At _Wespelaer_[112] the destruction was complete. Out of 297 houses 47 were burnt and 250 gutted. Twenty-one inhabitants were killed. “The Germans shot the owner of the first house burnt on his doorstep, and his twenty-years-old daughter inside.... I only saw one man shot with my own eyes--a man who had an old carbine in his house. It had not been used; he was not carrying it.... In another house a married couple, 80 years old, were burnt alive” (c60). At _Campenhout_[113] the Germans burned 85 houses and killed 14 civilians. In a rich man’s house, where officers were quartered, they rifled the wine cellar and shot the mistress of the house in cold blood as she entered the room where they were drinking. “The other officers continued to drink and sing, and did not pay great attention to the killing of my mistress,” states a servant who was present. As they continued their advance, the Germans collected about 400 men, women and children (some of the women with babies in their arms) from Campenhout, Elewyt and Malines, and drove them forward as a screen, with the priest of Campenhout at their head, against the Belgian forces holding the outer ring of the Antwerp lines.[114] The devastation of this district is described by a witness who walked through it, from Brussels to Aerschot, after the Germans had passed (c 25). “We traversed the village of Werchter, where there had been no battle, but it had been in the occupation of the Germans, and on all sides of this village we saw burnt-down houses and traces of plunder and havoc. In Wespelaer and Rotselaer and Wesemael we saw the same. We did not pass through the village of Gelrode, but close to it, and we saw that houses had been burnt down there. In Aerschot the Malines Street, Hamer Street, Théophile Becker Street and other streets were completely burnt. Half the Grand Place had been burnt down....” (iv) _The Retreat from Malines._ Yet the devastation done by the Germans in their advance was light compared with the outrages they committed when the Belgian sortie of August 25th drove them back from Malines towards the Aerschot-Louvain line.