The Kingdom of serbia : report upon the atrocities committed by the Austro-Hungarian Army during the first invasion of Serbia

MASSACRES OF CIVILIANS 35

all that was Serbian. The Hungarian officers were everywhere the most ferocious.

All men, old men and children, were captured and driven before the troops with bayonet-thrusts. These people were questioned as to the position of the Serbs and the comitadjis. If their answers failed to satisfy the officers they were shot immediately. In most cases, when the troops entered a village the greater number of the hostages, or even all of them, were killed. These unfortunate people were almost always old men or children. In Velika Reka two young men perished in the flames of a burning house. Witness tried to recover one of the bodies, when First-Lieutenant Olak passed him on horseback, and threatened him with his revolver, saying that the two men were comitadjis, which was an untruth.

About 50 metres further on he saw another charred corpse in a house that had been set on fire.

In the same village, more to the right, there was an inn. The innkeeper was bayoneted by Corporal Begouvitch. The innkeeper’s wife, who had witnessed the scene, wrenched the rifle from the corporal and killed him. Other Austrians threw themselves upon her and ripped her body open from end to end with a bayonet. Her child was killed with the same weapon. The house was completely sacked.

Still further on, at the Customs Office, the Austrians knocked at both door and window. A man opened and was killed immediately by being bayoneted full in the chest. An old man at the back of the house wished to surrender, but the men seized him by the collar and cut his throat with a bayonet ;