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Alcoholism: Atrocity.

Case 95. (Kastan, January, 1916.)

September 15, 1914, a German soldier was missed. He had said that he wanted to get to the enemy quickly, and that he was going to march alone against the Russians. A shot was fired that night by this soldier, on the ground that he had been insulted by a civilian, although no civilian was present.

September 21, a farmer in a wagon reached a farm, where he found the soldier aiming at a woman. He fired, wounded the woman severely, and jumped on the farmer’s wagon and rode off with him. It seems that the soldier had come to the farm at noontime and accused the woman of treachery, ordering her to come with her husband to a certain farmhouse, where she should be placed against the wall and be shot. The soldier had shot her and wounded her husband also. According to the woman, the idea was to take revenge because she had denounced certain persons as spies.

He was arrested during the night, and told how he had left his troop because he could not get at the enemy. He had been informed that there were spies who ought to be shot; there had been talk in a certain inn about it. He did not know he had wounded the husband, and he only wanted to give that dangerous woman a piece of his mind.

After wounding the woman, he had given himself no further thought about her, but had gone to partake of the holy sacrament at the pastor’s. He then had drunk another glass of beer and gone to bed. He was, in fact, still drunk at the time of arrest. He had not been aware that he would be punished for the crime of going alone against the Russians.

Some days later, he wrote that he did not intend to kill the woman, that he had been drunk at the time and was always a bad man when drunk; that he had other times when he absented himself from home for days when drunk. He had had, he said, a number of attacks of delirium, in which he had seen animals. At one time, he had fallen on his head. On the day in question, he had drunk 1½ litres of liquor. He was remorseful for his deed.