When, later on, the women and children were shut up in a windmill, having first been marched in front of the corpses, the Germans allowed themselves the distraction of lighting fires before the windows from time to time, in order to make the women believe that they were about to be burned alive with their children, and to delight in their anguish.
While men were being shot in the Fonds de Leffe, horrible massacres were being committed at Leffe and at Dinant, at only a few minutes' distance. Here, too, men were shot before their families—for example, Victor Poncelet and Charles Naus—and the survivors were forced to pass through the midst of the corpses. The officers, too, devised more complicated diversions; for instance, allowing a group of women and children to escape into the mountains, in order to shoot them down from a distance.
A moral torture commonly employed is that which consists in making people believe that they are going to be killed. All the inhabitants of Sorinnes were placed before machine-guns, and a German chaplain, speaking French, ceremoniously shook each man by the hand. At Dinant two or three hundred persons were lined up against a wall; then a pastor recited the prayers for the dead (perhaps the chaplain of Sorinnes had found another opportunity for his pleasantry), and an empty machine-gun was pointed at them. An officer laughed as though his sides would split while he threatened, with his revolver, some fifteen women shut up in the convent of Prémontré, at Leffe.
Pretended executions and threats of execution were everywhere in common usage. At Wépion, near Namur, on the 23rd August, 1914 (the day of the Dinant horrors), the Germans packed the women into boats, and told them to row into the middle of the Meuse. They took aim at them several times; then, having sufficiently amused themselves, they allowed them to return to the bank.
On the 28th September, 1914, a group of civil prisoners from the north of Brabant were going towards the railway-station, whence they left for Germany. The procession was preceded by a military band, which played funeral marches, so that they were convinced that they were being led to execution.
Two citizens of Brussels, taking a walk on Sunday, the 30th August, ventured as far as Koningsloo, in the suburbs. They were seized by German sentinels, and imprisoned at the post. From time to time an under-officer approached them, held his revolver under their noses, and grimaced at them: "Ah, ah, walk's over, walk's done!" (Fini, promenade!). One of the prisoners asked the guard if they were really going to be shot; in which case they would wish to make certain arrangements. But the soldier reassured them: "Don't be afraid," he said, "it's only a game of our officer's; he does it every day to amuse himself." And sure enough, towards evening the two prisoners were set free without further ceremony.
Sectional execution—execution by small groups—under the eyes of those awaiting their fate, was applied on a large scale at Arlon. On the 26th August, 123 (or 118, or 127) inhabitants of Rossignol and neighbouring localities were taken thither, and were killed in groups of ten or twelve. Madame Hurieaux was reserved for the last; she saw her husband and all her companions in misfortune perish first; and she died crying "Vive la Belgique! Vive la France!"
It will be of interest to reproduce here the narrative of a medical student who was present at the executions which took place at Arlon. It may be taken as a sample, so to speak, of the German procedure: massacre and incendiarism, with no previous inquiry; the most varied moral and physical tortures; capricious condemnation or liberation of prisoners; pillage of the communal funds, etc.
At the beginning of August I left Y——, where my parents live, to go to the village of X——, lying to the north of my native town.
Two days later the French arrived, making towards the north of Luxemburg. There were movements of troops in different directions, and soon one could see that battles would be fought in the neighbourhood.
I thought I could make myself useful by opening a small ambulance, which I did.
I was lodging with one of my aunts, who has a son of my own age.
One day an engagement took place between the French and the German troops, and a wounded German soldier was brought into my little ambulance; his name was Kohn.
I gave him first aid; I apologized for not being able to do more, and I told him that towards evening it might be possible to carry him to Arlon, where he would receive all necessary care.
I returned to my aunt's house; I found her in tears; they had just taken away her son, my cousin Jules, on the pretext that he had fired on them. It was a piece of stupidity, for there was nothing in the whole house but one revolver, and I was carrying that on me. I had had it on me all the time I was at the ambulance. I hastened to hide it under a chest, and I decided to go and demand my cousin of the Germans. I speak their language a little, and I was so convinced of my cousin's innocence that I imagined a few words of explanation would make them give him up.
I soon found him, tied to a tree, beside other prisoners.
I began to parley with a German officer.
He replied that there was nothing to do for the moment, that the prisoners would be sent to Arlon, and that he was convinced that if I followed them I should be able, at Arlon, to obtain justice for my cousin.
We set out for Arlon; I was beside the prisoners. At a determined spot we were handed over to other soldiers. I was greatly astonished, at a given moment, to see that I had become a prisoner myself; I was no longer accompanying my cousin, to save him; I was sharing his fate.
We arrived at Arlon; we were lined up against a wall. There were with us, notably, a woman, with two young children of nine and ten, an old villager with his son, and other people whom I did not know.
An officer on horseback approached us. He was, it seemed a judge. He turned to the soldiers and asked, pointing to each of us: "Did that one fire?" And the soldiers always replied in the affirmative.
Now it should be noted that these soldiers had seen nothing, and could have seen nothing, for they were not those who seized the prisoners in the village in which they were arrested.
The head-dress of the troops was entirely different; the first had helmets, and the second caps.
When the officer had finished pointing at us, we were informed that we were all condemned to death.
An old man was seized; I myself was seized; and we were pushed to one side, to be shot.
The old man's son rushed towards him and tried to drag him away from the soldiers. The result was that the son was seized, to be shot with the father.
This is how things happened:
The two were put against a wall; a platoon of soldiers commanded by an officer took up their position in front of them.
The officer commanded all their movements with a deliberation calculated to increase the torture of the victims.
"Load!"... Then a pause. "Take aim!"... Then a pause. "Fire!"...
The two unhappy men fell to the ground, groaning.
The officer went up to them, recognized that they were not dead, and again gave orders to fire, with the same deliberation and the same method. This time the father ceased to move; it took a third volley to finish the son.
We were then all led to a guard-house.
There we remained for three days. We were given nothing to eat. We fasted from the morning we were taken; it was only on the following day, or the day after that, that we received a little water.
In that room we were literally tortured.
We were forced to stand upright; an old man was groaning he was so thirsty that his tongue protruded from his lips and the flies settled on it. As he could not stand any longer, the Germans passed a cord round his neck and attached it to a ring-bolt in the wall, so that he was supported only on his toes. The cord stretched and the wretched man fell now to this side, now to that. The soldiers made him stand upright again by striking his face with the butts of their rifles.
At one time his trousers fell down and we saw he was wounded in the thigh, by bayonet-thrusts. Later he became insane. In his delirium he cried: "Prepare food for the cows."[50] It was a horrible scene.
At another time the woman was taken out, with her two little children, and all three were shot against the wall of the Palais de Justice at Arlon. The soldiers asserted that they had "found a German soldier's purse" in this woman's house.
The time passed in the most atrocious moral anguish and physical suffering. We had lost all notion of time. The soldiers insulted us, spat upon us, made signs that our throats would be cut, that we were going to be shot. They took a pleasure in drinking in front of us.