A WOMAN CRUCIFIED.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144199, 16 September 1913, Page 7

A WOMAN CRUCIFIED.

BRITISH OFFICER’S INDICTMENT OF BULGARIANS.

A woman and her child wore, according to Commander Cardale, of tho British Navy, crucified by Bulgarians during their retreat from Doxato. Other ..frightful atrocities are laid to tho charge of tho Bulgarians. Commander Cardale was at Kavala, and on hearing of the horrors committed by the Bulgarian troops at Doxato, loft immediately, for that place. At the entrance to tho town, he told tho London Daily Telegraph’s correspondent, the first things that met his gaze were bands of dogs feeding on human remains. By the tune .he got to the place most of the bodies lying in the streets had been removed, bat many, for want of graye- . diggers, had been temporarily deposited at the entrance of the village, which explains tho horrible sight just mentioned.- In one courtyard about 120 women and children were massacred. The bodies, of 30 of them were still there when’Commander Cardale visited the place. All tho bodies had bayonet thrusts and bore marks of unspeakable mutilations. The walls were spattered with blood to a height of 6tt, from the ground, and. he accounts for this by the narrative given him by the surviving inhabitants, who say that the victims were not done to death at onco, hut were slowly brought to their end by bayonet thrusts. In one corner of the courtyard he saw huddled together the bodies of six little chidlrcn. Into the courtyard of a rich Turk’s house a similar flock of women and children were driven for. daughter by the Bulfarians, but before they had time to espatch them all some broke through the cordon of soldiers placed at the entrance and ran-upstairs into the house of the Turk, seeking refuge under the carpets andi divans of the place. Commander Cardale found the cushions and carpets slashed by sword cuts and the Walls reeking with human 'blood and hacked remains. In on© of tho rooms there was a stovo pipe. Up this pipe he saw, wedged in, a girl, seven years of age, who had evidently tried to escape in this way, the murderers killing her by thrusts from bayonets from below. On the body of the little victim ho counted four such bayonet wounds. In another room he was shown the place, still bespattered with blood, where a woman and her child, as mentioned above, had been crucified on tho wall. The impressions that the bodies had left were plainly visible, as were also the holes left by the nails driven through the, outstretched hands and . feet of the victims. Throughout the town he personally counted- 600 bodies still left unburied, mostly of women and children.