The Log of a Noncombatant | Page 6

there single houses, even houses built of boards, were spared at the
commander's word. The convent was burnt and pillaged, stones and
mortar littered the street in front of the Hotel de Ville, and upon the
sidewalk lay the famous bells which came crashing to the street below
when shells burst in the belfry. From cellar to garret nearly every
remaining house was systematically drenched with naphtha and the
torch applied, and when all was over hundreds of gallons were tossed
into the River Scheldt. Over a small group of houses in the poorer
section of the city, where the prostitutes were quartered, grim Prussian
humor, or perhaps a sense of value received, had prompted the
conquerors to write in great white chalk marks in German script, "Gute
Leute. Nicht brennen!" (Good people. Do not burn!)
For an hour we walked through the silence of ashes and stone,
stumbling over timber and debris, tangled and twisted wire, a fallen
statue, broken bells or the cross-piece of a spire; we made our way
through piles of beds, chairs, singed mattresses, and stepped over the
carcass of a horse with its belly bloated and flies feasting on its glassy
eyes. We entered an apothecary shop where the clock still ticked upon
the counter. Thinking there could be no reason of war to call for the

destruction of the orphan asylum, we entered its portals to investigate.
Before us lay burnt beds and littered glass. We searched what ten days
before had been a convent, and crawled over heaps of logs and brick
into narrow alleys that reminded one of Naples or Pompeii--alleys
where the walls stood so close as to hide the light of sun but not the
odor of charred vats and sewage and smouldering, smelling things, long
dead. Not far from there the way widened into the light, and before us,
breaking the rays of sunset, stood the cross above a heap of
cobblestones.
"They are buried here," said Verhagen, "and here too is my house."
Another alderman, a friend of Verhagen, who had been allowed to
remain in Termonde most of the four days that the Germans stayed, had
the story detailed in his little pocket diary. On Thursday, September 3,
he said, he was just leaving his rope and twine factory when he heard
the sounds of musketry to the south. A small force of Belgian outposts
were completely surprised by a part of the Ninth German Army Corps
under General von Boehn. They were completely outclassed. Before
retreating, however, they let the enemy have a couple of volleys. In the
return fire they lost six of their men. They then retreated into the town
and across the bridge.
Nothing happened after dark, but the next morning at nine o'clock the
cannonading started. Inside of half an hour, according to the villagers,
the entire German force of the One Hundred and Sixty-second and One
Hundred and Sixty-third Uhlans and the Ninetieth Regiment of infantry
of the Ninth Army Corps were in the town. They entered
simultaneously by three different roads. The burgomaster was ordered
immediately to provide rations for the regiment. But the burgomaster
was away. He was given twelve hours to return. When he did not return,
the burning began, according to the townspeople.
"The soldiers did not wish to burn the town," said one man; "but the
orders were orders of war." He recounted that four Uhlans entered his
house with a bow, and a knock at the door, politely helped themselves
to his cellar, drank a toast to his wife, put his chairs in the street, and
sat there playing his phonograph. They said they were sorry, but the
house must be burnt. But before pouring on the naphtha and lighting
the flame they freed his canary bird. Verhagen and the priest agreed
that fright brought on an attack to a woman about to become a mother,

and that she fell in the Rue de l'Eglise. A German lieutenant saw the
trouble, put her on a stretcher made of window shutters, and called the
German army doctor. She was sent to a field hospital and tenderly
cared for until she and the child could be moved. Such incidents in
strange relief, told by men who had lost everything, lent corroboration,
if such were necessary, to the burden of their story of the relentless
destruction of the town itself.
Our little band was the first to enter the ruins of Termonde after its
abandonment by the Ninth German Army Corps. And by a coincidence,
we were the last to leave. That very evening, at precisely the time we
were crawling across the broken timbers that spanned the Scheldt and
connected us with Belgium-owned Belgium, the Germans again
pumped heavy artillery fire into the town. This was later known