Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 243, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1917 — CRITICIZES THE GERMAN AIRMEN [ARTICLE]

CRITICIZES THE GERMAN AIRMEN

FRENCH PRESS COMMENTS ON TERRIBLE DEEDS OF THE GERMAN AIRMEN.

Through the courtesy of Delos Thompson, The Republican is permitted to print an article taken* from a French newspaper, which was sent to him by his son, Alfred, who is in the American Field Ambulance service in France. The press of that country is very bitter in its criticism of the German airmen and cites instances of atrocities committed by the German aviators which would be a disgrace to even an uncivilized nation. The raid of August 20, mentioned in the article below, is the one which Alfred Thompson passed through. The article was in French and was translated by Mrs. Ora T. Ross, as follows: THE ASSASINS. Our Hospital* Knowingly Bombarded. How the German Aviator* Kill Women and Wounded. Our special envoy on the Meuse front described to us some days ago, the fury with which the German planes had attacked the hospital groups around Verdun. Successively, by cannon and by aeroplane bomb, they attacked our hospitals at Dugny, Monthairon, Vadelaincourt and Belrupt, killing forty-three persons, nurses and patients, and wounding fifty-five others. . It was July 14 that, for the first time, the German artillery rained its projectiles upon the hospital at Dugny. It recommenced July 22, and again August 3. From that time, almost every day, the same crime was renewed. On August 18 an enemy shell busting in the middle of the hospital, killed Mlle. Eugenia Pietrowska, who had made as nurse the whole campaign of Maroc and the Dardanelles, and had arrived some time before from Saloniki. The same projectile killed also two other nurses, Mmes. Vostoy and Fischot, widows of officers fallen on the field of honor. The splinters grievously wounded Mlle, de Baye, head nurse of the hospital at Dugny, Mlles. Hartz, Leclerc,Ledue and Paque. nurses in the same lospital. Two days later, August 20, at 11 o’clock at night, a German plane flew over the hospital at Vadelaincourt, and threw an incendiary bomb, which set fire to a dressing room in which Mlle. Vandamme, a nurse, was at. work. She was instantly killed. The fire spread to all the huts. The light of the flames made particularly easy te criminal work undertaken by the enemy aviator, who letting fall a new bomb, reached this time the corner of an operating room where three surgical crews cared for the wounded. Meanwhile the fire gained ground, miking still more visible the red cross of Geneva, painted on the roofs of the buildings. But that did not stop the killing of women. Menaced by the fire, the nurses, patients and wounded fled to the neighboring fields. Descending then to some dozen meters above the earth, the aviator pursued them, firing his machine gun, and thus, making sixtyeight victims, eighteen of whom were to succumb. , The same evening another plane threw upon the chateau of Petit Monthairon, transformed into a hospital, a bomb which traversed a room full of wounded, of whom one only was killed. The same evening the field hospital of Belrupt was struck by a shell which mortally wounded ten soldiers under treatment. The Germans can not argue that it was a mistake and that they believed they were attacking camps or formations of combattants. On one of the enemy machines brought down by us at Mort-Homme, was found a photograph which proves the premeditation of the crime. It is taken from above the military hospital at Vadelaincourt, upon which the croses of Geneva are very apparent in the picture. But our general in chief did not wish to leave without recompense, the devotion of the heroic women who, in spite of the incessant perils, consecrated themselves, there te our wounded. In the presence of the minister of war, and the minister of armament, he has bestowed upon the chief nurse of the hospital at Dugny, Mlle.’ de /Baye, wounded under the circumstances— related above, the cross of tne legion of honor. To Mlle. Hartz, Leclerc, Leduc, and Paque, he has given the cross of war with palm. The families of Mmes. Vostey and Fischot, as well as those of Mlles. Pietrowska and Vandamme, glorious victims of German barbarity, received likewise the cross of war, in memory of those who died heroically there.