CHAPTER XI
A TRAMP ACROSS BELGIUM
The stranger, a Monsieur Jules Pochard, proved a most useful friend. In the first instance, he was a cool-headed person, who did not allow imagination to run riot. “No,” he said, when questioned as to the chance of reaching Namur by a forced march along country lanes, “every road in that section of the province is closed by cavalry patrols. You cannot avoid them, monsieur. Come with me to Huy, and you’ll be reasonably safe.”
“Why safer in Huy than here, or anywhere else where these brutes may be?”
“Huy has been occupied by the Germans since the 12th, and is their temporary headquarters. From what I gather, they usually spare such towns. That is why we never dreamed of Andenne being sacked.”
Dalroy remembered the aged curé’s exposition of Kultur as a policy. “Is this sort of thing going on generally, then?” he asked.
Monsieur Pochard was a Frenchman. He raised his eyebrows. “Where can you have been, monsieur, not to know what has happened at Liège, Visé, Flemelle Grande, Blagny Trembleur, and a score of other places?”
“Visé!” broke in the cracked, piping voice of Joos. “What’s that about Visé?”
“It is burnt to the ground, and nearly all the inhabitants killed.”