The voice shouted again, "Frauen und Kinder heraus!" No description can convey the horror of this voice from the dark, the brutal bullying tone carrying to our ears an instant apprehension. More hammering, and then a woman's screams—the brutal voice and piercing screams as of women being dragged along, and the French voice of a man loudly protesting, with always the hard staccato German words of command; then yet another louder shrieking, then three rifle-shots, and a long silence. A long silence, and never more in the night did we hear the man's protesting voice or the terrified shriek of women.
The silence was broken by leaping, crackling flames, and in an instant the white house was a roaring bonfire. Fiercely danced the flames, carrying high into the night their tribute to German efficiency!
During the long silence after the three shots, we had all seen with eyes straining through the darkness, how shadows were at work round the walls, and one shadow on the roof whose errand there was at first a mystery, but was quickly explained in the light of the great blaze which rose up instantaneously from a spark kindled in the darkness of the courtyard.
In the ring of light thrown by the blazing house, the trees on the roadside, the out-houses beyond the courtyard, and even, for a short way, the beetroot fields, showed vividly against the black arch of night. Here, on the fringe of light in uncertain mist of mingled smoke and darkness, it seemed as if men were grouped revelling over the night's work. Now that the roof had fallen in, clouds of smoke hung low over the fields and the red-hot glow gave little light. Only every now and then a flame, shooting high into the thick darkness, threw a momentary gleam on a wider arch and showed the black shadows of men dodging back into the safety of the night.
The work was well and quickly done. The pleasant roadside inn where I had idly wandered in the morning was now a smouldering ruin.
There is no excuse for this ruin of a Belgian home. The burning was deliberate, and carried out with military precision under orders given by the officer in command, serving no conceivable military purpose, and prompted solely by a spirit of wanton destruction.
The story of the three shots in the dark will, perhaps, never be clearly told, but there can be little doubt—there is none in the minds of those who heard—that both the women and the man were brutally murdered.
Nearly a thousand years ago this same land was laid waste by the Huns, who left a memory that has lasted down to the hour of their return, for "it is in memory of the Huns," says an ancient chronicle, "that the province received the name of Hanonia or Hainault," a name which it retains to this day.
Again, after a thousand years, the Huns have risen and left a track in Europe for the memory of many generations.