It seems that the Germans had endeavoured to get volunteers from
the great industrial town of Lille, Roubeix and Tourcoing to
work these fields; that after the posting of the notices calling
for volunteers only fourteen had appeared. The Germans then gave
orders to seize a certain number of inhabitants and send them
out to farms in the outlying districts to engage in agricultural
work. The Americans told me that this order was carried out with
the greatest barbarity; that a man would come home at night and
find that his wife or children had disappeared and no one could
tell him where they had gone except that the neighbours would
relate that the German non-commissioned officers and a file of
soldiers had carried them off. For instance, in a house of a
well-to-do merchant who had perhaps two daughters of fifteen and
seventeen, and a man servant, the two daughters and the servant
would be seized and sent off together to work for the Germans
in some little farm house whose location was not disclosed to
the parents. The Americans told me that this sort of thing was
causing such indignation among the population of these towns
that they feared a great uprising and a consequent slaughter and
burning by the Germans.
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