Читать книгу German Atrocities: An Official Investigation - J. H. Morgan - Страница 9

Like a defendant who has no case, the German Government attempt to plead generally in default of being able to plead specifically. They therefore put forward a sweeping generalisation to the effect that, quite apart from the question whether the Belgians did or did not comply with the formal requirements of the Hague Convention, they violated all the usages of war by “unheard of” atrocities. “Finally it is proved beyond all doubt that German wounded were robbed and killed by the Belgian population, and indeed were subjected to horrible mutilation, and that even women and young girls took part in these shameful actions. In this way the eyes of German wounded were torn out, their ears, nose, fingers and sexual organs cut off, or their body cut open.”18 Let us consider the depositions with which this accusation is supported.

(1) Hugo Lagershausen, of the 1st Ersatz Company of the Reserve, his attention having been drawn to the significance of the oath, declares:

“I lost the other men of the patrol. About noon on August 6th, I came to a dressing station, which was set up on a farm near the village of Chenée. In the house I found about fifteen severely wounded German soldiers, of whom four or five had been horribly mutilated; both their eyes had been gouged out, and some had had several fingers cut off. Their wounds were relatively fresh although the blood was already somewhat coagulated. The men were still living and were groaning. It was not possible for me to help them, as I had already ascertained by questioning other wounded men lying in that house, there was no doctor in the place. I also found in the house six or seven Belgian civilians, four of whom were women; these gave drinks to the wounded; the men were entirely passive. I saw no weapons on them, and I cannot say whether they had blood on their hands, because they put them in their pockets.”19

It is highly probably, is it not? Musketeer Lagershausen falls among ghouls who hastily put their incriminating hands in their pockets and allow him who was “entirely alone” and powerless to walk off and inform against them. Truly they must have been some of the mildest-mannered men who ever cut a throat.

(2) Musketeer Paul Blankenberg, of Infantry Regiment No. 165, declares:

“We were on the march in closed column and passing through a Belgian village west of Herve. In the village some German wounded were lying and I recognised some Jäger of the Jäger Battalion, No. 4. Suddenly the column marching through was fired upon from the houses, and accordingly the order was given that all civilians should be removed from the houses and driven together to one point. While this was being done I noticed that girls of eight to ten years old, armed with sharp instruments, busied themselves with the German wounded. Later, I ascertained that the ear lobes and upper parts of the ears of the most seriously injured of the wounded had been cut off.”20

That is to say, a whole column of German troops is on the march in close formation, they round up the civilians and while they are doing this some little girls continue, in presence of this overwhelming force, to “busy themselves” by cutting up their comrades with the contents of their mothers’ work-box.

(3) Landwehrman Alwin Chaton, of the 5th Company of the Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 78, declared:

“In the course of the street fighting in Charleroi, as we fought our way through the High Street and had reached a side street leading off the High Street, I saw, when I had reached the crossing and shot into the side street, a German dragoon lying in the street about fifty or sixty paces in front of me. Three civilians were near him, of whom one was bending over the soldier, who still kicked with his legs. I shot among them and hit the last of the civilians; the others fled. When I approached I saw that the shot civilian had a long knife, covered with blood, in his hand. The right eye of the German dragoon was gouged out.”21

The witness adds that “much smoke was rising from the body of the dragoon,” This is to say that a general engagement, one of the hardest fought during the war, is going on in the middle of a town and three civilians are discovered within fifty or sixty paces, leisurely carving up a German dragoon! Is it credible?

(4) My fourth example is too long to quote, but in substance it is this. Reservist G. Gustav Voigt deposes that on August 6th he and seven comrades suddenly saw five Belgian soldiers, fully armed, holding up their arms to surrender. When they went up to them they discovered that the Belgians had a German hussar strung up and freshly mutilated, and that they had two other hussars upon whom they were about to perform similar operations.22 Without firing a shot, these men, caught red-handed under circumstances which made their own death inevitable, surrender immediately.

Now I ask any unbiased reader whether these depositions, in each case uncorroborated, are such as to carry conviction to any reasonable man? Yet the whole of the “proofs” adduced as to Belgian atrocities are of this character.