"On the 21st of August, toward 5 in the evening, the Germans who had occupied for seventeen days the village of Audun-le-Roman, began without any reason to fire upon the houses with rifles and machine guns. Four women, Mlle. Roux, Mlle. Tréfel, Mme. Zapolli, and Mme. Giglio, were wounded. Mlle. Tréfel was struck while she was giving a drink to a German soldier. Three men were killed: M. Martin, an agriculturist, aged 68, whose house was burned, was led out and shot in the street in the presence of his wife and children. M. Chary, aged 55, foreman roadmaker, was escaping from the conflagration, holding his wife by the hand, when he was killed by rifle shots. I have seen his body, which was riddled with wounds. M. Ernest Samen was struck by five revolver bullets at the moment when he was shutting the door of his coach house.
"I saw the enemy set fire to the Café Matte with petrol. Mme. Matte went out with a little bag in her hand containing her savings, about two thousand francs. She was robbed by a German officer, who snatched the bag away."
The witness added that the Mayor must have been carried off by a patrol, but in any case he had disappeared.
At Arracourt, M. Maillard was killed in the fields by a bullet which went right through him; five houses were burned.
The village of Brin-sur-Seille was almost entirely destroyed by fire lighted by cartridges and round fuses. Further, the wife of a man at Raucourt who is with the colors, Mme. X., declared to us that she had been raped in her own house in the presence of her little boy, aged 3-1/2, by a soldier who had placed the point of his bayonet on her breast to overcome the resistance which she opposed to him.
OISE.
In the Department of Oise we have ascertained the following facts:
When on the 31st of August the Germans entered the village of Monchy-Humières a group of about fifteen people were in the street looking at them as they entered. No act of provocation was committed, but an officer believed that he heard some one say the word "Prussian." At once he directed three dragoons to fall out and ordered them to fire. Young Gaston Dupuis was killed, M. Grandvalet was wounded in the right shoulder by a bullet, and a little girl of 4 who belonged to a family of refugees from Verdun was slightly wounded in the neck.
Next day the commune of Ravenel was sacked, and the stolen objects were taken away in a carriage. A man named Vilette, while bicycling on the road near the village, met a motor car in which were several Germans. They began to fire at him without any reason. He jumped down from his machine and took to flight across country, but a bullet stopped him on his way. He died a few hours afterward, leaving a widow and two children.
On the same day, near Méry, the enemy opened fire on some English guns which were drawn up at the place called Le Bout de la Ville, and an engagement began between the cavalry of the two armies. At this moment the Germans entered the sugar factory, which is situated in a hamlet of the commune. They seized the manager, his family, and all the staff of the factory, and, during the three hours which the engagement lasted, made them walk in a parallel line to themselves in order to protect themselves against the fusillade which was catching them on the flank. Among the twenty-five people who were thus exposed to grave danger were women and children. A work girl, Mme. Jeansenne, was killed, and a foreman, Courtois, had a bullet through his left arm. At 10 in the evening, the enemy returned in force to the village. They left the next day after having burned the houses and carried out a general sack.