On this side hundreds of soldiers were standing; they had taken off their uniforms in the fierce heat, and were busy loading and unloading and changing horses. From time to time the entire scene was hidden by the smoke from numerous burning houses at Lixhe, quite near the river. I walked in the most casual way, in an unconcerned attitude, looked calmly at some of the houses I passed, and which were for the greater part destroyed. The walls were pierced by bullets, the rooms generally burnt out; in the front gardens lay all sorts of furniture, dragged out of the house and then smashed to pieces. The road was all strewn with straw. I approached the bridge past burning farms and villas. There the pieces of broken furniture were even lying in the road, and I had to go warily so that I should not stumble. The soldiers looked at me as if they were amused, but I went up to them in the same unconcerned manner and asked them to take me to their commanding officer. "What do you want with him?" "I am a Netherland journalist, and want to ask the commander's permission to go to Liège." "Oh, you are a Netherlander; then come along." They took me to two officers who stood near the bridge, and told them that I "pretended" to be a Netherland journalist. Having proved this by my papers, the officers gave me an escort of three men, who conducted me to the bridge-commander, on the other side of the Meuse. I had to walk along the very edge of the unstable bridge in order to avoid the wheels of the passing carriages, which shook the whole bridge and made the rather loose boards clatter. In the meantime, at no considerable distance, some shells fell in the Meuse, fired at the bridge from Fort Pontisse. Yet, I did not mind it at all, as all these new experiences stunned me, so to speak; the incessant hellish noises of the batteries, the burning houses, the smoke swooping down, the excited soldiers.... As we crossed the bridge, I asked my escort why these houses were set on fire. I heard then, for the first time, that "they had been shooting," and they told me of cowardly civilians, who shot from the windows at unsuspicious soldiers, or stabbed them treacherously. But of course they had experienced nothing of the kind; it had happened to troops who were now moving ahead. They had, however, taken part in the revenge, and told of it with glittering eyes: how they fired the houses of francs-tireurs and then shot the people who, nearly stifled, appeared at the windows; how in "holy" anger, in order to avenge their comrades, they subsequently entered the houses and destroyed everything. I did not answer, did not know what to think of it, but shuddered, because it was so gruesome. They told this, while we were waiting on a couple of protruding boards of the pontoon-bridge, so as to allow some extremely wide carts to pass. Once again shells exploded, a couple of hundred yards behind us, and one made a hole in the bank quite near.