Their Crimes by Various
page 28 of 54 (51%)
page 28 of 54 (51%)
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else to do with them."
Read this letter found at L'Éçouvillon in a German trench which we recaptured: "Every day we take many prisoners, but they are shot at once as we no longer know where to put them." Think of the diary in which a German soldier near Peronne recorded his impressions of the day: "They lay in heaps of ten or twelve, some dead and some still living. Those who could still walk were marched off. Those who were wounded in the head or lungs, and could not lift themselves up, were finished off with a bullet. That is the order which we got." A German soldier, while being nursed in a hospital at Nancy, confided to Dr. Roemer that the wound in his stomach "had been inflicted on him by a German N.C.O. because he refused to finish off a wounded Frenchman." Wounded were not only massacred on the field of battle, but field hospitals were also the scene of atrocities. At Gomery, in a casualty clearing station, under Dr. Sédillot, there were numerous wounded remaining in the German lines. A German officer with twenty-five men visited the place and inspected it and retired, saying that all was in order. But a N.C.O. and a party of soldiers remained in the street outside. They were excited and kept shouting, "It is war to the death," and making signs of cutting throats. They rushed in and with their revolvers shot down Dr. Sédillot (who happily survived, with others, to give evidence), and set fire to the place. Maddened by the flames, the wounded (many of whom had had amputations performed on them that very morning) leapt from the windows on the first floor and fell into the garden, where the executioners picked them up, gathering them in a |
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