HIS ARREST
“At 1.30 P.M. the Germans entered Louvain. They did not do anything to the people in the beginning. On the following Saturday, Aug. 22, I started to return to Aerschot, as I had no money. (All my money was still in Brussels.) The whole distance from Louvain to Aerschot I saw nothing but German armies, always Germans. They did not say a word to me until I suddenly found myself alone with three of the “Todeshusaren” (Death’s-head Hussars), the vanguard of their regiment. They arrested me at the point of the revolver, demanded where I was going and why I had run away from Aerschot. They said that the whole of Aerschot was now on fire, because the son of the burgomaster had killed a general. Finally they searched me from head to foot, and I heard them discuss the question of my fate.
“Finally the non-commissioned officer told me that I could continue on my way; that they would certainly take care of me in Aerschot, as I had been firing at Germans, and they would shoot me when I arrived. I would have liked better to return to Louvain, but with an imperious gesture he pointed out my road to Aerschot, and I continued. On arriving within a few hundred meters of the town I was arrested once more.
“I forgot to tell you that of all the houses which I passed between Louvain and Aerschot, there were only a few left intact. Upon these the Germans had written in chalk in the German language: ‘Please spare. Good people. Do not burn.’ Lying along the road I saw many dead horses putrefying. There were also to be seen pigs, goats, and cows which had nothing to eat, and which were howling like wild beasts. Not a soul was to be seen in the houses or in the streets. Everything was empty.
In Belgium.
Jean—“Do you think St. Nicholas will find us, now that we haven’t a chimney?”
“I was then arrested when a short distance from Aerschot. There were with me two or three families from Sichem, a village between Diest and Aerschot. We remained in the fields alongside the road, while the Prussian regiments with their artillery continued to pass by. When the artillery had passed we were marched at the point of the bayonet to the church in Aerschot. On arrival at the church the families of Sichem (there were at least twenty small children) were permitted to continue on their way, and the non-commissioned officer, delighted that I could speak German, permitted me to go to my aunt’s house.