were kept there all night, but set free in the
morning, Thursday, but shortly afterward sent to Tirlemont on foot. A
number of corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners, of whom there are
said to have been thousands, were not allowed even to have water to
drink, although there were streams on the way from which the soldiers
drank. Witness was given some milk at a farm, but as she raised it to
her lips it was taken away from her.

A priest was taken on Friday morning Aug. 28, and placed at the head of
a number of refugees from Wygmael. He was led through Louvain, abused
and ill-treated, and placed with some thousands of other people in the
riding school in the Rue du Manege. The glass roof broke in the night
from the heat of burning buildings around. Next day the prisoners were
marched through the country with an armed guard. Burned farms and burned
corpses were seen on the way. The prisoners were finally separated into
three groups, and the younger men marched through Herent and Bueken to
Campenhout, and ultimately reached the Belgian lines about midnight on
Saturday, Aug. 29. All the houses in Herent, a village of about 5,000
inhabitants, had been burned.

The massacre of civilians at Louvain was not confined to its citizens.
Large crowds of people were brought into Louvain from the surrounding
districts, not only from Aerschot and Gelrode as above mentioned, but
also from other places. For example, a witness describes how many women
and children were taken in carts to Louvain, and there placed in a
stable. Of the hundreds of people thus taken from the various villages
and brought to Louvain as prisoners, some were massacred there, others
were forced to march along with citizens of Louvain through various
places, some being ultimately sent on the 29th to the Belgian lines at
Malines, others were taken in trucks to Cologne as described below,
others were released. An account of the massacre of some of these
unfortunate civilian prisoners given by two witnesses may be quoted:

"We were all placed in Station Street, Louvain, and the German
soldiers fired upon us. I saw the corpses of some women in the
street. I fell down, and a woman who had been shot fell on top
of me. I did not dare to look at the dead bodies in the
street, there were so many of them. All of them had been shot
by the German soldiers. One woman whom I saw lying dead in the
street was a Miss J., about 35. I also saw