“In Soumagne and Micheroux very many civilians were summarily shot. In a field belonging to a man named E——, fifty-six or fifty-seven were put to death. A German officer said, ‘You have shot at us.’ One of the villagers asked to be allowed to speak, and said, ‘If you think these people fired, kill me, but let them go.’ The answer was three volleys. The survivors were bayoneted. Their corpses were seen in the field that night by another witness. One at least had been mutilated. These were not the only victims in Soumagne. The eye-witness of the massacre saw, on his way home, twenty bodies, one that of a girl of thirteen. Another witness saw nineteen corpses in a meadow.
“At Heure le Romain all the male inhabitants, including some bed-ridden old men, were imprisoned in the church. The burgomaster’s brother and the priest were bayoneted. The village of Visé was completely destroyed. Officers directed the incendiaries. Antiques and china were removed from the houses before their destruction, by officers, who guarded the plunder, revolver in hand.
TELLS OF MASSACRES
“Entries in a German diary show that on August 10 the German soldiers gave themselves up to debauchery in the streets of Liège, and on the night of the 20th a massacre took place in the streets. . . . Though the cause of the massacre is in dispute, the results are known with certainty. The Rue des Pitteurs and houses in the Place de l’Université and the Quai des Pêcheurs were systematically fired with benzine; and many inhabitants were burned alive in their houses, their efforts to escape being prevented by rifle fire. Twenty people were shot while trying to escape, before the eyes of one of the witnesses. The Liège Fire Brigade turned out, but was not allowed to extinguish the fire. Its carts, however, were usefully employed in removing heaps of civilian corpses to the Town Hall.”
Taking up the Valleys of the Meuse and Sambre, the report gives lengthy details of terrible conditions described by witnesses at Andenne, and says:
“About four hundred people lost their lives in this massacre, some on the banks of the Meuse, where they were shot according to orders given, and some in the cellars of the houses where they had taken refuge. Eight men belonging to one family were murdered. Another man was placed close to a machine gun which was fired through him. His wife brought his body home on a wheelbarrow. The Germans broke into her house and ransacked it.
“A hair-dresser was murdered in his kitchen where he was sitting with a child on each knee. A paralytic was murdered in his garden. After this came the general sack of the town. Many of the inhabitants who escaped the massacre were kept as prisoners and compelled to clear the houses of corpses and bury them in trenches. These prisoners were subsequently used as a shelter and protection for a pontoon bridge which the Germans had built across the river and were so used to prevent the Belgian forts from firing upon it.
“A few days later the Germans celebrated a ‘fête nocturne’ in the square. Hot wine, located in the town, was drunk, and the women were compelled to give three cheers for the Kaiser and to sing ‘Deutschland über Alles.’”
“KILLED IN MASSES”
Similar details are recited at much length in reference to the districts of Namur, Charleroi and the town of Dinant. At the latter point, the report says, “Unarmed civilians were killed in masses. We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation or that any other defense can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.”