It takes three balls to kill him.
Another hostage, a little farther on, who had also fallen was beaten to
death before the eyes of the others.
The following day, after having suffered every kind of insult and
privation, the wretched remnant of the civilian prisoners reached
Soissons, and were dispatched to Germany, bound for the concentration
camp at Erfurt.
Eight of them, poor souls! reached Germany, where two of them died. At
last, in January 1915, four of them were returned to France through
Switzerland. They reached Schaffhausen with a number of other
_rapatries,_ in early February, to find there the boundless pity with
which the Swiss know so well how to surround the frail and tortured
sufferers of this war. In a few weeks more, they were again at home,
among the old farms and woods of the Ile-de-France. "They are now in
peace," says the Meaux Librarian--"among those who love them, and whose
affection tries, day by day, to soften for them the cruel memory of
their Calvary and their exile."
A monument to the memory of the murdered hostages is to be erected in
the village market-place, and a _plaque_ has been let into the wall of
the farm where the old men and the women passed their first night
of agony.
Pages:
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196