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Updated: May 2, 2025
This advance was not gained without considerable losses, and during the charge Lieutenant Colonel Odent was killed. On May 5, 1916, the Germans after an intense bombardment, in which gas shells were lavishly used, tried to turn Hill 304, and also attacked the Camart Wood and Hill 287. On the northern slope of Hill 304 the French trenches were so badly damaged that they could not be held.
During the night there was a French counterattack; it was directed by a brilliant officer of the General Staff, Lieutenant Colonel Odent, who had at his own request been assigned the duty of defending this dangerous position. Rallying the men of his regiment, he threw them against the foe. The French succeeded in reaching the edges of the plateau facing northeast.
Then pressing the hands held out to him, he said good-bye to them all, and went back with a firm step to the group of officers. Two soldiers were called up, and the Maire was placed at ten paces' distance. The soldiers fired, and M. Odent fell without a sound.
Meanwhile, at nine o'clock in the evening a party of German officers betook themselves to the hamlet of Poteau a village north of Senlis where M. Odent had been kept under guard since the afternoon. Six other hostages were produced, and they were all marched off to a field near Chamant at the edge of a wood. Here the Maire was called up and interrogated.
"'No, said M. Odent, 'one victim is enough. You see he foresaw everything. We all knew what had happened in Belgium and the Ardennes. "The German officer questioned him again. "'Why have your people gone? why are these houses, these shops, shut? There must be lights everywhere all through the night! "Suddenly shots! in the Rue de la République.
They ran down and disappeared." But that was not the end of the Abbé's trouble. He was presently sent for to the German Headquarters, at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, where the table spread for thirty people, by the order of M. Odent, was still waiting for its guests. The conversation here between the Curé and the officer of high rank who spoke to him is worth repeating.
Meanwhile the maire, M. Odent, a good man and greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hôtel de Ville. His secretary proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the maire tranquilly, "one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb of Chammont, the headquarters of von Kluck, and his guards buffeted him and spat upon him as he went.
At Senlis the heroic Mayor, M. Odent, and six members of his staff were shot. At Gerbeviller they forced their way into the house of M. and Madame Lingenheld; seized the son, aged 36, exempt from service, and wearing the badge of the Red Cross, tied his hands, dragged him into the street and shot him. They then returned to look for the father, an old man of 70.
There are some discrepancies in detail, but nothing that matters. The murder of M. Odent, of the other hostages, of the civilians placed in front of the German troops, and of four or five other victims; the burning out by torch and explosive of half a flourishing town, because of a discreditable mistake, the fruit of panic and passion, these crimes are indelibly marked on the record of Germany.
The officer himself presently took him outside the town, and left him under guard, at the little village of Poteau, at the edge of a wood." What had happened? Unluckily for Senlis and M. Odent, some of the French rear-guard infantry stragglers, and a small party of Senegalese troops were still in the southern quarter of the town when the Germans entered.
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