During the evening I was granted an audience by the Right Reverend Monseigneur Rutten, Bishop of Liège. The venerable, aged prelate received me very affably, but he was deeply impressed by the terrible fate that had overwhelmed his poor native country. He himself had suffered exceedingly bad treatment at the hands of the Germans. First he and the other hostages were imprisoned in the citadel, where he was locked up in a small shanty, with a leaking roof, so that the torrential rain entered it freely. Wet and cold, the Bishop passed that day without being offered any food, and, as stated above, was at last allowed to go home.
He told me a good many other instances of ill-treatment, but as I gave him my word of honour not to mention them, my mouth is sealed. He himself was visited a few days later by the German commanding general, who offered his apologies.
That same evening many more houses were burned down, more particularly in Outre-Meuse, although no valid reason was given for that.
The next day, Sunday, August 16th, I was already about at five o'clock in the morning, and soon witnessed some historical shots. In the park on one of the boulevards the Germans had been digging for two days, and prepared a firm foundation upon which big guns might be mounted. I saw one of these guns that morning, and at about half-past five three shots were fired from it at short intervals, by which Fort Loncin was completely destroyed, as was indicated by the terrific explosions which followed the third shot. After these shots I was quite benumbed for several minutes; in all the streets of Liège they caused the greatest commotion, which became all the greater because large numbers of cavalry happened to ride through the town, and all the horses started rearing.
Was the gun I had seen there one of the notorious forty-two centimetre monsters? I should not like to wager my head in affirming that. It was an inordinately unwieldy and heavy piece of ordnance, but during the first days of the war nothing or very little had yet been said or written about these forty-two's, and I did not pay sufficient attention to the one I saw. Only after the fall of Loncin did all those articles about the forty-two's appear in the papers, and the Germans certainly asserted that they destroyed Loncin by means of such a cannon.
But it is equally certain that at Liège as well as at Namur and Antwerp the Austrian thirty-point-five mortars were used, siege-guns chiefly, and these were taken by the German soldiers for forty-two's. These Austrian mortars were equally misnamed in German, French, and even Netherland illustrated papers.
However, the effect of these Austrian mortars was terrible enough. I could not form a correct opinion about them by the sound of the shot; and only those who were in the fort that was hit were able to realise the terrific results. Hence the interest of the report by an officer, who escaped after having been made a prisoner at Loncin. He told my colleague of De Tijd at Antwerp about it. After having related how, during nearly ten days, the fort had been defended heroically and resolutely, he gave the following description of the final struggle:—
"On August 14th, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, the expected storm burst; for twenty-five hours the invisible siege-guns poured their torrent of projectiles on the fort. Flares of fire and dense clouds of smoke belched through the crevices. As the enemy's batteries could not be located, their fire could not be answered. The artillerists of the garrison were then taken to the spacious chief gallery, which offered a safe refuge under its vault, about two and a half to three yards thick. Outside the sentries were watching. In the parts near the entrance it was unendurable; the heavy projectiles from the guns mounted in the town had nibbled away the outer wall, only a yard and a half thick. There were as yet no casualties among the garrison; calmly they waited for the infernal tempest to subside and the enemy to storm the fort, for they had sworn to repulse the assault.
"General Leman, Commander Naessens, and all the officers were splendid in their imperturbable courage. They found the words that went straight to the hearts of their men. These fellows looked more like bronze statues than human beings. The projectiles hammered at the walls and smashed huge pieces, penetrating into the parts near the entrance. The rest of the fort withstood splendidly the hurricane of hostile steel and fire. During the night the bombardment stopped, and then the commanding officer went to inspect the cupolas.
"The larger ones had suffered little; but the majority were jammed by fragments of concrete and steel, which struck between the armour and the front-armour. The small quick-fire cupolas had not been touched by any projectile. 'It is all right,' he said, 'we shall be able to repulse the enemy's attack.'
"At dawn the bombardment started again, but only the front was seriously damaged. The garrison stood as firm as a rock. Here and there the beginnings of a fire were soon extinguished.
"Then a frightful thing happened. The men had finished breakfast, some were sleeping quietly in spite of the thundering noise. The assault was expected to commence during the next night.
"And then the disaster followed suddenly. At about five o'clock a tremendous explosion shook the fort to the foundations; the powder-magazine had caught fire. It is impossible to describe the appalling results of that explosion; the entire middle-part of the fort collapsed in a stupendous cloud of flames, smoke and dust; it was an awful destruction, an immense avalanche of masses of concrete, fragments of armour, which in their fall crushed to death nearly the whole of the garrison. From this fantastical, confused mass, overwhelming clouds of suffocating smoke escaped through some crevices and holes.
"After this infernal rumble, deadly silence followed, interrupted only by the groans of the wounded. The German artillery ceased to fire, and from all sides their infantry came rushing on, their faces expressing the terror caused by such great calamities. They were no longer soldiers longing to destroy, but human beings hurrying to go to the assistance of other human beings.
"German sappers and other military men cleared away the dead and the wounded. They also discovered General Leman, whose orderlies, who had a miraculous escape from death, were already busy in rescuing him from underneath the ruins.
"They were all unrecognisable, their faces were black from smoke, their uniforms in rags, their hands covered with blood. The general was put on a stretcher, and carried outside the fort across the heaps of obstacles; there he was attended to by a surgeon. He had lost consciousness. As soon as he recovered it, he pressed the hands of two Belgian officers. 'It is all over; there is nothing left to defend. But we did our utmost courageously.'
"A German officer came nearer, and, uncovering his head, said in a voice trembling with emotion: 'General, what you performed is admirable!' Evidently these words slightly comforted the defender of Liège, who before long was removed by motor-car to an ambulance in the town."
Such was the end of Fort Loncin, and by its fall the last obstacle was removed by which the undisturbed progress of the German armies might have been prevented. The brave defenders of Loncin did not surrender, but stood their ground until they were buried under the ruins of their own defences. According to information from another source, Lierce had succumbed the night before.