A Century Ago: Germans In Lorraine

Today's New York Times on line publishes the account of a young German soldier's experiences with the German Army in Lorraine August 22, 1914 and afterward.

The story is told by an American woman living in Paris whose grandfather was among the invaders of the little village of Mercy-le-Haut. But she also tells the story of what happened to the villagers when the Germans came.

One villager, Marthe Mandy, recounted her mother’s tales of those years as if she had lived it all herself. Her eyes welled up as she told of an uncle she never met who was executed by the Germans that night. The uncle, Léon Mandy, was 17. He had been ordered to gather the bodies of nine of his neighbors who died as the Germans stormed the village and to bury them in a mass grave. When Léon had finished his grim task shortly before dawn, he was shot.

Many accounts of World War I claim that the war was fought in a chivalrous fashion at the outset, but became more inhumane as time went by. Tell that to the French and Belgians along the frontier! The invasion did not seem so humane to them.

Why did the Germans shoot Leon Mandy?

They shot countless Frenchmen and Belgians in the early days of the war, sometimes for being impolite to the invaders.

What is the moral of the story?

In the end, Germany lost. A quarter century later they attacked again and lost again.