SHOCKING OUTRAGES

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 43, 19 August 1918, Page 7

SHOCKING OUTRAGES

UNPARALLELED FIENDISHNESS

GERMANS USE LIQUID FIRE ON

PRISONERS,

(AUSTRAJJAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.} ■f LONDON, 17th August. Details are officially published of gross outrages, perhaps unparalleled in fiendish cruelty, upon British prisoners and wounded men last March. The facts are authenticated by sworn statements of Scottish soldiers who were of the party maltreated.

Private Eonald, of the Highlanders, tells how he and a number of • comrades were surrounded and compelled to surrender near Monchy on 28th March. "Our rifles and equipment were taken. We consisted of an officer and sixteen men, ten of whom were wounded. We were lined up in the original front-line trench and left without a guard for some time. Then a German officer and two men appeared on the edge of the trench. One man carried a container on his back. The other was armed with a rifle and a short bayonet, and the officer carried a revolver. The officer gave an order to the man with the container, who turned a stream of liquid fire straight down the trench in which we were standing. They could plainly see we were unarmed, but continued to play on us for six or seven minutes." The witness added that he and a few companions who were able to move scrambled down the communication trench and got over the top to the British lines.

A private says that after he and some other prisoners were captured and disarmed they were marched down tho trench to an •emplacement about six feed deep, nine feet wide, and nine to twelve feet long, the sides being perpendicular except at one end. The prisoners were tightly packed in the enclosure. Two Germans appeared at the entrance of the emplacement. One carried a revolver, and appeared to be an office!. The other had strapped to his back a cylinder with a flexible pipe, tho end of which he carried in his hand. Just as he reached the entrance to the enclosure a flame spurted in a stream from the pipe, and caught tho men who were nearest the entrance. "I immediately dropped, and got my face on the ground. The other men lay ml heaps around and partly on me. I heard a hissing sound for a short while. Then it stopped and started again. During this time the men were shrieking and writhing about. The flame reached r^ight back to where I was, and my overcoat and tunic caught fire. By this time all the men were on tho gronnd." This soldier managed to crawl up the slope and get away.

Another private shows that an officer, who was wounded in the head and the foot, four wounded men, and three unwounded, including the narrator, were in the old trench when the Germans came. One stood with a revolver in his hand and ordered the party to get back to the German lines. The other man squirted liquid fire all over the party. The narrator's hands and one of his ears were burned. Three of the party managed to run and reach the British lines. The Germans must either have suffocated or burned all the five wounded men, for nothing further was heard of them. The British Government has protested to Germany against these outrages.