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Updated: May 25, 2025
They pass the two ladies in the motor car, looking at us with friendly, laughing eyes, and disappear into the storm. Then we move on to the northern edge of the battle-field, and at Rosoy we turn south towards Meaux, passing Vareddes to our left.
In my next letter I propose to tell the ghastly story of the hostages of Vareddes. No. 8 May 17th, 1917.
Among the French German Barbarities Beauty of France French Families Paris To Senlis Senlis The Curé of Senlis The German Occupation August 30th, 1914 Germans in Senlis German Brutality A Savage Revenge A Burning City Murder of the Mayor The Curé in the Cathedral The Abbé's Narrative False Charges Wanton Destruction A Sudden Change Return of the French Ermenonville Scenes of Battle Vareddes.
We were well on our road before she came to her senses, and there were moments when I almost wished she might remain dormant until we had passed beyond the gruesome plain that stretches between Barcy and Vareddes now a historic battlefield. What a weird and wonderful sight it presented that gloomy September morning.
The hostages of Vareddes, the helpless victims of Nomény, of Gerbéviller, of Sermaize, of Sommeilles, and a score of other places in France were scarcely cold in their graves. But the old white-haired professor stands there, unashamed, unctuously offering the kultur of his criminal nation to an expectant world!
The story of Vareddes, like that of Senlis, is not among the vilest by a long, long way of those which have steeped the name of Germany in eternal infamy during this war.
"Push open this window, enter this house, talk with any person whatever whom you may happen to meet, and they will tell you of the torture of old men, carried off as hostages and murdered in cold blood, or of the agonies of fear deliberately inflicted on old and frail women, through a whole night." The story of Vareddes is indeed nearly incredible.
And our most animated and animating companion, Monsieur P , with his wonderful knowledge of the battle, hails every landmark, identifies every farm and wood, even in what has become, in less than an hour, a white wilderness. But it is of one village only, of these many whose names are henceforth known to history, that I wish to speak the village of Vareddes.
The tale of Gerbéviller which I shall take for my third instance as I heard it from the lips of eye-witnesses, plunges us in deeper depths of horror; and the pages of the Bryce report are full of incidents beside which that of Vareddes looks almost colourless.
From Vareddes we passed on to Congis, the only living soul we met being a little old white-haired parish priest, who had set himself the task of blessing each new-made grave. "If this rain continues some of them will be so effaced in a fortnight that we shall never find them. See this cross is but two bits of straw, bound together by a shoe string!"
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