These 88 victims were only a preliminary batch. The whole population of Aerschot was being hunted out of the houses by the German troops and driven together into the square. They were driven along with brutal violence. “One of the Germans thrust at me with his bayonet,” states one woman (c 9), “which passed through my skirt and behind my knees. I was too frightened to notice much.”--“When we got into the street,” states another (c 10), “other German soldiers fired at us. I was carrying a child in my arms, and a bullet passed through my left hand and my child’s left arm. The child was also hit on the fundament.... In the hospital, on Aug. 22nd, I saw three women die of wounds.”--“In the ambulance at the Institut Damien,” reports the monk quoted above, “we nursed four women, several civilians and some children. A one-year-old child had received a bayonet wound in its thigh while its mother was carrying it in her arms. Several civilians had burns on their bodies and bullet wounds as well. They told us how the soldiers set fire to the houses and fired on the suffocating inhabitants when they tried to escape.” As elsewhere, the incendiarism was systematic. “They used a special apparatus, something like a big rifle, for throwing naphtha or some similar inflammable substance” (c 19).--“I was taken to the officer in command,” states a professor (c 14). “I found him personally assisting in setting fire to a house. He and his men were lighting matches and setting them to the curtains.”--“We saw a whole street burning, in which I possessed two houses,” deposes a native of Aerschot, who was being driven towards the square. “We heard children and beasts crying in the flames” (c 2). A civilian went out into the street to see if his mother was in a burning house. He was shot down by Germans at a distance of 18 yards (c 5). Another householder (R. No. 5) threw his child out of the first-floor window of his burning house, jumped out himself, and broke both his legs. His wife was burnt alive. “The Germans with their rifles prevented anyone going to help this man, and he had to drag himself along with his legs broken as best he could” (c 19).--“The whole upper part of my house caught fire,” declares another (R. No. 13), “when there were a dozen people in it. The Germans had blocked the street door to prevent them coming out. They tried in vain to reach the neighbouring roofs.... The Germans were firing on everyone in the streets....” By this time the Germans were mostly drunk (c9) and lost to all reason or shame. Two men and a boy stepped out of the door of a public-house in which they had taken refuge with others. “As soon as we got outside we saw the flash of rifles and heard the report.... We came in as quickly as we could and shut the door. The German soldiers entered. The first man who entered said, ‘You have been shooting,’ and the others kept repeating the same words. They pointed their revolvers at us, and threatened to shoot us if we moved” (c 4).