Most harrowing the testimony given by the mother of a Red Cross
ambulance driver. The day before the Germans came, this man had
returned from the front, bringing an ambulance filled with wounded
soldiers. While the division of twenty thousand Germans were looting
the houses, and carrying away every rug, carpet, table, chair, picture,
tool, art treasure towards the Rhine, German officers entered the house
of Sister Juliet, who was nursing the wounded soldiers. Finding the
young Red Cross man there, they immediately shot him. Later while his
mother was holding his head in her arms and staunching his wounds, a
German officer approached and, seizing her hands, held them behind her
back, while one of the privates poured petrol over her son's head. With
two fingers this soldier ripped the clothes from the breast of the
wounded man and poured oil under his shirt and then set fire to his
garments. Referring to his death struggles and the photograph of the
charred mass that had once been her son lying on the brick pavement,
this mother exclaimed, "If I had only let him bleed to death! If I had
only let him bleed to death! Then they could not have made him die
twice!"