When bodies had piled so high the soldiers could not reach survivors without stumbling in blood, then they used their rifles, and killed the remainder with bullets.
That afternoon soldiers visited all the camps of refugees and took children more than five years old. I think there must have been eight or nine thousand of these. The soldiers came even to the house in which I was with the “turned” Armenians, and despite the promises of the mayor took all our boys and girls. When mothers clung to their little ones and begged for them the soldiers beat them off. “If they die now your God won’t be troubled by having to look after them till they grow up,” the soldiers said—and always with a brutal laugh.
They took the children to the edge of the city, where a band of Aghja Daghi Kurds was waiting. Here the soldiers gave the children into the keeping of the Kurds, who drove them off toward the Tokma River, just outside the city. The Kurds drove the little ones like a flock of sheep. At the river banks the boys were thrown into the river. The girls were taken to Turkish cities, to be raised as Mohammedans
