Suddenly I heard firing on the right above me from the detachment of Schreyer, and saw at the same time how one man collapsed on the left slope and rolled a few paces, another crawled back apparently wounded, and a third took to flight into the adjacent wood. The Marburg Jägers, who soon after came to this spot, and with whom I spoke later, had ascertained with certainty that in this case we were dealing with civilians.
Soon after this, Lieutenant Schreyer came back and reported to me that he had observed on the opposite slope some suspicious rascals on whom he had fired. Shortly after we were fired at from a detached house on the right slope. This was somewhere about 10 o'clock in the morning.
I once more sent out a strong patrol on the right bank to clear out this house. The patrol soon returned and brought a big, strong man about forty years old, in labourer's clothes, and a lad of about sixteen years, as well as a number of wailing women and children. The men had been armed, according to the statement of the leader of the patrol, with sporting-rifles which the patrol themselves in the house had rendered unserviceable. I can no longer remember the name of the patrol leader. The men were taken to the factory, the women and children bundled off to the monastery in Leffe.
Towards midday the 2nd Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 178 was moved forward towards Leffe direct to the Meuse. In the village street itself there lay a great number of dead men in civilian clothing. On questioning different soldiers I learnt that the troops marching through before us had been fired on from almost every house; hence the great number of civilians shot. Dead women and children I did not see.
I had my company halted at the monastery at Leffe, and went forward myself to the Meuse. Parts of the 3rd and 1st Battalions of the 178th Regiment were still there, fighting the enemy on the opposite bank. I also saw there bodies of troops, in particular, of Regiments Nos. 102 and 103, of Rifle Regiment No. 108, of the Marburg Jägers, and of the artillery.
In the compact rows of houses at Leffe, the reports of firing were continuous, and one could not always tell from whence they came. Without doubt they were pistol-shots discharged from cellars and attics. I can also remember that a large number of brown sporting-shot cartridge cases lay in front of a house in the principal street of Leffe.
In the course of the afternoon I received the order to occupy the bank of the Meuse with my company, and was allotted for this purpose the school and the houses near it. Behind the school was a gasometer, and close to the gasometer coals had been piled up and set on fire—manifestly by the civilian population. I therefore sent Acting-Sergeant-Major Bauer, officer's deputy, with his men, in order either to extinguish the fire or otherwise to prevent in some way the threatened explosion. He reported to me, however, that the pioneers who had already arrived before us, correctly judging the danger of the gasometer, had emptied it.
After the enemy had evacuated the opposite bank in the late afternoon, and the crossing of single detachments of troops had already begun, I withdrew my company from the school and from the bank of the Meuse and assembled them in the street enclosed by two rows of houses. Towards 5 o'clock in the afternoon we were again fired on from these houses, and, consequently, I got the order from the Battalion Commander to search all the houses and to have all armed persons shot without compunction. On this occasion, the soldiers Hautschick and Altermann found in a house on the floor a soldier of the 9th Company of the 178th Regiment who had been shot. He lay with his face over a kneading-trough, and had obviously been shot from behind. In the adjoining room the soldiers found two sporting-rifles which plainly bore the traces of having been discharged quite recently.
In a vineyard just above this house two men were caught with rifles by two other soldiers, whose names can no longer be ascertained, and shot.
At about the same time Acting-Sergeant-Major Paatsch (who fell at Saunois), together with Private Kaspar, broke into a house close by the castle. Kaspar depicts the occurrence in the following way. On entering the house a man on the ground floor threatened him with a long-barrelled pistol. He struck this man down with a spade which he had at hand. He then mounted with Paatsch to the first floor. Six men were there with sporting-rifles, whom they shot or felled with rifle-butts.