In the darkness the gray uniforms filled the
station with an army of ghosts. You distinguished men only when
pipes hanging from their teeth glowed red or their bayonets flashed.
Outside the station in the public square the people of Louvain passed
in an unending procession, women bareheaded, weeping, men
carrying the children asleep on their shoulders, all hemmed in by the
shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they were halted, and among
them were marched a line of men. These were on their way to be
shot. And, better to point the moral, an officer halted both processions
and, climbing to a cart, explained why the men were to die. He
warned others not to bring down upon themselves a like vengeance.
As those being led to spend the night in the fields looked across to
those marked for death they saw old friends, neighbors of long
standing, men of their own household. The officer bellowing at them
from the cart was illuminated by the headlights of an automobile. He
looked like an actor held in a spotlight on a darkened stage.
It was all like a scene upon the stage, unreal, inhuman. You felt it
could not be true.
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