6

At the town of Coulommiers on September 6 a German soldier came to the door of a small house where a woman and her husband were sitting with two children, trying to hide their fear of this invasion of German troops.  It was half-past nine in the evening and almost dark, except for a glow in the sky.  The soldier was like a shadow on the threshold until he came in, and they saw a queer light in his eyes.  He was very courteous, though rather gruff in his speech.  He asked the husband to go outside in the street to find one of his comrades.  The man, afraid to refuse, left the room on this errand, but before he had gone far heard piercing cries.  It was his wife’s voice, screaming in terror.  He rushed back again and saw the German soldier struggling with his wife.  Hearing her husband’s shout of rage, the soldier turned, seized his rifle, and clubbed the man into an adjoining room, where he stayed with the two little children who had fled there, trying to soothe them in their fright and listening, with madness in his brain, to his wife’s agony through the open door a yard away.  The husband was a coward, it seems.  But supposing he had flung himself upon the soldier and strangled him, or cut his throat?  We know what would have happened in the Village of Coulommiers.

7

On September 7 ten German horsemen rode into the farm of Lamermont, in the commune of Lisle-en-Barrois.  They were in good humour, and having drunk plenty of fresh milk, left the farmhouse in a friendly way.  Shortly after their departure, when Farmer Elly and his friend, the sieur Javelot, breathed more easily and thanked God because the danger had passed, some rifle-shots rang out.  Somewhere or other a dreadful thing was happening.  A new danger came to the farm at Lamermont, with thirty men of a different patrol, who did not ask for milk but blood.  They accused the farm people of having killed a German soldier, and in spite of the protests of the two men, who had been sitting quietly in the kitchen, they were shot in the yard.

8

At Triaucourt the Germans were irritated by the behaviour of a young girl named Mlle. Helene Proces, who was bold enough to lodge a complaint to one of their officers about a soldier who had tried to make love to her in the German way.  It was a fine thing if German soldiers were to be punished for a little sport like that in time of war!  “Burn them out!” said one of the men.  On a cold autumn night a bonfire would warm things up a little. ...  It was the house of M. Jules Gaude which started the bonfire.  It blazed so quickly after the torch had touched his thatch that he had to leap through the flames to save himself, and as he ran the soldiers shot him dead.  When the houses were burning the Germans had a great game shooting at the people who rushed about the streets.  A boy of seventeen, named George Lecourtier, was killed as he thrust his way through the flames.  A gentleman named Alfred