In another building about 22 captured Belgian soldiers (some of them wounded) and six civilian hostages were under guard. They were dragged out to the banks of the Démer and shot down by two companies of German troops. “I was hit,” explains one of the two survivors (a soldier already wounded before being taken prisoner), “but an officer saw that I was still breathing, and when a soldier wanted to shoot me again, he ordered him to throw me into the Démer. I clung to a branch and set my feet against the stones on the river-bottom. I stayed there till the following morning, with only my head above water....” (R. No. 8). The Burgomaster’s house was the first to be cleared. Colonel Stenger’s aide-de-camp dragged the Burgomaster out of the cellar where he and his family had taken refuge, and carried him off under guard. Half-an-hour later the aide-de-camp returned for the Burgomaster’s wife and his fifteen-year-old son. “My poor child,” writes the Burgomaster’s wife, “could scarcely walk because of his wound. The aide-de-camp kicked him along. I shut my eyes to see no more....” (R. No. 11). “When we reached the square,” the same witness continues, “we found there all our neighbours. A girl near me was fainting with grief. Her father and two brothers had been shot, and they had torn her from her dying mother’s bedside. (They found her, nine hours later, dead). All the houses on the right side of the square were ablaze. One could detect the perfect order and method with which they were proceeding. There was none of the feverishness of men left to pillage by themselves. I am positive they were acting with orderliness and under orders.... From time to time, soldiers emerged from our house, with their arms full of bottles of wine. They were opening our windows, and all the interiors were stripped bare....”--“The square was one blaze of fire,” states a blacksmith (c 1), “and the civilians were obliged to stand there close to the flames from the burning houses.”--“They put the women and children on one side,” adds a woman (c 7). “I was among them, and my 5 children--one boy of fifteen and 4 girls. I saw that many of the men had their hands tied. They took the men away along the road to Louvain....”