Acts committed in the violation of the laws of war and affecting
combatants, murder of wounded or prisoners, stratagems forbidden by
international conventions, attacks on doctors and stretcher bearers,
have been innumerable in all the places in which there has been
fighting. We have not been able to verify the majority of them because
the witnesses are for the most part soldiers, who are obliged to move
from place to place continually. Besides, these acts have been set
forth in reports addressed by corps leaders to the military
authorities, who may add them to the documents of our inquiry if they
think fit to do so. Many are also attested by evidence collected by
magistrates in hospitals, and we are engaged at this moment in
analyzing them with a view to drawing up a supplementary report. A
certain number, however, have been laid before us in the course of our
investigation.
At Bar-le-Duc M. Ferry, the head surgeon, gave us a report of
depositions made to him in the course of his duties. Sergt. Lemerre of
the --th Infantry Regiment told him that on the 6th of September, when
he was wounded in the leg at Rembercourt by a fragment of a shell, he
had been left on the battlefield eight days by the German Red Cross
people although they knew quite well that he was there. On the fourth
day this non-commissioned officer received a further wound by a
soldier, who fired at him on the order of an officer who was going
over the scene of action with his revolver in his hand. Moreover, he
repeatedly saw near him German stretcher bearers firing on our
wounded.
The soldier Dreyfus of the --th Infantry Regiment related the
following story to Dr. Ferry:
"On the 10th of September at Somaine, as he was leaving the
battlefield, wounded, he met three Germans. He told them in German
that he had just been wounded, but these men answered that this was no
reason why he should not receive another bullet, and they thereupon
shot him point blank in the eye."
At Vaubecourt an infantry sergeant and two soldiers were shot by the
enemy. They alleged that one of the latter was found on the church
tower in the village, from which he would have been able to exchange
signals with our troops.
On the 22d of August a detachment of Germans arrived in the vicinity
of Bouvillers in the Department of Meurthe-et-Moselle at the farm of
La Petite Rochelle, where the owner, M. Houillon, had lodged some
French wounded soldiers. The officer in command ordered four of his
men to go and finish off nine wounded who were lying in the barn. Each
one was shot in the ear. Mme. Houillon begged mercy for them, and the
officer, placing the barrel of his revolver to her breast, told her to
be silent.
On the 25th of August the Abbé Denis, curé of Réméréville, tended in
the evening Lieut. Toussaint, who last July headed the list of
candidates who left the School of Forestry. As he fell wounded on the
battlefield this young officer was struck with bayonets by all the
Germans who passed near him. His body was covered with wounds from
head to foot.
At the hospital at Nancy we saw the soldier Voyer of the --th Infantry
Regiment, who still bore traces of German barbarity, having been badly
wounded in the backbone outside the Forest of Champenoux on the 24th
of August, and paralyzed in both legs as the result of his wound. He
was lying on his face when a German soldier turned him over brutally
with his gun and hit him three times on the head with the butt of his
rifle. Other soldiers passing by kicked him and hit him also with the
butts of their guns. Finally one of them with a single blow caused a
wound of about three or four centimeters under each eye with what Dr.
Weiss, head doctor and Professor of Faculty at Nancy, thinks must have
been a pair of scissors.
A hussar who was treated by the same doctor relates that, having
fractured his leg falling off his horse, and being unable to extricate
himself, he was assaulted by Uhlans, who stole his watch and chain
after having taken his carbine and shot him in the eye with it.
Seven French soldiers, also treated by Dr. Weiss, told him that they
had seen the enemy finish off the wounded on the battlefield. As they
had feigned death to escape massacre, the Germans belabored them with
the butts of their guns to see if they were still alive.
In the same hospital a German soldier wounded in the stomach told Dr.
Rohmer that his wound had been caused by a revolver shot fired by his
own officer because he had refused to finish off a French wounded
soldier. Again, another German, wounded in the back, the result of a
shot fired point-blank, told Dr. Weiss that a soldier had fired at him
by order of an officer to punish him for having carried into a village
near the battlefield several French wounded soldiers.
On the 25th of August, at Einvaux, the Germans fired at a distance of
300 yards at Dr. Millet, army doctor, belonging to the --th Colonial
Regiment, just as, together with two stretcher bearers, he was
attending to a man lying on a stretcher. As his left side was turned
toward them, the enemy could perfectly see his brassard. And,
furthermore, they could not mistake the nature of the work upon which
these three men were engaged.
On the same day Capt. Perraud of the same regiment, having noticed
that the soldiers of a section of men upon whom his mitrailleuses were
firing were wearing red trousers, ordered the firing to cease.
Immediately this section fired on him and on his men. They were
Germans in disguise.
Believe us, &c.,
G. PAYELLE, President.
ARMAND MOLLARD.
G. MARINGER.
PAILLOT, Rapporteur.
Paris, Dec. 17, 1914.