d 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.

The journey to Louvain is thus described by a witness: We were all
marched off to Louvain, walking. There were some very old people, among
others a man 90 years of age. The very old people were drawn in carts
and barrows by the younger men. There was an officer with a bicycle,
who shouted, as people fell out by the side of the road, "Shoot them!"

AERSCHOT AND DISTRICT.

Period III., (September.)

It is unnecessary to describe with much particularity the events of the
period beginning about Sept. 10. The Belgian soldiers, who had
recaptured the place, found corpses of civilians who must have been
murdered in Aerschot itself just as they found them in Sempst and the
other villages on Aug. 25. Some of these bodies were found in wells and
some had been burned alive in their houses.

The prisoners released by the Belgian Army from the church were almost
starved.

HAECHT.--At Haecht several children had been murdered, one of 2 or 3
years of age was found nailed to the door of a farmhouse by its hands
and feet--a crime which seems almost incredible, but the evidence for
which we feel bound to accept. I