FORE:In the end these stories of the soldiers convinced even the inhabitants that there had been francs-tireurs, but never in the place where they lived, always somewhere else. They could not believe that the Germans could be so cruel and wreck so much property if nothing at all had happened; and when at length the time came that they themselves were obliged to fly, many of them believed that their compatriots who elsewhere acted as francs-tireurs were to blame for all the dire calamities. But if they had had my opportunity to go "elsewhere" and gather information there, they would have been convinced of the untruth, and probably would have heard the name of their own village as90 the scene of the occurrence. That was how rumours and reports got about.

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