When I arrived in Louvain I heard of a young Fleming who was then being nursed in a hospital established by the Norbertine Fathers, and had been serving at two pieces of ordnance near Corbeek-Loo. As the army was forced to retreat in the evening his comrades were compelled to abandon the two guns, but he had to stay, being wounded in the leg by a grape shot. The Germans made him prisoner, and tied him to a tree. By an immense effort he succeeded in tearing himself loose, and dragged himself towards a farm-house. At a short distance from this goal he was stopped, however, by a German soldier. The Fleming, putting forth all his remaining strength, gave the other such a tremendous blow in the face with his rifle-butt that he fell down dead. Subsequently this boy reached the farm-house, where he was charitably received. Later on he was fetched away by the Sisters from Boven-Loo, and finally from that institution by the Norbertine Fathers. The Belgians left also a considerable number of dead and wounded at Wijgmaal and Rotselair. On Tuesday, September 15th, I visited the battle-fields in that neighbourhood with father Coppens, a Netherland Norbertine, born at Lieshout. The wounds of the soldiers lying there were in a most terrible condition, because _the Germans forbade the removal of the Belgian wounded before all the German dead had been buried_. In my opinion not only a proof of barbarity, but also an admission that the Germans themselves must have suffered great losses. The Wijgmaal battle-field was after all the least horrible. About ten houses seemed to have been set on fire on purpose; the rest had suffered badly from the bombardment. All the inhabitants had fled as soon as the fighting began. The wounded Belgians had been placed in the large dancing-room of a café, where father Coppens brought them a large hamper full of eatables and drinkables, and whence also he had them transported to Louvain. The food was gratefully accepted, but they were still more eager to get hold of the mugs, as they were very thirsty in consequence of the high temperature caused by the inflamed wounds; often we had to prevent them forcibly from drinking too much. We passed a dead field-officer who still laid hold of a piece of a flag. When I read that sort of thing in a book, I thought: "how pretty and romantic," but never believed that this would actually happen in war-time. I saw the reality now, and, deeply touched, bared my head, saluting that dead hero. From papers we found on him we saw that his name was Van Gesthel; like most Belgians, he had been killed by shell. I went on with Father Coppens and found about one hundred wounded, of whom only a few had been taken to the houses. Most of them crept away frightened, but when we told them that we were Netherlanders from Louvain, who came to bring them food and drink, and to take them away to be nursed, they got hold of our coats and refused to let us go.