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Updated: May 21, 2025
General Clauss himself gave the signal to fire. Two German soldiers fired bullets into each one of the old men. One of the heart-broken onlookers was the village priest.
Yet we prayed we hoped. We hoped even after our army's defeat at Morhange. Then Lunéville was taken. Our turn was near. We heard how terrible were the Bavarians under their general, Clauss. Our soldiers poor, brave boys! fought every step of the way to hold them back. They fought like lions. But they were so few! The Germans came in a gray wave of men.
It must have been easy for dying French boys in those rooms to have identified Sister Julie with Mary the Mother, who saw her son dying on the cross. Later on we met an aged woman of martyred Gerbéviller. She had been nursing in the hospital and had stood behind Sister Julie when she forbade General Clauss to light the firebrands. "What did Sister Julie say?" we asked the old woman.
It is not the fashion on the Continent for unmarried ladies to affix any equivalent to the English "Miss" to their visiting cards. Emilie Dubois, or Kätchen Clauss, is thought more simple and elegant than if preceded by Mademoiselle or Fraülein. Some English girls have of late adopted this good custom, and it would be well if it became general.
At half-past eleven General Clauss was in the Mayor's house, when the German colonel came in and reported that everything in the houses had been stripped and that they were ready to begin the firing of the buildings.
She lived in the little village of Gerbéviller, now called "Gerbéviller the Martyred." On August 27th the French army broke the line of the German Crown Prince and compelled the Huns' retreat. General Clauss was ordered to go northeast and dig in on the top of the ridge some twelve miles north of Gerbéviller.
The aged wife of the secretary to the Mayor told me this incident: "We find no weapons in the houses, and we find only these fifteen old men, one Red Cross boy, and this priest," said the colonel. "Line up the old men then and shoot them," shouted General Clauss. "Take the priest as a prisoner to do work in the trenches." The old men were lined up on the grass.
He turned and disappeared into a group of his soldiers. Two or three minutes passed by. A German colonel came to Sister Julie. He told her that the houses used for wounded soldiers would be spared by General Clauss provided Sister Julie would agree to continue her ministrations to the wounded Germans lying in her hospital.
"Oh, sir, I do not know, and yet I do know. She told them that she would ask God to strike them dead. In that moment I was afraid of her. She seemed to me more to be feared than General Clauss and all his wicked army. I can tell you what our good priest says about Sister Julie." "And what is that?"
As General Clauss already knew that this had already been done, and would be, the Germans marched away, leaving the hospital buildings uninjured. It was a victory of the soul of a noble woman. One morning last summer Sister Julie showed her decorations. Her face was kind, gentle and motherly. Her atmosphere was peace and serenity. She seemed a tower of strength.
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