(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.