“I went with an artilleryman,” states another Belgian soldier,[123] “to find his parents who lived in Hofstade. All the houses were burning except the one where this man’s parents lived. On forcing the door, we saw lying on the floor of the room on which it opened the dead bodies of a man, a woman, a girl, and a boy, who, the artilleryman told us, were his father and mother and brother and sister. Each of them had both feet cut off just above the ankle, and both hands just above the wrist. The poor boy rushed straight off, took one of the horses from his gun, and rode in the direction of the German lines. We never saw him again....” Retreating from Hofstade, the Germans drove about 200 of the inhabitants with them as a screen, to cover their flank against the Belgian attack.[124] At _Muysen_ they killed 6 civilians and burned 450 houses. “There were broken wine bottles lying about everywhere” (d 88). At _Sempst_,[125] as they evacuated the village, they dragged the inhabitants out of their houses. One old man who expostulated was shot by an officer with a revolver,[126] and his son was shot when he attempted to escape. They fired down into the cellars and up through the ceilings to drive the people out (d 68). The hostages were taken to the bridge. “One young man was carrying in his arms his little brother, 10 or 11 years old, who had been run over before the war and could not walk. The soldiers told the man to hold up his arms. He said he could not, as he must hold his brother, who could not walk. Then a German soldier hit him on the head with a revolver, and he let the child fall....” [Illustration: 13. BRUSSELS: A BOOKING-OFFICE] [Illustration: 14. MALINES AFTER BOMBARDMENT] In one house they bound a bed-ridden man to his bed, and shot another man in the presence of 13 children who were in the house (d 29). In another house they burned a woman and two children (d 71); they burned the owner of a bicycle shop in his shop;[127] these four bodies were found, carbonised, by the Belgian troops. The Belgians also found a woman dead in the street, with four bayonet wounds in her body (d 36), and saw an Uhlan overtake a woman driving in a cart, thrust his lance through her body, and then shoot her in the chest with his carbine (d 80). In a farmhouse the farmer was found with his head cut off. His two sons, killed by bullet wounds, were lying beside him. His wife, whose left breast had been cut off, was still alive, and told how, when her eight-year-old son had gone up a ladder into the loft, the Germans had pulled away the ladder and set the building on fire.[128] Twenty-seven houses were burnt at Sempst, 200 sacked, 18 inhabitants killed, and 34 deported to Germany.