KILLING OF THE WOUNDED BY GERMANS
THE WOUNDED, THE RED CROSS, AND THE GENEVA CONVENTION
What is the aim and object of battles between belligerent powers? To put
out of action as large a number as possible of enemy soldiers, and thus,
as much as may be, to break the enemy’s resistance. That, at least, is
the conception of the aim of war entertained by all civilised nations,
since only barbarians, from desire for revenge, from blindness and
brutality, would seek to do injury for its own sake, and to seize the
opportunity of a state of war to gratify their instincts for plunder.
This conception, let us repeat, Germany, like all other nations, has
countersigned in solemn covenants.
Nevertheless, the aims which this war is laying bare in them are contrary
to these pledges.
In fact, we see Germany deliberately killing either those whom she
could prevent from doing her any injury by keeping them as prisoners,
or even those who were non-combatants. Some have thought that the
Germans aimed, in a manner, at the annihilation of the race in nations
hostile to Germany. It would be dreadful if this were the case. As for
ourselves, we shall neither say that this has not been proved nor that it
is impossible. What is certain is that the number of outrages committed
by Germany can only be explained by a deliberate attempt at barbaric
destruction.
Beyond question they have attempted to damage the property of the enemy.
Pillage in their eyes has not been one of the more or less inevitable
concomitants of war: it has been one of its deliberate aims. Moreover,
the policy of terrorisation is a part of their general plan of action.
In their view fear is a good ally of invasion, and in order to reap all
the advantage of it they have left untried no form of violence or even of
cruelty.
Besides, we are not here concerned with policy shaped from above, by
the Government or the higher command: in the rank and file we may take
everything for granted. “Let us kill them all: there will be so many the
fewer left.” Who knows how often this monstrous thought has entered the
brain of people whose cruelty and violence is a part of their plans of
war? How often has it not been a necessity to kill, as to sack, in order
to overthrow, to reduce, to weaken an enemy nation not merely in war,
but in general, and even as regards the future in which rehabilitation
might be anticipated. But civilised nations look to treaties to prevent
the rehabilitation of the enemy. By looting and robbing industrial
establishments, the property of private individuals, the Germans showed
that their peculiar method was to try to prevent it by war itself, to
draw up a schedule of barbarism which by its very nature endangers life
itself, which includes murder as well as pillage. Thus we understand how
the Germans, both in theory and practice, have violated the most widely
accepted conventions which, in the midst of the havoc of war, limit the
right to kill either civilians or soldiers.
To begin with, the present chapter will be devoted to the complete denial
of the principles of humanity laid down in the Geneva Convention. We
reserve the right of discussion in subsequent chapters of the questions
of the treatment of prisoners, of the massacre of civilians, etc. The
violation of that part of the Convention of Geneva which bears upon the
wounded and the Red Cross is, in fact, a deliberate crime, without any
extenuating circumstances; it is inexcusable and unpardonable.
What are the terms of the Convention of Geneva? That “soldiers and
other persons officially attached to armies shall, when wounded or
sick, _be respected and taken care of_ by the belligerent in whose
power they may be, without distinction of nationality.” The latter,
therefore, must look for and collect the sick and wounded, and prevent
every act by any third party which might do them injury. These sick
and wounded will be prisoners of war, but “prisoners who must be taken
care of.” As for people attached to the Red Cross, it was declared,
and Germany and Austria-Hungary subscribed both to this and to the
preceding stipulations, that “the _personnel_ engaged exclusively in the
collection, transport and treatment of the wounded and sick, as well
as in the administration of medical units and establishments, and the
chaplains attached to armies, _shall be respected and protected under all
circumstances_; if they fall into the hands of the enemy they shall not
be treated as prisoners of war.”
PRINCIPLES OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION WHICH GERMANS HAVE VIOLATED
We have already stated in the preceding chapter how seldom the Germans
have carried out these principles, for, contrariwise, they have
deliberately aimed their artillery at establishments for the shelter
of the wounded, the sick, and the hospital services. This fact is not
the only one which shows the contempt displayed by the Germans for
the Geneva Convention. It seems that they have eagerly seized upon
every opportunity which presented itself to violate this convention in
every way. Not only have the wounded who fell into their hands not been
properly treated by them, but in many instances these wounded have been
put to death. Sometimes, before killing them, they treated themselves
to the enjoyment of making them suffer. It is scarcely credible, but it
is true, that in more than one case the killing of the wounded assumed
the form of a command issued by the officers themselves. We have said
that the Germans have also fired on ambulances. They have killed and
ill-treated Red Cross nurses, male and female, and the doctors engaged on
Red Cross work.
KILLING OF THE WOUNDED ORDERED BY OFFICERS
The German wounded are many. It followed, therefore, that the German
medical service was disinclined to encumber itself with relays of enemy
wounded. Perhaps this is also the reason why orders were given to the
soldiers to kill the wounded. General Stenger issued, on the 26th August,
an order of the day _giving instructions to make no more prisoners and
to leave no living man behind_. The authenticity of this order, the full
text of which we give in the next chapter, was confirmed by the evidence
of German prisoners.
The prisoners cross-examined, says the _Temps_, which reported the
depositions, belong to the 112th and 142nd infantry regiments. They were
put on oath and signed the report of their examination. A soldier of the
142nd deposed that, on the 26th August, about three o’clock, he was in
the van of his battalion in the forest of Thiaville when _the company
order giving instructions to kill the wounded was sent along the ranks
and repeated from man to man_.
This prisoner added that as soon as this order was passed round, ten
or twelve French wounded who were lying here and there round about the
battalion were dispatched with rifle shots.
Another prisoner in the same regiment deposed that, on the 26th August,
he saw a cavalry officer, unknown to him, _come and give the order in
question as coming from headquarters_. Immediately afterwards rifle shots
were heard coming from the head of the detachment in front of him.
A soldier of the 112th declared that he heard, on the 26th August,
_Captain Curtins, in command of the 3rd Company_, say that henceforth no
more wounded were to be made prisoners. Shortly afterwards he heard rifle
shots fired at the French wounded who happened to be lying along the
roads.
Another soldier of the 112th gave evidence that on the same day, between
four and five o’clock, _some French wounded_ who happened to be on the
sides of the road from Thiaville to Saint Benoit, _were killed by order
of the commander of the 1st battalion_.
About twenty German soldiers who were cross-examined admitted that this
order had been given, but without giving details about the manner in
which it had been carried out. Some prisoners, who did not know even in
the field about the company order of the day, declared that they were
subsequently informed of it by their comrades.
Moreover, the German soldier Karl Johannes Kaltenochner (9th company of
the regiment of Count Bülow of Tervuenwist), who deserted and took refuge
in Holland, declared in the _Telegraaf_ of Amsterdam (_Temps_ of 3rd
January, 1915) that when Turcos were made prisoners the German officers
did not take the trouble to send them to any place behind the lines, _and
gave orders to the soldiers to shoot them_. He quoted _Major Botwitz as
having given orders to kill two Turco prisoners_. It is not, then, to be
wondered at that the soldier who made this disclosure accompanied it with
the declaration “that the German soldiers have become like wild animals
and think only of killing and pillaging.”
Finally, in the hospital at Nancy two German soldiers who were under
treatment there made similar confessions. One of them, who had a wound
in the stomach, confided to _Dr. Rohmer that it had been caused by a
revolver-shot from his officer, because he declined to kill a wounded
Frenchman_. The other, who was wounded in the back by a shot fired
point-blank, declared to Dr. Weiss that, _in obedience to the order of
an officer_, a soldier had fired on him to punish him for having carried
several wounded Frenchmen into a village not far from the battlefield.
FRENCH AND BELGIAN OFFICERS KILLED BY THE GERMANS
The number of officers killed by Germans on the different battlefields to
which the war has extended is certainly greater than one would think. The
following are two attested instances—
On the 9th August, at Ormael in Belgium, the Belgian Commandant Knapen,
who was already wounded, was killed.
On the 12th August, after the battle of Haelen in Belgium, the Germans
killed, by a revolver-shot in the mouth, Commandant Van Daume, who had
been seriously wounded.
On the 22nd August, at Gommery (Belgian Luxemburg) M. Charles Deschars,
former commercial attaché of France at Berlin, was killed under the
following disgraceful circumstances. M. Deschars, an interpreter
lieutenant at the headquarters of General Trentinian, had been wounded
at the battle of Elbe, in Belgian Luxemburg, on the 22nd August. On that
day he had to be left at an ambulance in the village of Gommery. In the
evening came a German troop belonging to the 47th infantry regiment,
in command of a non-commissioned officer. The latter pretended that a
shot had been fired at his platoon. He asked for an interpreter, and M.
Ch. Deschars came down, helped by attendants. _He went up to the German
non-commissioned officer, and the latter, after exchanging some words
with him, drew a revolver and blew out his brains._
After this murder the German platoon gave itself up to all sorts of
excesses. Dr. Vaissières, who happened to be in the ambulance, was
killed. Dr. Sedillot, surgeon-major of the 1st class, was wounded. The
majority of the wounded were killed.
A similar crime took place during an engagement between French dragoons
and German light cavalry. A French lieutenant, who afterwards told the
story in the _Matin_ of the 22nd August, finding he was wounded, called
for help. A German came up and, seeing that he had to deal with an
officer, appealed to his commandant, M. de Schaffenberg, of the Trèves
light cavalry. The latter went behind the French lieutenant, took his
cavalry revolver, and at point blank shot him in the stomach. The French
officer’s orderly was spared only because Commandant de Schaffenberg
thought he was dead.
WOUNDED SOLDIERS TORTURED BEFORE BEING PUT TO DEATH
The German crime of killing enemy wounded assumes a still more dreadful
aspect when it is committed only after the victims have suffered cruel
treatment. The tortures inflicted on the wounded argue an exceptional
ferocity in those who are guilty of them, and yet such cases are not rare.
On the 16th August, at Dinant, French soldiers were found with their
heads smashed in by the butt-ends of rifles. On the 25th August, at
Hofstade in Belgium, a soldier who had been slightly wounded was also
killed by blows from the butt-end of a rifle. In a wood not far from the
road to Malines, at Tervueren, eighteen Belgian riflemen were killed by
bayonet thrusts in the head. One of the French wounded, who had been
taken again by the French troops and then left at Besançon, had been
struck on the head and sides with blows from the butt-end of a rifle
and kicked. A German soldier had dragged him along the ground. Beside
him another wounded Frenchman was dispatched with bayonet thrusts. The
Belgian quartermaster Beaudin van de Kerchove (5th lancers), who had
been wounded by two German bullets at the battle of Orsmael, on the 20th
August, was also tortured. The French sergeant Lemerre, who had been
wounded in the leg at Rembercourt by a bursting shell, was left on the
ground for eight days by the German ambulance, who had, however, seen
him. On the fourth day, on the order of an officer who, revolver in hand,
was crossing the field of battle, this non-commissioned officer was
wounded again by a rifle shot fired by a soldier.
The French Commission of Inquiry on their part quote three cases of
torture inflicted on the wounded—
“On the evening of the 25th August,” say the Commission in their report,
the Abbé Denis, Curé of Reméreville, tended Lieutenant Toussaint, who had
only left the forestry school in the previous month of July. As he lay
wounded on the field of battle, this young officer had been bayoneted by
all the Germans who had passed by him. His body was one great wound from
head to foot.
“At the Nancy hospital we saw Private Voger of the infantry regiment, who
was still bearing the marks of German barbarism. Seriously wounded in the
spinal column, in front of the forest of Champenoux, on the 24th August,
and paralysed in both legs as a result of his wound, he had remained
lying on his stomach, when a German soldier brutally turned him over with
his rifle and struck him three times with the butt on the head. Others,
who were passing near him, also struck him with the butt-ends of their
rifles and kicked him.
“Finally, one of them with a single stroke made a wound below and three
or four centimetres from each eye with the help of an instrument which
the victim could not distinguish, but which in the opinion of Dr. Weiss,
chief physician and professor of the faculty of Nancy, must have been a
pair of scissors.”
These facts appear difficult of belief. Nevertheless a confession of
similar deeds has been made by German soldiers; for example, Paul Gloede,
of the 9th battalion of Pioneers (9th corps), actually writes in his
notebook: “Mutilation of the wounded is the order of the day.”
PUBLISHED ADMISSION BY GERMANS
These acts of German troops did not always make Germans ashamed. On the
contrary, in certain cases they even thought it was a clever thing to
boast about it. For instance, a story, which had come from the German
non-commissioned officer Klemt (154th infantry regiment, 1st company),
was published in a newspaper of Jauer in Silesia on the 18th October,
1914. The paper even put as a marginal note the following phrase “_The
24th September, 1914, a day of honour for our troops._” In his pamphlet,
_German Crimes according to German Evidence_, M. Bédier has put on record
the non-commissioned officer’s story.
“We bludgeon and transfix the wounded,” says the wretch, “for we know
that these scoundrels, when we have passed by, would fire at our backs.
There lies at full length a Frenchman, face to the ground, but he is
shamming death. A kick from the foot of a stout fusilier lets him know
that we are there. Turning round, he asks for quarter, but we say to him,
‘That is how, you ⸺, your tools work,’ and we pin him to the ground.
Beside me, I hear strange crashing noises. They are blows from the
butt-end of a rifle which a soldier of the 154th regiment is vigorously
applying to a Frenchman’s bald head: very cleverly he used a French
rifle for his work, lest he should break his own. Men with exceptionally
tender hearts do the French wounded the favour of finishing them off with
a bullet, but others distribute as many cuts and thrusts as they can.
Our opponents had fought bravely: they were picked troops whom we had
in front of us: they let us come as close as thirty and even ten metres
to them: too close. Knapsacks and arms thrown in a heap prove that they
wanted to take to flight, but at sight of the ‘grey phantoms,’ terror
paralysed their limbs, and on the narrow path which they were taking
the German bullet brought them the order to ‘halt.’ At the entrance to
their hiding-place of boughs of trees they lie, groaning and asking
for quarter. But, whether they were lightly or seriously wounded, the
fusiliers spare the fatherland the expensive attentions which would have
to be given to a crowd of enemies.”
The non-commissioned officer adds that Prince Oscar of Prussia, on being
informed of the exploits of the 154th and of the regiment which with
the 154th forms a brigade, declared they were both worthy of the name
“King’s Brigade.” “When evening came,” he continued, “with a prayer of
thanks upon our lips we fell asleep in expectation of the following day.”
Then, having added by way of postscript a little bit of verse, “Return
from Battle,” he brings the whole, prose and verse, to his lieutenant,
who countersigns it, “Certified to be correct, De Niem, lieutenant and
company commander.”
GERMAN MURDER OF PEOPLE ATTACHED TO THE MEDICAL SERVICE AND THE RED CROSS
No more than the wounded were people engaged in tending or transporting
the wounded spared by the Germans.
We have said that in bombardments no distinction was made between Red
Cross establishments and the others. But even outside these cases the
Geneva Convention was so frequently violated that we are driven to attach
no credence to the excuses invented in case of bombardment.
Enemy doctors, nurses male and female, ambulance workers have been often
ill-treated, wounded and even killed by the Germans. We have noted one
case, in reporting the murder of the French lieutenant Deschars who had
been previously wounded. It is not the only one.
M. Pierre Nothomb reports several in his pamphlet, _Belgique Martyre_.
We must also remember the testimony given by Dr. Barbey (_Echo de Paris_
of the 20th January, 1915). Speaking of the cruelties committed by the
Germans at Recquignies (Nord), this doctor says—
“On the afternoon of the 6th September German soldiers came to the
ambulance; they were very much excited: two of them caught hold of me
brutally and another presented his rifle at me. I explained to them that
they were in a temporary hospital, where there were no arms, which was
true, and, moreover, all arms had been punctiliously given up by the
civilians at the beginning of the siege. The Boches searched everywhere
without finding anything. Then they went off, leading the eight
attendants and stretcher-bearers, whom, as they pretended, they needed to
bring their wounded to Boussois. The little company set out. As they were
passing before my house, which was still uninjured, the Germans, revolver
in hand, compelled attendant Jus to set fire to it. They did the same
with the mayor’s house, which was next door to mine.
“On the way back from this expedition, as the eight attendants, who all
the time had been surrounded by Boches, were going along the railway-line
from Paris to Cologne, the leader of the detachment suddenly caused a
halt: the French soldiers were lined along the bank: they were ordered to
raise their arms and they obeyed.
“‘Shoot them,’ commanded the leader. A volley rang out. The eight men
fell. Without troubling further about them the bandits went off at once,
shouting, for they were drunk… Fortunately, so drunk, in fact, that their
bullets had nearly all missed. Only four of our attendants were wounded:
Private Hacrien; Private Caudren, who had his leg broken; a private who
was a native of Perenchies, and who had a bullet through his thigh, and a
fourth private who sustained a not very serious wound on the knee. When
the Boches were gone the four attendants, who were unhurt and who had
been shamming death, lifted up their comrades and brought them to the
ambulance.
“On the following day all the wounded under treatment in this ambulance
were brought, without food, to Beaumont in Belgium, where a kindly
major had them collected in a convent which had been transformed into a
hospital. There I left them, as I had been authorised to go back alone to
France.
“I set out on foot, without a copper, on an empty stomach. On the way, I
met with a German patrol; without parley, the savages belaboured me with
the butt-ends of their rifles and left me for dead, having just stripped
me of all I had left—namely, my clothes.”
M. Herriot, Mayor of Lyon, on his part, in a letter to a French minister,
declares that “he knows ten French doctors whose ambulances had been
bombarded and their attendants killed,” and that “_the Chief Rabbi of
Lyon was killed as he was endeavouring to get the wounded out through the
window of an ambulance which had been set on fire by shells_.”
On the other hand, the French Commission of Inquiry states in its report
that, on the 25th August, at Einvaux some Germans had opened fire at 300
metres on Dr. Millet, surgeon-major of the colonial regiment, just when,
with the help of two bearers, he was dressing the wounds of a man who was
lying on a stretcher. As his left side was turned to them they saw his
brassard perfectly. Besides, they could not have been mistaken about the
kind of job on which the three men were engaged.
“At Xivry-Circourt,” writes M. Bonne, senior curé of Étain, in a report
which he drew up, “the Germans seized an ambulance and a convoy of
wounded, only the first carriage of which succeeded in escaping, in a
hail of bullets.”
In a report on the outrages and crimes committed by the Germans at Arras,
M. Briens, prefect of the Department of Pas de Calais, remarks: “The most
painful feelings have been roused by the taking away of all the wounded
under treatment at the hospitals whom it was possible to carry… The
surgeon-majors of the Medical Service and the Red Cross attendants were
attached to this convoy of prisoners.”
Finally, before Lunéville, a French Red Cross nurse, Mme. Prudennec,
while on the look-out for wounded on the battlefields, tended a _German
officer who, to show his gratitude, gave her a sabre thrust in return_.
The nurse was injured in the leg, and for five days remained wounded in
the hands of the Prussians. But when the time came for them to retreat
the Germans left behind the nurse (who was unable to walk), and so it
came to pass that she was saved by French soldiers.