The enemy occupied the village of Bievre and the edge of the
wood behind it. The Third Company advanced in first line. We
carried the village, and then pillaged and burned almost all
the houses.

And Private Schiller (133d Infantry, Nineteenth Corps) writes:

Our first fight was at Haybes (Belgium) on the 24th of August.
The Second Battalion entered the village, ransacked the
houses, pillaged them, and burned those from which shots had
been fired.

And Private Sebastian Reishaupt (Third Bavarian Infantry, First Bavarian
Corps) writes:

The first village we burned was Parux, (Meurthe-et-Moselle.)
After this the dance began, throughout the villages, one after
the other; over the fields and pastures we went on our
bicycles up to the ditches at the edge of the road, and there
sat down to eat our cherries.

They emulate each other in their thefts; they steal anything that comes
to hand and keep records of the thefts--"Schnaps, Wein, Marmelade,
Zigarren," writes this private soldier; and the elegant officer of the
178th Saxon Regiment, who was at first indignant at the "vandalismus" of
his men, further on admits that he himself, on the 1st of September, at
Rethel, stole "from a house near the Hôtel Moderne a superb waterproof
and a photographic apparatus for Felix." All steal, without distinction
or grade, or of arms, or of cause, and even in the ambulances the