In the great high-up Château de Sévérac they only knew of them by rumour, and whenever Aimée told what she had heard over the telephone to her father sitting there so grave and morose, he always shook his head and declared that they were only wild rumours.
“The German soldiers are civilised. They do not shoot women, my dear girl,” he would always declare. The true stories of the Kaiser’s “frightful examples”—which his bloody Majesty himself admitted—had not yet been told. The Baron and his family did not know how, at Aerschot, the male inhabitants who crossed their thresholds were seized and shot under the eyes of their wives and children; how poor Monsieur Thielemans, the Burgomaster, and his fifteen-year-old son, with a dozen prominent citizens, were set up against a wall and shot, and their bodies cast unceremoniously into a hole. They knew not how young girls, and even little children, had been raped at Orsmael; how wounded Belgian soldiers were tied to telegraph poles and shot; how, constantly, Red Cross waggons bearing doctors and wounded were deliberately fired upon; or how these Teuton apostles of “kultur” had actually mounted machine-guns in their own Red Cross vans and fired at the unsuspecting! Of the awful scenes in St. Trond, Velm, and Haelen, rumour only gave the faintest outline, which was dismissed as imaginary and without foundation.
Alas! however, it was the bitter and terrible truth. Abominable deeds were committed not only in those places, but at Sempst men had their arms and hands cut off; at Corbeek Loo women and girls were bayoneted; at Seraing the blood-guilty ruffians massacred several hundred people, and in more than one village terrified women were made to pass in front of machine-guns amid the laughter of the drunken German soldiers and their threats to blow them out of existence at any moment.
Was it any wonder that many poor wretches went stark mad with terror?
Over this stricken country, between Liège and Louvain, towards Brussels, the “Flying Column” were fighting—struggling along bravely from day to day against the most fearful odds.
While Aimée sat, hour after hour in silence, watching and wondering, Edmond with his Maxim was doing terrible execution. Yet of what use was it all? They were being gradually driven back towards Brussels, compelled to leave the villagers to their fate.
The roads were crowded by homeless men, women, and children, poor wretched people who had watched their homes sacked and burnt. For years they had been thrifty, and saved until they could live in quiet comfort, still working hard. Yet in one short fortnight all had gone from them; all they now possessed was piled into a wheelbarrow, perambulator, or cart, or else carried in a sack upon their backs.
The scenes on that wide, open main road leading through Louvain and Tirlemont to Brussels, a well-kept highway, lined in places by tall poplars, were enough to cause one’s heart to bleed.
Edmond looked upon them with a sigh. Beneath the pitiless sun the never-ceasing crowd moved westward, driven on by the advancing German army. All sorts of ramshackle vehicles were mixed up in the slowly moving mass of humanity who were tramping their way, day and night, on and on to some place of safety—where, they knew not—Brussels, Antwerp, or to Ghent, Ostend, or perhaps the sea. The iron of despair was in their souls.
Such a human tide as this, naturally, hampered the Belgian army severely. Weary, footsore, and sad-eyed, many old persons fainted by the wayside, and those who were friendless were left there to die. Everybody was thinking of his or her own family. They had no time for sympathy with others. Most of them were dressed in their best clothes—in order to save them—and all had fearful tales to tell of the behaviour of the Uhlans. Many of those poor, red-eyed, hatless women in black had seen their husbands, brothers, sons, or lovers shot down before their eyes. Some had been falsely accused of firing at the troops; some had simply been seized by drunken, laughing soldiers; some had been questioned by swaggering German officers, others had not. With all, trial or no trial, the end was the same—death.