“In the Grand’ Place,” states the former witness,[354] “the heat from the burning houses was so great that the prisoners huddled together to get away from it....”
“After we had remained standing there about an hour,” states a third,[355] “we had to proceed towards the Station along the Rue de la Station. In this same road we saw the German soldiers plundering the houses. They took pleasure in letting us see them doing it. In the city and at Kessel-Loo the conflagration redoubled in intensity.”
“The houses were all burning in the Rue de la Station,” states the first,[356] “and there were even flames in the street which we had to jump across. We were closely guarded by German soldiers, who threatened to kill us if we looked from side to side.”
Yet these victims in their misery were accused of shooting by their tormentors. “On August 27th,” states an officer concerned,[357] “the Third Battalion of the Landwehr Infantry Regiment No. 53 had to take with it on its march from Rotselaer to Louvain a convoy of about 1,000 civilian prisoners.... Among the prisoners were a number of Belgian priests, one of whom,[358] especially caught my attention because at every halt he went from one to another of the prisoners and addressed words to them in an excited manner, so that I had to keep him under special observation. In Louvain we made over the prisoners at the Station.... On the following morning it was reported to me ... that the above-mentioned priest had shot at one of the men of the guard, but had failed to hit him, and in consequence had himself been shot in the Station Square.”
Such were the rumours that passed current in the German Army; but there is no reference in this officer’s deposition to what really happened at the Station on the night of the 27th-28th. The prisoners arrived there about 7.0 p.m., and were immediately put on board a train. Their numbers had risen by now to between 2,000 and 3,000,[359] and the overcrowding was appalling. The curé of Rotselaer was placed in a truck which had carried troops and was furnished with benches; but even this truck was made to hold 50 people,[360] while the majority were forced into cattle trucks—from 70 to 100 men, women, and children in each,[361] which had never been cleaned, and were knee-deep in dung.[362] They stood in these trucks all night, while the train remained standing in the Station. On August 28th, about 6.0 in the morning, they started for Cologne, but the stoppages and shuntings were interminable, and Cologne was not reached till the afternoon of August 31st. During these four days—from the evening of August 27th to the afternoon of August 31st—the prisoners were given nothing to eat,[363] and were not allowed to get out of the train to relieve themselves when it stopped.[364] “We had nothing to eat,” states one of them,[365] “not even the child one month old.”—“My wife was suckling her child,” states another,[366] “but her milk came to an end. My wife was crying nearly all the time. The baby was dreadfully ill, and nearly died.”—“We had been without food for two days and nights, and had nothing to drink till we got to Cologne, except that one of my fellow-prisoners had a bottle of water, from which we just wetted our lips.”[367]—“I asked for some water for my child at Aix-la-Chapelle, and it was refused. It was the soldiers that I asked, and they spat at me when they refused the water. The soldiers also took all the money that I had upon me.”[368]—“We had not been allowed to leave the train to obey the calls of nature, till at Cologne we went on our knees and begged the soldiers to allow us to get down.”[369]
The brutality of the soldiers did not stop short of murder. “At Henne,” where the train stopped at 3.30 a.m. on August 29th, “a man got out to satisfy nature. He belonged to the village of Wygmael. He was going towards the side of the line when three German soldiers approached him. One of them caught hold of him and threw him on the ground, and he was bayonetted by one or other of them in his left side. The man cried out; then the German soldier withdrew his bayonet and showed his comrades how far it had gone in. He then wiped the blood off his bayonet by drawing it through his hand.... After the soldier had wiped his bayonet, he and his comrades turned the man over on his face.... A few minutes after he had wiped his bayonet, he put his hand in his pocket and took out some bread, which he ate....”[370]
Between Louvain and the frontier two men in a passenger-carriage “tried to escape and broke the windows. The German sentinels bayonetted these two men and killed them.”[371]
Two people on the train went mad,[372] and two committed suicide.[373] When the train started again after its halt at Liége, a man from Thildonck was run over, and it was supposed that he had thrown himself under the wheels to put himself out of his misery.[374] When the train was emptied at Cologne, three of the prisoners were taken out dead.[375]
The trucks were chalked with the inscription: “Civilians who shot at the soldiers at Louvain,”[376] and at every place in Germany where the train stopped the prisoners were persecuted by the crowd.[377] “At Aix-la-Chapelle,” states the curé of Rotselaer, “an officer came up to spit on me.”[378] At Aix, too, those destined for the internment camp at Münster had to change trains and were marched through the streets. “As we went,” states one of them,[379] “the German women and children spat at us.”—“We arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle,” states another witness.[380] “There the German people shouted at us. At Dürren, between Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, 4,000 German people crowded round. I turned round to the old woman with eight children, and said: ‘Do these people think we are prisoners? Show them one of your little children, at the window.’ This child was a month old, and naked. When the child was shown at the window a hush came over the crowd.”
“When we reached Cologne a crowd came round the trucks, jeering at us, and as we marched out they prodded us with their umbrellas and pelted us and shouted: ‘Shoot them dead! Shoot them dead!’—and drew their fingers across their throats.”[381]