Present:
President of the Court, SCHWEINITZ.
Secretary, LIPS.
NEUFCHÂTEL, _February 18th, 1915_.
In the matter for inquiry concerning the events in Dinant, there
appeared as witness Staff-Surgeon Dr. Petrenz who, after the importance
of the oath had been pointed out to him, was examined as follows:
My name is Max Georg Hand Petrenz. I am 36 years old; Roman Catholic;
by profession Dr. med., Staff-Surgeon with the Commander of the Train,
XIIth Army Corps.
Questioned on the subject of his examination, he stated the following:
On August 21st and 22nd, 1914, I was in Taviet; on August 23rd the
mounted echelon of the General Command started off and reached the
Meuse at Les Rivages towards 10 o'clock in the evening. As I learned,
the village of Sorinnes had been cleared on August 22nd of all the men
and suspicious characters by our troops. When I came to Sorinnes early
on the 23rd August I saw a burning house surrounded by our troops. I
learned that passing hussars had been fired on from the house, that
the house had been searched for the marksmen without result, and that
in order to smoke them out of their hiding-places the house had been
set on fire. I related this when I had ridden back again to Taviet,
to my billet-landlady, a woman of the middle class. She gave it as
her opinion that they were certainly, some of them, once more from
Dinant. She related further, that suspicious characters had been sent
out from Dinant to the surrounding districts; if these did anything to
the German troops, the blame was put upon the inhabitants. I gathered
from her words that the resistance to the German troops was directly
organised in Dinant.
Our mounted escort set out from Taviet at three in the afternoon, made
a halt for some time to the south of the Sorinnes-Dinant road, and
carried out the descent to the Meuse in the ravine which leads to Les
Rivages. We reached this point when it was already dark. In the night
there came here a large number of women and children who really wanted
to go still farther south. As this was attended with great danger,
because everything on the way was burning, we detained them there
and sheltered them in a large empty house, just opposite the pontoon
bridge, where they were safe from the danger of fire. Besides myself, a
number of Grenadier officers of the (Guards) Grenadier Regiment No. 100
also looked after the sheltering of the women and children. The next
morning, at my request, all the women and children were provided with
warm coffee by Captain von Criegern.
On the bank of the Meuse, between the river and a garden wall, there
lay close to the left of the pontoon bridge a heap of civilians who
had been shot; how many I do not know--I estimate the number at from
thirty to forty. I do not know who had shot them. I have heard that the
Grenadier Regiment No. 101 had carried out an execution there. Among
those who had been shot were also some women; by far the majority were
young lads. Under the pile I discovered a girl of about five years old,
alive and quite uninjured. I took her out and brought her to the house
where the women were. She accepted some chocolate, was quite pleased
and evidently quite unconscious of the gravity of the situation. I
thereupon examined the pile of corpses to see if any more children were
among them. I only found further a girl of about ten years with a wound
in the leg. I had her bandaged and lodged her with the women also. The
next morning she was almost without pain. It turned out that the mother
of the girl was among the women who had come from Dinant. The mother
and daughter were very grateful to me.
The pile of corpses was so situated that it could not be seen from
the house in which the women and children were lodged. When I was
getting ready at 9 o'clock the next morning for marching off, Pioneers
were about to dig a common grave for the bodies behind the garden
wall, before which they lay. It was in an orchard. I convinced myself
personally and by daylight that only the dead lay there. Any mistake of
burying alive is precluded.
Further, I will cite the following:
In the course of the night I was requested by a Grenadier officer to
take a wounded civilian from a house in danger of fire into a safe
place. The man had a bullet wound in the upper thigh; he belonged to
the better class. He told the Grenadier officers that he had been
shot by Belgian francs-tireurs because he would not grant them a
hiding-place in his house. He had been bandaged by our people, and was
now carried into the house to the women.
The next morning, after crossing the Meuse, we rode along the left
bank in order to gain the road to Onhaye. The bank lying opposite, as
well as the houses of Dinant, seemed deserted. Only in the doorway of
some hotel stood a civilian who aimed a rifle at us and fired, without
making a hit. When we replied with revolver shots he disappeared.
Read over, approved, signed.
Signed: Dr. PETRENZ.
The witness was thereupon sworn.
Signed: SCHWEINITZ. Signed: LIPS.