GENERAL SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON, K.C.B.—
Chief of the British General Staff, Who Made a Remarkable Record
as Quartermaster General in France—(Photo from Bain News Service.)
GENERAL FOCH—The Brilliant Strategist Who Commands
the French Armies of the North—(Photo from P.S. Rogers.)
One witness describes the scene graphically:
"The whole of the prisoners—men, women and children—were placed in the church. Nobody was allowed to go outside the church to obey the calls of nature; the church had to be used for that purpose. We were afterward allowed to go outside the church for this purpose, and then I saw the clergyman of Gelrode standing by the wall of the church with his hands above his head, being guarded by soldiers."
The actual details of the murder of the priest are as follows: The priest was struck several times by the soldiers on the head. He was pushed up against the wall of the church. He asked in Flemish to be allowed to stand with his face to the wall, and tried to turn around. The Germans stopped him and then turned him with his face to the wall, with his hands above his head. An hour later the same witness saw the priest still standing there. He was then led away by the Germans a distance of about fifty yards. There, with his face against the wall of a house, he was shot by five soldiers.
Other murders of which we have evidence appear in the appendix.
Some of the prisoners in the church at Aerschot were actually kept there until the arrival of the Belgian Army on Sept. 11, when they were released. Others were marched to Louvain and eventually merged with other prisoners, both from Louvain itself and the surrounding districts, and taken to Germany and elsewhere.
It is said by one witness that about 1,500 were marched to Louvain and that the journey took six hours.