Every one was too restless and unhappy to settle to anything, all the most important shops were burnt down, and very few of those that were left were open.  The whole population seemed to spend all their time in the street waiting for something to happen.  Certainly the Germans seem to have had a special “down” on Charleroi and its neighbourhood, so many villages in its vicinity were burnt down and most abominable cruelties practised on its inhabitants.  The peasants who were left were simply terrorized, as no doubt the Germans meant them to be, and a white flag hung from nearly every cottage window denoting complete submission.  In one village some German soldier wrote in chalk on the door of a house where he had been well received, “Guete Leute hier,” and these poor people got chalk and tried to copy the difficult German writing on every door in the street.  I am afraid that did not save them, however, when their turn came.  It was the utter ruthlessness and foresight with which every contingency was prepared for that appalled me and made me realize what a powerful enemy we were up against.  Everything was thought out down to the last detail and must have been prepared months beforehand.  Even their wagons for transport were all painted the same slate-grey colour, while the English and Belgians were using any cart they could commandeer in the early days, as I afterwards saw in a German camp Pickford’s vans and Lyons’ tea carts that they had captured from us.  Even their postal arrangements were complete; we saw their grey “Feld-Post” wagons going to and fro quite at the beginning of the war.

Several people in Charleroi told me that the absolute system and organization of destruction frightened them more than the actual fire itself.  Every German soldier had a little hatchet, and when Charleroi was fired, they simply went down the street as if they had been drilled to it for months, cutting a square hole in the panel of each door, and throwing a ball of celluloid filled with benzine inside.  This exploded and set the house on fire, and later on the soldiers would return to see if it was burning well.  They were entirely indifferent as to whether anyone were inside or not, as the following incident, which came under my notice, will show.  Two English Red Cross Sisters were working at an ambulance in Charleroi, and lodging with some people in the centre of the city.  When the town was being burnt they asked leave to go and try to save some of their possessions.  They arrived at the house, however, and found it entirely burnt down, and all their things destroyed.  They were returning rather sorrowfully to their hospital when an old woman accosted them and told them that a woman with a new-born infant was lying in bed in one of the burning houses.