Belgium had been a neutral country since 1839, its neutrality guarded by what were reputed to be among the strongest fortifications in Europe. Liège, for example, near the German border, was protected in 1914 by twelve forts (six on each side of the Meuse river), with a total of 400 retractable guns, the forts manned by an estimated 70,000 troops. It was at this point that the German Second Army, with something like 320,000 men, entered Belgium on August 5, in the first land battle of World War I. The forts themselves held out for 12 days; the city was brought to surrender on August 7 after the Germans called in a fleet of zeppelins, which by-passed the forts and rained aerial bombs on the city from above.
A tiny group of Latter-day Saints lived at Liège – so tiny that their entire priesthood corps consisted of one teacher and two deacons. Miles away at Seraing, another branch was home to a solitary elder, a priest, and two deacons. A few scattered Saints lived in the countryside. The Belgian Saints endured the bombardment, followed by what one member recalled as “a fortnight or more” of terror, when the invaders “bombarded the fort, burned the houses, and plundered and shot the inhabitants.” Even though the Saints at Liège had a rented hall, they were forbidden from gathering for ten months, until the city had settled down into a “wartime normalcy” of unemployment, famine, and occupation.