“On Aug. 31st,” writes a German landsturmer in his diary,[105] “we entered Aerschot to guard the station. On Sept. 2nd I had a little time off duty, which I spent in visiting the town. No one, without seeing it, could form any idea of the condition it is in.... In all my life I shall never drink more wine than I drank here.”
Three hundred and eighty-six houses were burnt at Aerschot, 1,000 plundered, 150 inhabitants killed, and after this destruction the Germans admitted the innocence of their victims. “It was a beastly mess,” a German non-commissioned officer confessed to one of the monks in the church of Aerschot on Aug. 29th.[106] “It was our soldiers who fired, but they have been punished.”
(iii) The Aerschot District.
The smaller places round Aerschot suffered in their degree. At Nieuw-Rhode 200 houses (out of 321) were plundered, one civilian killed, and 27 deported to Germany. At Gelrode,[107] on August 19th, the Germans seized 21 civilians as hostages, imprisoned them in the church, and then shot one in every three against a wall—the rest were marched to Louvain and imprisoned in the church there. None of them were discovered with arms, for the Burgomaster of Gelrode had collected all arms in private hands before the Germans arrived. The priest of Gelrode[108] was dragged away to Aerschot on August 27th by German soldiers. “When they got to the churchyard the priest was struck several times by each soldier on the head. Then they pushed him against the wall of the church” (c24).—“His hands were raised above his head. Five or six soldiers stood immediately in front of him.... When he let his hands drop a little, soldiers brought down their rifle butts on his feet” (c25). Finally they led him away to be shot, and his corpse was thrown into the Démer.
Eighteen civilians altogether were shot in the commune of Gelrode, and 99 deported to Germany. Twenty-three houses were burnt, and 131 plundered, out of 201 in the village.
At Tremeloo[109] 214 houses were burnt and 3 civilians killed (one of them an old man of 72). A number of women were raped at Tremeloo.
At Rotselaer[110] 67 houses were burnt, 38 civilians killed, and 120 deported to Germany. A girl who was raped by five Germans went out of her mind (c52). The priest of Rotselaer was deported with his parishioners. The men of the village had been confined in the church on the night of August 22nd, again on the night of the 23rd, and then consecutively till the morning of the 27th. The priest of Herent (who was more than 70 years old)[111] and other men from Herent, Wackerzeel, and Thildonck, were imprisoned with them, till there were a thousand people in the church altogether. The women brought them what food could be found, but for five days they could neither wash nor sleep. On the 27th they were marched to Louvain with a batch of prisoners taken from Louvain itself, and were sent on the terrible journey in cattle-trucks to Aix-la-Chapelle.
At Wespelaer[112] the destruction was complete. Out of 297 houses 47 were burnt and 250 gutted. Twenty-one inhabitants were killed. “The Germans shot the owner of the first house burnt on his doorstep, and his twenty-years-old daughter inside.... I only saw one man shot with my own eyes—a man who had an old carbine in his house. It had not been used; he was not carrying it.... In another house a married couple, 80 years old, were burnt alive” (c60).