Current History, A Monthly Magazine

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At Saint-Andre, M. Havette, who was among the number of persons
arrested, obtained from an officer permission to watch over the body
of his wife, who had been killed on the previous day by a fragment of
a shell. In the evening the inhabitants were ordered to collect
together in a barn. Havette believed that he was exempt from this
order by reason of the authority he had received, and remained at his
house until 11 in the evening. When he left his house he was struck
down by a rifle bullet.

Of the other villages besides those whose burning we have related,
Vassincourt and Brabant-le-Roi were more or less completely burned. Up
to now it has not been possible for us to ascertain completely the
circumstances of their destruction. Our inquiry so far as it concerns
them will be further pursued.

It has been brought to our knowledge that in the Department of the
Meuse the enemy has committed acts of cruelty toward the French
soldiers who were wounded and prisoners. We will set out the facts of
this at the end of the present report.

MEURTHE-ET-MOSELLE.

We arrived in the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle on the 26th of
October, and visited a great number of communes in the arrondissements
of Nancy and Luneville.

Nancy, an open town into which the German Army has not been able to
enter, was bombarded without formal warning during the night of the
9th and 10th of September. About sixty shells fell into the middle of
the town and in the southern cemetery--that is, in places where there
is no military establishment. Three women, a young girl, and a little
girl were killed; thirteen people were wounded; the material damage
done was considerable.

The enemy's aviators have flown over the town twice. On the 4th of
September one of them dropped two bombs, by one of which a man and a
little girl were killed and six people wounded, in the Place de la
Cathedrale. On the 13th of October three bombs were thrown on the
goods station. Four persons employed by the Eastern Railway Company
were wounded.

When we reached Pont-a-Mousson, on the morning of the 10th of
November, seven shells had just been fired by the German batteries a
few hours before. It was the 24th day of the bombardment, which began
on the 11th of August. The evening before a young girl of 19 and a
child of 4 had been killed in their beds by fragments of shells. On
the 14th of August the Germans took as their special objective the
hospital, from whose towers floated Red Cross flags, visible from a
great distance. No less than seventy shells fell on to this building,
and we have witnessed the damage they have caused.

About eighty houses were damaged by the different bombardments, all of
which took place without any warning. Fourteen civilians, mainly women
and children, were killed. There were about the same number of
wounded. Pont-a-Mousson is not fortified. Only the bridge over the
Moselle had been put in a state of defense, on the outbreak of
hostilities, by the Twenty-sixth Battalion of Chasseurs, who were then
quartered in the town.

We experienced real horror when we found ourselves before the
lamentable ruins of Nomeny. With the exception of some few houses
which still stood near the railway station in a spot separated by the
Seille from the principal group of buildings, there remains of this
little town only a succession of broken and blackened walls in the
midst of ruins, in which may be seen here and there the bones of a few
animals partially charred and the carbonized remains of human bodies.
The rage of a maddened soldiery has been unloosed there without pity.

Nomeny, on account of its proximity to the frontier, received from the
beginning of the war the visits of German troopers from time to time.
Skirmishes took place in its neighborhood, and on Aug. 14, in the
courtyard of the farm de la Borde, which is a little distance off, a
German soldier, without any motive, killed by a rifle shot the young
farm servant, Nicholas Michel, aged 17.

On Aug. 20, when the inhabitants sought refuge in the cellars from the
bombardment, the Germans came up after having fired upon each other by
mistake and entered the town toward midday.

According to the account given by one of the inhabitants, the German
officers asserted that the French were torturing the wounded by
cutting off their limbs and plucking out their eyes. They were then in
a state of terrible excitement. That day and part of the next the
German soldiers gave themselves over to the most abominable excesses,
sacking, burning and massacring as they went. After they had carried
off from the houses everything which seemed worth taking away, and
after they had dispatched to Metz the product of their rifling, they
set fire to the houses with torches, pastilles of compressed powder
and petrol which they carried in receptacles placed on little carts.
Rifle shots were fired on every side; the unhappy inhabitants, who
had been driven from the cellars before the firing, were shot down
like game--some in their dwellings and others in the public streets.

MM. Sanson, Pierson, Lallemand, Adam Jeanpierre, Meunier, Schneider,
Raymond, Duponcel, and Hazotte, father and son, were killed by rifle
shots in the streets. M. Killian, seeing himself threatened by a sabre
stroke, protected his neck with his hand. He had three fingers cut off
and his throat gashed. An old man aged 86, M. Petitjean, who was
seated in his armchair, had his skull smashed by a German shot. A
soldier showed the corpse to Mme. Bertrand, saying: "Do you see that
pig there?" M. Chardin, Town Councilor, who was Acting Mayor, was
required to furnish a horse and carriage. He had promised to do all he
could to obey, when he was killed by a rifle shot. M. Prevot, seeing
the Bavarians breaking into a chemist's shop of which he was
caretaker, told them that he was the chemist, and that he would give
them anything they wanted, but three rifle shots rang out and he fell,
heaving a deep sigh. Two women who were with him ran away and were
pursued to the neighborhood of the railway station, beaten all the way
with the butts of rifles, and they saw many bodies heaped together in
the station garden and on the road.

Between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon the Germans entered the
butcher shop of Mme. Francois. She was then coming out of her cellar
with her boy Stub, and an employee named Contal. As soon as Stub
reached the threshold of the entrance to the door he fell severely
wounded by a rifle shot. Then Contal, who rushed into the street, was
immediately murdered. Five minutes afterward, as Stub was still
groaning, a soldier leaned over him and finished him off with a blow
of a hatchet on the back.

The most tragic incident in this horrible scene occurred in the house
of M. Vasse, who had collected a number of people in his cellar in the
Faubourg de Nancy. Toward 4 o'clock about fifty soldiers rushed into
the house, beat in the door and windows, and set it on fire. The
refugees then made an effort to flee, but they were struck down one
after the other as they came out. M. Mentre was murdered first; then
his son Leon fell with his little sister, aged 8, in his arms. As he
was not killed outright, the end of a rifle barrel was placed on his
head and his brains blown out. Then it was the turn of the Kieffer
family. The mother was wounded in the arm and shoulder. The father and
little boy aged 10 and little girl aged 3 were shot. The murderers
went on firing on them after they had fallen. Kieffer, stretched on
the ground, received another bullet in the forehead, and his son had
the top of his head blown off by a shot. Last of all M. Strieffert and
one of the sons of Vasse were murdered, while Mme. Mentre received
three bullets, one in the left leg, another in the arm on the same
side, and one on her forehead, which was only grazed. M. Guillaume was
dragged into the street and there found dead. Simonin, a young girl of
17, came out last from the cellar, with her sister Jeanne, aged 3. The
latter had her elbow almost carried away by a bullet. The elder girl
flung herself on the ground and pretended to be dead, remaining for
five minutes in terrible anguish. A soldier gave her a kick, crying
"Capout."

An officer arrived at the end of this butchery, and ordered the women
who were still alive to get up, and shouted to them: "Go to France!"

While all these people were being massacred, others, according to an
expression used by an eyewitness, were driven like sheep into the
fields under the threat of immediate execution. The cure, in
particular, owed his escape from being shot to extraordinary
circumstances.

According to the depositions which we have received, all these
abominations were committed chiefly by the Second and Fourth Regiments
of Bavarian infantry. To explain them, the officers have alleged that
civilians had fired on their troops. As our inquiry has established
formally, this allegation is a lie, for at the moment when the enemy
arrived all arms had been deposited at the Mairie, and the part of the
population which had not quitted the country had hidden itself in the
cellars, a prey to the greatest terror. Besides, the reason alleged,
even were it true, would assuredly be insufficient to excuse the
destruction of a whole city, the murder of women, and the massacre of
children.

A list of persons who were killed in the course of the burning and the
shootings has been drawn up by M. Bievelot, Conseiller d'Arrondissement.
The list includes no less than 50 names. We have not quoted all of
them. For one thing, among the people whose death has been proved,
some died under conditions which are not stated with sufficient
precision; on the other hand, the dispersal of the inhabitants of the
town which has now been destroyed made our inquiry very difficult. Our
efforts will be continued. In any case, what we have already been able
to establish beyond dispute is enough to give an idea of what was, on
the day of Aug. 20, the martyrdom of Nomeny.

Luneville was occupied by the Germans from Aug. 27 to Sept. 11. During
the first few days they were content to rob the inhabitants without
molesting them in any other way. Thus, in particular on Aug. 24, the
house of Mme. Jeaumont was plundered. The objects stolen were loaded
on to a large vehicle in which were three women, one of them dressed
in black and the two others wearing military costumes and appearing,
as we were told, to be canteen women.

On Aug. 25 the attitude of the invaders suddenly changed. M. Keller,
the Mayor, went to the hospital about 3:30 o'clock in the afternoon
and saw soldiers firing in the direction of the attic of a neighboring
house, and heard the whistling of the bullets, which appeared to him
to come from behind. The Germans declared to him that the inhabitants
had fired on them. He protested, and offered to go around the town
with them in order to prove the absurdity of this allegation. His
proposal was accepted, and as at the beginning of the circuit they
came across in the street the body of M. Crombez, the officer
commanding the escort said to M. Keller, "You see this body. It is
that of a civilian who has been killed by another civilian who was
firing on us from a house near the synagogue. Thus, in accordance with
our law, we have burned the house and executed the inhabitants." He
was speaking of the murder of a man whose timid character was known to
all, the Jewish officiating minister, Weill, who had just been killed
in his house, together with his 16-year-old daughter. The same officer
added, "In the same way we have burned the house at the corner of the
Rue Castara and the Rue Girardet, because civilians fired shots from
there." It is from this dwelling that the Germans alleged shots had
been fired on to the courtyard of the hospital, but the position of
the building makes it impossible for such a statement to be true.

While the Mayor and the soldiers who accompanied him were pursuing
their investigation the fire broke out on different sides; the Hotel
de Ville was burned as well as the synagogue, and a number of houses
in the Rue Castara, and the Faubourg d'Einville was in flames. The
massacres, which were continued until the next day, began at the same
time. Without counting M. Crombez, the officiating minister, Weill,
and his daughter, whose deaths we have already mentioned, the victims
were MM. Hamman, Binder, Balastre, (father and son,) Vernier, Dujon,
M. Kahn and his mother, M. Steiner and his wife, M. Wingerstmann and
his grandson, and, finally, MM. Sibille, Monteils, and Colin.

The murders were committed in the following circumstances:--

On Aug. 25, after having fired two shots into the Worms Tannery to
create the belief that they were being attacked from there, the
Germans entered a workshop in this factory, in which the workman,
Goeury, was working, in company with M. Balastre, father and son.
Goeury was dragged into the street, robbed there and brutally
ill-treated, while his two companions, who were found trying to hide
themselves in a lavatory, were killed by rifle shots.

On the same day soldiers came to summon M. Steiner, who had hidden in
his cellar. His wife, fearing some misfortune, tried to keep him back.
As she held him in her arms she received a bullet in the neck. A few
moments after, Steiner, having obeyed the order which had been given
to him, fell mortally wounded in his garden. M. Kahn was also murdered
in his garden. His mother, aged 98, whose body was burned in the fire,
had first been killed in her bed by a bayonet thrust, according to the
account of an individual who acted as interpreter to the enemy. M.
Binder, who was coming out to escape the flames, was also struck down.
The German by whom he was killed realized that he had shot him without
any motive, at the moment when the unfortunate man was standing
quietly before a door. M. Vernier suffered the same fate as Binder.

Toward 3 o'clock the Germans broke into a house in which were Mme.
Dujon, her daughter aged 3, her two sons, and M. Gaumier, by breaking
the windows and firing shots. The little girl was nearly killed; her
face was burned by a shot. At this moment, Mme. Dujon, seeing her
youngest son, Lucien, 14 years old, stretched on the ground, asked him
to get up and escape with her. She then saw that his intestines were
protruding from a wound, and that he was holding them in. The house
was on fire; the poor boy was burned, as well as M. Gaumier, who had
not been able to escape.

M. Wingerstmann and his grandson, aged 12, who had gone to pull
potatoes a little way from Luneville, at the place called Les Mossus,
in the District of Chanteheux, were unfortunate enough to meet
Germans. The latter placed them both against a wall and shot them.

Finally, toward 5 o'clock in the evening, soldiers entered the house
of the woman Sibille, in the same place, and without any reason took
possession of her son, led him 200 meters from the house and murdered
him there, together with M. Vallon, to whose body they had fastened
him. A witness, who had seen the murderers at the moment when they
were dragging their victim along, saw them return without him and
noticed that their saw bayonets were covered with blood and bits of
flesh.

On the same day a hospital attendant named Monteils, who was looking
after a wounded enemy officer at the hospital of Luneville, was struck
down by a bullet in the forehead while he was looking through a window
at a German soldier who was firing.

The next day, the 26th, M. Hamman and his son, aged 21, were arrested
in their own house and dragged out by a band of soldiers who had
entered by breaking down the door. The father was beaten unmercifully;
as for the young man, as he tried to struggle, a non-commissioned
officer blew out his brains with a revolver shot.

At 1 o'clock in the afternoon M. Riklin, a chemist, having been
informed that a man had fallen about thirty meters from his shop, went
to the spot indicated and recognized in the victim his brother-in-law,
M. Colin, aged 68, who had been struck in the stomach by a bullet. The
Germans alleged that this old man fired upon them. M. Riklin denied
this statement. Colin, we are told, was a harmless person, absolutely
incapable of an aggressive act, and completely ignorant of the means
of using a firearm.

It appeared to us desirable to deal also at Luneville with acts which
are less grave, but which throw a peculiar light on the habits of
thought of the invader. On Aug. 25 M. Lenoir, 67 years of age,
together with his wife, were led into the fields with their hands tied
behind their backs. After both had been cruelly ill-treated, a
non-commissioned officer took possession of 1,800 francs in gold which
M. Lenoir carried on him. As we have already stated, the most impudent
theft seems to have formed part of the customs of the German Army, who
practiced it publicly. The following is an interesting example:

During the burning of a house belonging to Mme. Leclerc, the safes of
two inhabitants resisted the flames. One, belonging to M. George,
Sub-Inspector of Waters and Forests, had fallen into the ruins; the
other safe, belonging to M. Goudchau, general dealer, remained fixed
to a wall at the height of the second story. The non-commissioned
officer, Weiss, who was well acquainted with the town, where he had
often been welcomed when he used to come before the war to carry on
his business of hop merchant, went with the soldiers to the place and
ordered that the piece of wall which remained standing should be blown
up with dynamite, and saw that the two safes were taken to the
station, where they were placed on a truck destined for Germany. This
Weiss was particularly trusted and esteemed by the persons in command.
It was he who, installed at Headquarters, was given the duty of
administering the commune in some sense, and was in charge of the
requisitioning.

After having committed numerous acts of pillage at Luneville, after
having burned about seventy houses with torches, petrol, and various
incendiary machines, and after having massacred peaceful inhabitants,
the German military authorities thought it well to put up the
following proclamation, in which they formulated ridiculous
accusations to justify the extortion of enormous contributions in the
form of an indemnity:

NOTICE TO THE POPULATION.

On Aug. 25, 1914, the inhabitants of Luneville made an
attack by ambuscade against the German columns and
transports. On the same day the inhabitants fired on
hospital buildings marked with the Red Cross. Further, shots
were fired on the German wounded and the military hospital
containing a German ambulance. On account of these acts of
hostility a contribution of 650,000 francs is imposed on the
commune of Luneville. The Mayor is ordered to pay this
sum--50,000 francs in silver and the remainder in gold--on
Sept. 6, at 9 o'clock in the morning, to the representative
of the German military authority. No protest will be
considered. No extension of time will be granted. If the
commune does not punctually obey the order to pay 650,000
francs all the goods which are available will be seized. In
case payment is not made domiciliary searches will take
place, and all the inhabitants will be searched. Any one who
shall have deliberately hidden money or shall have attempted
to hide his goods from the seizure of the military
authorities, or who seeks to leave the town, will be shot.
The Mayor and hostages taken by the military authorities
will be made responsible for the exact execution of the
above order. The Mayor is ordered to publish these
directions to the commune at once.

Henamenil, Sept. 3, 1914.

Commander in Chief,
Von FOSBENDER.

On reading this extraordinary document one is justified in asking
whether the arson and murders committed at Luneville on Aug. 25 and 26
by an army which was not acting under the excitement of battle, and
which during its preceding days had abstained from killing, were not
ordered on purpose to make more plausible the allegation which was to
serve as a pretext for the exaction of an indemnity.

The village of Chanteheux, situated quite close to Luneville, was not
spared either. The Bavarians, who occupied it from the 22d of August
to the 12th of September, burned there 20 houses in the customary
manner and massacred 8 persons on the 25th of August, MM. Lavenne,
Toussaint, Parmentier, and Bacheler, who were killed, the first three
by rifle shots, the fourth by two shots and a blow with a bayonet;
young Schneider, aged 23, who was murdered in a hamlet of the commune;
M. Wingerstmann and his grandson, whose death we have recorded above
in setting out the crimes committed at Luneville; lastly, M. Reeb,
aged 62, who certainly died as the result of the ill-treatment which
he suffered. This man had been taken as hostage with some 42 of his
fellow-citizens who were kept for 13 days. After having received
terrible blows from the butt of a rifle in his face and a bayonet
wound in his side, he continued to follow the column, although he lost
much blood and his face was so bruised that he was almost
unrecognizable, when a Bavarian, without any reason, gave him a great
wound by throwing a wooden pail at his forehead. Between Henamenil and
Bures his companions saw that he was no longer with them; no doubt he
fell by the way.

If this unhappy man was to suffer the most cruel martyrdom of all, the
hostages taken with him in the commune had also to suffer violence and
insult. Before setting fire to the village, the hostages were set with
their backs to the parapet of the bridge while the troops passed by
ill-treating them. As an officer accused them of firing on the
Germans, the schoolmaster gave him his word of honor that it was not
so. "Pig of a Frenchman," replied the officer, "do not speak of honor;
you have none."

At the moment when her house was burning Mme. Cherrier, who was coming
out of the cellar to escape suffocation, was drenched with an
inflammable liquid by some soldiers who were sprinkling the walls. One
of them told her that it was benzine. She then ran behind a dunghill
to hide herself with her parents, but the fire raisers dragged her by
force in front of the blaze and she was obliged to witness the
destruction of her dwelling.

Like Nomeny, the pretty town of Gerbeviller, on the banks of the
Mortagne, fell a victim to the fury of the Germans under terrible
circumstances. On the 24th August the enemy's troops hurled themselves
against some sixty chasseurs a pied, who offered heroic resistance,
and who inflicted heavy loss upon them. They took a drastic vengeance
upon the civilian population. Indeed, from the moment of their
entrance into the town, the Germans gave themselves up to the worst
excesses, entering the houses, with savage yells, burning the
buildings, killing or arresting the inhabitants, and sparing neither
women nor old men. Out of 475 houses, 20 at most are still habitable.
More than 100 persons have disappeared, 50 at least have been
massacred. Some were led into the fields to be shot, others were
murdered in their houses or struck down in passing through the streets
as they were trying to escape from the conflagration. Up to now 36
bodies have been identified. They are those of MM. Barthelemy, Blosse
(Senior), Robinet, Chretien, Remy, Bourguignon, Perrin, Guillaume,
Bernasconi, Gauthier, Menu, Simon, Lingenheld (father and son),
Benoit, Calais, Adam, Caille, Lhuillier, Regret, Plaid (aged 14),
Leroi, Bazzolo, Gentil, Victor Dehan, Charles Dehan, Dehan the
Younger, Brennevald, Parisse, Yong, Francois, Secretary of the Mairie;
Mmes. Perrot, Courtois, Gauthier, and Guillaume, and Mlles. Perrin and
Miquel.

Fifteen of these poor people were executed at a place called "La
Prele." They were buried by their fellow-citizens on Sept. 12 or 15.
Almost all had their hands tied behind their backs; some were
blindfolded; the trousers of the majority were unbuttoned and pushed
down to their feet. This fact, as well as the appearance of the
bodies, made the witnesses think that the victims had been mutilated.
We did not think we ought to adopt this view, the bodies being in such
an advanced state of decomposition that a mistake on the subject might
be made. Besides, it is possible that the murderers unbuttoned the
trousers of the prisoners so as to incumber their legs, and thus make
it impossible for them to escape.

On Oct. 16, at a place called Le Haut-de-Vormont, buried under fifteen
to twenty centimeters of earth, we found the bodies of ten civilians
with the marks of bullets upon them. On one of them was found a
laissez passer in the name of Edward Seyer, of Badonviller. The other
nine victims are unknown. It is believed that they were inhabitants of
Badonviller, who had been taken by the Germans into the neighborhood
of Gerbeviller to be shot there.

In the streets and houses, during the day of the sacking, the most
tragic scenes took place.

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