*The shops and cafés stayed open, by order of the Germans, on Independence Day the following year, but the population of Brussels retaliated by boycotting them, and shopkeepers colluded by asking outrageous prices of the few customers who were injudicious enough to enter them – fifty thousand francs for a cap in one case. The wearing of flowers was also forbidden, but the Belgians replied by wearing green leaves, the colour of hope, and went so far as to strip the blossoms of house plants in their windows so that only the green foliage was left. One lady went one better, to the admiration of her fellow citizens, and paraded the boulevards all day accompanied by her three little girls, one dressed entirely in yellow, another in red and the third in black.

*In the immediate aftermath of the liquid fire attack, Lieutenant Sidney Woodroffe of the 8th Rifle Brigade bombed his way out after his small detachment was surrounded and cut off, rallied his small party and led them back through a hail of fire to counter-attack. He was killed at the head of his men while attempting to cut a path through wire entanglements, and awarded a posthumous VC.