The devastation spread through the whole zone of the German retreat. At _Capelle-au-Bois_[134] the Belgian troops found two girls hanging naked from a tree with their breasts cut off, and two women bayonetted in a house, caught as they were making preparations to flee. A woman told them how German soldiers had held her down by force, while other soldiers had violated her daughter successively in an adjoining room. Four civilians were killed at Capelle-au-Bois and 235 houses burnt. At _Londerzeel_[135] 18 houses were burnt and one civilian killed. He was a man who had tried to prevent the Germans from violating his two daughters. When the Germans re-entered Londerzeel they used the civilian population as a screen. At _Ramsdonck_, near Londerzeel, a woman and two children were shot by the Germans as they were flying for protection towards the Belgian lines.[136] At _Wolverthem_ 10 houses were burnt and 5 people killed. At _Meysse_ 3 houses were burnt and 350 sacked, 2 civilians killed and 29 deported. At _Beyghem_ 32 houses were burnt. At _Pont-Brûlé_,[137] on Aug. 25th, the priest was imprisoned with 28 other civilian hostages in a room. The German soldiers compelled him to hold up his hands for hours, and struck him when he lowered them from fatigue. They compelled his fellow-prisoners to spit on him. They tore up his breviary and threw the fragments in his face. When he fainted they threw pails of water on him to revive him. As he was reviving he was shot. Fifty-eight houses were burnt in the commune of Pont-Brûlé-Grimbergen, 5 civilians shot, and 65 deported. These places lay in the _Canton of Wolverthem_, west of the river Senne, between Termonde, Malines, and Brussels. In the whole canton 426 houses were burnt, 1,292 plundered, 29 civilians killed, and 182 deported to Germany. [Illustration: 15. MALINES: RUINS] [Illustration: 16. MALINES: RUINS] In the district between Malines and Aerschot it was the same, and places which had suffered already on Aug. 19th were devastated again on Aug. 25th and the following days. At _Hever_[138] in the Canton of Haecht, a baby was found hanged by the neck to the handle of a door. Thirty-five houses were burnt. At _Boortmeerbeek_[139] 103 houses were burnt and 300 sacked (out of 437); 5 civilians were killed--one of them a little girl who was bayonetted in the road. At _Haecht_[140] 5 men were seized as hostages and then shot in cold blood. One of them survived, though he was bayonetted twice after the shooting to “finish him off.” Seven others were stripped naked and threatened with bayonets, but instead of being killed they were used as a screen. The Belgian troops found the body of a woman on the road, stripped to the waist and with the breasts cut off. There was another woman with her head cut off and her body mutilated. There was a child with its stomach slashed open with a bayonet, and another--two or three years old--nailed to a door by its hands and feet. At Haecht 40 houses were burnt.