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....”
3. Liége Forts: A Destroyed Cupola
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).
5. Ans: The Church
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.”