The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1918-04-19

cipally of the statements of British
| officers and soldiers who took part
in the retreat after the battle OF
Mons and in the subsequent advance,
following the Germans from Marine.
The area covered is relatively small.
and it is from French reports that
any complete account of what &C.
Cured in the invaded districts in
France as a whole must be obtained.
Naturally, soldiers in a foreign
country, with which they were un-
acquainted, cannot be expected al
ways to give accurately the names
of villages thru which they passed
on their marches, but this does not
prevent their evidence from being
definite as to what they actually saw
in the farms and houses where the
German troops had recently been.
Many shocking outrages are record
ed. Three examples may here suffice; ;
others are given in the appendix. A
Sergeant who had been thru the re-
treat from Mons and then taken part
in the advance from the Marine, and
who had been engaged in driving out
some German troops from a village,
states that his troop halted outside
bakery just inside the village. 1t
was a private house where baking
was done, mot like our bakeries
here" Two or three women were
standing at the door. The women
motioned them to come into the
house, as did also three civilian
Frenchmen who were there. They
took them into a garden at the back
of the house. At the end of the
garden was the bakery. They saw
two old men between so and 70
years of age and one old woman ly-
ing close to each other in the garden.
All three had the scaips cut right
thru and the brains were hanging
out. They were still bleeding. APP
parently they had only just been
killed. The three French civilians
belonged to this same house. One
of them spoke few words of Eng
lish. He gave them to understand
that these three had been killed by
the Germans because they had re-
fused to bake bread for them.
Another witness states that two
German soldiers took hold of young
civilian named D. and bound his
hands behind his back, and struck
him in the face with their fists.
They then tied his hands in front
and fastened the cord to the tail of
the horse. The horse dragged him
for about fifty yards, and then the
Germans loosened his hands and left
him The whole of his face was
cut and torn, and his arms and legs
were bruised. On the following day
one of his sisters, whose husband was
a soldier, came to their house with
her four children. His brother, who
was also married and who lived in
village near Velenciennes, went to
fetch the bread for his sister. On
the way back to their house he met
q patrol of Uhlans, who took him to
the market place at Valenciennes,
and then shot him. About twelve
other civilians were also shot in the
market place. The Uhlans then
burned nineteen houses in the vii
lage, and afterwcrd burned the
corpses of the civilians, including
that of his brother. His father and
his uncle afterward went to see the
dead body of his brother, but the
German soldiers refused to allow
them to pass.
A lance corporal in the Rifles, who
was on patrol duty with five privates
during the retirement of the Ger
mans after the Marine, states that
they entered a house in a small viii
lage and took ten Uhlans prisoners,
and then searched the house and
found two women and two children.
One was dead, but the body not yet
cold. The left arm had been cut of
just below the elbow. The floor was
cnyerad with hIond Tho wonan,a