At a certain moment an officer of superior rank entered the room. He came up to me and asked: "Why are you here?"
I replied: "They accuse us of having fired on the troops." Immediately he turned his back upon me, but I cried, with energy: "Yes, and far from having fired on them, I looked after them. If you want the proof of this, ask the soldier called Kohn who must be in the hospital here at Arlon."
I then told him of Kohn. He went to the hospital, and returned some time later; he had found the soldier Kohn, who confirmed my story.
An officer on horseback (the judge) came to the door of the guard-room: we were sent out, my cousin and I, and without even questioning us he said, "You are acquitted." I protested, saying: "There are still five or six people there of my village who are no more guilty than we are."
They were sent out, and the judge told them, as he told me, without any further inquiry, "You are acquitted."
As for the unhappy old man, I will tell you later how he escaped. He returned to his village; he is crippled.
I remained at Arlon until the end of August, at the house of one of my relatives, whose business brought him daily into contact with the Belgian authorities and the German army. I was thus able to obtain a good deal of precise information.
The Germans entered Arlon on the 12th August. They came from Mersch, in the Grand-Duchy. Several days earlier, all the weapons the inhabitants possessed had been deposited at the Hôtel de Ville. The people of Arlon knew from the newspapers what atrocities the Germans had committed in the neighbourhood of Liége, at Visé, Herve, Battice, Warsage, etc., and they were far from meditating any disturbance.
On entering the town the Uhlans began to break in the doors with the butts of their rifles.
On the following day Commandant von der Esch, commandant of the town, had a notice posted up, which I have copied verbatim.
Proclamation.
Luminous signals have been made to-night between Freylange and the lower part of this town; one of our patrols has been attacked; our telephone wires have been cut. To punish the population guilty of these acts of ill-will, I order for to-day at 3 o'clock the burning of the village of Freylange and the sack of 100 houses in the west of Arlon. I also condemn the town to pay a war contribution of 100,000 frs., which must be paid over before 6 p.m., or I shall have the hostages shot.
Von der Esch.
While the communal administration of Arlon was deliberating on the subject of the war contribution, the burning of Freylange and the sack of 100 houses of Arlon was carried out according to the programme.
After the 100,000 frs. had been paid to the Germans, they summoned to the general headquarters, established in the Hôtel de Ville of the northern portion of Arlon, a police agent, named Lempreur, and instructed him to proceed to arrest those who had fired on the German troops. He came back to say that he had found no one. "Ah!" they told him, "you are going about it unwillingly! Very good; you shall pay for the others." And without listening to his pleading, without allowing him to see his wife or children again, he was placed with his back to a door and a firing platoon shot him down.
I saw the door at the Hôtel de Ville; it was riddled with bullets.
A few days later another army division replaced the first. Immediately the town was condemned to pay a fresh war contribution: a million francs.
The town could get together only 238,000 frs. It was let off the remainder.
From the day when I was set at liberty we used almost daily to hear of executions in Arlon; they were of prisoners, brought just as we were, from the neighbouring villages, notably from Rossignol and Tintigny, who were shot in small parties.
One of these executions took place in the courtyard of the Church of St. Donat. The Dean succeeded in obtaining pardon for two of the condemned.
The most important execution was that of 123 (others say 127) inhabitants of Rossignol and its immediate surroundings, who were shot on 26th August. They were taken near the viaduct which passes over the Arlon railway-station (towards the connecting station). They were killed in small groups of ten or twelve. Those who were not dead were finished with the bayonet. Each group had to climb over the surrounding corpses. They kept to the last a lady of Rossignol, Mme. Hurieaux, who thus had to see her husband and the greater part of the inhabitants of her village killed before her eyes. She died crying "Vive la Belgique! Vive la France!"
Here is one little detail which I was able to verify. When the receiver and examiner of Customs of Arlon learned of the approaching arrival of the Germans they removed all the money from the safe, leaving only copper coin to the value of about a franc. The Germans immediately proceeded to break open the safe, but succeeded only after two days' work. Infuriated by this discomfiture, they used the safe as a commode.
But whatever the moral sufferings inflicted on those who were executed, the tortures which the Germans applied to those against whom no accusation was brought were a hundred times more atrocious. Think of the martyrdom of Mme. Cambier, of Nimy, who was forced to tread on her son's brains; and the sufferings of the innumerable men and women of whom the Germans made a living shield, at Anseremme, Mons, Tournai, and Charleroi (p. [195]). As to Charleroi, here is a detail not recorded by Herr Heymel. The prisoners collected at Jumet and Odelissert were tied in couples by the wrists, to prevent them from trying to escape when the French should fire on them. Moreover, they had to walk with their hands raised. When, by reason of fatigue, they dropped their arms, the soldiers struck them with the butts of their rifles. We know a man who was thus placed before the German troops, who saw one of his relatives killed at his side, and two of the latter's sons. He himself received three bullets, one in the right wrist, one in the left arm, and the third under the chin. He escaped, but is lamed for life.
Imagine also the tortures suffered by the civil prisoners who, in defiance of all justice, were sent to Germany. Hunger, thirst, threats, and insults; packed into cattle-trucks, they had no room to lie down, or even to sit. Above all, they had no news of their families. On the 4th September, 1914, more than 100 inhabitants of Lebbeke, near Termonde, were placed as a screen in front of the German troops marching against Termonde. In the evening, those who had not been shot were added to others just captured, and all together, in all some 300, were sent into Germany. At the moment when these unhappy folk were leaving Lebbeke the Germans set fire to some of the houses, and kindly informed the prisoners that the whole village was about to be burned. Moreover, they said, the women and children would in part be killed, and the rest driven off in the direction of Termonde and Gand. Imagine, if you can, the sufferings endured by these unfortunate people for the two months during which they remained without news of their homes, in the conviction that their families were massacred or wandering wretchedly across the devastated country. While by means of these cruel lies, whose horrible effect was systematically calculated, they filled with despair the hearts of those who were departing, the soldiers amused themselves also by wringing the hearts of the poor women—mothers, wives, sisters, daughters—who remained in the village. For they, too, were for long weeks without news from the prisoners, and the abominable manner in which the German troops, drunk with carnage, had assassinated, on the day of exodus, twelve of their fellow-citizens (9th Report), permitted them to entertain the most frightful suppositions.
Make no mistake: the case of Lebbeke is far from being exceptional. All the civil prisoners were treated with the same barbarity, a barbarity utterly unjustified, since, in the judgment of Baron von Bissing, no complaint had been formulated against the civil prisoners who have been sent back to their homes. But all have not returned. In June 1915, for example, most of the prisoners from Visé were still in Germany. As for those taken from Rossignol and so many other localities in Luxemburg, they will never return, alas! They have been shot without pretext.
Another horrible torture consists in the suppression of communications between the Belgian soldiers and their parents. Since mid-October 1914 all connections have been severed between the Belgian army which is fighting on the Yser and the Belgians remaining in Belgium. Those who seek to establish communication between the Belgian soldiers and their relatives are spied out and sentenced.
Against Jules-Arthur de Cuypere, bachelor, domiciled in the last instance at Liége, a deprivation of liberty of five months has been pronounced, because, contrary to the known regulations, he took charge, during a number of journeys to the Dutch frontier and into Holland, of a large number of letters from Belgian soldiers in France and interned Belgian prisoners in Holland; and delivered these letters, addressed to different members of families of Namur and the environs, at their addresses, by carrying them thither. At the same time he rendered himself guilty by crossing the frontier.
(L'Ami de l'Ordre, 5-6th July, 1915.)