"OCTOBER 7, 1914.
[Sidenote: Civilians used as screens.]
"But we arrested three other civilians, and then I had a brilliant
idea. We gave them chairs, and we then ordered them to go and sit out
in the middle of the street. On their part, pitiful entreaties; on
ours, a few blows from the butt end of the rifle. Little by little
one becomes terribly callous at this business. At last they were all
seated outside in the street. I do not know what anguished prayers
they may have said but I noticed that their hands were convulsively
clasped the whole time. I pitied these fellows, but the method was
immediately effective.
"The flank fire from the houses quickly diminished, so that we were
able to occupy the opposite house and thus to dominate the principal
street. Every living being who showed himself in the street was shot.
The artillery on its side had done good work all this time, and when,
toward 7 o'clock in the evening, the brigade advanced to the assault
to relieve us I was in a position to report that Saint Dié had been
cleared of the enemy.
"Later on I learned that the regiment of reserve which entered Saint
Dié further to the north had tried the same experiment. The four
civilians whom they had compelled in the same way to sit out in the
street were killed by French bullets. I myself saw them lying in the
middle of the street near the hospital."
"A. EBERLEIN,
"_First-Lieutenant_."
Letter published on the 7th October, 1914, in the "Vorabendblatt" of
the _Münchner Neueste Nachrichten_.
Minister Whitlock, in his report of September 12, 1917, to the
Secretary of State, gives an instance of this German practice of
seeking protection.
[Sidenote: "No respect to the cassock."]
"The Germans attacked Hougaerde on the 18th August; the Belgian troops
were holding the Gette Bridge in the village. The Germans forced the
parish priest of Autgaerden to walk in front of them as a shield. As
they neared the barricade the Belgian soldiers fired and the priest
was killed. After the retreat of the Belgians the Germans shot 4 men,
burned 50 houses, and looted 100."
Hugh Gibson, in _A Journal from our Legation in Belgium_, page 155,
gives another incident:
"Two old priests have staggered into the ---- legation more dead than
alive after having been compelled to walk ahead of the German troops
for miles as a sort of protecting screen. One of them is ill, and it is
said that he may die as a result of what he has gone through."