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 as the second German
bombardment and occupation of Termonde. Because of superior artillery
range, the attack had the cruel advantage of the man who can strike and
still stay out of reach. On that evening at six-thirty, the Teutons
sent a few warning shells into the debris, and then the first column of
scouts entered simultaneously by the two southern gates. It was just at