The first German force to push forward from Liége was the column commissioned to mask the Belgian fortress of Antwerp on the extreme right flank of the German advance. From the bridges of the Meuse this column marched north-west across the Province of Limburg. Belgian patrols met the advance-guard already at Lanaeken on August 6th, driving civilians in front of it as a screen.[74] The invaders were obsessed with the terror of franc-tireurs. At Hasselt,[75] on August 17th, they made the Burgomaster post a proclamation advising his fellow-citizens “to abstain from any kind of provocative demonstration and from all acts of hostility, which might bring terrible reprisals upon our town.
“Above all you must abstain from acts of violence against the German troops, and especially from firing on them.
“In case the inhabitants fire upon the soldiers of the German Army, a third of the male population will be shot.”
7. Liége Under German Occupation
8. Liége Under the Germans: Ruins and Placards
At Tongres,[76] on August 18th, the Germans carried threats into action. The population was driven out bodily from the town, and the town systematically plundered. At least 17 civilians were killed (including a boy of 12), and a number of houses were burnt. “On August 18th,” writes a German in his diary, “we reach Tongres. Here, too, it is a complete picture of destruction—something unique of its kind for our profession.”[77]—“Tongres,” writes another on the 19th, “A quantity of houses plundered by our cavalry.” A captured letter from the hand of a German army-doctor reveals the pretext on which this was done. “The Belgians have only themselves to thank that their country has been devastated in this way. I have seen all the great towns attacked and the villages besieged and set on fire. At Tongres we were attacked by the population in the evening when it was dark. An immense number of shots were exchanged, for we were exposed to fire on four sides. Happily we had only one man hit—he died the following day. We killed two women, and the men were shot the day after.” There is no disproof here of the Belgian affirmation that the shots were fired by the Germans themselves.
This outbreak at Tongres on August 18th was not an isolated occurrence. On the same day the Germans shot down the Burgomaster’s wife and a lawyer at Cannes,[78] and two men and a boy at Lixht,[79] a few miles north-west of the Visé bridge. But Limburg suffered little compared to Brabant, into which the Germans next advanced.
Haelen, where their advance-guard was severely handled by the Belgian Army on August 12th, lies close to the boundary between the two provinces, and they took vengeance on the civil population of Brabant for this military reverse.
“The Germans came to Schaffen,”[80] the curé reports, “at 9.0 o’clock on August 18th. They set fire to 170 houses. A thousand inhabitants are homeless. The communal building and my own residence are among the houses burnt. Twenty-two people at least were killed without motive. Two men (mentioned by name) were buried alive head downwards, in the presence of their wives. The Germans seized me in my garden, and mishandled me in every kind of way.... The blacksmith, who was a prisoner with me, had his arm broken and was then killed.... It went on all day long. Towards evening they made me look at the church, saying it was the last time I should see it. About 6.45 they let me go. I was bleeding and unconscious. An officer made me get up and bade me be off. At several metres distance they fired on me. I fell down and was left for dead. It was my salvation....
“All the houses were drenched, before burning, with naphtha and petrol, which the Germans carry with them....”
On the German side, there is the ordinary excuse. “Fifty civilians,” writes a diarist, “had hidden in the church tower and had fired on our men with a machine-gun.[81] All the civilians were shot.”
The curé mentions that the Germans found the church door locked, broke it in, and then found no one there.
At Molenstede, another village in the Canton of Diest, 32 houses were burnt and 11 civilians killed. In the whole Canton 226 houses were burnt, and 47 people killed in all.
The Germans were also advancing by a more southerly road from Tongres through St. Trond. At St. Trond,[82] the first Uhlans killed 2 civilians in the street and wounded others. At Budirgen they killed 2 civilians and burned 58 houses, at Neerlinter one and 73. In the Canton of Léau they killed 19 civilians altogether, and 174 houses were destroyed.
At Haekendover, in the Canton of Tirlemont, they killed one civilian, burned 32 houses and pillaged 150 (out of 220 in all). At Tirlemont itself, they killed three civilians and burned 60 houses. At Hougaerde,[83] when they entered the village, they drove the curé of Autgaerde before them as a screen, and he was killed by the first bullet from the Belgian troops, who were defending the road from behind a barricade. Four civilians were killed at Hougaerde, 100 houses pillaged, and 50 destroyed. In the whole Canton of Tirlemont the Germans killed 18 civilians, and burned 212 houses down.
At Bunsbeek they killed 4 people and burned 20 houses, at Roosbeek 3 and 42. “After Roosbeek,” a German diarist notes,[84] “we began to have an idea of the war; houses burnt, walls pierced by bullets, the face of the tower carried away by shells, and so on. A few isolated crosses marked the graves of the victims.” At Kieseghem[85] the Germans used civilians as a screen again, and killed two more when they entered the village. At Attenrode they killed 6 civilians and burned 17 houses, at Lubbeck 15 and 46. In the Canton of Glabbeek 35 civilians were killed from first to last, and 140 houses destroyed.
The Germans marched into Aerschot[86] on the morning of Aug. 19th, driving before them two girls and four women with babies in their arms as a screen.[87] One of the women was wounded by the fire of the Belgian troops, who had posted machine guns to dispute the Germans’ entry, but now withheld their fire and retired from the town. The Germans encountered no further resistance, but they began to kill civilians and break into houses immediately they came in. They bayonetted two women on their doorstep (c 27). They shot a deaf boy (c 1) who did not understand the order to raise his hands. They shot 5 men they had requisitioned as guides (R. No. 3). They fired at the church (c 18). They fired at people looking out of the windows of their houses (R. No. 5). The Burgomaster’s son, a boy of fifteen, was standing at a window with his mother and was wounded by a bullet in the leg (R. No. 11). They killed people in their houses. Six men, for instance, were bayonetted in one house (R. No. 15). They dragged a railway employé from his home and shot him in a field (R. No. 2). “I went back home,” states a woman who had been seized by the Germans and had escaped (c 18), “and found my husband lying dead outside it. He had been shot through the head from behind. His pockets had been rifled.”
Other civilians (the civil population was already accused of having fired) were collected as hostages,[88] and driven, with their hands raised above their heads, to an open space on the banks of the River Démer. “There were about 200 prisoners, some of them invalids taken from their beds” (c 1). There was a professor from the College among them (R. No. 9), and an old man of 75 (c 15). After these hostages had been searched, and had been kept standing by the river, with their arms up, for two hours, the Burgomaster was brought to them under guard,[89] and compelled to read out a proclamation, ordering all arms to be given up, and warning that if a shot were fired by a civilian, the man who fired it, and four others with him, would be put to death. It was a gratuitous proceeding, for, several days before the Germans arrived, the Burgomaster (like most of his colleagues throughout Belgium) had sent the town crier round, calling on the population to deposit all arms at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and he had posted placards on the walls to the same effect (c 4, 7). A priest drew a German officer’s attention to these placards (c 20), and the Burgomaster himself had already given a translation of their contents to the German commandant (R. No. 11). That officer[90] disingenuously represents this act of good faith as a suspicious circumstance. “To my special surprise,” he states, “thirty-six more rifles, professedly intended for public processions and for the Garde Civique, were produced” (from the Hôtel-de-Ville). “The constituents of ammunition for these rifles were also found packed in a case.” But the only weapon still found in private hands on the morning of Aug. 19th was a shot gun used for pigeon shooting (c 1), and when the owner had fetched it from his home the hostages were released. Yet at this point 4 more civilians were shot down, two of them father and son—the son feeble-minded (c 15).
The Germans quartered in Aerschot were already getting out of hand. “I saw the dead body of another man in the street,” continues the witness (c 15) quoted above. “When I got to my house, I found that all the furniture had been broken, and that the place had been thoroughly ransacked, and everything of value stolen. When I came out into the street again I saw the dead body of a man at the door of the next house to mine. He was my neighbour, and wore a Red Cross brassard on his arm....”
The Germans gave themselves up to drink and plunder. “They set about breaking in the cellar doors, and soon most of them were drunk” (R. No. 15).—“An officer came to me,” states another witness (c 7), “and demanded a packet of coffee. He did not pay for it. He gave no receipt.”—“They broke my shop window,” deposes another. “The shop front was pillaged in a moment. Then they gutted the shop itself. They fought each other for the bottles of cognac and rum. In the middle of this an officer entered. He did not seem at all surprised, and demanded three bottles of cognac and three of wine for himself. The soldiers, N.C.O.’s and officers, went down to the cellar and emptied it....” Not even the Red Cross was spared. The monastery of St. Damien, which had been turned into an ambulance, was broken into by German soldiers, who accused the monks of firing and tore the bandages off the wounded Belgian soldiers to make sure that the wounds were real (R. No. 16). “Whenever we referred to our membership of the Red Cross,” declares one of the monks, “our words were received with scornful smiles and comments, indicating clearly that they made no account of that.”
9. Liége in Ruins
10. “We Live Like God in Belgium”
About 5.0 p.m. Colonel Stenger, the commander of the 8th German Infantry Brigade, arrived in Aerschot with his staff. They were quartered in the Burgomaster’s house, in rooms overlooking the square. Captain Karge, the commander of the divisional military police, was billeted on the Burgomaster’s brother, also in the square but on the opposite side. About 8.0 p.m. (German time) Colonel Stenger was standing on the Burgomaster’s balcony; the Burgomaster, who had just been allowed to return home, was at his front door, offering the German sentries cigars, and his wife was close by him; the square was full of troops, and a supply column was just filing through, when suddenly a single loud shot was fired, followed immediately by a heavy fusillade. “I very distinctly saw two columns of smoke,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife (R. No. 11), “followed by a multitude of discharges.”—“I could perceive a light cloud of smoke and dust,” states Captain Karge,[91] who was at his window across the square, “coming from the eaves of a red corner house.” In a moment the soldiers massed in the square were in an uproar. “My yard,” continues the Burgomaster’s wife, “was immediately invaded by horses and by soldiers firing in the air like madmen.”—“The drivers and transport men,” observes Captain Karge, “had left their horses and waggons and taken cover from the shots in the entrances of the houses. Some of the waggons had interlocked, because the horses, becoming restless, had taken their own course without the drivers to guide them.” Another German officer[92] thought the firing came from the north-west outskirts of the town, and was told by fugitive German soldiers that there were Belgian troops advancing to the attack. A machine-gun company went out to meet them, and marched three kilometres before it discovered that there was no enemy, and turned back. “About 350 yards from the square,” states the commander of this unit,[93] “I met cavalry dashing backwards and transport waggons trying to turn round.... I saw shots coming from the houses, whereupon I ordered the machine guns to be unlimbered and the house fronts on the left to be fired upon.”
Who fired the first shot? Who fired the answering volley? There is abundant evidence, both Belgian and German, of German soldiers firing in the square and the neighbouring streets; no single instance is proved, or even alleged, in the German White Book, of a Belgian caught in the act of firing. “The situation developed,” deposes Captain Folz,[94] “into our men pressing their backs against the houses, and firing on any marksman in the opposite house, as soon as he showed himself.” But were they Belgians at the windows, or Germans taking cover from the undoubted fire of their comrades, and replying from these vantage points upon an imaginary foe? “Near the Hôtel-de-Ville,” continues Captain Folz, “there stood an officer who had the signal ‘Cease Fire’ blown continuously.[95] Clearly this officer desired in the first place to stop the shooting of our men, in order to set a systematic action on foot.”
The German soldiers’ minds had been filled with lying rumours. “I heard,” declares Captain Karge, “that the King of the Belgians had decreed that every male Belgian was under obligation to do the German Army as much harm as possible....
“An officer told me he had read on a church door that the Belgians were forbidden to hold captured German officers on parole, but had to shoot them....
“A seminary teacher assured me” (it was under the threat of death) “definitely, as I now think that I can distinctly remember, that the Garde Civique had been ordered to injure the German Army in every possible way....”
Thus, when he heard the shots, Captain Karge leapt to his conclusions. “The regularity of the volleys gave me the impression that the affair was well organised and possibly under military command.” It never occurred to him that they might be German volleys commanded by German officers as apprehensive as himself. “Everywhere, apparently,” he proceeds, “the firing came, not from the windows, but from roof-openings or prepared loopholes in the attics of the houses.” But if not from the windows, why not from the square, which was crowded with German soldiers, when a moment afterwards (admittedly) these very soldiers were firing furiously? “This” (assumed direction from which the firing came) “is the explanation of the smallness of the damage done by the shots to men and animals,” and, in fact, the only victim the Germans claim is Colonel Stenger, the Brigadier. After the worst firing was over and the troops were getting under control, Colonel Stenger was found by his aide-de-camp (A 2), who had come up to his room to make a report, lying wounded on the floor and on the point of death. Captain Folz (A 5) records that “the Regimental Surgeon of the Infantry Regiment No. 140, who made a post-mortem examination of the body in his presence on the following day, found in the aperture of the breast wound a deformed leaden bullet, which had been shattered by contact with a hard object.” It remains to prove that the bullet was not German. The German White Book does not include any report from the examining surgeon himself.
Meanwhile, the town and people of Aerschot were given over to destruction. “I now took some soldiers,” proceeds Captain Karge, “and went with them towards the house from which the shooting”—in Captain Karge’s belief—“had first come.... I ordered the doors and windows of the ground floor, which were securely locked, to be broken in. Thereupon I pushed into the house with the others, and using a fairly large quantity of turpentine, which was found in a can of about 20 litres capacity, and which I had poured out partly on the first storey and then down the stairs and on the ground floor, succeeded in setting the house on fire in a very short time. Further, I had ordered the men not taking part in this to guard the entrances of the house and arrest all male persons escaping from it. When I left the burning house several civilians, including a young priest, had been arrested from the adjoining houses. I had these brought to the square, where in the meantime my company of military police had collected.
“I then ... took command of all prisoners, among whom I set free the women, boys and girls. I was ordered by a staff officer to shoot the prisoners. Then I ordered my police ... to escort the prisoners and take them out of the town. Here, at the exit, a house was burning, and by the light of it I had the culprits—88 in number, after I had separated out three cripples—shot....”
11. Haelen
12. Aerschot
These 88 victims were only a preliminary batch. The whole population of Aerschot was being hunted out of the houses by the German troops and driven together into the square. They were driven along with brutal violence. “One of the Germans thrust at me with his bayonet,” states one woman (c 9), “which passed through my skirt and behind my knees. I was too frightened to notice much.”—“When we got into the street,” states another (c 10), “other German soldiers fired at us. I was carrying a child in my arms, and a bullet passed through my left hand and my child’s left arm. The child was also hit on the fundament.... In the hospital, on Aug. 22nd, I saw three women die of wounds.”—“In the ambulance at the Institut Damien,” reports the monk quoted above, “we nursed four women, several civilians and some children. A one-year-old child had received a bayonet wound in its thigh while its mother was carrying it in her arms. Several civilians had burns on their bodies and bullet wounds as well. They told us how the soldiers set fire to the houses and fired on the suffocating inhabitants when they tried to escape.”
As elsewhere, the incendiarism was systematic. “They used a special apparatus, something like a big rifle, for throwing naphtha or some similar inflammable substance” (c 19).—“I was taken to the officer in command,” states a professor (c 14). “I found him personally assisting in setting fire to a house. He and his men were lighting matches and setting them to the curtains.”—“We saw a whole street burning, in which I possessed two houses,” deposes a native of Aerschot, who was being driven towards the square. “We heard children and beasts crying in the flames” (c 2). A civilian went out into the street to see if his mother was in a burning house. He was shot down by Germans at a distance of 18 yards (c 5). Another householder (R. No. 5) threw his child out of the first-floor window of his burning house, jumped out himself, and broke both his legs. His wife was burnt alive. “The Germans with their rifles prevented anyone going to help this man, and he had to drag himself along with his legs broken as best he could” (c 19).—“The whole upper part of my house caught fire,” declares another (R. No. 13), “when there were a dozen people in it. The Germans had blocked the street door to prevent them coming out. They tried in vain to reach the neighbouring roofs.... The Germans were firing on everyone in the streets....”
By this time the Germans were mostly drunk (c9) and lost to all reason or shame. Two men and a boy stepped out of the door of a public-house in which they had taken refuge with others. “As soon as we got outside we saw the flash of rifles and heard the report.... We came in as quickly as we could and shut the door. The German soldiers entered. The first man who entered said, ‘You have been shooting,’ and the others kept repeating the same words. They pointed their revolvers at us, and threatened to shoot us if we moved” (c 4).
In another building about 22 captured Belgian soldiers (some of them wounded) and six civilian hostages were under guard. They were dragged out to the banks of the Démer and shot down by two companies of German troops. “I was hit,” explains one of the two survivors (a soldier already wounded before being taken prisoner), “but an officer saw that I was still breathing, and when a soldier wanted to shoot me again, he ordered him to throw me into the Démer. I clung to a branch and set my feet against the stones on the river-bottom. I stayed there till the following morning, with only my head above water....” (R. No. 8).
The Burgomaster’s house was the first to be cleared. Colonel Stenger’s aide-de-camp dragged the Burgomaster out of the cellar where he and his family had taken refuge, and carried him off under guard. Half-an-hour later the aide-de-camp returned for the Burgomaster’s wife and his fifteen-year-old son. “My poor child,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife, “could scarcely walk because of his wound. The aide-de-camp kicked him along. I shut my eyes to see no more....” (R. No. 11).
“When we reached the square,” the same witness continues, “we found there all our neighbours. A girl near me was fainting with grief. Her father and two brothers had been shot, and they had torn her from her dying mother’s bedside. (They found her, nine hours later, dead). All the houses on the right side of the square were ablaze. One could detect the perfect order and method with which they were proceeding. There was none of the feverishness of men left to pillage by themselves. I am positive they were acting with orderliness and under orders.... From time to time, soldiers emerged from our house, with their arms full of bottles of wine. They were opening our windows, and all the interiors were stripped bare....”—“The square was one blaze of fire,” states a blacksmith (c 1), “and the civilians were obliged to stand there close to the flames from the burning houses.”—“They put the women and children on one side,” adds a woman (c 7). “I was among them, and my 5 children—one boy of fifteen and 4 girls. I saw that many of the men had their hands tied. They took the men away along the road to Louvain....”
The men were being led out of the town, as Captain Karge’s prisoners had been led out a few hours before, to be shot. The Burgomaster, his brother, and his son were in this second convoy. “Under the glare of the conflagration,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife, “my eyes fell upon my husband, my son and my brother-in-law, who were being led, with other men, to execution. For fear of breaking down his courage, I could not even cry out to my husband: ‘I am here.’” There were 50 or 60 prisoners altogether, and another batch of 30 followed behind.[96] “They made us walk in the same position, hands up, for 20 minutes,” one survivor states (c 4). “When we got tired we put our hands on our heads.”—“One of the prisoners,” states a second member of the convoy (c 8), “was struck on the back with a rifle-butt by a German soldier. The young man said: ‘O my father.’ His father said: ‘Keep quiet, my boy.’ Another soldier thrust his bayonet into the thigh of another prisoner, and afterwards compelled him to walk on with the rest.”—“Our hands,” states a third (R. No. 7), “were bound behind our backs with copper wire—so tightly that our wrists were cut and bled. We were compelled to lie down, still bound, on our backs, with our heads touching the ground. About six in the morning, they decided to begin the executions.”
An officer read out a document to the prisoners.—One out of three was to be shot. “It was read out like an article of the law. He read in German, but we understood it.... They took all the young men....” (c 4).
The Burgomaster’s chief political opponent was among the prisoners. He offered his life for the Burgomaster’s—“The Burgomaster’s life was essential to the welfare of the town.” The Burgomaster pleaded for his fellow citizens, and then for his son. The officer answered that he must have them all—the Burgomaster, his son and his brother. “The boy got up and stood between his father and uncle.... The shots rang out, and the three bodies fell heavily one upon another....” (R. No. 7).
“The rest were drawn up in ranks of three. They numbered them—one, two, three. Each number three had to step out of his rank and fall in behind the corpses; they were going to be shot, the Germans said. My brother and I were next to each other—I number two, he three. I asked the officer if I might take my brother’s place: ‘My mother is a widow. My brother has finished his education, and is more useful than I!’ The officer was again implacable. ‘Step out, number three.’ We embraced, and my brother joined the rest. There were about 30 of them lined up. Then the German soldiers moved slowly along the line, killing three at every discharge—each time at the officer’s word of command” (R. No. 7).
The last man in the line was spared as a medical student and member of the Red Cross (R. No. 5). The survivors were set free. On their way back they passed another batch going to their death (R. No. 7). They passed the corpse of a woman on the road, and another in the cattle-market (c 17). Other inhabitants of Aerschot were forced to bury all the corpses on the Louvain road in the course of the same day. They brought back to the women of Aerschot the sure knowledge that their husbands, sons and brothers were dead.[97]
The rest of what happened at Aerschot is quickly told. When the Germans had marched the second convoy of men out of the town and dismissed the women from the square, they evacuated the town themselves[98] and bombarded it from outside with artillery;[99] but in the daylight of Aug. 20th they came back again, and burned and pillaged continuously for three days—taking not only food and clothing but valuables of every kind, and loading them methodically on waggons and motor cars.[100] On the evening of the 20th, the Institut Damien, hospital though it was, was compelled to provide quarters for 1,100 men. “We spent all night giving food and drink to this mob, of whom many were drunk. We collected 800 empty bottles next morning.”[101]
On Aug. 26th and 27th the remnant of the population—about 600 men, women, and children, who had not perished or fled—were herded into the church.[102] They were given little food, and no means of sanitation. On the evening of the 27th a squad of German soldiers amused themselves by firing through the church door over the heads of the hostages, against the opposite wall. On the 28th the monks of St. Damien were brought there also. (Their hospital was closed, and the patients turned out of their beds.) The rest of the hostages were marched that day to Louvain. There were little children among them, and women with child, and men too old to walk. At Louvain, in the Place de la Station, they were fired upon, and a number were wounded and killed. The survivors were released on the 29th, but when they returned to Aerschot they were arrested and imprisoned again—the men in the church, the women in a chateau. The women and children were released the day following (that day the active troops at Aerschot were replaced by a landsturm garrison, who began to pillage the town once more).[103] The men were kept prisoners till Sept. 6th, when those not of military age were released and the remainder (about 70) deported by train to Germany. All the monks were deported, whatever their age.[104]
“On Aug. 31st,” writes a German landsturmer in his diary,[105] “we entered Aerschot to guard the station. On Sept. 2nd I had a little time off duty, which I spent in visiting the town. No one, without seeing it, could form any idea of the condition it is in.... In all my life I shall never drink more wine than I drank here.”
Three hundred and eighty-six houses were burnt at Aerschot, 1,000 plundered, 150 inhabitants killed, and after this destruction the Germans admitted the innocence of their victims. “It was a beastly mess,” a German non-commissioned officer confessed to one of the monks in the church of Aerschot on Aug. 29th.[106] “It was our soldiers who fired, but they have been punished.”
The smaller places round Aerschot suffered in their degree. At Nieuw-Rhode 200 houses (out of 321) were plundered, one civilian killed, and 27 deported to Germany. At Gelrode,[107] on August 19th, the Germans seized 21 civilians as hostages, imprisoned them in the church, and then shot one in every three against a wall—the rest were marched to Louvain and imprisoned in the church there. None of them were discovered with arms, for the Burgomaster of Gelrode had collected all arms in private hands before the Germans arrived. The priest of Gelrode[108] was dragged away to Aerschot on August 27th by German soldiers. “When they got to the churchyard the priest was struck several times by each soldier on the head. Then they pushed him against the wall of the church” (c24).—“His hands were raised above his head. Five or six soldiers stood immediately in front of him.... When he let his hands drop a little, soldiers brought down their rifle butts on his feet” (c25). Finally they led him away to be shot, and his corpse was thrown into the Démer.
Eighteen civilians altogether were shot in the commune of Gelrode, and 99 deported to Germany. Twenty-three houses were burnt, and 131 plundered, out of 201 in the village.
At Tremeloo[109] 214 houses were burnt and 3 civilians killed (one of them an old man of 72). A number of women were raped at Tremeloo.
At Rotselaer[110] 67 houses were burnt, 38 civilians killed, and 120 deported to Germany. A girl who was raped by five Germans went out of her mind (c52). The priest of Rotselaer was deported with his parishioners. The men of the village had been confined in the church on the night of August 22nd, again on the night of the 23rd, and then consecutively till the morning of the 27th. The priest of Herent (who was more than 70 years old)[111] and other men from Herent, Wackerzeel, and Thildonck, were imprisoned with them, till there were a thousand people in the church altogether. The women brought them what food could be found, but for five days they could neither wash nor sleep. On the 27th they were marched to Louvain with a batch of prisoners taken from Louvain itself, and were sent on the terrible journey in cattle-trucks to Aix-la-Chapelle.
At Wespelaer[112] the destruction was complete. Out of 297 houses 47 were burnt and 250 gutted. Twenty-one inhabitants were killed. “The Germans shot the owner of the first house burnt on his doorstep, and his twenty-years-old daughter inside.... I only saw one man shot with my own eyes—a man who had an old carbine in his house. It had not been used; he was not carrying it.... In another house a married couple, 80 years old, were burnt alive” (c60).
At Campenhout[113] the Germans burned 85 houses and killed 14 civilians. In a rich man’s house, where officers were quartered, they rifled the wine cellar and shot the mistress of the house in cold blood as she entered the room where they were drinking. “The other officers continued to drink and sing, and did not pay great attention to the killing of my mistress,” states a servant who was present. As they continued their advance, the Germans collected about 400 men, women and children (some of the women with babies in their arms) from Campenhout, Elewyt and Malines, and drove them forward as a screen, with the priest of Campenhout at their head, against the Belgian forces holding the outer ring of the Antwerp lines.[114]
The devastation of this district is described by a witness who walked through it, from Brussels to Aerschot, after the Germans had passed (c 25). “We traversed the village of Werchter, where there had been no battle, but it had been in the occupation of the Germans, and on all sides of this village we saw burnt-down houses and traces of plunder and havoc. In Wespelaer and Rotselaer and Wesemael we saw the same. We did not pass through the village of Gelrode, but close to it, and we saw that houses had been burnt down there. In Aerschot the Malines Street, Hamer Street, Théophile Becker Street and other streets were completely burnt. Half the Grand Place had been burnt down....”
Yet the devastation done by the Germans in their advance was light compared with the outrages they committed when the Belgian sortie of August 25th drove them back from Malines towards the Aerschot-Louvain line.
In Malines itself[115] they destroyed 1,500 houses from first to last, and revenged themselves atrociously on the civil population. A Belgian soldier saw them bayonet an old woman in the back, and cut off a young woman’s breasts (d 1). Another saw them bayonet a woman and her son (d 2). They shot a police inspector in the stomach as he came out of his door, and blew off the head of an old woman at a window (d 3). A child of two came out into the street as eight drunken soldiers were marching by. “A man in the second file stepped aside and drove his bayonet with both hands into the child’s stomach. He lifted the child into the air on his bayonet and carried it away, he and his comrades still singing. The child screamed when the soldier struck it with his bayonet, but not afterwards.” This incident is reported by two witnesses (d 4-5). Another woman was found dead with twelve bayonet wounds between her shoulders and her waist (d 7). Another—between 16 and 20 years old—who had been killed by a bayonet, “was kneeling, and her hands were clasped, and the bayonet had pierced both hands. I also saw a boy of about 16,” continues the witness, “who had been killed by a bayonet thrust through his mouth.” In the same house there was an old woman lying dead (d 9).
The next place from which the Germans were driven was Hofstade,[116] and here, too, they revenged themselves before they went. They left the corpses of women lying in the streets. There was an old woman mutilated with the bayonet.[117] There was a young pregnant woman who had been ripped open.[118] In the lodge of a chateau the porter’s body was found lying on a heap of straw.[119] He had been bayonetted in the stomach—evidently while in bed, for the empty bed was soaked with blood. The blacksmith of Hofstade—also bayonetted in the stomach—was lying on his doorstep.[120] Adjoining the blacksmith’s house there was a café, and here a middle-aged woman lay dead, and a boy of about 16. The boy was found kneeling in an attitude of supplication. Both his hands had been cut off. “One was on the ground, the other hanging by a bit of skin” (d 25). His face was smeared with blood. He was seen in this condition by twenty-five separate witnesses, whose testimony is recorded in the Bryce Report.[121] Several saw him before he was quite dead.
In one house at Hofstade[122] the Belgian troops found the dead bodies of two women and a man. One of the women, who was middle-aged, had been bayonetted in the stomach; the other, who was about 20 years old, had been bayonetted in the head, and her legs had been almost severed from her body. The man had been bayonetted through the head. In another room the body of a ten-year-old boy was suspended from a hanging lamp. He had been killed first by a bayonet wound in the stomach.
“I went with an artilleryman,” states another Belgian soldier,[123] “to find his parents who lived in Hofstade. All the houses were burning except the one where this man’s parents lived. On forcing the door, we saw lying on the floor of the room on which it opened the dead bodies of a man, a woman, a girl, and a boy, who, the artilleryman told us, were his father and mother and brother and sister. Each of them had both feet cut off just above the ankle, and both hands just above the wrist. The poor boy rushed straight off, took one of the horses from his gun, and rode in the direction of the German lines. We never saw him again....”
Retreating from Hofstade, the Germans drove about 200 of the inhabitants with them as a screen, to cover their flank against the Belgian attack.[124] At Muysen they killed 6 civilians and burned 450 houses. “There were broken wine bottles lying about everywhere” (d 88).
At Sempst,[125] as they evacuated the village, they dragged the inhabitants out of their houses. One old man who expostulated was shot by an officer with a revolver,[126] and his son was shot when he attempted to escape. They fired down into the cellars and up through the ceilings to drive the people out (d 68). The hostages were taken to the bridge. “One young man was carrying in his arms his little brother, 10 or 11 years old, who had been run over before the war and could not walk. The soldiers told the man to hold up his arms. He said he could not, as he must hold his brother, who could not walk. Then a German soldier hit him on the head with a revolver, and he let the child fall....”