They included many relatives of a witness
whose deposition will be found in the appendix. This witness asked a
German officer why her husband had been shot, and he told her that it
was because two of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at
the Germans. As a matter of fact one of her sons was at that time in
Liege and the other in Brussels. It is stated that, besides the ninety
corpses referred to above, sixty corpses of civilians were recovered
from a hole in the brewery yard and that forty-eight bodies of women and
children were found in a garden. The town was systematically set on fire
by hand grenades.
Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one of whose legs was broken
and the other injured by a bayonet.
We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave
any provocation, or that any other defense can be put forward to
justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.
As regards this town and the advance of the German Army from Dinant to
Rethel on the Aisne, a graphic account is given in the diary of a Saxon
officer.[1] This diary confirms what is clear from the evidence as a
whole, both as regards these and other districts, that civilians were
constantly taken as prisoners, often dragged from their homes, and shot
under the direction of the authorities without any charge being made
against them.
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