"On August 4th the roads converging upon Liège from north-east, east, and south were covered with German Death's Head Hussars and Uhlans pressing forward to seize the passage over the Meuse. From the very beginning of the operations the civilian population of the villages lying upon the line of the German advance were made to experience the extreme horrors of war. 'On the 4th of August,' says one witness, 'at Herve' (a village not far from the frontier), 'I saw at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, near the station, five Uhlans, these were the first German troops I had seen. They were followed by a German officer and some soldiers in a motor car. The men in the car called out to a couple of young fellows who were standing about 30 yards away. The young men, being afraid, ran off, and then the Germans fired and killed one of them named D----.' "The murder of this innocent fugitive civilian was a prelude to the burning and pillage of Herve and of other villages in the neighbourhood, to the indiscriminate shooting of civilians of both sexes, and to the organised military execution of batches of selected males. Thus at Herve some 50 men escaping from the burning houses were seized, taken outside the town and shot. At Melen, a hamlet west of Herve, 40 men were shot. In one household alone the father and mother (names given) were shot, the daughter died after being repeatedly outraged, and the son was wounded. Nor were children exempt.... "The burning of the villages in this neighbourhood and the wholesale slaughter of civilians, such as occurred at Herve, Micheroux, and Soumagne, appear to be connected with the exasperation caused by the resistance of Fort Fléron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la Chapelle to Liège. Enraged by the losses which they had sustained, suspicious of the temper of the civilian population, and probably thinking that by exceptional severities at the outset they could cow the spirit of the Belgian nation, the German officers and men speedily accustomed themselves to the slaughter of civilians." As a German soldier's diary, examined by Lord Bryce's Committee, says:--"The inhabitants without exception were brought out and shot. This shooting was heart-breaking as they all knelt down and prayed, but that was no ground for mercy. A few shots rang out and they fell back into the green grass and slept for ever."[66]