"I've had enough of this. Let's get out and go home."

Our friend, the officer, said Bulle was right, and that it would be the
part of wisdom for us all to fall back to the station, where we would be
near the car in case anything happened. He started off at a good pace,
and as we were in no mood to argue we went meekly along in his wake. We
overtook Bulle engaged in an altercation with a very drunken soldier,
who wanted to see his papers and was insulting about it. Instead of
taking the easy course and showing his papers Bulle was opening a debate
on the subject, when we arrived and took a hand. Our officer waded into
the soldier in a way that would have caused a mutiny in any other army,
and the soldier, very drunk and sullen, retreated, muttering, to his
armchair on the curb. We then moved on to the station.

Outside the station was a crowd of several hundred people, mostly women
and children, being herded on to trains by soldiers, to be run out of
the town. They seemed to be decently treated but were naturally in a
pitiable state of terror. Just inside the gates of the freight yard were
a couple of women telling their troubles to a group of officers and
soldiers. They had both lost their husbands in the street-fighting, and
were in a terrible state. The officers and men were gathered about them,
evidently distressed by their trouble, and trying to comfort them. They
had put the older woman in an armchair and were giving her a little
brandy in a tea cup. And the same men may have been the ones who killed
the husbands....

We went on into the freight yards and were greeted by a number of
officers with hopeful talk about a train coming from Brussels with food.
We were given chairs and an orderly was despatched for a bottle of wine
so that a drink could be given to Bulle, who said that after what he had
been through he would appreciate a glass of something comforting.

We settled down and listened to the stories of the past few days. It was
a story of clearing out civilians from a large part of the town; a
systematic routing out of men from cellars and garrets, wholesale
shootings, the generous use of machine guns, and the free application of
the torch--the whole story enough to make one see red. And for our
guidance it was impressed on us that this would make people _respect_
Germany and think twice about resisting her.

Suddenly several shots rang out apparently from some ruins across the
street and the whole place