At Hartennes-et-Taux, in the Arrondissement of Soissons, the Germans, as everywhere else, pillaged the houses. At the hamlet of Taux they set fire to the straw with which they had stopped up the openings of an isolated cellar in which were three of the inhabitants whom they had taken for soldiers. The three men were suffocated by the smoke.
ACTS OF A MILITARY NATURE.
Acts committed in the violation of the laws of war and affecting combatants, murder of wounded or prisoners, stratagems forbidden by international conventions, attacks on doctors and stretcher bearers, have been innumerable in all the places in which there has been fighting. We have not been able to verify the majority of them because the witnesses are for the most part soldiers, who are obliged to move from place to place continually. Besides, these acts have been set forth in reports addressed by corps leaders to the military authorities, who may add them to the documents of our inquiry if they think fit to do so. Many are also attested by evidence collected by magistrates in hospitals, and we are engaged at this moment in analyzing them with a view to drawing up a supplementary report. A certain number, however, have been laid before us in the course of our investigation.
At Bar-le-Duc M. Ferry, the head surgeon, gave us a report of depositions made to him in the course of his duties. Sergt. Lemerre of the —th Infantry Regiment told him that on the 6th of September, when he was wounded in the leg at Rembercourt by a fragment of a shell, he had been left on the battlefield eight days by the German Red Cross people although they knew quite well that he was there. On the fourth day this non-commissioned officer received a further wound by a soldier, who fired at him on the order of an officer who was going over the scene of action with his revolver in his hand. Moreover, he repeatedly saw near him German stretcher bearers firing on our wounded.
The soldier Dreyfus of the —th Infantry Regiment related the following story to Dr. Ferry:
"On the 10th of September at Somaine, as he was leaving the battlefield, wounded, he met three Germans. He told them in German that he had just been wounded, but these men answered that this was no reason why he should not receive another bullet, and they thereupon shot him point blank in the eye."
At Vaubecourt an infantry sergeant and two soldiers were shot by the enemy. They alleged that one of the latter was found on the church tower in the village, from which he would have been able to exchange signals with our troops.
On the 22d of August a detachment of Germans arrived in the vicinity of Bouvillers in the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle at the farm of La Petite Rochelle, where the owner, M. Houillon, had lodged some French wounded soldiers. The officer in command ordered four of his men to go and finish off nine wounded who were lying in the barn. Each one was shot in the ear. Mme. Houillon begged mercy for them, and the officer, placing the barrel of his revolver to her breast, told her to be silent.
On the 25th of August the Abbé Denis, curé of Réméréville, tended in the evening Lieut. Toussaint, who last July headed the list of candidates who left the School of Forestry. As he fell wounded on the battlefield this young officer was struck with bayonets by all the Germans who passed near him. His body was covered with wounds from head to foot.
At the hospital at Nancy we saw the soldier Voyer of the —th Infantry Regiment, who still bore traces of German barbarity, having been badly wounded in the backbone outside the Forest of Champenoux on the 24th of August, and paralyzed in both legs as the result of his wound. He was lying on his face when a German soldier turned him over brutally with his gun and hit him three times on the head with the butt of his rifle. Other soldiers passing by kicked him and hit him also with the butts of their guns. Finally one of them with a single blow caused a wound of about three or four centimeters under each eye with what Dr. Weiss, head doctor and Professor of Faculty at Nancy, thinks must have been a pair of scissors.