Soon after this, Lieutenant Schreyer came back and reported to me that he had observed on the opposite slope some suspicious rascals on whom he had fired. Shortly after we were fired at from a detached house on the right slope. This was somewhere about 10 o'clock in the morning. I once more sent out a strong patrol on the right bank to clear out this house. The patrol soon returned and brought a big, strong man about forty years old, in labourer's clothes, and a lad of about sixteen years, as well as a number of wailing women and children. The men had been armed, according to the statement of the leader of the patrol, with sporting-rifles which the patrol themselves in the house had rendered unserviceable. I can no longer remember the name of the patrol leader. The men were taken to the factory, the women and children bundled off to the monastery in Leffe. Towards midday the 2nd Battalion of Infantry Regiment No. 178 was moved forward towards Leffe direct to the Meuse. In the village street itself there lay a great number of dead men in civilian clothing. On questioning different soldiers I learnt that the troops marching through before us had been fired on from almost every house; hence the great number of civilians shot. Dead women and children I did not see. I had my company halted at the monastery at Leffe, and went forward myself to the Meuse. Parts of the 3rd and 1st Battalions of the 178th Regiment were still there, fighting the enemy on the opposite bank. I also saw there bodies of troops, in particular, of Regiments Nos. 102 and 103, of Rifle Regiment No. 108, of the Marburg Jägers, and of the artillery. In the compact rows of houses at Leffe, the reports of firing were continuous, and one could not always tell from whence they came. Without doubt they were pistol-shots discharged from cellars and attics. I can also remember that a large number of brown sporting-shot cartridge cases lay in front of a house in the principal street of Leffe. In the course of the afternoon I received the order to occupy the bank of the Meuse with my company, and was allotted for this purpose the school and the houses near it. Behind the school was a gasometer, and close to the gasometer coals had been piled up and set on fire--manifestly by the civilian population. I therefore sent Acting-Sergeant-Major Bauer, officer's deputy, with his men, in order either to extinguish the fire or otherwise to prevent in some way the threatened explosion. He reported to me, however, that the pioneers who had already arrived before us, correctly judging the danger of the gasometer, had emptied it.