The German Fury in Belgium / Experiences of a Netherland Journalist during four months with the German Army in Belgium

by L. Mokveld

Not half of the requisitioned meat was used by the Germans, and the rest was simply left to rot, whilst the starving people were not allowed to touch it. Two pigs and a cow were shot in a meadow, but no part of these animals had been used, the order to bury them being given when the smell became unendurable. In some places the Germans indulged in such unspeakably filthy acts, that it is impossible to mention details.

When the Germans entered Bilsen for the first time, four persons were shot in front of the town-hall; fifteen holes were still to be seen in the wall. Amongst these four was also the brother-in-law of the editor of the Bilsenaar. He was dragged out of his house, accused of having shot, although he and his wife and children were at that moment saying the rosary. His wife had got up that day for the first time after her confinement.

The unhappy man asserted in a loud voice that he was innocent, but got the answer that he would have to prove that later on. But he never had a chance of doing that. Arriving at the market-place, he and three others were simply placed against the wall and shot. He could not even have spiritual assistance.

Frequently Protestant services were held in the market-place, conducted by a parson, and the invariable beginning and end of that parson's allocution was: "There is one God; there must also be one Kaiser."

A good many lads had been able to escape from Bilsen and the environs to Antwerp; in the aggregate, 500 from this district, and more went every day. They were driven to the Belgian army by all they had seen and experienced. Often one heard women and girls say: "Oh, if I were a man, if I were a boy, I should be in the army to-morrow!"

I was sitting comfortably in the home circle of the editor of De Bilsenaar, with father, mother, and daughter. They had one son of eighteen, who was at the Junior Seminary at Hasselt, and only the first Sunday in August he had left for Heerenth in order to offer himself as a missionary aspirant. The next Wednesday the would-be missionary, an only son, enlisted as a volunteer in the Belgian army.... He was already the sixteenth of his form of twenty-three boys at the college at Hasselt.

The father got up and went to a small cupboard from which he took some papers, and his eyes, and those of his wife and daughter, became moist at once; letters from their only boy, written on the battle-field! He read them out with a broken voice, frequently interrupted by sobs. I said nothing, could not utter a word.

The boy also had been obliged to retire into France, had been transported from Rheims to Havre, and from there, across the sea, back to Belgium. "Five times already, my dear parents, I have been in the fight; I have asked them not to let me wait long for the sixth. Oh, you cannot imagine how glorious it is to be allowed to fight for my country! Have confidence in the future, dear parents, and say a paternoster for me and my comrades and also one for our Fatherland."

Well, I could not keep calm when I heard such things read by a father from a letter of his only son on the battle-field; that is impossible.

The next morning was Sunday, and the bells summoned the people to church. But nobody went, nobody dared to appear in the street, although prayer-book and rosary are always in everybody's hands during these days. I had decided to go to the second Mass, but as nobody had come to the first, there was no second. The Dean himself said that the people were quite right not to come to church. The previous Sunday the Germans, who had entered Lanaeken suddenly, had posted themselves in front of the church, where the believers attended Holy Mass, and ordered the women and children to leave the church, but the men to stay. When all the women and children had left, the Germans entered the building and ... found not a single man, for all had left quickly by the back door. A veritable battue was held in the whole district for lads and young men, who were all taken away as prisoners by the Germans, because during the last few days great numbers had escaped to the north and enlisted as volunteers in the army.