While public attention was more or less centred on these continued explosions, fires broke out in all the railway stations, one of which was almost entirely destroyed. Many explanations were set afloat in the familiar German fashion, the most persistent being that rue Haute thieves had done it in order to pillage certain cars—an absurd suggestion, since thieves do not usually light a beacon to attract attention to their deeds. One damning fact, moreover—the simultaneity of the conflagrations—suggested some inexplicable Teuton object, perhaps mere vengeance.
The theory of vengeance was given weight by an account given us by the mayor of Charleroi. Just before the Germans withdrew, some officers visited him and, without giving a hint of their intentions, asked him to call together all the former Belgian railroad employés and send them to work at the station. The mayor, considering this a reasonable request, willingly agreed, got the men together, and set them to work. Scarcely were they all gathered in and about the station than terrific explosions took place in the yard and on near-by tracks. Fifty-eight of the unsuspecting Belgians were killed, and many others, living in the vicinity, either slain or wounded, while every window in the entire town was shattered, doors also and many objects of value. Hundreds of cars containing ammunition had been secretly attached by a fuse wire, which the Germans lighted and left to do its deadly work, while they fled into safety and were never again seen.
Some intrepid Belgians, fortunately, discovered the fuse, cut it, and thus saved two hundred and twenty car-loads of high-power explosives, some of which stood in the centre of the town and would have caused its entire wreckage.
The mayor also told us a shocking story in regard to a hospital in his town which the Germans had occupied during the war. At their departure they removed their wounded, and announced that the hospital was at his disposal. On going to visit it, he found a number of French and English wounded lying on the floor, who stated they had never had a bed, and were in a deplorable condition. Outside, in the ambulance garage, the door of which was locked, he found seventeen dead bodies of soldiers, entirely devoid of clothing and therefore impossible to identify as to nationality. In a corner of this place were heaped a ghastly collection of amputated human limbs. These and the bodies were in a state of decomposition that rendered their removal both dangerous and horrible.
A school-house that had been used to shelter troops up to the last day before the Germans left, he found in a condition quite as incredibly revolting. There were no beds; the floors, covered with a sort of mossy turf, were in a state of indescribable filth, whereon the soldiers slept and which they subjected to animal-like treatment. The stench, he said, was frightful, and the entire place so infected with vermin that the charwomen engaged to clean it were not allowed to leave the premises before being thoroughly fumigated and cleansed.
After such disclosures, could one wonder at the brutalized, unhuman appearance of those men who dragged their weary way through Brussels—men once hardy, self-respecting tillers of the soil, or workers in other useful pursuits? Such treatment as they had endured could leave no spark of military pride in them, no consciousness of shame at defeat, no desire even for the triumph of victory.
On Sunday, the 17th of November, when Germans were seen openly in the capital for the last time, the street scenes were something at which to marvel. Everyone was abroad. Among the throng surging to and fro, through those wide avenues and boulevards so long ruled by the enemy, the familiar grey-green Teuton uniforms were relieved by the khaki of the English and Belgians, and the pale blue of the French. Many Italians and Russians were there, and one or two American airmen who had descended from a cloudless sky to see how the armistice was affecting us. Although no organized part of the Allied armies had yet entered save certain Belgians on leave to visit their families, hundreds of liberated prisoners had come to the city from German camps where they had been forced to labour for the enemy. All of these save the French, who could speak the language, were a sorry-looking lot, wandering about, unable to express themselves. So numerous were they that it was impossible for the Belgians to collect them at once and give them the assistance and comfort which they so greatly needed. The British prisoners especially were pitiable to behold in their starved condition and wretched rags—poor helpless youths, that for many months had endured such moral and physical anguish under their cruel jailers that some stated they had looked back with regret to their life in the trenches.
Most of these had found kind hearts to look after them, before that amazing Sunday when foe and friend mingled in the streets of Brussels, presenting a sight so fantastic, so unforeseen, that it seemed to lend a strange element of travesty to all that had gone before.
On the crowded platforms of trams an occasional German might be seen, pressed close to a haggard-looking Britisher worn to emaciation after months of harsh treatment by the former’s compatriots; or shoulder to shoulder with a jubilant Belgian officer, hearing his response to the triumphant greeting of friends—hearing the wild applause given to units of all the Allied nations! Strange and incredible sight, in those streets where the casque à pointe had reigned supreme but a few days before, where—it seemed but yesterday—the hope of seeing a Belgian, English, or French uniform had been almost extinguished!
And now the spiked helmet was ignored. No voice was raised to acclaim it; the once-dreaded uniform passed unnoticed.