“KILLED IN MASSES”
Similar details are recited at much length in reference to the districts of Namur, Charleroi and the town of Dinant. At the latter point, the report says, “Unarmed civilians were killed in masses. We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation or that any other defense can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.”
The commission stated that it had received a great mass of evidence on “scenes of chronic outrage” in the territory bounded by the towns Aerschot, Malines, Vilvorde and Louvain. It stated that the total number of outrages was so great that the commission could not refer to them all.
“The commission is specially impressed by the character of the outrages committed in the smaller villages. Many of these are exceptionally shocking and cannot be regarded as contemplated or prescribed by responsible commanders of the troops by whom they were commanded. Evidence goes to show that deaths in these villages were due not to accident but to deliberate purpose. The wounds were generally stabs or cuts, and for the most part appear to have been inflicted with a bayonet.
“In Sempst the corpse of a man with his legs cut off, who was partly bound, was seen by a witness, who also saw a girl of seventeen in great distress dressed only in a chemise. She alleged that she herself and other girls had been dragged into a field, stripped naked and attacked, and that some of them had been killed with a bayonet.”
Taking up conditions at Aerschot and the surrounding district during September, the report says:
“At Haecht several children had been murdered; one of two or three years old was found nailed to the door of a farmhouse by its hands and feet, a crime which seems almost incredible, but the evidence for which we feel bound to accept. At Eppeghem the body of a child of two was seen pinned to the ground with a German lance. The same witness saw a mutilated woman alive near Weerde on the same day.”
A chapter is given to the terrible conditions at Louvain, where the report states, “massacre, fire and destruction went on. . . . Citizens were shot and others taken prisoners and compelled to go with the troops. Soldiers went through the streets saying, ‘Man hat geschossen’ (some one has fired on us).