For three whole days they continued to pillage and set fire to
everything in sight.
About 150 inhabitants of Aerschot are supposed to have been thus
massacred.
The largest part of the city is totally destroyed. Five times the
Germans tried to set fire to the large church, the interior of which has
been sacked. The records of the town have been carried away.
The ambulance attendants, although wearing the Red Cross badge, were not
respected. One of them reports that German troops fired upon him while
he was collecting his wounded, and that they continued to fire even
though he displayed his Red Cross armband. Moreover, during the entire
day of the 19th, while he was engaged in hospital service, he was
threatened and ill-used. A German officer, among others, took him by the
head, thrusting against his forehead the butt of a revolver. A
collector, wearing the insignia of the Red Cross, was killed in the Rue
de l'Hospital on the evening of Aug. 19 by Germans.
Deny Any Civilian Attack.
From all the testimony taken it appears that the civil population of
Aerschot has in no wise participated in the hostilities, that no shot
was fired by them; that all the witnesses agree in pointing out the
improbability of the German version, according to which the
Burgomaster's son, a youth of 151/2 years, and of extremely gentle
disposition, is said to have fired upon a superior German officer during
the night of Aug.
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