The church, which was classed as a historical monument, and the Mairie with all its archives, have been destroyed.
Many inhabitants, among whom were children, have been taken away as hostages. They were, however, set at liberty next day, with the exception of M. Wladimir Thomas.
Few localities in the Department of the Meuse have suffered as much as the Commune of Sommeilles. It is nothing but a heap of ruins, having been completely burned on the 6th of September by a regiment of German infantry bearing the number fifty-one. The place was set on fire with help of machinelike bicycle pumps with which many of the soldiers were furnished.
This unhappy village was the scene of a terrible drama. At the commencement of the fire Mme. X., whose husband is with the colors, took refuge in the cellar of M. et Mme. Adnot, together with these latter and their four children, aged respectively 11, 5, 4, and 1-1/2 years. A few days afterward the bodies of all these unfortunate people were discovered in the middle of a pool of blood. Adnot had been shot, Mme. X. had her breast and right arm cut off; the little girl of 11 had a foot severed, the little boy of 5 had his throat cut. The woman X. and the little girl appeared to have been raped.
At Villers-aux-Vents, on the 8th of September, German officers invited the inhabitants who had not yet fled to leave their dwellings, warning them that the village was about to be burned, because, they alleged, three French soldiers had dressed themselves in civilian clothes; others gave the pretext that an installation of wireless telegraphy had been found in a house. The threat was carried out so rigorously that one house alone remains standing.
At Vaubecourt, where six dwelling houses were burned by the Württemburgers, fire was set to a barn with straw piled up by the soldiers.
At Triaucourt the Germans gave themselves up to the worst excesses. Angered doubtless by the remark which an officer had addressed to a soldier, against whom a young girl of 19, Mlle. Hélène Procès, had made complaint on account of the indecent treatment to which she had been subjected, they burned the village and made a systematic massacre of the inhabitants. They began by setting fire to the house of an inoffensive householder, M. Jules Gand, and by shooting this unfortunate man just as he was leaving his house to escape the flames; then they dispersed among the houses in the streets, firing their rifles on every side. A young man of 17, Georges Lecourtier, who tried to escape, was shot. M. Alfred Lallemand suffered the same fate; he was pursued into the kitchen of his fellow-citizen, Tautelier, and murdered there, while Tautelier received three bullets in his hand.
Fearing, not without reason, for their lives, Mlle. Procès, her mother, her grandmother of 71, and her old aunt of 81, Mlle. Laure Mennehand, tried with the help of a ladder to cross the trellis which separates their garden from a neighboring property. The young girl alone was able to reach the other side and to avoid death by hiding in the cabbages. As for the other women, they were struck down by rifle shots. The village curé collected the brains of Mlle. Mennehand on the ground on which they were strewn, and had the bodies carried into Procès's house. During the following night the Germans played the piano near the bodies.
While the carnage raged, the fire rapidly spread and devoured thirty-five houses. An old man of 70, Jean Lecourtier, and a child of two months perished in the flames. M. Igier, who was trying to save his cattle, was pursued for 300 meters by soldiers, who fired at him ceaselessly. By a miracle this man had the good fortune not to be wounded, but five bullets went through his trousers. When the curé, Viller, expressed his indignation at the treatment inflicted upon his parish to the Duke of Württemburg, who was lodged in the village, the latter replied: "What would you have? We have bad soldiers just as you have."
In the same commune an attempt at rape was made which was unsuccessful by reason of the obstinate and courageous resistance of the victim. Three Germans made the attempt on Mme. D., 47 years old. Further, an old woman of 75, Mme. Maupoix, was kicked so violently that she died a few days afterward. While some of the soldiers were ill-treating her others were ransacking her wardrobes.