I do not know whether I killed any Germans at Liège, but I hope I did. You could see them falling over, but could not say who killed them.
We hated them because they had come into Belgium.
We were fighting all night, the rifles crackling because of the constant firing of the magazines.
We chased the Germans into the fields outside Liège. We got at stragglers with the bayonet, and we brought fifteen prisoners in. How amusing it was when we caught them! They said, “Oh, my Belgian brother!” We left them with contempt, and looked after other ones. Then, when we had got them, they were sent to the station and so to Antwerp.
The Germans came on in such strength that we could not stop them; but in spite of all their guns and regiments we held Liège for twenty-four days. We had only 300,000 Belgians in our army, and the Germans had about a million; but I would not run away from fifteen Germans myself. The Belgians called the Germans “swine,” and said, “we will be giving the Germans one presently!”
And we gave them one.
We went into the trenches, and the Germans were bombarding us and smashing the place up. We did as much as we could to keep them back.
Houses were smashed and everybody seemed to be killed or wounded. The shells came on top of you and spread out like an umbrella. A lot of my friends were killed and fell over in the trenches.
When we were in the trenches a man near me was not happy, because he was married and his thoughts were with his wife and children and home; but when we were going on firing I said, “Look! A German has fallen over again!” And then he was happy. He was married and I was single, and that made the difference.
If you had your friend in the trenches you did your best for him, because you liked to take your friend home again; but many friends were left in the trenches.