sancy-les-Provins, on the 6th of September, about 9 o'clock at night, about eighty people were summarily arrested and imprisoned in a sheep pen. On the next day thirty of them were taken by an officer's order some five kilometers from the village to the barn called "Pierrelez," where a German Red Cross ambulance was established. There an army doctor (médecin-major) addressed some words to the wounded under his charge, who at once proceeded to load four rifles and two revolvers, their intention being obvious. Moreover, a French hussar, who had been wounded in the arm and taken prisoner, said to the priest, while asking him for absolution: "I am going to be shot, and it will be your turn next." After having done as the soldier asked him, the priest, unbuttoning his cassock, went and took his place between the Mayor and another of his fellow-citizens, against a wall along which the hostages were lined up; but at this moment two French chasseurs à cheval suddenly arrived, and the doctors, with their ambulance staff, surrendered to these soldiers, near whom the hussar had hastened to place himself.
As showing the responsibility of officers of high rank for these proceedings, it is interesting to note that the schoolmaster at Sancy, when he was about to be taken off with the others, was allowed to retain his freedom as a favor by General von Dutag, who was quartered on him.
On the 6th of the same month, after having set on fire some of the houses in Courtaçon, a body of soldiers, believed to belong to the Imperial Guard, took five men and a child of thirteen out into the fields, and exposed them to the French fire so long as the engagement lasted. In the confines of the same commune, Edmond Rousseau, liable to serve in the 1914 class, was arrested for the sole reason that his age marked him out as being on the eve of being called up to the colors, and was murdered under tragic circumstances.
The Mayor, who was one of the hostages, when questioned as to the position of this youth from the military point of view, replied that Rousseau had passed the medical examination, that he had been declared fit for service, but that his class had not yet been called up. The Germans thereupon made the prisoner strip, in order to satisfy themselves of his physical condition, then put his trousers on again, and shot him within fifty meters of his fellow-citizens.
The town of Coulommiers has suffered considerable pillage. Plate, linen, and boots were taken away, principally from empty houses, and a large number of bicycles were loaded on motor wagons. The Germans occupied this place from the 5th to the 7th of September. On this day before they left they arrested, without any pretext, the Mayor and the Procureur de la République, and an officer grossly insulted them. These two officials were kept in custody until the next morning, together with the Secretary of the Mairie. Guards were set over the Procureur during the night, and did their best to persuade him by remarks exchanged between them that his execution was imminent.
It is generally believed at Coulommiers that criminal attempts have been made on many women of that town, but only one crime of this nature has been proved for certain. A charwoman, Mme. X., was the victim. A soldier came to her house on the 6th of September, toward 9:30 in the evening, and sent away her husband to go and search for one of his comrades in the street. Then, in spite of the fact that two small children were present, he tried to rape the young woman. X., when he heard his wife's cries, rushed back, but was driven off with blows of the butt of the man's rifle into a neighboring room, of which the door was left open, and his wife was forced to suffer the consummation of the outrage. The rape took place almost under the eyes of the husband, who, being terrorized, did not dare to intervene, and used his efforts only to calm the terror of his children.