ng ahead of them a body of several hundred civilians.
They took the road for Montigny-le-Tilleul, where the first important
battle with the French forces took place. At Sempst, during the fighting
on the 25th August, men and women were placed in the front rank of the
firing line. At Erpe, on the 12th September, a German column, attacked
by a Belgian motor-machine-gun, took out of the houses twenty to
twenty-five men and young people (including a child of thirteen), and
made them walk in front in the middle of the road. The machine-gunners,
seeing civilians in front of them, ceased firing. At Alost, a German
company attacked the bridge. In front marched some thirty civilians with
a machine-gun hidden behind them. At Nimy, with the butt-ends of their
rifles, they drove in front of them 500 men, women and children towards
the English, who in consequence dared not fire; and in this way the 84th
and 85th Schleswig Regiments were able to continue their heroic march as
far as Maubeuge.

When their adversary cannot actually see the human shield that they are
using, they send a warning. On the 7th September, 1914, the Death's Head
Hussars shut up all the inhabitants of the village with them in the
Chateau of Saint Ouen-sur-Morin, and then, to avoid being shelled,
informed the English of their "dispositions." They fired on anyone who
tried to escape. At Mouzon, we saw a number of civilians being pushed in
front of the enemy with the butt-ends of rifles, and we stopped firing.
The wretched people moved suddenly to one side of the road, uncovering
the Germans, and then we fired. The Boches, furious, fired their first
volley not at us, but point blank at these non-combatants, who were
decimated.

The cowards chiefly used civilians as shields, but sometimes they also
made use of prisoners. At Keyem, they pushed one hundred Belgian
soldiers in front of them, some with their hands tied, and others with
their arms in the air. At Dixmude, they advanced under the shelter of
forty disarmed marines who had been taken prisoners. When they got in
front of our lines our marines shouted, "For God's sake fire, these are
Germans," and these heroes fell gloriously under the French bullets.
Such deeds are countless.

The Boches will deny them later on, but in 1914 they did not deny them,
but rather gloried in them as a "good idea." We can see this from the
letter of the Bavarian Lieutenant Eberlein, published on the 7th
October, 1914, by a leadi