_Ah! les gredins!_ how well they deserved their fate for the shooting down of peaceful citizens in Charleroi and the unspeakable crimes committed in the communes on the wooded heights of Loverval, Acoz, Montigny-le-Tilleul, and Somzée! With what satisfaction our small detachments, hidden in the woods, let the German scouts pass on in order to open fire at close quarters on the masses of troops which followed! They paid, then, for the outrages perpetrated by the Uhlans. You ask for an instance. Here is one which was related to me by my friend of Charleroi--he who viewed the battle from his house-top, and afterwards explored the battlefield to come face to face with this grim picture. A typical instance of Teutonic cruelty, I give it in his own words: "A little way out of the village of Somzée was a small farm inhabited by a young household, including three small children. Honest, courageous, and economical folk, they had toiled season after season to pay by annual instalments for their property, which they had agreed to purchase some eight years ago. The last payment had just been made; the children were growing up; the little family was happy. But the German monsters came. In a few minutes this hardly-earned happiness was shattered. The Boches seized everything--the few cows, the dearly-loved horse. They set fire to the farm, shot the farmer, and drove before them, into the distance, the poor widow with her four weeping and terrified children. What a sinister picture it makes! It was at the close of a splendid August day. The little isolated farm is burning. A few yards from the door the dead man is lying on his back. On the side of the hill which descends to the main road are the silhouettes of the Uhlans disappearing in the gathering darkness of night. Tongues of flame on the horizon mark places where similar dramas had been enacted." "Now, then, boys, let them have it hot. Pick off the gunners one by one. Marcel, Gustave, François, do you keep an eye on the officers. _Ah, les gredins!_ we'll teach them!"