MINERS BURIED ALIVE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 128, 23 October 1914, Page 6

MINERS BURIED ALIVE.

MORE GERMAN OUTRAGES. FIRING ON THE WOUNDED. THE TURCO'S TROPHY. Trains reached Paris with thousands of Belgian refugees on board, writes the J Paris correspondent of tho London Daily ■'■ Telegraph. They seemed stupefied, with j the blind terror of their midnight flight still in their pale faces and blank looks. Questioned, most of them could only | repeat as if they hardly took in the ■ meaning of what was said to them: "Je ne sais pas. Je ne sais pas." [ A miner's wife, a vigorous woman in the prime of, life, who had escaped from her village with her baby in her arms was more loquacious. "I come from Frameries," she said, "a village about five miles from Moiis. Before I made up my mind to leave my little house I saw many terrible scenes. The. Germans 1 reached tflie village ion Sunday. The first thing they did was to elosc'all the mouths of.the pits, in which a number of miners-were still working. The unhappy men must have been buried alivi Most of the people of tho village took refugo in their cellars. The soldiers searched the cellars,- stabbed them with their lances, and cut them down with' their swords. They are brutal savages."

"A TERRIBLE NIGHT."

A Monsieur Bastion, who lives at Versailles, has returned from a visit to Mars La Tour, to which he went on learning of tho bombardment, to get news ol relatives of his who lived, there. lie ; heard terrible stories .of the brutality 1 of the Germans from the Mayor Oi the village and from a number of inhabitants who had escaped. An old woman of Champs, a small commune near Mars La Tour, told him the following story of the coming of the Germans: —"They reached Champs at nightfall, drove all the inhabitants out of their houses, and shut them up in a shed. When everybody was inside, an ollicer entered, and holding up his arm above our heads, said; *I swear by the Almighty that if the French attack us this night you will all be shot, men, women and children. Do you understand I have sworn an oath V "We replied, 'Yes, sir.' Then the officer went out, closed the door of the shed, and locked it. The whole night .through no one closed an eye. Every second we feared to hear the sound cf * shot, which would have meant death for all of us."

v, r;.'ig the hours of this'terrible vigil in ~iu shed the Germans set lire to. a number oi houses in the village. Those that they left unburned they sacked from roof to cellar.

In a letter from the front, .published by the Humanitc, a soldier writes:— "Yesterday I s aw a very touching sight. A cart was bringing back the wounded, both Trench and 'Prussians, and I saw a Prussian soldier terribly wounded in the head so that lie could not hold it upright for pain; He was being supported by a French soldier, also wounded, who had placed his arm round the Prussian's neck to support him. It was a pitiful si«ht, *nd everybody was deeply touched" by it." J THE FRENCH WOUNDED. Many trains of French wounded pass cUily through the station of Versailles. Tho soldiers, most of whom are wounded in the legs or the feet, are in splendid spirits, and their only anxiety is to be pronounced cured and get hack to the front again, As the trains draw up to the platforms, which are strictly guarded from the public, faces a little drawn ami pallid, but cheerful and smiling in (spite of it all, appear at the windows, and there is a sound of robust sin"ihe which proves very thai wherever the Prussian, bullets may neve lodged it is not in the soldiers' lungs. Many of the carriages are fcstooncd°jn the flowers plucked, some of tfieni, from Alsatian soil. Several of the more vigorous of the wounded even brandish trophies of war-spiked Prussian helmets captured from Prussian Lancers. They all insist on the superiority of the French fire over the Ucrman, both the small arm and artillery fire. They are especially enthusiastic over the merits of the French 75. In one of the trains that passed \va s a wounded Tureo "'ho brandished with ferocious i Ule a Mood-Stained Prussian helmet, if fee Turco could have had his way tin, V.lmci, would not have been, as it'was, empi-v. H would have contained n "luistii'-r trophy. The Turco had some justification for his ferocity.

CEK.MAN DECAPITATED.

Ihis ig tI H . story of the capture of the iicln.ct. Wounded in tUe ]iKlul heroic bayonet charge against the Prussian Guard, the Tuico leli. As he was strug-gJuig to hid knees he saw a German sohuer advancing to despatch him wall a bayonet, ltut the Turco, though he had lost his rille, still iiud the lonponiard which ,i<b. B native troops earnat their side He leapt at the toman's" tiiroat, stabbed him, and, in the white heat of his rage, struck oil his head. All tlic wounded assert that the Germans .systematically ire on tlie convova o! wounded. They make the lied OroVs Uag their special mark. They add that during the night the Germans (ire shells at haphazard on the main roads, hopin* to kill, or at least to strike with panic", Uie civmau population. Their stories confirm the report that the only fault I that can bo attributed to the French ti-o o p 3 Is t i leir recklessness under tiro | Xhe lr officers can hardly hold them back, but the wounded promise to be "sa"cs" next time—and all hope there will be a next time, and very soon, for them. GEXERAL'B SON KILLED. In the list of those killed in action during the recent lighting appears the name of Xavier de Castelnau, aged ;J0 sou of General Castelnau, chief of the General Staff. It is to this, doubtless, that M. Clemenccau referred in his article, in which 'ho renewed his plea for light.',' "Yesterday," Jie wrote, -"in a glorious combat a French general' saw his son fall at his side, and, without a moment's weakening, continued to direct the fight. Why were we not told? It is acts that we look for, not words, and such noble acts as these are made for our encouragement and example."