I remained at Aerschot. This was Aug. 15. Suddenly, on the 19th, at 9 o'clock in the morning, after a terrible bombardment, the Germans made their entry into Aerschot. In the first street which they passed through they broke into the houses. They brought out six men whom I knew very well and immediately shot them. Learning of this, I fled to Louvain, where I arrived on Aug. 19 at 1 o'clock.
At 1:30 P.M. the Germans entered Louvain. They did not do anything to the people in the beginning. On the following Saturday, Aug. 22, I started to return to Aerschot, as I had no money. (All my money was still in Brussels.) The whole distance from Louvain to Aerschot I saw nothing but German armies, always Germans. They did not say a word to me until I suddenly found myself alone with three of the "Todeshusaren," (Death's Head Hussars,) the vanguard of their regiment. They arrested me at the point of the revolver, demanded where I was going, and why I had run away from Aerschot. They said that the whole of Aerschot was now on fire, because the son of the Burgomaster had killed a General. Finally they searched me from head to foot, and I heard them discuss the question of my fate.
Finally the non-commissioned officer told me that I could continue on my way; that they would certainly take care of me in Aerschot, as I had been firing at Germans, and they would shoot me when I arrived. I would have liked better to return to Louvain, but with an imperious gesture he pointed out my road to Aerschot, and I continued. On arriving within a few hundred meters of the town I was arrested once more.
I forgot to tell you that of all the houses which I passed between Louvain and Aerschot, there were only a few left intact. Upon these the Germans had written in chalk in the German language: "Please spare. Good people. Do not burn." Lying along the road I saw many dead horses putrefying. There were also to be seen pigs, goats, and cows which had nothing to eat, and which were howling like wild beasts. Not a soul was to be seen in the houses or in the streets. Everything was empty.
I was then arrested when a short distance from Aerschot. There were with me two or three families from Sichem, a village between Diest and Aerschot. We remained in the fields alongside the road, while the Prussian regiments with their artillery continued to pass by. When the artillery had passed we were marched at the point of the bayonet to the church in Aerschot. On arrival at the church the families of Sichem (there were at least twenty small children) were permitted to continue on their way, and the non-commissioned officer, delighted that I could speak German, permitted me to go to my aunt's house.
The aspect of the town was terrible. Not more than half the houses were standing. In the first three streets which the Germans traversed there was not a single house left. There was not a house in the town but had been pillaged. All doors had been burst open. There was nothing, nothing left. The stench in the streets was insupportable.
I then went home, or, rather, I should say, I went to the house where my father had always been boarding. You know, perhaps, that my mother died twelve years ago. I did not find my father, but according to what the people told me he had been arrested, and, with five other Aerschot men, taken to Germany—I do not know for what purpose.
I got into this house without any difficulty, because the door was smashed in. I stayed there from Saturday, Aug. 22, up to Wednesday, the 26th, a little more comfortable. There was nothing to eat left in the house. I lived on what a few women who remained in Aerschot could give me. I was forced to go with the soldiers into the cellars of M.X., director of a large factory, to hunt for wine. As recompense I got a loaf. It was not much, but at this moment it meant very much for me.
On Wednesday, Aug. 26, we were all once more locked up in the church. It was then half-past four in the afternoon. We could not get out, even for our necessities. On Thursday, about 9 o'clock, each of us was given a piece of bread and a glass of water. This was to last the whole day. At 10 o'clock a Lieutenant came in, accompanied by fifteen soldiers. He placed all the men who were left in a square, selected seventy of us and ordered us out to bury the corpses of Germans and Belgians around the town, which had been lying there since the battle of the 19th. That was a week that these bodies had remained there, and it is no use to ask if there was a stench. Afterward we had to clean the streets, and then it was evening.
They just got ready to shoot us. There were then ten of us. The guns had already been leveled at us, when suddenly a German soldier ran out shouting that we had not fired on them. A few minutes before we had heard rifle firing and the Germans said it was the Aerschot people who were shooting, though all these had been locked up in the church and we were the only inhabitants then in the streets, cleaning them, under surveillance of Germans. It was this German who saved our lives.