There was a little farm near Steinbach round which a battle raged for
many days. Leading to it was a sunken road, defended by the enemy,
until one day they put up a number of non-combatants from captured
villages to prevent a French attack.
"Among them we could distinguish a woman, with her hair falling to
her shoulders and her hands tied behind her back. This new infamy
inflamed the courage of our soldiers. A company rushed forward with
fixed bayonets. The road to the farm was swept by the enemy's fire,
but nothing stopped our men. In spite of our losses we carried the
position and are masters of the farm. There was no mercy in those
moments of triumph. The ghastly business of war was done to the
uttermost."
There were ghastly things in some of the enemy's trenches. One of
the worst of them was seen in the forest of Apremont, in the district of
Woevre, where the enemy was strongly entrenched in some quarries
quite close to the French trenches which sapped their way forward to
those pits. When the guns ceased firing the French soldiers often
heard the sound of singing. But above the voices of the Germans
there came sometimes a series of piercing cries like the screeching of
an owl in a terrible plaint, followed by strange and bloodcurdling
laughter.
Pages:
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461