The last man in the line was spared as a medical student and member of the Red Cross (R. No. 5). The survivors were set free. On their way back they passed another batch going to their death (R. No. 7). They passed the corpse of a woman on the road, and another in the cattle-market (c 17). Other inhabitants of Aerschot were forced to bury all the corpses on the Louvain road in the course of the same day. They brought back to the women of Aerschot the sure knowledge that their husbands, sons and brothers were dead.[97] The rest of what happened at Aerschot is quickly told. When the Germans had marched the second convoy of men out of the town and dismissed the women from the square, they evacuated the town themselves[98] and bombarded it from outside with artillery;[99] but in the daylight of Aug. 20th they came back again, and burned and pillaged continuously for three days--taking not only food and clothing but valuables of every kind, and loading them methodically on waggons and motor cars.[100] On the evening of the 20th, the Institut Damien, hospital though it was, was compelled to provide quarters for 1,100 men. “We spent all night giving food and drink to this mob, of whom many were drunk. We collected 800 empty bottles next morning.”[101] On Aug. 26th and 27th the remnant of the population--about 600 men, women, and children, who had not perished or fled--were herded into the church.[102] They were given little food, and no means of sanitation. On the evening of the 27th a squad of German soldiers amused themselves by firing through the church door over the heads of the hostages, against the opposite wall. On the 28th the monks of St. Damien were brought there also. (Their hospital was closed, and the patients turned out of their beds.) The rest of the hostages were marched that day to Louvain. There were little children among them, and women with child, and men too old to walk. At Louvain, in the Place de la Station, they were fired upon, and a number were wounded and killed. The survivors were released on the 29th, but when they returned to Aerschot they were arrested and imprisoned again--the men in the church, the women in a chateau. The women and children were released the day following (that day the active troops at Aerschot were replaced by a landsturm garrison, who began to pillage the town once more).[103] The men were kept prisoners till Sept. 6th, when those not of military age were released and the remainder (about 70) deported by train to Germany. All the monks were deported, whatever their age.[104] “On Aug. 31st,” writes a German landsturmer in his diary,[105] “we entered Aerschot to guard the station. On Sept. 2nd I had a little time off duty, which I spent in visiting the town. No one, without seeing it, could form any idea of the condition it is in.... In all my life I shall never drink more wine than I drank here.”