In Belgium.
Jean—“Do you think St. Nicholas will find us, now that we haven’t a chimney?”
“I was then arrested when a short distance from Aerschot. There were with me two or three families from Sichem, a village between Diest and Aerschot. We remained in the fields alongside the road, while the Prussian regiments with their artillery continued to pass by. When the artillery had passed we were marched at the point of the bayonet to the church in Aerschot. On arrival at the church the families of Sichem (there were at least twenty small children) were permitted to continue on their way, and the non-commissioned officer, delighted that I could speak German, permitted me to go to my aunt’s house.
A TOWN IN RUINS
“The aspect of the town was terrible. Not more than half the houses were standing. In the first three streets which the Germans traversed there was not a single house left. There was not a house in the town but had been pillaged. All doors had been burst open. There was nothing, nothing left. The stench in the streets was insupportable.
“I then went home, or, rather, I should say, I went to the house where my father had always been boarding. You know, perhaps, that my mother died twelve years ago. I did not find my father, but according to what the people told me he had been arrested, and, with five other Aerschot men, taken to Germany—I do not know for what purpose.
“I got into this house without any difficulty, because the door was smashed in. I stayed there from Saturday, Aug. 22, up to Wednesday, the 26th, a little more comfortable. There was nothing to eat left in the house. I lived on what a few women who remained in Aerschot could give me. I was forced to go with the soldiers into the cellars of M. X., director of a large factory, to hunt for wine. As recompense I got a loaf. It was not much, but at this moment it meant very much for me.
BURYING THE DEAD
“On Wednesday, Aug. 26, we were all once more locked up in the church. It was then half-past four in the afternoon. We could not get out, even for our necessities. On Thursday, about nine o’clock, each of us was given a piece of bread and a glass of water. This was to last the whole day. At ten o’clock a lieutenant came in, accompanied by fifteen soldiers. He placed all the men who were left in a square, selected seventy of us and ordered us out to bury the corpses of Germans and Belgians around the town, which had been lying there since the battle of the 19th. That was a week that these bodies had remained there, and it is no use to ask if there was a stench. Afterward we had to clean the streets, and then it was evening.