FIENDIST ACT OF A HUN.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 January 1919, Page 3

FIENDIST ACT OF A HUN.

LADY'S BEJEWELLED HAND FOUND IN POCKET. Ballarat, Dee. 3. A Ballarat soldier, who has just returned from Franca, where lie had been on active service for nearly three years, lias made a gruesome statement regarding the fiendish acts and brutalities generally of the Germans on the battlefields. On one occasion a party from his battalion had a closo encounter at Poziores, with the enemy. Several Germans wero killed, while others Were wounded or taken prisoner. When the prisoners had been marched in3idc the lines of the Allies a peculiar looking object was observed protruding from the pocket of one of the Germans. The object proved to be the bejewelled hand of a lady who had been murdered and sobbed by the Germans in one of the villages in the neighbourhood of the bp-ttle-field. On two of the fingers were very valuable diamond rings, while on the index finger was a costly sapphire. The hand had been torn off a few inches above the wrist, and as there v?aa apparently some difficulty in removing the rings, the Hun thrust it into the pocket of his tunic. The Ballarat soldier, »vho with his comrades witnessed thia ghastly affair, is a son of a well-known district pioneer. He enlisted in Western Australia-