I had two brothers fighting in the North Sea of whom I
had no news since the war began, and I could bear it no longer, but fled
from the operating-room.

Charleroi and its neighbourhood was just one large German camp, its
position on the railway making it a particularly valuable base for them.
The proclamations and rules for the behaviour of the inhabitants became
daily more and more intolerant. It was forbidden to lock the door, or
open the window, or pull down the blinds, or allow your dog out of the
house; all German officers were to be saluted--and if there was any
doubt, any German soldier was to be saluted, and so on, day after day.
One really funny one I wish I could reproduce. It forbade anyone to
"wear a menacing look" but it did not say who was to be the judge of
this look.

Every one was too restless and unhappy to settle to anything, all the
most important shops were burnt down, and very few of those that were
left were open. The whole population seemed to spend all their time in
the street waiting for something to happen. Certainly the Germans seem
to have had a special "down" on Charleroi and its neighbourhood, so many
villages in its vicinity were burnt down and most abominable cruelties
practised on its inhabitants. The peasants who were left were simply
terrorized, as no doubt the Germans meant them to be, and a white flag
hung from nearly every cottage window denoting complete submission. In
one village some German soldier wrote in chalk on the door of a house
where he had been well received, "Guete Leute hier," and these poor
people got chalk and tried to copy the difficult German writing on every
door in the street. I am afraid that did not save them, however, when
their turn came. It was the utter ruthlessness and foresight with which
every contingency was prepared for that appalled me and made me realize
what a powerful enemy we were up against. Everything was thought out
down to the last detail and must have been prepared months beforehand.
Even their wagons for transport were all painted the same slate-grey
colour, while the English and Belgians were using any cart they could
commandeer in the early days, as I afterwards saw in a German camp
Pickford's vans and Lyons' tea carts that they had captured from us.
Even their postal arrangements were complete; we saw their grey
"Feld-Post" wagons going to and fro quite at the beginning of the war.

Several people in Charleroi told me that the absolu