(i) THROUGH LIMBURG TO AERSCHOT 52
(ii) AERSCHOT 57
(iii) THE AERSCHOT DISTRICT 74
(iv) THE RETREAT FROM MALINES 77
(v) LOUVAIN 89
MAPS
THE INVADED COUNTRY _Frontispiece_
THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES: FROM THE
FRONTIER TO MALINES[3] _End of Volume_
LOUVAIN, FROM THE GERMAN WHITE BOOK _End of Volume_
FOOTNOTE:
[3] _This map shows practically all the roads and places referred to in
the text._
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
1. MOULAND _To face page_ 16
2. BATTICE 17
3. LIÉGE FORTS: A DESTROYED CUPOLA 32
4. ANS: AN INTERIOR 33
5. ANS: THE CHURCH 48
6. LIÉGE: A FARM HOUSE 49
7. LIÉGE UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION 52
8. LIÉGE UNDER THE GERMANS: RUINS AND PLACARDS 53
9. LIÉGE IN RUINS 60
10. “WE LIVE LIKE GOD IN BELGIUM” 61
11. HAELEN 64
12. AERSCHOT 65
13. BRUSSELS: A BOOKING-OFFICE 80
14. MALINES AFTER BOMBARDMENT 81
15. MALINES: RUINS 84
16. MALINES: RUINS 85
17. MALINES: CARDINAL MERCIER’S STATE-ROOM AS A RED
CROSS HOSPITAL 92
18. MALINES: THE CARDINAL’S THRONE-ROOM 93
19. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS 96
20. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS 97
21. CAPELLE-AU-BOIS: THE CHURCH 112
22. LOUVAIN: NEAR THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE 113
23. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE 116
24. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE ACROSS THE RUINS 117
25. LOUVAIN: THE CHURCH OF ST. PIERRE--INTERIOR 124
26. LOUVAIN: STATION SQUARE 125
ABBREVIATIONS
ALPHABET, LETTERS OF THE:--
CAPITALS Appendices to the German White Book entitled: “_The
Violation of International Law in the Conduct of the Belgian
People’s-War_” (dated Berlin, 10th May, 1915); Arabic numerals
after the capital letter refer to the depositions contained in
each Appendix.
LOWER CASE Sections of the “_Appendix to the Report of the
Committee on Alleged German Outrages, Appointed by His Britannic
Majesty’s Government and Presided Over by the Right Hon. Viscount
Bryce, O.M._” (Cd. 7895); Arabic numerals after the lower case
letter refer to the depositions contained in each Section.
ANN(EX) Annexes (numbered 1 to 9) to the _Reports of the Belgian
Commission (vide infra)_.
BELG. _Reports (numbered i to xxii) of the Official Commission of the
Belgian Government on the Violation of the Rights of Nations and
of the Laws and Customs of War._ (English translation, published,
on behalf of the Belgian Legation, by H.M. Stationery Office, two
volumes.)
BLAND “_Germany’s Violations of the Laws of War, 1914-5_”; compiled
under the Auspices of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and
translated into English with an Introduction by J. O. P. Bland.
(London: Heinemann. 1915.)
BRYCE _Appendix to the Report of the Committee on Alleged German
Outrages appointed by His Britannic Majesty’s Government._
CHAMBRY “_The Truth about Louvain_,” by Réné Chambry. (Hodder and
Stoughton. 1915.)
DAVIGNON “_Belgium and Germany_,” Texts and Documents, preceded by a
Foreword by Henri Davignon. (Thomas Nelson and Sons.)
“EYE-WITNESS” “_An Eye-Witness at Louvain_” (London: Eyre and
Spottiswoode. 1914.)
“GERMANS” “_The Germans at Louvain_,” by a volunteer worker in the
_Hôpital St.-Thomas_. (Hodder and Stoughton. 1916.)
GRONDIJS “_The Germans in Belgium: Experiences of a Neutral_,” by L.
H. Grondijs, Ph.D., formerly Professor of Physics at the Technical
Institute of Dordrecht. (London: Heinemann. 1915.)
HÖCKER “_An der Spitze Meiner Kompagnie, Three Months of
Campaigning_,” by Paul Oskar Höcker. (Ullstein and Co., Berlin and
Vienna. 1914.)
“HORRORS” “_The Horrors of Louvain_,” by an Eye-witness, with an
Introduction by Lord Halifax. (Published by the London _Sunday
Times_.)
MASSART “_Belgians under the German Eagle_,” by Jean Massart,
Vice-Director of the Class of Sciences in the Royal Academy of
Belgium. (English translation by Bernard Miall. London: Fisher
Unwin. 1916.)
MERCIER _Pastoral Letter_, dated Xmas, 1914, of His Eminence Cardinal
Mercier, Archbishop of Malines.
MORGAN “_German Atrocities: An Official Investigation_,” by J. H.
Morgan, M.A., Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of
London. (London: Fisher Unwin. 1916.)
NUMERALS, ROMAN LOWER CASE _Reports (numbered i to xxii) of the
Belgian Commission (vide supra)._
R(EPLY) “_Reply to the German White Book of May 10, 1915._”
(Published, for the Belgian Ministry of Justice and Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, by Berger-Levrault, Paris, 1916.)
Arabic numerals after the R refer to the depositions contained
in the particular section of the _Reply_ that is being cited
at the moment: _e.g._, R15 denotes the fifteenth deposition
in the section on Louvain in the _Reply_ when cited in the
section on Louvain in the present work; but it denotes the
fifteenth deposition in the section on Aerschot when cited in the
corresponding section here.
The _Reply_ is also referred to by pages, and in these cases the
Arabic numeral denotes the page and is preceded by “p.”
S(OMVILLE) “_The Road to Liége_,” by Gustave Somville. (English
translation by Bernard Miall. Hodder and Stoughton. 1916.)
STRUYKEN “_The German White Book on the War in Belgium: A
Commentary_,” by Professor A. A. H. Struyken. (English Translation
of Articles in the Journal _Van Onzen Tijd_, of Amsterdam, July
31st, August 7th, 14th, 21st, 1915. Thomas Nelson and Sons.)
N.B.--Statistics, where no reference is given, are taken from the first
and second Annexes to the Reports of the Belgian Commission. They are
based on official investigations.
* * * * *
THE GERMAN TERROR IN BELGIUM
I. THE TRACK OF THE ARMIES.
When Germany declared war upon Russia, Belgium, and France in the
first days of August, 1914, German armies immediately invaded Russian,
Belgian, and French territory, and as soon as the frontiers were
crossed, these armies began to wage war, not merely against the troops
and fortifications of the invaded states, but against the lives and
property of the civil population.
Outrages of this kind were committed during the whole advance and
retreat of the Germans through Belgium and France, and only abated when
open manœuvring gave place to trench warfare along all the line from
Switzerland to the sea. Similar outrages accompanied the simultaneous
advance into the western salient of Russian Poland, and the autumn
incursion of the Austro-Hungarians into Serbia, which was turned back
at Valievo. There was a remarkable uniformity in the crimes committed
in these widely separated theatres of war, and an equally remarkable
limit to the dates within which they fell. They all occurred during
the first three months of the war, while, since that period, though
outrages have continued, they have not been of the same character or on
the same scale. This has not been due to the immobility of the fronts,
for although it is certainly true that the Germans have been unable to
overrun fresh territories on the west, they have carried out greater
invasions than ever in Russia and the Balkans, which have not been
marked by outrages of the same specific kind. This seems to show that
the systematic warfare against the civil population in the campaigns
of 1914 was the result of policy, deliberately tried and afterwards
deliberately given up. The hypothesis would account for the peculiar
features in the German Army’s conduct, but before we can understand
these features we must survey the sum of what the Germans did. The
catalogue of crimes against civilians extends through every phase and
theatre of the military operations in the first three months of the
war, and an outline of these is a necessary introduction to it.
In August, 1914, the Central Empires threw their main strength against
Belgium and France, and penetrated far further on this front than on
the east and south-east. The line on which they advanced extended from
the northern end of the Vosges to the Dutch frontier on the Meuse, and
here again their strength was unevenly distributed. The chief striking
force was concentrated in the extreme north, and advanced in an
immense arc across the Meuse, the Scheldt, the Somme, and the Oise to
the outskirts of Paris. As this right wing pressed forward, one army
after another took up the movement toward the left or south-eastern
flank, but each made less progress than its right-hand neighbour. While
the first three armies from the right all crossed the Marne before
they were compelled to retreat, the fourth (the Crown Prince’s) never
reached it, and the army of Lorraine was stopped a few miles within
French territory, before ever it crossed the Meuse. We shall set down
very briefly the broad movements of these armies and the dates on which
they took place.
[Illustration: 1. MOULAND]
[Illustration: 2. BATTICE]
Germany sent her ultimatum to Belgium on the evening of Aug. 2nd. It
announced that Germany would violate Belgian neutrality within twelve
hours, unless Belgium betrayed it herself, and it was rejected by
Belgium the following morning. That day Germany declared war on France,
and the next day, Aug. 4th, the advance guard of the German right wing
crossed the Belgian frontier and attacked the _forts of Liége_. On Aug.
7th the town of _Liége_ was entered, and the crossings of the Meuse,
from Liége to the Dutch frontier, were in German hands.
Beyond Liége the invading forces spread out like a fan. On the extreme
right a force advanced north-west to outflank the Belgian army covering
Brussels and to mask the fortress of Antwerp, and this right wing,
again, was the first to move. Its van was defeated by the Belgians at
_Haelen_ on Aug. 12th, but the main column entered _Hasselt_ on the
same day, and took _Aerschot_ and _Louvain_ on Aug. 19th. During the
next few days it pushed on to _Malines_, was driven out again by a
Belgian sortie from Antwerp on Aug. 25th, but retook Malines before the
end of the month, and contained the Antwerp garrison along the line of
the Dyle and the Démer.
This was all that the German right flank column was intended to do,
for it was only a subsidiary part of the two armies concentrated at
Liége. As soon as Antwerp was covered, the mass of these armies was
launched westward from Liége into the gap between the fortresses of
Antwerp and Namur--von Kluck’s army on the right and von Bülow’s on
the left. By Aug. 21st von Bülow was west of Namur, and attacking the
French on the _Sambre_. On Aug. 20th an army corps of von Kluck’s had
paraded through _Brussels_, and on the 23rd his main body, wheeling
south-west, attacked the British at _Mons_. On the 24th von Kluck’s
extreme right reached the Scheldt at _Tournai_ and, under this threat
to their left flank, the British and French abandoned their positions
on the Mons-Charleroi line and retreated to the south. Von Kluck and
von Bülow hastened in pursuit. They passed _Cambrai_ on Aug. 26th and
_St. Quentin_ on the 29th; on the 31st von Kluck was crossing the
Oise at _Compiègne_, and on the 6th Sept. he reached his furthest
point at _Courchamp_, south-east of Paris and nearly thirty miles
beyond the _Marne_. His repulse, like his advance, was brought about
by an outflanking manœuvre, only this time the Anglo-French had the
initiative, and it was von Kluck who was outflanked. His retirement
compelled von Bülow to fall back on his left, after a bloody defeat in
the marshes of _St. Gond_, and the retreat was taken up, successively,
by the other armies which had come into line on the left of von Bülow.
These armies had all crossed the Meuse south of the fortress of Namur,
and, to retain connexion with them, von Bülow had had to detach a force
on his left to seize the line of the Meuse from Liége to Namur and to
capture Namur itself. The best German heavy artillery was assigned to
this force for the purpose, and _Namur_ fell, after an unexpectedly
short bombardment, on Aug. 23rd, while von Bülow’s main army at
Charleroi was still engaged in its struggle with the French.
The fall of Namur opened the way for German armies to cross the Meuse
along the whole line from Namur to Verdun. The first crossing was made
at _Dinant_ on Aug. 23rd, the very day on which Namur fell, by a Saxon
army, which marched thither by cross routes through Luxembourg; the
second by the Duke of Würtemberg’s army between _Mezières_ and _Sedan_;
and the third by the Crown Prince of Prussia’s army immediately
north of _Verdun_. West of the Meuse the Saxons and Würtembergers
amalgamated, and got into touch with von Bülow on their right.
Advancing parallel with him, they reached _Charleville_ on Aug. 25th,
crossed the Aisne at _Rethel_ on the 30th and the Marne at _Châlons_ on
the 4th, and were stopped on the 7th at _Vitry en Perthois_. The Crown
Prince, on their left, did not penetrate so far. Instead of the plains
of Champagne he had to traverse the hill country of the _Argonne_. He
turned back at _Sermaize_, which he had reached on Sept. 6th, and never
saw the Marne.
On the left of the Crown Prince a Bavarian army crossed the frontier
between Metz and the Vosges. Its task was to join hands with the
Crown Prince round the southern flank of Verdun, as the Duke of
Würtemberg had joined hands with von Bülow round the flank of Namur.
But Verdun never fell, and the Bavarian advance was the weakest of any.
_Lunéville_ fell on Aug. 22nd, and _Baccarat_ was entered on the 24th;
but _Nancy_ was never reached, and on Sept. 12th the general German
retreat extended to this south-easternmost sector, and the Bavarians
fell back.
Thus the German invading armies were everywhere checked and driven back
between the 6th and the 12th September, 1914. The operations which came
to this issue bear the general name of the _Battle of the Marne_. The
_Marne_ was followed immediately by the _Aisne_, and the issue of the
Aisne was a change from open to trench warfare along a line extending
from the Vosges to the Oise. This change was complete before September
closed, and the line formed then has remained practically unaltered to
the present time. But there was another month of open fighting between
the Oise and the sea.
When the Germans’ strategy was defeated at the Marne, they transferred
their efforts to the north-west, and took the initiative there. On
Sept. 9th the Belgian Army had made a second sortie from Antwerp, to
coincide with the counter-offensive of Joffre, and this time they
had even reoccupied _Aerschot_. The Germans retaliated by taking
the offensive on the Scheldt. The retaining army before Antwerp was
strongly reinforced. Its left flank was secured, in the latter half
of September, by the occupation of _Termonde_ and _Alost_. The attack
on _Antwerp_ itself began on Sept. 27th. On the 2nd the outer ring
of forts was forced, and on the 9th the Germans entered the city.
The towns of Flanders fell in rapid succession--_Ghent_ on the 12th,
_Bruges_ on the 14th, _Ostend_ on the 15th--and the Germans hoped to
break through to the Channel ports on the front between Ostend and the
Oise. Meanwhile, each side had been feverishly extending its lines from
the Oise towards the north and pushing forward cavalry to turn the
exposed flank of the opponent. These two simultaneous movements--the
extension of the trench lines from the Oise to the sea, and the German
thrust across Flanders to the Channel--intersected one another at
_Ypres_, and the _Battle of Ypres and the Yser_, in the latter part of
October, was the crisis of this north-western struggle. On Oct. 31st
the German effort to break through reached, and passed, its climax, and
trench warfare established itself as decisively from the Oise to the
sea as it had done a month earlier between the Vosges and the Oise.
Thus, three months after the German armies crossed the frontier, the
German invasion of Belgium and France gave place to a permanent German
occupation of French and Belgian territories behind a practically
stationary front, and with this change of character in the fighting a
change came over the outrages upon the civil population which remained
in Germany’s power. The crimes of the invasion and the crimes of the
occupation are of a different order from one another, and must be dealt
with apart.
II. FROM THE FRONTIER TO LIÉGE.
(i) _On the Visé Road._
The Germans invaded Belgium on Aug. 4th, 1914. Their immediate
objective was the fortress of Liége and the passage of the Meuse,
but first they had to cross a zone of Belgian territory from twenty
to twenty-five miles wide. They came over the frontier along four
principal roads, which led through this territory to the fortress and
the river, and this is what they did in the towns and villages they
passed.
The first road led from Aix-la-Chapelle, in Germany, to the bridge
over the Meuse at Visé, skirting the Dutch frontier, and _Warsage_[4]
was the first Belgian village on this road to which the Germans came.
Their advance-guards distributed a proclamation by General von Emmich:
“_I give formal pledges to the Belgian population that they will not
have to suffer from the horrors of war.... If you wish to avoid the
horrors of war, you must act wisely and with a true appreciation of
your duty to your country._” This was on the morning of Aug. 4th, and
the Mayor of Warsage, M. Fléchet, had already posted a notice on the
town-hall warning the inhabitants to keep calm. All that day and
the next the Germans passed through; on the afternoon of the 6th the
village was clear of them, when suddenly they swarmed back, shooting in
at the windows and setting houses on fire. Several people were killed;
one old man was burnt alive. Then the Mayor was ordered to assemble
the population in the square. A German officer had been shot on the
road. No inquiry was held; no post-mortem examination made (the German
soldiers were nervous and marched with finger on trigger); the village
was condemned. The houses were systematically plundered, and then
systematically burnt. A dozen inhabitants, including the Burgomaster,
were carried off as hostages to the German camp at Mouland. Three were
shot at once; the rest were kept all night in the open; one of them was
tied to a cart-wheel and beaten with rifle-butts; in the morning six
were hanged, the rest set free. Eighteen people in all were killed at
Warsage and 25 houses destroyed.
At _Fouron-St. Martin_[5] five people were killed and 20 houses burnt.
Nineteen houses were burnt at _Fouron-le-Compte_.[5] At _Berneau_,[6]
a few miles further down the road, 67 houses (out of 116) were burnt
on Aug. 5th, and 7 people killed. “The people of Berneau,” writes a
German in his diary on Aug. 5th, “have fired on those who went to get
water. The village has been partly destroyed.” On the day of this entry
the Germans had commandeered wine at Berneau, and were drunk when they
took reprisals for shots their victims were never proved to have fired.
Among these victims was the Burgomaster, M. Bruyère, a man of 83. He
was taken, like the Burgomaster of Warsage, to the camp at Mouland, and
was never seen again after the night of the 6th. At _Mouland_[7] itself
4 people were killed and 73 houses destroyed (out of 132).
The road from Aix-la-Chapelle reaches the Meuse at _Visé_.[8] It was
a town of 900 houses and 4,000 souls, and, as a German describes it,
“It vanished from the map.”[9] The inhabitants were killed, scattered
or deported, the houses levelled to the ground, and this was done
systematically, stage by stage.
The Germans who marched through Warsage reached Visé on the afternoon
of Aug. 4th. The Belgians had blown up the bridges at Visé and
Argenteau, and were waiting for the Germans on the opposite bank. As
they entered Visé, the Germans came for the first time under fire,
and they wreaked their vengeance on the town. “The first house they
came to as they entered Visé they burned” (a 16), and they began to
fire at random in the streets. At least eight civilians were shot in
this way before night, and when night fell the population was driven
out of the houses and compelled to bivouac in the square. More houses
were burnt on the 6th; on the 10th they burned the church; on the 11th
they seized the Dean, the Burgomaster, and the Mother Superior of the
Convent as hostages; on the 15th a regiment of East Prussians arrived
and was billeted in the town, and that night Visé was destroyed. “I saw
commissioned officers directing and supervising the burning,” says an
inhabitant (a 16). “It was done systematically with the use of benzine,
spread on the floors and then lighted. In my own and another house I
saw officers come in before the burning with revolvers in their hands,
and have china, valuable antique furniture, and other such things
removed. This being done, the houses were, by their orders, set on
fire....”
The East Prussians were drunk, there was firing in the streets, and,
once more, people were killed. Next morning the population was rounded
up in the station square and sorted out--men this side, women that. The
women might go to Holland, the men, in two gangs of about 300 each,
were deported to Germany as franc-tireurs. “During the night of Aug.
15-16,” as another German diarist[10] describes the scene, “Pioneer
Grimbow gave the alarm in the town of Visé. Everyone was shot or taken
prisoner, and the houses were burnt. The prisoners were made to march
and keep up with the troops.” About 30 people in all were killed
at Visé, and 575 out of 876 houses destroyed. On the final day of
destruction the Germans had been in peaceable occupation of the place
for ten days, and the Belgian troops had retired about forty miles out
of range.
That is what the Germans did on the road from Aix-la-Chapelle; but,
before reaching Warsage, the road sends out a branch through Aubel
to the left, which passes under the guns of _Fort Barchon_ and leads
straight to Liége. The Germans took this road also, and Barchon was the
first of the Liége forts to fall. The civil population was not spared.
(ii) _On the Barchon Road._
At _St. André_[11] 4 civilians were killed and 14 houses burnt.
_Julémont_,[12] the next village, was completely plundered and burnt.
Only 2 houses remained standing, and 12 people were killed. Advancing
along this road, the Germans arrived at _Blégny_[13] on Aug. 5th.
Several inhabitants of Blégny were murdered that afternoon, among
them M. Smets, a professor of gunsmithry (the villagers worked for
the small-arms manufacturers of Liége). M. Smets was killed in his
house, where his wife was in child-bed. The corpse was thrown into
the street, the mother and new-born baby were dragged out after it.
That night the population of Blégny was herded together in the village
institute; their houses were set on fire. Next morning--the 6th--the
women were released and the men driven forward by the German infantry
towards Barchon fort. The Curé of Blégny, the Abbé Labeye, was among
the number, and there were 296 of them in all. In front of Barchon
they were placed in rows of four, but the fort would not fire upon
this living screen, and they were marched away across country towards
Battice, where five were shot before the eyes of the rest, and the curé
kicked, spat upon, and pricked with bayonets. They were again driven
forward as a screen against a Belgian patrol, and were kept in the open
all night. Next morning 4 more were shot--two who had been wounded by
the Belgian fire, and one who had heart disease and was too feeble to
go on. The fourth was an old man of 78. The Germans tortured these
victims by placing lighted cigarettes in their nostrils and ears. After
this second execution on the 7th, the remainder were set free....
On the 10th Aug. the curé writes in his diary:
“There are now 38 houses burnt, and 23 damaged.
“Thursday the 13th: a few houses pillaged, two young men taken away.
“Friday, the 14th: a few houses pillaged.
“Friday night: the village of Barchon is burnt and the curé taken
prisoner....”
The curé’s last notes for a sermon have survived: “My brothers, perhaps
we shall again see happy days....” But on the 16th, before the sermon
was delivered, the curé was shot. He was shot against the church
wall, with M. Ruwet, the Burgomaster, and two brothers, one of them
a revolver manufacturer who had handed over his stock to the German
authorities (from whom he received two passes) and had been working
for the Red Cross. After the execution the church was burnt down. The
nuns of Blégny were shot at by Germans in a motor-car when they came
out that day to bury the bodies. From the 5th to the 16th Aug., about
30 people were killed in the commune of Blégny-Trembleur, and 45 houses
burnt in all.
The village of _Barchon_,[14] as the curé of Blégny records, was
destroyed on the 14th--in cold blood, five days after the surrender
of the fort. There was a battue by two German regiments through the
village. The houses were plundered and burnt (110 burnt in all out
of 146); the inhabitants were rounded up. Twenty-two were shot in
one batch, including two little girls of two and an old woman of
ninety-four. Thirty-two perished altogether, and a dozen hostages were
carried off, some of whom were tied to field guns and compelled to keep
up with the horses. On the 16th the Germans evicted the inhabitants of
_Chefneux_,[15] and shot 4 men. On the 17th they burned all the 22
houses in the hamlet. At _Saives_[16] they burned 12 houses, and shot a
man and a girl.
We have the diary of a German soldier who marched down this branch
road from Aubel when all the villages had been destroyed except
_Wandre_,[17] which stood where the road debouched upon the Meuse.
“15th Aug.--11.50 a.m. Crossed the Belgian frontier and kept steadily
along the high road until we got into Belgium. We were hardly into it
before we met a horrible sight. Houses were burnt down, the inhabitants
driven out and some of them shot. Of the hundreds of houses not a
single one had been spared--every one was plundered and burnt down.
Hardly were we through this big village when the next was already set
on fire, and so it went on....
“16th Aug. The big village of Barchon set on fire. The same day, about
11.50 a.m., we came to the town of Wandre. Here the houses were spared
but all searched. At last we had got out of the town when once more
everything was sent to ruins. In one house a whole arsenal had been
discovered. The inhabitants were one and all dragged out and shot, but
this shooting was absolutely heart-rending, for they all knelt and
prayed. But this got them no mercy. A few shots rang out, and they
fell backwards into the green grass and went to their eternal sleep.
“And still the brigands would not leave off shooting us from
behind--that, and never from in front--but now we could stand it no
longer, and raging and roaring we went on and on, and everything that
got in our way was smashed or burnt or shot. At last we had to go
into bivouac. Half tired out and done up we laid ourselves down, and
we didn’t wait long before quenching some of our thirst. But we only
drank wine; the water has been half poisoned and half left alone by the
beasts. Well, we have much too much here to eat and drink. When a pig
shows itself anywhere or a hen or a duck or pigeons, they are all shot
down and slaughtered, so that at any rate we have something to eat. It
is a real adventure....”
This was the temper of the Germans who destroyed Wandre. They burned 33
houses altogether and shot 32 people--16 of them in one batch.
(iii) _On the Fléron Road._
There is another road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liége, which passes
through Battice and is commanded by _Fort Fléron_ (Fort Fléron offered
the most determined resistance of all the forts of Liége, and cost
the Germans the greatest loss). The Germans marched through _Battice_
on August 4th, and came under fire of the fort that afternoon. In the
evening they arrested three men in the streets of Battice, and shot
them without charge or investigation.
The check to their arms was avenged on the civil population. “On the
arrival of the German troops in the village of _Micheroux_,” states a
Belgian witness (a 12), “during the time when Fort Fléron was holding
out, they came to a block of four cottages, and having turned out the
inhabitants, set the cottages on fire and burned them. From one of the
cottages a woman (mentioned by name) came out with a baby in her arms,
and a German soldier snatched it from her and dashed it to the ground,
killing it then and there.”[18]
“The position was dangerous,” writes a German in his diary[19] on
August 5th, from a picket in front of Fort Fléron. “As suspicious
civilians were hovering round, houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 were cleared, the
owners arrested (and shot the next day).... I shoot a civilian with my
rifle, at 400 metres, slap through the head....”
[Illustration: 3. LIÉGE FORTS: A DESTROYED CUPOLA]
[Illustration: 4. ANS: AN INTERIOR]
That day the curé of Battice[20]: (who had been kept under arrest in
the open since the evening of the 4th) was driven, with the Mayor and
one of the communal councillors, under the Belgian fire. On the 6th the
German troops again retired on Battice in confusion, and the village
was destroyed that afternoon. Shots were fired indiscriminately and
the houses set on fire. The first victim was a young man sitting in a
café with his _fiancée_--he fell dead by her side. Three people were
taken to the field to which the men of Blégny had been brought, and
were shot with the five victims there. On the 7th they shot a workman
who had been given a safe-conduct by a German officer to buy bread in a
neighbouring village, and was on his way home with his wife. On the 8th
they set the fire going again, to burn what still remained. They burned
146 houses and killed 36 people in Battice from first to last.
The town of _Herve_[21] lies a mile or so beyond Battice on the Fléron
road, and was also traversed by the Germans on August 4th. The first
to pass were officers in a motor car, and as they crossed the bridge
they shot down two young men standing by the roadside--one was badly
wounded, the other killed outright. In the evening they sent for the
Mayor, accused the inhabitants of having fired on German troops, and
threatened to shoot the inhabitants and burn the town to the ground.
The Mayor and the curé spent the night going from house to house and
warning the people to avoid all grounds of offence--before they had
finished there were more shots fired indiscriminately (by the Germans),
and more (civilian) wounded and dead. The Mayor and curé were then
retained as hostages for the civilians’ good behaviour. On the 6th the
first house was burnt; on the 7th five men were shot in cold blood;
on the 8th a fresh column of troops arrived from Aix-la-Chapelle, and
these were the destroyers of Herve. “They fired indiscriminately in
all quarters of the town,” says an eye-witness (a 2), “and in the Rue
de la Station they shot Madame Hendrickx, hitting her at close range,
although she had a crucifix in her hand--begging for mercy.” All
through the 8th the shooting and burning went on, and on the 9th the
fires were kindled again. “The Germans gave themselves up to pillage
and loaded motor cars with everything of value they could find.” They
burned and pillaged consecutively for ten days, and on the 19th and
20th fresh regiments arrived and carried on the work. Two hundred
and seventy-nine houses were destroyed at Herve altogether, and 44
people killed. “On the road to Herve everything is burnt,” writes a
German soldier (Reply p. 127) who passed when all was over. “At Herve,
the same. Everything is burnt except a convent--everywhere corpses
carbonised into an indistinguishable mass. (There are about a hundred,
all civilians, and children among the number.) I only saw three people
alive in the village--an old man, a sister of charity, and a girl.”
The Belgian witness quoted above (a 2) records that “the German staff
officers staying in his hotel told his wife that the reason why they
had so treated Herve was because the inhabitants of the town would not
petition for a passage for the Germans at Fléron.”
In the villages between Herve and Fort Fléron the slaughter and
devastation were, if possible, more complete. At _la Bouxhe-Melen_[22]
there were two massacres--one on Aug. 5th and another on the 8th. In
the second the people were shot down in a field _en masse_, and 129
were murdered altogether, as well as about 40 people herded in from the
farms and hamlets of the neighbourhood. Sixty houses in la Bouxhe-Melen
were destroyed. In the commune of _Soumagne_,[23] on a branch road to
the south, the Germans killed 165 civilians and burned 104 houses down.
When they entered Soumagne on Aug. 5th, they killed indiscriminately
in the streets. “They broke the windows and broke the door,” writes a
witness (a 5) who had taken refuge in a cellar. “My mother went out of
the cellar door.... Then I heard a shot and my mother fell back into
the cellar. She was killed.” This indiscriminate killing was followed
up the same afternoon by the massacre of 69 civilians in a field called
the Fonds Leroy. “The soldiers fired a volley and killed many, and
then fired twice more. Then they went through the ranks and bayonetted
everyone still living. I saw many bayonetted in this way” (a 4). One
boy was shot and bayonetted in four places, and lay several days among
the dead, keeping himself alive on weeds and grass. This boy survived.
In another field 18 were massacred in one batch, in another 19. “I saw
about 20 dead bodies lying here and there along the road,” writes one
of the witnesses (a 4). “One of them was that of a little girl aged 13.
The rest were men, and most of them had had their heads bashed in.”--“I
saw 56 corpses of civilians in a meadow,” deposes another. “Some had
been killed by bayonet thrusts and others by rifle shots. In the heaps
of corpses above mentioned was that of the son of the Burgomaster. His
throat had been cut from ear to ear and his tongue had been pulled out
and cut off.”
In the hamlet of _Fécher_ the whole population--about 1,000 women,
children and men--was penned into the church on Aug. 5th, and next
morning the men (412 of them) were herded off as a living screen for
the German troops advancing between the forts (the first man to come
out of the church being wantonly shot down as an example to the rest).
The 411 were driven by bye-roads to the Chartreuse Monastery, above
the Meuse, overlooking the bridge into the city of Liége, and on the
7th they were planted as hostages on the bridge while the Germans
marched across. They were held there without food or shelter or relief
for a hundred hours. At _Micheroux_[24] 9 people were killed and 17
houses destroyed. These villages were all outside the eastern line of
forts, but the places inside the line, between the forts and Liége,
were devastated to an equal degree. At Fléron[25] 15 civilians were
killed and 152 houses destroyed.[26] At _Retinnes_[27] 41 civilians
were killed and 118 houses destroyed.[26] At _Queue du Bois_[28]
11 civilians were killed and 35 houses destroyed. At _Evegnée_ 2
civilians were killed and 5 houses destroyed. At _Cerexhe_[29] 4 women
and children were burnt alive in a house, and 2 houses destroyed.
At _Bellaire_[30] 4 people were killed and 15 houses destroyed. At
_Jupille_[31] 8 people were killed and 1 house destroyed. These
villages were saved none of the horrors of war by the surrender of the
forts.
(iv) _On the Verviers Road._
The Germans converged on the forts by more southerly roads as well.
At _Dolhain_,[32] on the road from Eupen to Verviers, 28 houses were
burnt on Aug. 8th and several civilians killed. At _Metten_,[33] near
Verviers, a German soldier confesses that he and his comrades “were
ordered to search a house from which shots had been fired, but found
nothing in the house but two women and a child.... I did not see the
women fire. The women were told that nothing would be done to them,
because they were crying so bitterly. We brought the women out and took
them to the major, and then we were ordered to shoot the women.... When
the mother was dead, the major gave the order to shoot the child, so
that the child should not be left alone in the world. The child’s eyes
were bandaged. I took part in this because we were ordered to do it by
Major Kastendick and Captain Dultingen....”
But Verviers and the Verviers road remained comparatively unscathed.
Far worse was done by the Germans who descended on the Vesdre from
Malmédy, south-eastward, over the hills.
(v) _On the Malmédy Road._
_Francorchamps_,[34] the first Belgian village on the Malmédy road, was
sacked on Aug. 8th, four days after the first German troops had passed
through it unopposed, and again on Aug. 14th by later detachments. At
_Hockay_,[35] near Francorchamps, the curé was shot. In Hockay and
Francorchamps 13 people were killed altogether, and 25 houses burnt.
“M. Darchambeau, who was wounded (in the cellar of a burning house),
asked a young officer for mercy. This young officer of barely 22, in
front of the women and children, aimed his revolver at M. Darchambeau’s
head and killed him.”
The fate of _Pepinster_[36] is recorded in a German diary: “Aug.
12th, Pepinster, Burgomaster, priest, and schoolmaster shot; houses
reduced to ashes. March on.” As a matter of fact, the three hostages
were not shot, but reprieved. The Burgomaster of _Cornesse_[37] was
shot in their stead (a 33, 34)--“an old man and quite deaf. (He was
only hit in the leg, and a German officer came up and shot him through
the heart with his revolver.)” Five houses in Cornesse were burnt.
At _Soiron_,[38] on Aug. 4th, the Germans bivouacking there fired on
one another, and eight German soldiers were wounded or killed. “But
the officers,” deposes a German private[39] who was present at the
scene, “in their anxiety to prevent the fact of this blunder from
being reported, hastened to pretend that it was really the civilians
who had fired, and gave orders for a general massacre. This order was
carried out, and there was terrible butchery. I must mention that we
only killed the males, but we burned all the houses.” At _Olnes_[40]
the curé and the communal secretary were shot on Aug. 5th, and the
schoolmaster the same evening, in front of his burning house, with
his daughter and his two sons. Only two members of the schoolmaster’s
family were spared. In the hamlet of _St. Hadelin_,[41] which came
within the radius of Fort Fléron’s guns, there was a wholesale massacre
on the same date. Early in the day the Germans “requisitioned” 300
bottles of wine; later they drove a crowd of people from St. Hadelin,
_Riessonsart_, and _Ayeneux_, to a place called the Faveu, and shot
down 33. The remainder were forced to haul German artillery towards the
forts, but these were partly released next day, and partly massacred
at the Heids d’Olne. Twenty inhabitants of Ayeneux were massacred in a
batch elsewhere. Sixty-two civilians were murdered altogether in the
commune of Olne, and 78 houses destroyed--40 in St. Hadelin and 38 in
Olne itself.
At _Forêt_[42] the Germans burned a farm and killed two of the farmer’s
sons on Aug. 5th as they entered the place. They drove the farmer and
his two surviving sons in front of them as a screen. The schoolmaster
and two others were shot outside the village. “At Forêt,” states the
German soldier quoted above,[43] “we found prisoners--a priest and
five civilians, including a boy of 17. Pillage began ... but we were
shelled ... and moved off to the next village. The house doors were at
once broken in with the butt-ends of muskets. We pillaged everything.
We made piles of the curtains and everything inflammable, and set
them alight. All the houses were burnt. It was in the middle of this
that the civilian prisoners of whom I have spoken were shot, with the
exception of the curé.” (The curé, too, was shot that night.)[44] “A
little further on, under the pretext that civilians had fired from a
house (though for my own part I cannot say whether they were soldiers
or civilians who fired), orders were given to burn the house. A woman
asleep there was dragged from her bed, thrown into the flames, and
burnt alive....”
Thirteen people in all were killed at Forêt, and 6 houses destroyed.
At _Magnée_[45] 18 houses were destroyed and 21 people killed. The
German troops in Magnée were caught by the fire from the Fléron and
Chaudfontaine forts, and they revenged themselves, as elsewhere, on
the civilians, shooting people in batches and burning houses and
farms. This was on Aug. 6th, and at _Romsée_,[46] on the same day,
34 houses were burnt and 31 civilians murdered--some of them being
driven as a screen in front of the German troops under the fire of Fort
Chaudfontaine.
(vi) _Between the Vesdre and the Ourthe._
The same outrages were committed between the Vesdre and the Ourthe. At
_Louveigné_,[47] on Aug. 7th, the Germans, retreating from their attack
on the southern forts, looted the drink-shops, fired in the streets,
and accused the civilians of having shot. A dozen men (two of them over
70 years old) were imprisoned as hostages in a forge, and were shot
down, when released, like game in the open. That evening Louveigné was
systematically set on fire with the same incendiary apparatus that was
used at Visé, and the curé was dragged round on the foot-board of a
military motor-car to watch the work. There were more murders next day.
The total number of civilians murdered at Louveigné was 29, and there
were 77 houses burnt. The devastation impressed the German soldiers who
passed through Louveigné on the following days. “Louveigné has been
completely burnt out. All the inhabitants are dead,” writes a German
diarist on Aug. 9th. “March to Louveigné,” another records on Aug.
16th. “Several citizens and the curé shot according to martial law,
some not yet buried--still lying where they were executed, for everyone
to see. Stench of corpses everywhere. Curé said to have incited the
inhabitants to ambush and kill the Germans.”--“Bivouac! Rain! Burnt
villages! Louveigné!” another exclaims on Aug. 17th. “We marched and
bivouacked in the rain, in an orchard with a high hedge round it, full
of fruit-trees. There was an abandoned house in front of it. The door,
which was locked, was broken in with an axe. The traces of war--burnt
houses, weeping women and children, executions of franc-tireurs--showed
us the ruthlessness of the times. We could not have done otherwise....
But how many have to suffer with others, how many innocent people are
shot by martial law, because there is no detailed enquiry first....”
At _Lincé_,[48] in the commune of Sprimont, a German officer was
wounded when the troops returned in confusion from before the southern
forts of Liége. The Germans forbade an autopsy to discover by what
bullet the wound had been caused, and condemned two civilians with a
proven alibi to be shot. All the next morning the destruction went
on. Houses were burnt, the curé was mishandled, a farmer and his son
were shot down at their farm gate, a girl of twelve received four
bullets in her body. The execution of the hostages took place in the
afternoon. Sixteen men were shot, of whom 7 were more than 60 years
old. At _Chanxhe_,[49] on Aug. 6th, hostages from _Poulseur_ were
bound in ranks to the parapet of the bridge over the Ourthe, and kept
there several days while the Germans filed across. “We were tortured
by hunger and thirst,” writes one of them. “We shivered at night. And
then, of necessity, there was the filth.... At the end of the bridge
the women were pleading with the Germans in vain, and the children were
crying.” On the 5th two civilian captives were shot on the bridge, and
their bodies thrown into the river, and two more (one aged 70) were
shot on the 7th. In the commune of Poulseur, from which these hostages
came, 7 civilians were killed and 25 houses destroyed. In the commune
of Sprimont 67 houses were destroyed and 48 civilians killed. At
_Esneux_ 26 houses were destroyed and 7 civilians killed.
(vii) _Across the Meuse._
Meanwhile, the Germans had crossed the Meuse at Visé, and were
descending on Liége from the north. At _Hallembaye_, in the commune
of _Haccourt_,[50] 18 people were killed. There were women, children
and old men among them, and also the curé,[51] who was bayonetted on
his church threshold as he was removing the sacrament. In the commune
of Haccourt 80 houses were destroyed, and 112 hostages were carried
away into Germany. _Hermalle-sous-Argenteau_[52] was plundered on Aug.
15th, and 9 houses destroyed. There was a mock execution of hostages
in the presence of women and children, and 368 men of the place were
imprisoned in the church for 17 days. At _Vivegnis_[53] 6 civilians
were shot on Aug. 13th, and 45 houses destroyed the day after. The
Germans fired on the inhabitants through the windows and doors, and two
men were thus killed in a single household. At _Heure-le-Romain_[54]
the population was confined in the church on Aug. 16th (it was Sunday)
and compelled to stand there, hands raised, under the muzzle of a
machine-gun. Seven civilians were shot at Heure-le-Romain that day,
including the Burgomaster’s brother and the curé,[55] who were roped
together and shot against the church wall. All through the 16th and
17th the sack continued; on the 18th fresh troops arrived and completed
the work by systematic arson and the slaughter of 19 people more.
Twenty-seven civilians were killed at Heure-le-Romain altogether and
84 houses destroyed. At _Hermée_,[56] on Aug. 6th, the Germans, caught
by the fire of _Fort Pontisse_, revenged themselves by shooting 11
civilians, including old men of 76 and 82 years. On the 14th, the day
after the surrender of the fort, the inhabitants of Hermée were driven
from their homes and the village systematically burnt, 146 houses
out of 308 being destroyed. In the village itself, as apart from
the outlying hamlets of the commune, only two or three houses were
left standing. At _Fexhe-Slins_, near Hermée, 3 people were killed.
Twenty-three were killed, and 13 houses destroyed, in the hamlet of
_Rhées_ in the commune of _Herstal_.[57]
Thus the Germans plundered private property, burned down houses, and
shot civilians of both sexes and all ages, on every road by which they
marched upon Liége--from the north-east, the south-east, and the north.
One thousand and thirty-two civilians[58] were shot by the Germans in
the whole _Province of Liége_, and 3,173 houses were destroyed in two
arrondissements (those of Liége and Verviers) alone out of the four of
which the Province is made up.
(viii) _The City of Liége._
Twenty-nine of these civilians were killed and 55[59] of the houses
destroyed in the _city of Liége_ itself--on August 20th, a fortnight
after it had fallen into the German Army’s possession. The Germans
entered Liége on August 7th. Their entry was not opposed by Belgian
troops, and arms in private hands had already been called in by
the Belgian police.[60] The Germans found themselves in peaceful
occupation of a great industrial city, caught in the full tide of
its normal life. There was nothing to suggest outrage, still less to
excuse it, in their surroundings there; their conduct on August 20th
was deliberate and cold-blooded. The Higher Command was faced with the
problem of holding a conquered country, and wanted an example. The
troops in garrison were demoralised by the sudden change to idleness
from fatigue and danger, and were ready for excitement and pillage.
“Aug. 16th, Liége,” writes a German soldier in his diary.[61] “The
villages we passed through had been destroyed.
“Aug. 19th. Quartered in University. Gone on the loose and boozed
through the streets of Liége. Lie on straw; enough booze; too little to
eat, or we must steal.
“Aug. 20th. In the night the inhabitants of Liége became mutinous.
Forty persons were shot and 15 houses demolished. Ten soldiers were
shot. The sights here make you cry.”
There are proofs of German premeditation--warnings from German soldiers
to civilians on whom they were billeted,[62] and an ammunition waggon
which drew up at 8.0 a.m. in the Rue des Pitteurs, and twelve hours
later disgorged the benzine with which the houses in that street were
drenched before being burnt.[63]
“The city was perfectly quiet,” declares a Belgian witness,[64]
“until about 8.0 p.m. At about 9.15 p.m. I was in bed reading when I
heard the sound of rifle-fire.... The noise of the firing came nearer
and nearer.” The first shot was fired from a window of “Emulation
Building,” looking out on the Place de l’Université, in the heart of
the town.[65] The Place was immediately crowded with armed German
soldiers, firing in the air, breaking into houses, and dragging out
any civilians they could find. First nine men (5 of them Spanish
subjects) were shot in a batch, then 7 more.[66] “About 10.0 p.m. they
were shooting everywhere. About 10.30 p.m. several machine guns were
firing and artillery as well.” (The artillery was firing on private
houses from the opposite side of the Meuse.[67]) “About 11.0 p.m. I saw
between 45 and 50 houses burning. There were two seats of the fire--the
first at the Place de l’Université (8 houses--I was close by at the
time), the second across the Meuse on the Quai des Pecheurs, where
there were about 35 houses burning. I heard a whole series of orders
given in German, and also bugle calls, followed by the cries of the
victims, and I saw women with children running about in the street,
pursued by soldiers....” (a 28).
[Illustration: 5. ANS: THE CHURCH]
[Illustration: 6. LIÉGE: A FARM HOUSE]
The arson was elaborate. In the Rue des Pitteurs the waggon loaded with
benzine moved from door to door.[68] “About 20 men were going up to
each of the houses. One of them had a sort of syringe, with which he
squirted into the house, and another would throw a bucket of water in.
A handful of stuff was first put into the bucket, and when this was
thrown into the house there was an immediate explosion” (a 31). At the
Place de l’Université, when the Belgian fire-brigade arrived, they were
forbidden to extinguish the fire, and made to stand, hands up, against
a wall (a 28, 29). Later they were assigned another task. “About
midnight,” states a witness (a 30), “a whole heap of civilian corpses
were brought to the Hôtel de Ville on a fire-brigade cart. There were
17 of them. Bits were blown out of their heads....”
As the houses caught fire the inmates tried to escape. The few who
reached the street were shot down (a 24, 26). Most were driven back
into the flames. “At about 30 of the houses,” a witness states (a 31),
“I actually saw faces at the windows before the Germans entered, and
then saw the same faces at the cellar windows after the Germans had
driven the people into the cellars.” In this way a number of men and
women were burnt alive.[69] In some cases the Germans would not wait
for the fire to do their work for them, but bayonetted the people
themselves. In one house, near the Episcopal Palace,[70] two boys were
bayonetted before their mother’s eyes, and then the man--their father
and her husband. Another man in the house was wounded almost to death,
and the Germans were with difficulty prevented from “finishing him
off,” next morning, on the way to the hospital. An orphan girl, who
lodged in the same house, was violated.
Next morning, August 21st, the district round the University Buildings
on either side of the Meuse was cleared of its inhabitants--such
inhabitants as survived and such streets as still stood. The people
were evicted at a few hours’ notice, and not allowed to return for
a month.[71] The same day a proclamation was posted by the German
authorities: “Civilians have fired on the German soldiers. Repression
is the result.”[72] The indictment was not convincing, for “Emulation
Building,” from which the first shot was fired on the night of the
20th, had been cleared of its Belgian occupants some days before
and filled entirely with German soldiers. Later the German Governor
of Liége shifted his ground, and laid the blame on Russian students
“who had been a burden on the population of the city.”[73] A clearer
light is thrown on the outbreak of August 20th by what occurred on the
night of August 21st-22nd. “Aug. 22nd, 3 a.m., Liége,” writes a German
in his diary. “Two infantry regiments shot at each other. Nine dead
and 50 wounded--fault not yet ascertained.” But in the other diary,
quoted before, the incident is thus recorded under the same date:
“August 21st. In the night the soldiers were again fired on. We then
destroyed several houses more.” The soldiers fire, the civilians suffer
reprisals, but the Germans’ object is gained. The conquered population
is terrorised, the invaders feel secure. “On August 23rd everything
quiet,” the latter diarist continues. “The inhabitants have so far
given in.
“August 24th. Our occupation is bathing, and eating and drinking for
the rest of the day. We live like God in Belgium.”
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Belgian Report xvi (statements by the Mayor and another
inhabitant); Somville pp. 134-143.
[5] Belg. xvii.
[6] Somville pp. 143-6.
[7] Somville pp. 146-7.
[8] Belg. xvii; Somville pp. 177-184; Bland pp. 164-5; a 16.
[9] Höcker p. 46.
[10] Bland p. 165.
[11] Somville p. 148.
[12] Somville pp. 147-8.
[13] Somville pp. 157-168; a 7, 20.
[14] Somville pp. 152-7; xvii.
[15] Somville p. 156.
[16] S. p. 148; xvii.
[17] Bryce pp. 161-2; S. pp. 168-177.
[18] Same incident recorded in xvii, p. 50.
[19] Bryce pp. 168-9.
[20] S. pp. 46-55; xvii; Reply pp. 110-116 (Report of L’Abbé Voisin,
Curé of Battice, to the Belgian Government).
[21] S. pp. 55-72; xvii; Reply pp. 123-7; a 2.
[22] S. pp. 73-9; xvii.
[23] S. pp. 113-126; xvii; a 4, 5, 9.
[24] S. pp. 110-2; xvii; a 12.
[25] S. pp. 126-130.
[26] Partly by bombardment during the attack on the fort.
[27] S. pp. 105-110; Reply pp. 133-4.
[28] S. pp. 151-2.
[29] S. p. 148.
[30] S. p. 152.
[31] S. p. 149.
[32] xvii. p. 57.
[33] Bland pp. 105-9.
[34] S. pp. 16-18; xvii. p. 56.
[35] S. p. 18; Mercier.
[36] Bland p. 185.
[37] xvii; a 33, 34.
[38] xvii; Reply p. 126.
[39] Reply p. 126.
[40] xvii; Mercier; S. pp. 79-82.
[41] S. pp. 82-92.
[42] xvii; S. pp. 92-4.
[43] Reply p. 126.
[44] Mercier.
[45] S. pp. 94-100.
[46] S. pp. 100-5.
[47] S. pp. 40-5: Belg. Ann. 5, pp. 167-8; Morgan p. 100; Bryce p. 172.
[48] S. pp. 30-8.
[49] S. pp. 20-30.
[50] S. pp. 191-3; xvii.
[51] Mercier.
[52] S. pp. 190-1, a 15.
[53] S. pp. 187-8.
[54] S. pp. 200-5; xvii; a 17.
[55] Mercier.
[56] S. pp. 194-200; xvii; a 35.
[57] S. pp. 185-7; a 6, 10, 11, 13.
[58] Known by name. See Reply, p. 142.
[59] There were also thirty-seven houses destroyed in the suburb of
Grivegnée.
[60] a 24.
[61] Bryce pp. 172-3.
[62] a 28.
[63] a 24.
[64] a 28.
[65] S. p. 209.
[66] Names given by S. pp. 211-2; cp. a 27.
[67] S. p. 212.
[68] a 24, 27, 31.
[69] a 31; S. p. 213.
[70] S. pp. 219-224.
[71] S. pp. 217-8, 225.
[72] S. p. 218.
[73] S. p. 234; a 24.
III. FROM LIÉGE TO MALINES.
(i) _Through Limburg to Aerschot._
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.”
[Illustration: 7. LIÉGE UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION]
[Illustration: 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.
(ii) _Aerschot._
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.”
[Illustration: 9. LIÉGE IN RUINS]
[Illustration: 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....”
[Illustration: 11. HAELEN]
[Illustration: 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.”
(iii) _The Aerschot District._
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....”
(iv) _The Retreat from Malines._
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....”
[Illustration: 13. BRUSSELS: A BOOKING-OFFICE]
[Illustration: 14. MALINES AFTER BOMBARDMENT]
In one house they bound a bed-ridden man to his bed, and shot another
man in the presence of 13 children who were in the house (d 29). In
another house they burned a woman and two children (d 71); they burned
the owner of a bicycle shop in his shop;[127] these four bodies were
found, carbonised, by the Belgian troops. The Belgians also found a
woman dead in the street, with four bayonet wounds in her body (d 36),
and saw an Uhlan overtake a woman driving in a cart, thrust his lance
through her body, and then shoot her in the chest with his carbine (d
80). In a farmhouse the farmer was found with his head cut off. His two
sons, killed by bullet wounds, were lying beside him. His wife, whose
left breast had been cut off, was still alive, and told how, when her
eight-year-old son had gone up a ladder into the loft, the Germans had
pulled away the ladder and set the building on fire.[128] Twenty-seven
houses were burnt at Sempst, 200 sacked, 18 inhabitants killed, and 34
deported to Germany.
At _Weerde_ 34 houses were burnt. As the Germans retreated they
bayonetted two little girls standing in the road and tossed them into
the flames of a burning house--their mother was standing by (d 85).
At _Eppeghem_[129] 176 houses were burnt, 8 civilians killed, and
125 deported. The killing was done with the bayonet. A woman with
child, whose stomach had been slashed open, died in the hospital at
Malines. When the Germans returned to Eppeghem again, they used the
remaining civilians as a screen. On August 28th they did the same at
_Elewyt_,[130] not even exempting old men or women with child. We
have the testimony of a Belgian priest who was driven in the screen,
and of a Belgian soldier in the trenches against which the screen was
driven. A hundred and thirty-three houses were burnt at Elewyt, and
10 civilians killed. The Belgian troops found the body of a man tied
naked to a ring in a wall. His head was riddled with bullets, there was
a bayonet wound in his chest, and he had been mutilated obscenely. A
woman, also mutilated obscenely after violation, was lying dead on the
ground. In another house a man and a woman were found, with bayonet
wounds all over their bodies, on the floor. At _Perck_ 180 houses (out
of 243) were sacked and 5 civilians killed. At _Bueken_ 50 houses were
burnt, 30 sacked (out of 84), and 8 civilians killed. The victims were
killed in a meadow in the sight of the women and children.[131] Among
them was the parish priest.[132] “He was a man 75 or 80 years old.
He could not walk fast enough. He was driven along with blows from
rifle-butts and knocked down. He cried out: ‘I can go no further,’ and
a soldier thrust a bayonet into his neck at the back--the blood flowed
out in quantities. The old man begged to be shot, but the officer said:
‘That is too good for you.’ He was taken off behind a house and we
heard shots. He did not return....” (d 97, cp. 98). At _Vilvorde_[133]
33 houses were burnt and 6 civilians killed. In the whole _Canton of
Vilvorde_, in which all these places, except Malines, lay, 611 houses
were burnt, 1,665 plundered, 90 civilians killed, and 177 deported to
Germany.
The devastation spread through the whole zone of the German retreat.
At _Capelle-au-Bois_[134] the Belgian troops found two girls hanging
naked from a tree with their breasts cut off, and two women bayonetted
in a house, caught as they were making preparations to flee. A woman
told them how German soldiers had held her down by force, while other
soldiers had violated her daughter successively in an adjoining room.
Four civilians were killed at Capelle-au-Bois and 235 houses burnt.
At _Londerzeel_[135] 18 houses were burnt and one civilian killed. He
was a man who had tried to prevent the Germans from violating his
two daughters. When the Germans re-entered Londerzeel they used the
civilian population as a screen. At _Ramsdonck_, near Londerzeel, a
woman and two children were shot by the Germans as they were flying for
protection towards the Belgian lines.[136] At _Wolverthem_ 10 houses
were burnt and 5 people killed. At _Meysse_ 3 houses were burnt and 350
sacked, 2 civilians killed and 29 deported. At _Beyghem_ 32 houses were
burnt. At _Pont-Brûlé_,[137] on Aug. 25th, the priest was imprisoned
with 28 other civilian hostages in a room. The German soldiers
compelled him to hold up his hands for hours, and struck him when he
lowered them from fatigue. They compelled his fellow-prisoners to spit
on him. They tore up his breviary and threw the fragments in his face.
When he fainted they threw pails of water on him to revive him. As he
was reviving he was shot. Fifty-eight houses were burnt in the commune
of Pont-Brûlé-Grimbergen, 5 civilians shot, and 65 deported. These
places lay in the _Canton of Wolverthem_, west of the river Senne,
between Termonde, Malines, and Brussels. In the whole canton 426 houses
were burnt, 1,292 plundered, 29 civilians killed, and 182 deported to
Germany.
[Illustration: 15. MALINES: RUINS]
[Illustration: 16. MALINES: RUINS]
In the district between Malines and Aerschot it was the same, and
places which had suffered already on Aug. 19th were devastated again
on Aug. 25th and the following days. At _Hever_[138] in the Canton of
Haecht, a baby was found hanged by the neck to the handle of a door.
Thirty-five houses were burnt. At _Boortmeerbeek_[139] 103 houses were
burnt and 300 sacked (out of 437); 5 civilians were killed--one of
them a little girl who was bayonetted in the road. At _Haecht_[140]
5 men were seized as hostages and then shot in cold blood. One of
them survived, though he was bayonetted twice after the shooting to
“finish him off.” Seven others were stripped naked and threatened with
bayonets, but instead of being killed they were used as a screen. The
Belgian troops found the body of a woman on the road, stripped to
the waist and with the breasts cut off. There was another woman with
her head cut off and her body mutilated. There was a child with its
stomach slashed open with a bayonet, and another--two or three years
old--nailed to a door by its hands and feet. At Haecht 40 houses were
burnt.
At _Thildonck_ 31 houses were burnt and 10 civilians killed. Seven of
those killed in the commune of Thildonck belonged to the family of the
two Valckenaers brothers, whose farms (situated close to one another)
were occupied by the Belgian troops early on the morning of August
26th. As the Germans counter-attacked, the Belgian soldiers opened
fire on them from the farm buildings and then retired. A platoon of
Germans, with an officer at their head, entered Isodore Valckenaers’
farm (where the whole family was gathered) about 8.0 a.m. Isodore and
two of his nephews--barely more than boys--were shot at once. His
daughter, who clung to him and begged for his life, was torn away. The
two young men were killed instantaneously. The elder, though horribly
wounded by the bullet, survived, and was rescued next day. The rest of
the family--a group of eleven women and children, for François-Edouard
Valckenaers, the other brother, was away--were shot down half-an-hour
later. They were herded together in the garden and fired on from all
sides. Madame Isodore Valckenaers was holding her youngest baby in her
arms. The bullet broke the child’s arm and mangled its face, and then
tore the mother’s lip and destroyed one of her eyes. (The baby died,
but the mother survived.) Madame F.-E. Valckenaers also survived--her
dress was spattered with the brains of her fourteen-year-old son,
whom she was holding by the hand. Five died altogether out of this
group of eleven--some instantaneously, some after hours of agony. The
eldest of them was only eighteen, the youngest was two-and-a-half.
Thus seven of the Valckenaers’ family were killed in all out of the
fourteen present, and three were severely wounded. Only four were left
unscathed.[141]
At _Werchter_[142] 267 houses were burnt and 162 sacked (out of 496),
15 civilians were killed, and 32 deported. The priests of _Wygmael_
and _Wesemael_ were dragged away as hostages, and driven, with a crowd
of civilians from Herent, as a screen in front of the German troops
on Aug. 29th. At Wesemael 46 houses were burnt, 13 civilians killed
and 324 deported. At _Holsbeek_ one civilian was killed and 35 houses
burnt. In the whole _Canton of Haecht_ 899 houses were burnt, 1,772
plundered, 116 civilians killed, and 647 deported.
As the Germans fell back south-eastward, the devastation spread
into the Canton of Louvain. “When the Germans first arrived at
_Herent_,”[143] states a witness (d 97), “they did nothing, but when
they were repulsed from Malines they began to ill-treat the civilians.”
They shot a man at his door, and threw another man’s body into a
burning house. At _Aanbosch_, a hamlet of Herent, they dragged 4 men
and 9 women out of their houses and bayonetted them. In the commune
of Herent they killed 22 civilians (the priest was among the later
victims)[144] and deported 104 altogether, burned 312 houses and sacked
200. At _Velthem_ they killed 14 civilians and burned 44 houses. At
_Winxele_ they burned 57 houses and killed 5 civilians--the soldier
who had shot and bayonetted one of them thrust his bayonet into the
faces of the hostages: “Smell, smell! It is the blood of a Belgian
pig” (d 97-8). At _Corbeek-Loo_ 20 civilians were killed, 62 deported,
and 129 houses burnt. At _Wilsele_ 36 houses were burnt and 7 people
killed. One of them was an epileptic who had a seizure while he was
being carried away as a hostage. Since he could go no further, he was
shot through the head (d 129). At _Kessel-Loo_ 59 people were killed
and 461 houses burnt; at _Linden_ 6 and 103; at _Heverlé_ 6 and 95. In
the whole _Canton of Louvain_ 2,441 houses were burnt, 2,722 plundered,
251 civilians killed, and 831 deported. About 40 per cent. of this
destruction was done in the City of Louvain itself, on the night of
August 25th and on the following nights and days. The destruction of
Louvain was the greatest organised outrage which the Germans committed
in the course of their invasion of Belgium and France, and as such it
stands by itself. But it was also the inevitable climax of the outrages
to which they had abandoned themselves in their retreat upon Louvain
from Malines. The Germans burned and massacred invariably, wherever
they passed, but there was a bloodthirstiness and obscenity in their
conduct on this retreat which is hardly paralleled in their other
exploits, and which put them in the temper for the supreme crime which
followed.
(v) _Louvain._
The Germans entered _Louvain_ on August 19th. The Belgian troops did
not attempt to hold the town, and the civil authorities had prepared
for the Germans’ arrival. They had called in all arms in private
possession and deposited them in the Hôtel-de-Ville. This had been
done a fortnight before the German occupation,[145] and was repeated,
for security, on the morning of the 19th itself.[146] The municipal
commissary of police remarked the exaggerated conscientiousness with
which the order was obeyed. “Antiquarian pieces, flint-locks and
even razors were handed in.”[147] The people of Louvain were indeed
terrified. They had heard what had happened in the villages round
Liége, at Tongres and at St. Trond, and on the evening (August 18th)
before the Germans arrived the refugees from Tirlemont had come pouring
through the town.[148] The Burgomaster, like his colleagues in other
Belgian towns, had posted placards on August 18th, enjoining confidence
and calm.
The German entry on the 19th took place without disturbance. Large
requisitions were at once made on the town by the German Command.
The troops were billeted on the inhabitants. In one house an officer
demanded quarters for 50 men. “Revolver in hand, he inspected every
bedroom minutely. ‘If anything goes wrong, you are all _kaput_.’
That was how he finished the business.”[149] It was vacation time,
and the lodgings of the University students were empty. Many houses
were shut up altogether, and these were broken into and pillaged by
the German soldiers.[150] They pillaged enormous quantities of wine,
without interference on the part of their officers. “The soldiers did
not scruple to drain in the street the contents of stolen bottles,
and drunken soldiers were common objects.”[151] There was also a
great deal of wanton destruction--“furniture destroyed, mirrors and
picture-frames smashed, carpets spoilt and so on.”[152] The house of
Professor van Gehuchten, a scientist of international eminence, was
treated with especial malice. This is testified by a number of people,
including the Professor’s son. “They destroyed, tore up and threw
into the street my father’s manuscripts and books (which were very
numerous), and completely wrecked his library and its contents. They
also destroyed the manuscript of an important work of my late father’s
which was in the hands of the printer.”[153]--“This misdemeanour made
a scandal,” states another witness. “It was brought to the knowledge
of the German general, who seemed much put out, but took no measures
of protection.”[154] The pillage was even systematic. A servant, left
by an absent professor in charge of his house, found on August 20th
that the Germans “had five motor-vans outside the premises. I saw
them removing from my master’s house wine, blankets, books, etc., and
placing them in the vans. They stripped the whole place of everything
of value, including the furniture.... I saw them smashing glass and
crockery and the windows.”[155] On August 20th there were already
acts of violence in the outskirts of the town. At Corbeek-Loo a girl
of sixteen was violated by six soldiers and bayonetted in five places
for offering resistance. Her parents were kept off with rifles.[156]
By noon on August 20th the town itself “was like a stable. Streets,
pavements, public squares and trampled flower beds had disappeared
under a layer of manure.”[157]
On August 20th the German military authorities covered the walls
with proclamations: “Atrocities have been committed by (Belgian)
franc-tireurs.”[158]--“If anything happens to the German troops,
_le total sera responsable_”[159] (an attempt to render in French
the Prussian doctrine of collective responsibility). Doors must be
left open at night. Windows fronting the street must be lighted up.
Inhabitants must be within doors between 8.0 p.m. and 7.0 a.m. Most of
these placards were ready-made in German, French and Russian. There
were no placards in Flemish till after the events of August 25th. Yet
Flemish was the only language spoken and understood by at least half
the population of Louvain.
[Illustration: 17. MALINES: CARDINAL MERCIER’S STATE-ROOM AS A RED
CROSS HOSPITAL]
[Illustration: 18. MALINES: THE CARDINAL’S THRONE-ROOM]
Hostages were also taken by the German authorities.[160] The
Burgomaster, a City Councillor and a Senator were confined under guard
in the Hôtel-de-Ville on the first day of occupation. From August 21st
onwards they were replaced successively by other notables, including
the Rector and Vice-Rector of the University. On August 21st there was
another German proclamation, in which the inhabitants were called upon
(for the third time) to deliver up their arms.[161] Requisitions and
acts of pillage by individual officers and soldiers continued, and on
the evening of August 24th the Burgomaster was dragged to the Railway
Station and threatened with a revolver by a German officer, who had
arrived with 250 men by train and demanded a hot meal and mattresses
for them at once. Major von Manteuffel, the Etappen-Kommandant in the
city, was called in and the Burgomaster was released, but without
reparation.[162] On that day, too, the German wounded were removed
from Louvain[163]--an ominous precaution--and in the course of the
following day there were spoken warnings.[164] On the morning of this
day, Tuesday, August 25th, Madame Roomans, a notary’s wife, is said to
have been warned by the German officers billeted on her to leave the
town. In the afternoon, about 5.0 o’clock, another lady reported how
an officer, billeted on her and taking his leave, had added: “I hope
you will be spared, for now it is going to begin.” At supper time, when
the first shots were fired and the alarm was sounded, officers billeted
on various households are said to have exclaimed “Poor people!”--or to
have wept.