In another building about 22 captured Belgian soldiers (some of them wounded) and six civilian hostages were under guard. They were dragged out to the banks of the Démer and shot down by two companies of German troops. “I was hit,” explains one of the two survivors (a soldier already wounded before being taken prisoner), “but an officer saw that I was still breathing, and when a soldier wanted to shoot me again, he ordered him to throw me into the Démer. I clung to a branch and set my feet against the stones on the river-bottom. I stayed there till the following morning, with only my head above water....” (R. No. 8).
The Burgomaster’s house was the first to be cleared. Colonel Stenger’s aide-de-camp dragged the Burgomaster out of the cellar where he and his family had taken refuge, and carried him off under guard. Half-an-hour later the aide-de-camp returned for the Burgomaster’s wife and his fifteen-year-old son. “My poor child,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife, “could scarcely walk because of his wound. The aide-de-camp kicked him along. I shut my eyes to see no more....” (R. No. 11).
“When we reached the square,” the same witness continues, “we found there all our neighbours. A girl near me was fainting with grief. Her father and two brothers had been shot, and they had torn her from her dying mother’s bedside. (They found her, nine hours later, dead). All the houses on the right side of the square were ablaze. One could detect the perfect order and method with which they were proceeding. There was none of the feverishness of men left to pillage by themselves. I am positive they were acting with orderliness and under orders.... From time to time, soldiers emerged from our house, with their arms full of bottles of wine. They were opening our windows, and all the interiors were stripped bare....”—“The square was one blaze of fire,” states a blacksmith (c 1), “and the civilians were obliged to stand there close to the flames from the burning houses.”—“They put the women and children on one side,” adds a woman (c 7). “I was among them, and my 5 children—one boy of fifteen and 4 girls. I saw that many of the men had their hands tied. They took the men away along the road to Louvain....”
The men were being led out of the town, as Captain Karge’s prisoners had been led out a few hours before, to be shot. The Burgomaster, his brother, and his son were in this second convoy. “Under the glare of the conflagration,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife, “my eyes fell upon my husband, my son and my brother-in-law, who were being led, with other men, to execution. For fear of breaking down his courage, I could not even cry out to my husband: ‘I am here.’” There were 50 or 60 prisoners altogether, and another batch of 30 followed behind.[96] “They made us walk in the same position, hands up, for 20 minutes,” one survivor states (c 4). “When we got tired we put our hands on our heads.”—“One of the prisoners,” states a second member of the convoy (c 8), “was struck on the back with a rifle-butt by a German soldier. The young man said: ‘O my father.’ His father said: ‘Keep quiet, my boy.’ Another soldier thrust his bayonet into the thigh of another prisoner, and afterwards compelled him to walk on with the rest.”—“Our hands,” states a third (R. No. 7), “were bound behind our backs with copper wire—so tightly that our wrists were cut and bled. We were compelled to lie down, still bound, on our backs, with our heads touching the ground. About six in the morning, they decided to begin the executions.”
An officer read out a document to the prisoners.—One out of three was to be shot. “It was read out like an article of the law. He read in German, but we understood it.... They took all the young men....” (c 4).
The Burgomaster’s chief political opponent was among the prisoners. He offered his life for the Burgomaster’s—“The Burgomaster’s life was essential to the welfare of the town.” The Burgomaster pleaded for his fellow citizens, and then for his son. The officer answered that he must have them all—the Burgomaster, his son and his brother. “The boy got up and stood between his father and uncle.... The shots rang out, and the three bodies fell heavily one upon another....” (R. No. 7).
“The rest were drawn up in ranks of three. They numbered them—one, two, three. Each number three had to step out of his rank and fall in behind the corpses; they were going to be shot, the Germans said. My brother and I were next to each other—I number two, he three. I asked the officer if I might take my brother’s place: ‘My mother is a widow. My brother has finished his education, and is more useful than I!’ The officer was again implacable. ‘Step out, number three.’ We embraced, and my brother joined the rest. There were about 30 of them lined up. Then the German soldiers moved slowly along the line, killing three at every discharge—each time at the officer’s word of command” (R. No. 7).
The last man in the line was spared as a medical student and member of the Red Cross (R. No. 5). The survivors were set free. On their way back they passed another batch going to their death (R. No. 7). They passed the corpse of a woman on the road, and another in the cattle-market (c 17). Other inhabitants of Aerschot were forced to bury all the corpses on the Louvain road in the course of the same day. They brought back to the women of Aerschot the sure knowledge that their husbands, sons and brothers were dead.[97]
The rest of what happened at Aerschot is quickly told. When the Germans had marched the second convoy of men out of the town and dismissed the women from the square, they evacuated the town themselves[98] and bombarded it from outside with artillery;[99] but in the daylight of Aug. 20th they came back again, and burned and pillaged continuously for three days—taking not only food and clothing but valuables of every kind, and loading them methodically on waggons and motor cars.[100] On the evening of the 20th, the Institut Damien, hospital though it was, was compelled to provide quarters for 1,100 men. “We spent all night giving food and drink to this mob, of whom many were drunk. We collected 800 empty bottles next morning.”[101]
On Aug. 26th and 27th the remnant of the population—about 600 men, women, and children, who had not perished or fled—were herded into the church.[102] They were given little food, and no means of sanitation. On the evening of the 27th a squad of German soldiers amused themselves by firing through the church door over the heads of the hostages, against the opposite wall. On the 28th the monks of St. Damien were brought there also. (Their hospital was closed, and the patients turned out of their beds.) The rest of the hostages were marched that day to Louvain. There were little children among them, and women with child, and men too old to walk. At Louvain, in the Place de la Station, they were fired upon, and a number were wounded and killed. The survivors were released on the 29th, but when they returned to Aerschot they were arrested and imprisoned again—the men in the church, the women in a chateau. The women and children were released the day following (that day the active troops at Aerschot were replaced by a landsturm garrison, who began to pillage the town once more).[103] The men were kept prisoners till Sept. 6th, when those not of military age were released and the remainder (about 70) deported by train to Germany. All the monks were deported, whatever their age.[104]