The father was shot
later on with fourteen other old men. More than 150 victims were
identified in this parish.
At Nomeny, M. Vasse provided shelter for a number of neighbours in his
cellar. Fifty soldiers got in and set fire to the house. To escape the
flames the refugees rushed out and were shot one by one as they emerged.
Mentre was killed first; his son Leon, with his little eight-year-old
sister in his arms, fell next: as he was not quite dead they put the
barrel of a rifle to his ear and blew his brains out. Then came the turn
of a family named Kieffer. The mother was wounded; the father, his boy
and girl, aged respectively 10 and 3, were shot down. They fell on them
with fury. Striffler, Guillaume, and Vasse were afterwards massacred.
Young Mlle. Simonin, 17 years old, and her small sister, afraid to leave
their refuge in the cellar, were eventually driven out by the flames,
and immediately shot at. The younger child had an elbow almost blown off
by a bullet; as the elder girl lay wounded on the ground, she was
deliberately kicked by a soldier. At Nomeny 40 victims were identified.
And now we come to some of the _wholesale slaughters._ At Louvain, more
than 100 victims; at Aerschot, over 150; at Soumagne, 165; at Ethe, 197;
at Andenne, over 300; at Tamines, 400; at Dinant, upwards of 600, of
whom 71 were women, 34 old men of over seventy, 6 children from five to
nine years old, and 11 under five. At Aerschot, a first batch of 78 men
were taken out of the town, and ordered to advance in groups of three,
holding each other by the hand, when they were made to pass in front of
some German Military Police, who shot them all at short range with
revolvers.
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