The officer went up to them, recognized that they were not dead, and again gave orders to fire, with the same deliberation and the same method. This time the father ceased to move; it took a third volley to finish the son. We were then all led to a guard-house. There we remained for three days. We were given nothing to eat. We fasted from the morning we were taken; it was only on the following day, or the day after that, that we received a little water. In that room we were literally tortured. We were forced to stand upright; an old man was groaning he was so thirsty that his tongue protruded from his lips and the flies settled on it. As he could not stand any longer, the Germans passed a cord round his neck and attached it to a ring-bolt in the wall, so that he was supported only on his toes. The cord stretched and the wretched man fell now to this side, now to that. The soldiers made him stand upright again by striking his face with the butts of their rifles. At one time his trousers fell down and we saw he was wounded in the thigh, by bayonet-thrusts. Later he became insane. In his delirium he cried: "Prepare food for the cows."[50] It was a horrible scene. At another time the woman was taken out, with her two little children, and all three were shot against the wall of the Palais de Justice at Arlon. The soldiers asserted that they had "found a German soldier's purse" in this woman's house. The time passed in the most atrocious moral anguish and physical suffering. We had lost all notion of time. The soldiers insulted us, spat upon us, made signs that our throats would be cut, that we were going to be shot. They took a pleasure in drinking in front of us. At a certain moment an officer of superior rank entered the room. He came up to me and asked: "Why are you here?" I replied: "They accuse us of having fired on the troops." Immediately he turned his back upon me, but I cried, with energy: "Yes, and far from having fired on them, I looked after them. If you want the proof of this, ask the soldier called Kohn who must be in the hospital here at Arlon." I then told him of Kohn. He went to the hospital, and returned some time later; he had found the soldier Kohn, who confirmed my story. An officer on horseback (the judge) came to the door of the guard-room: we were sent out, my cousin and I, and without even questioning us he said, "You are acquitted." I protested, saying: "There are still five or six people there of my village who are no more guilty than we are." They were sent out, and the judge told them, as he told me, without any further inquiry, "You are acquitted." As for the unhappy old man, I will tell you later how he escaped. He returned to his village; he is crippled. * * * * *