One witness
describes how she saw a Belgian boy of fifteen shot on the village
green at Tamines, and a day or two later on the same green a little girl
and her two brothers, (name given,) who were looking at the German
soldiers, were killed before her eyes for no apparent reason.
The principal massacre at Tamines took place about Aug. 28. A witness
describes how he saw the public square littered with corpses, and after
a search found those of his wife and child, a little girl of seven.
Another witness, who lived near Tamines, went there on Aug. 27, and
says: "It is absolutely destroyed and a mass of ruins."
At Morlanwelz, about this time, the British Army, together with some
French cavalry, were compelled to retire before the German troops. The
latter took the Burgomaster and his man servant prisoner and shot them
both in front of the Hotel de Ville at Peronne, (Belgium,) where the
bodies were left in the street for forty-eight hours. They burned the
Hotel de Ville and sixty-two houses. The usual accusation of firing by
civilians was made. It is strenuously denied by the witness, who
declares that three or four days before the arrival of the Germans,
circulars had been distributed to every house and placards had been
posted in the town ordering the deposit of all firearms at the Hotel de
Ville and that this order had been complied with.
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