There was a continuous coming and going at the bridge-command, for when I left the shrubberies a great many soldiers of high and low rank, with portfolios and documents, were waiting outside. The soldiers were to escort me back across the bridge, so that I might go on to Visé along the other bank.
Before I got to the bridge I saw something gruesome: a number of corpses of soldiers were lying about and others were brought in ... a little farther away, on the farm, there they were digging.... I looked away quickly; I was not yet accustomed to that sort of thing. Most likely they were men killed a moment ago by shells aimed at the bridge, for wounded men were also brought in on stretchers.
At the other end of the bridge I was left by my escort, and went on alone; on my left the Meuse, on my right burning houses, above me hissing and whistling shells, that came down in front of me and behind me, with tremendous explosions, throwing the loose earth high into the air.
In Devant-le-Pont, a hamlet opposite Visé, the doors of all the houses stood open, as a sign that the inhabitants did not propose to offer any resistance to the Germans. After much shouting the landlady of a café appeared, distressingly nervous, but doing her utmost to look unconcerned.
"The guns are horrid, madame; are you not afraid?"
"Have the Germans done no harm here yet?"
Her reserve told me that I would not get much information here, and, finishing my beer, I asked:
"Nothing! But, madame, I want to pay for what I drink!"
"No, no, I won't take anything for it. It is hot, is it not, and a soldier ought to get something...."
I understood only then why the woman was so full of praise of the Germans, although she was shaking in her shoes: she thought I was a soldier! How heavily weighed the oppressor's hand on the wretched population, if now already the honest Belgian heart became hypocritical!
I had great trouble to make her understand that I was a Netherlander; and that changed at once her opinion for the Germans. She told me then that her husband and children had fled to The Netherlands, as had most of the inhabitants, and that she was left behind merely because she dawdled too long. And now she was constantly afraid that they might fire her house as they did the others, and murder her ... for such had been the fate of several of the villagers. Even whole families had been killed.