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Remarks upon an atrocity.

Case 94. (Kastan, January, 1916.)

April 15, 1915, a German soldier went with three comrades to a farm, to select a sheep for slaughter; they were obliged to go to three farms. The man carried a revolver and cartridges in his pocket. He threatened the farmer that he met with this revolver, and desired to rape the farmer’s daughter. He was very drunk, and said to the non-commissioned officer who was called in at the time, “You have served only a year longer than I have.” He staggered, struck violently with his hand at the sergeant, and gave insolent replies.

He had already choked the peasant’s daughter, scratched her face, and bitten her fingers, hand and arm. She could not run away as she was lame. The soldier held the revolver to her face and shot it off several times, offered sex assault, scratched her feet with his spurs, and tried to twist her neck. The non-commissioned officer threatened to shoot him, and he then became still. He said to the first-lieutenant before whom he was taken, that he would do anything but allow himself to be beaten, and at this moment moved his arms about in the air, and bloody foam came from his mouth. The first-lieutenant previously had always thought him to be normal except for a strange flicker and unrest of the eyes. There was a history that he had already once attacked a servant girl. The man had amnesia for the affair, only remembering how the non-commissioned officer had come on a white horse. He remembered nothing about the peasant and the girl. He said that he had been given to earache on the right side in winter. There was a history of his having fallen from a tree in childhood, becoming unconscious. He had been a sufficiently good scholar up to the second class in school. He had been an excellent soldier.