GERMANY'S LATEST CRIME

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 5 October 1917, Page 3

GERMANY'S LATEST CRIME

ATTACKS ON HOSPITALS.

[From Cables to Australian Press.]

fteuter's correspondent at Paris writes: -'* Infuriated by their defeats at Verdun, the Germans have committed a fresh and Inexcusable crime. German aeroplanes, on the night of August 21, set fire, by means of incendiary bombs, to three French hospitals full of wounded, and then turned their machine guns on the medical men who were rescuing the wounded from the blazing buildings. The victims include seven medical men lulled and 20 injured, and seven wounded killed and 13 injured. The wotraded were killed in their beds. A Red Cross, nurse and a male nurse were killed at the bedsides of the wounded. There was no panic. Wounded men who were able to walk assisted in the rescue of their comrades, while the entire staff endeavored to extinguish the flames. Although the red crosses on the .roofs of the buildings could be very plainly seen in the glare of the conflagration, the Germans returned for the third time and bombarded the buildings." AWFUL SCENES TN" WARDS.

Mr Beach Thomas ('Daily Mail'), describing the German attacks on hospitals, states that a great English surgeon was visiting one hospital with American surgeons. They heard the hum of aeroplanes, and the company went out and saw a big plane flying straight for the hospital. They retreated to cover. A succession of crashes followed. The hospital echoed with the guttural shouts and screams of the German patients. The whole place was plunged in darkness. A. flash-lamp revealed a horrible scene. Three 1001b bombs had made huge craters, suggesting that the raider was one of the newest air giants. The first bomb struck a wardful of Germans, nine of whom were heaped in every attitude in a horrible, fantastic death. It was hard work for the doctors to unravel the human material from the debris and to separate the wounded from the dead. In all their experience, .they said, they had not witnessed" such a horrible scene. Other nurses and doctors came to their help. Another ward suffered as severely as that in which the Germans were. Three other hospitals were attacked the same nischt. "KAMERAD! KAMERAD!" Mr Pirrie Robinson ('The TimesV correspondent) made the charge dispassionately and earnestly that the Germans deliberately selected allied hospitals and clearing stations for aerial attacks. They bombed three clearing stations in succescession. Three women nurses were wounded in the first, one doctor was killed and three wounded in the second, and nine Germans were wounded in their beds in the third.

On the night of August 21 they similarly attacked other stations and a hospital where German wounded were being treated. They also contained a large number of British, who remained silent and self-controlled, while the Germans were noisy and panic-stricken. A German who was being tended by a nurse as a bomb fell held tip his hands in terror, and cried piteously : " Kamerad ! Kamerad !" The bombardment of this French hospital killed 22 and wounded 60, mostly hospital orderlies. Some of the wounijed were soldiers. The hospital contained 180 Germans, under the care of the orderlies. The latter were killed, and some of the Germans hnrt.

Several aeroplanes participated in the attack. One, which had dropped its bombs, continued to hover, after firing the hospital. The airmen descended low!" and deliberately used machine guns on the inmates. As the flames brightly illnminated the vicinity, it is impossible to plead the darkness as an excuse. The outrage was deliberate and conscious.