(Page 21. Affidavits H-67.) "September 14th. One hundred and eight inhabitants are stated to have been shot after they had dug their own graves. Innumerable houses have been destroyed. The population looks bitter and scowling." August 22nd, notebook of Private Max Thomas. "Our soldiers are so excited, we are like wild beasts. To-day, destroyed eight houses, with their inmates. Bayonetted two men with their wives and a girl of eighteen. The little one almost unnerved me, so innocent was her expression."
(D. 10. 45.) In retreating from Laines eight drunken soldiers were marching through the street. A little child of two years came out and a soldier skewered the child on his bayonet, and carried it away while his comrades sang.
Withdrawing from Hofstade, in addition to other atrocities the Germans cut off both hands of a boy of sixteen. At the inquest affidavits were taken from twenty-five witnesses, who saw the boy before he died or just afterwards.
(Affidavits D. 100-8.) Passing through Haecht, in addition to the young women whom they violated and killed, a child three years old was found nailed by its hands and feet to a door.
That all these atrocities were carefully planned in advance for terrorizing the people is proven by the fact that on the morning of August 25th the officers who had received great kindness from Madame Roomans, a notary's wife, warned her to make her escape immediately, as the looting and killing of all the citizens, men, women and children, was about to begin.
(D. 186.) "The captain served a requisition upon all the farmers hereabouts, taking horses, oxen, wagons, milk and butter. These people are so ignorant that they did not know when he gave them false receipts and signed this name—Herr von Koepenick." Other peasants received receipts stating that in return for the goods that had been requisitioned by the German officers, the owner was to come to the German quartermaster and receive his pay in twenty strokes of a whip-lash. If all the diaries of the Germans now in the hands of the English, Belgian and French authorities were brought together and published, they would make a small library, and the title would be "Confessions of Crime by German Soldiers."
"August 19th. Halted and plundered a villa, as invariably the surrounding houses were immediately plundered; dined splendidly, drank eleven bottles of champagne, four bottles of wine and six bottles of liquor."
John VanderSchoot, 10th Company, 39th Infantry, 7th Army Corps. "August 19th. Quartered in the University. Boozed through the streets of Liège, lie on straw, booze in plenty, little food, so we must steal. We live like gods here in Belgium."