Court of the Government-General at Brussels.
Present:
Dr. IVERS, Judge of Military Law.
Secretary, RAMBEAU.
LOUVAIN, _September 23rd, 1914_.
Lieutenant of the Landwehr Ibach, Adjutant, Mobile Foraging Commando
No. 15, declared as follows:
As to Person: My name is Ernst Ibach, born on May 16th, 1882, at
Braunschweig; Protestant; Municipal Councillor at Halberstadt.
The witness was informed that the Governor-General, Field-Marshal
General Baron von der Goltz, had arranged judicial proceedings for
the purpose of ascertaining whether German military persons, and, if
so, which, were guilty and deserving of punishment; he then made the
following statement:
As to Case: On August 25th, 1914, I was as adjutant of the Forage
Commando at Louvain in the town hall there. Between 7 and 8 p.m. it
was reported to me several times at short intervals that Belgians had
fired upon our German troops on the outskirts of the town. I asked the
Commandant, Major v. Manteuffel, to come to the town hall. Shortly
after his arrival, at about 8 p.m., violent firing took place directly
outside the town hall. On going from the office of the Commando into
the hall, our soldiers told me that the inhabitants had fired from the
opposite windows and roofs. The German soldiers replied to the fire.
Among the soldiers at the town hall I saw several with shot-wounds; one
was injured in the upper part of the thigh, and was bandaged at the
office of the Commando. In the course of the night, German soldiers
brought in a corpse wrapped in a red cover; the bearers related that he
was an ensign of the 90th Regiment, who had been shot in the head by
the Belgians.
During the night I noticed that a house diagonally opposite and one
behind the town hall were burning. I went to see Judge Schmit, who was
at the town hall as a hostage, and upon my request he asked the police
to collect the firemen who, in company with German soldiers, commenced
operations for extinguishing the fire. The other houses burned near the
town hall and the Peter Church were, as far as I could see, set on fire
by sparks from neighbouring conflagrations. The roof of the church
burned first. The endeavours of an hussar officer to extinguish the
fire by means of a Minimax apparatus from the roof of the church were
ineffective.
A soldier coming to the town hall gave me a broken shot-gun which
had been found in the possession of an inhabitant shot by summary
court-martial.
Read over, approved, signed.
Signed: ERNST IBACH.
The witness was then sworn.
Signed: Dr. IVERS. Signed: RAMBEAU.