This catalogue of crimes does not by any means represent the sum total
of the depositions relating to this district laid before the committee.
The above are given merely as examples of acts which the evidence shows
to have taken place in numbers that might have seemed scarcely credible.
In the rest of the district, that is to say, Aerschot and the other
villages from which the Germans had not been driven, the effect of the
battle was to cause a recrudescence of murder, arson, pillage, and
cruelty, which had to some extent died down after Aug. 20 or 21.
In Aerschot itself fresh prisoners seem to have been taken and added to
those who were already in the church, since it would appear that
prisoners were kept to some extent in the church during the whole of
the German occupation of Aerschot. The second occasion on which large
numbers of prisoners were put there was shortly after the battle of
Malines, and it was then that the priest of Gelrode was brought to
Aerschot Church, treated abominably, and finally murdered.
[Illustration: GENERAL SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON, K.C.B.
Chief of the British General Staff, Who Made a Remarkable Record as
Quartermaster General in France
_(Photo from Bain News Service.
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