KILLING THE WOUNDED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 230, 8 March 1915, Page 5

KILLING THE WOUNDED.

CHARGES AGAINST THE GERMANS. The Commission appointed by tlie ' Belgian Government to inquire into the; German "violation of the rules of international law and tlie laws and cub- v' toms of war" during the German inva- ?■ sion of Belgium break new ground in their seventh report, which has now • V been 'published. The previous reports ' chiefly dealt with the wanton destruc- > tioa of towns and villages, the murder : i« or civilians, outrages on women, and brutalities -inflicted on men, women and ! >' children. The seventh, report (says tho : ji correspondent of the Melbourne Age) is divided into five sections, dealing with. : (1) The use of explosivo or expanding bullets; (2) the maltreatment of pris- , 3- 1 oners and wounded; (3) the maltreatment of hospital staffs and the misuse of the, Red Cross; (4) the maltreatment of civilians; (5) the bombardment of open and undefended places. Tho report includes only those eases in which 7 sworn testimony in substantiation of ■ ' the crimes charged against the Germans was obtained. Cases which were not substantiated to the satisfaction of 1 i the Commission were 1 rejected, but it must not be supposed that all the German atrocities in Belgium have been recorded. The cases .which have Eeeh . substantiated are regarded merely as typical of scores of others for which \ : no evidence is obtainable at present Owing to the fact tliaflielgiuin is still ; in the hands of the German troops, and the fear 6f the Belgian people of giving their oppressors an excuse for committing further'outrages, tho difficulties in the wav of obtaining evidence, have been considerable. J;

The following instances of the mur- i dcr or brutal treatment of captured Belgian soldiers are recftrded: — Quarter-mastef'Baudoin Van ■ ;V' chove,' 3rd Lancers., deposed that after lie liad been wounded by two German bullets at the combat of Orsmael ' i 1 August), the Germans maltreated him in spite of his injuries. One of them _ < took liia carbine from liis band, whirled it round' nis bead and inflicted a vio- •«? lent blow on his ribs with it. A second German seeing that he was still 1 alive, fired at him from only a distance of 6ft ,• inflicting a grazing wound on bis abdomen. A eyelist-rifleman who , fell into the hands of the Germans in the same combat, was found hanged • in a hedge. We have several witnesses i to this fact among them .being the priest of the village, who took charge of the burying of the corpse. On the 16th August, French soldiers, wounded on the previous night at the :■ , * battle of D'nant, were found with their ' ' skulls battered in by blows with clubbed rifles. On 23rd August, at Narnur German soldiers moved their own soldiers from the private hospital, of Dr Br!-, boma,'which was'used as a dressing V fltatio, and killed two Belgian- and two French wounded -men" who had been tended there. They then set the pital on fire. On August 20. rear M*> 1 - ines, a Belgian soldier left ifliglitlv wounded was finished off by blows from tlie butts of viffes, which smashed in his skull. Twenty-two soldiers of the s&me corps were found dead in a little wood lying to the right of the rloail from Malincs to Turnouze, near TSa-ir-bcck. Fifteen of them had been killed by bayonet thrusts in the face. They had bullet wounds, but these were not dangerous—only sufficient to prevent them from escaping. But the fnur re- ' , - . maining Belgians, who had fatal bullet wounds, bore no traces of t.h.» bayonet.

On loth August, at the combat in the neighborhood of Sempst, the soldier Lootens. of the 24th Line, who had been ordered to assist the ambulance staff in carrying off the wounded, fpund \ two Belgian corpses bound to a tree. ' These soldiers were still wearing their full equipment. Their coats were torn open, and it was clear that they had been bayoneted in the stomach. Their entrails were protruding from tin wounds.

The colonel commanding the 2nd , ./■ Chasseurs at Cheval states in his report 17th September, that T™wt Richard Baechelandt, of his regiment, . is entered as having been killed by .the Germans during a reconnaisance carried out on the 6th September. Evidence allowed that he had been found with ■ his hands lashed together with a leather strap. Ho had evidently been first wounded and then captured, then finished off with a bayonet thrust in tho stomach.

The section of the report ' dealing with the maltreatment of hospital Btaffs ; and the misuse of the Red Cross shows ' • that the Germans repeatedly firqd on Belgian Red Cross men when the latter were attending to tiie wounded, and that buildings used as temporary hospitals were often bombarded, although they flew the Red Cross flag. The Germans captured Belgian military surgeons and sent them as prisoners to ~■* Germany, instead of releasing ther.\ according to the terms of the Geneva Convention, and allowing them to carry of their work among the wounded. Cases are recorded in which the Germans flew the Red Cross flags on buildings occupied by their troops. s i'n the section dealing with the mal-. treatment "of civilians there are many instances in, which the Germans coropell- ■ ed Gelgian non-combatants to dig trenches for them, and placed men, women, and children at the head of attacking columns as they advanced against Belgian troops. The evidence with' to the expanding bullets 'does not pretend to show that ammunition of the kind has been issued to the , German troops on an extensive scale. In fact, the indications are that this-ammuni-tion was obtained in some unauthorised way by the persons who used it. A-.- . cusations regarding the use of expanding bullets have been made against every one of the combatant nations, but there has been no satisfactory evidence of the combatants iave issued such ammunition to the troops for general use. The Belgian report refers to a German lieutenant named Von Hadcln, who was captured at Ninove on 26tli September, and was found to be in possession of cartridges containing ~ expanding bullets, which, acocrding to an expert armorer, were "made expan-,, sivc in the manufacture," and not subsenqueiitly converted into dum-dum bullets by tiie use of a file or knife. This officer threw away his revolver before lie was captured, a fact which seems te indicate that the weapon and the. , ammunition were supplied by hijnself, and were not of the types issued to the • German officers as part of their equip- : 'nient. Newly-commissioned British officers sent to the front have found it difficult to obtain the army service revolver, owing to tho shortage of sup- ! ])lies, and si story is current regarding . the fate of a British officer who took with him an ordinary Colt's revolver. He was captured by the as the ammunition flred by his revolver consisted of ordinary cartridges, in which the bullets were soft-nosed, tha ' Germans declared that they were ex> 1 (landing bullets, and promptly hanged ' him.