to furnish them with matches and faggots,
they sprinkled a great number of houses with petrol and set them
ablaze. The village, a great part of which is in ruins, presents a
lamentable appearance.
Together with these crimes against property, we have been able to
place on record in the Department of Seine-et-Marne many grave
offenses against the person.
Early in September a German cavalryman arrived one day at about 5
o'clock in the afternoon at the house of M. Laforest, at
May-en-Multien, and asked for a drink. M. Laforest hurried off to draw
some wine from the cask, but the German, no doubt annoyed at not being
served quickly enough, fired his rifle at the wife of his host, who
was seriously wounded. Taken to Livry-sur-Ourcq, Mme. Laforest was
there cared for by a German doctor and had her left arm amputated. She
died recently in the hospital at Meaux.
On Sept. 8 eighteen inhabitants of Vareddes, among whom was the
priest, were arrested without cause and led away by the enemy. Three
of them escaped. None of the others had returned up to Sept. 30, the
day we were there. From information collected, three of these men were
murdered. Anyhow, the death of one of the oldest among them, M.
Jourdain, aged 73, is certain.
Dragged as far as the village of Coulombs and being unable to walk
further, the unfortunate man received a bayonet wound in the forehead
and a revolver bullet through the heart.
At about the same time a man of 66, named Dalissier, living at Congis,
was ordered by the Germans to give up his purse to them. When he
proved unable to give them any money, he was tied up with a halter and
ruthlessly shot. The marks of about fifteen bullets were found on his
dead body.
On the 3d of September, at Mary-sur-Marne, M. Mathe, terrified at the
arrival of the German troops, attempted to hide himself under the
counter of a wine shop. He was found in his hiding place and killed by
a thrust of a knife or bayonet in the chest.
At Sancy-les-Provins, on the 6th of September, about 9 o'clock at
night, about eighty people were summarily arrested and imprisoned in a
sheep pen. On the next day thirty of them were taken by an officer's
order some five kilometers from the village to the barn called
"Pierrelez," where a German Red Cross ambulance was established. There
an army doctor (medecin-major) addressed some words to the wounded
under his charge, who at once proceeded to load four rifles and two
revolvers, their i
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