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.