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.”