"I believe," he said, "that I heard the first shot fired in this war.

It came from a clump of trees within half an hour after our advance guard crossed the boundary south of Aachen, and it wounded the leg of a captain who commanded a company of scouts at the head of the column.

Our skirmishers surrounded the woods and beat the thickets, and presently they brought forth the man who had fired the shot.

He was sixty years old, and he was a civilian.

Under the laws of war we shot him on the spot.