I saw a man, woman, and a
girl about nine, who had been killed. They were on the threshold of a
house, one on the top of the other, as if they had been shot down, one
after the other, as they tried to escape."
The burning of the villages in this neighborhood 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 Fleron, whose guns barred the main road from Aix la
Chapelle to Liege. 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. How rapidly the
process was effected is illustrated by an entry in the diary of Kurt
Hoffman, a one-year's man in the First Jaegers, who on Aug. 5 was in
front of Fort Fleron. He illustrates his story by a sketch map. "The
position," he says, "was dangerous. As suspicious civilians were hanging
about--houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, were cleared, the owners arrested, (and
shot the following day.
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