Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (41 page)

In the same spirit a Gordon Highlander recounted: ‘Poor devils of infantry! They advanced in companies of quite 150 men in files five deep,
and our rifle has a flat trajectory up to 600 yards. Guess the result. We could steady our rifles on the trench and take deliberate aim. The first company were simply blasted away to Heaven by a volley at 700 yards, and in their insane formation every bullet was almost sure to find two billets. The other companies kept advancing very slowly, using their dead comrades as cover, but they had absolutely no chance.’ The war would become overwhelmingly a contest between rival machine-guns and artillery pieces, but for a brief season in the late summer of 1914, the rifle displayed its powers against bodies of men exposing themselves in plain view.

However, the British grossly overestimated the casualties their riflemen inflicted. Many of the Germans who dropped to the ground were merely taking cover. Kluck’s units broke up into smaller groups that manoeuvred more subtly, supported by howitzers which caused steadily mounting casualties. Far from behaving like the mindless squareheads of British caricature, many Germans used fire and manoeuvre effectively. Smith-Dorrien’s companies deployed in advanced positions beyond the canal fell back to the south bank. ‘God! How their artillery do fire!’ exclaimed a Gordon: the shelling was a new and unwelcome experience for almost every member of the BEF. ‘The men were digging little holes for themselves to sit in,’ wrote Tom Wollocombe, ‘and most of them were getting a bit jumpy, not being used to such living.’ By the standards of the French battles a few days earlier, never mind those of Ypres two months later, British losses were slight. But for troops with no experience of the firepower of a modern European army, that August day on the canal bank seemed terrible enough. There was little German activity on the right, where Haig’s corps was deployed, but on Smith-Dorrien’s front information from prisoners and the badges of enemy dead revealed the presence of elements of two corps, pressing especially hard on the north-eastern salient.

But it should be stressed that, while Kluck led a much bigger army than French, the numbers of troops actively engaged on each side at Mons on 23 August were roughly equal. Praise has been lavished upon British heroism, less upon equally notable German courage. While significant numbers of Kluck’s men were shot down at the approaches to the water, scores worked forward to seek footholds on the south bank, some of which were secured within ninety minutes of the battle’s beginning. Memorable among the Germans was Oskar Niemeyer, a Hamburger. East of the rail crossing at Nimy defended by Royal Fusiliers stood a pedestrian bridge, which could be swung across the canal by pedal power. The British had
parked this along their own bank. Niemeyer dived into the water, swam across, and under fire pedalled the span almost to the north bank before being shot down, a feat that would have won him a Victoria Cross had he been wearing khaki that morning. The dead man’s comrades were able to toss a rope to secure the bridge and pull it to their side; then they began to dash across.

Such actions at a dozen points during the course of the morning exposed some British units to enfilading fire, and indeed threatened them with isolation. Shortly before 1 p.m., the Middlesex received a foolishly tardy message from division: ‘you will decide when bridges and boats within your zones should be destroyed’. Tom Wollocombe wrote: ‘it was too late. The enemy were across or crossing.’ The defenders at Mons were much too thinly spread to generate the intensity of violence necessary to halt Kluck’s host. British artillery batteries, close behind the infantry, suffered almost as severely from German fire as did riflemen. ‘Our faithful gunners stuck to their pieces magnificently,’ said Wollocombe. One of them, Sgt. William Edgington, wrote in his diary with notable understatement: ‘A very trying day – Germans seemed to be all around us.’ The Middlesex were among units which received no direct artillery support, because their nearest gunners could not see targets, and were obliged merely to hurl shells in the general direction of the enemy.

Though the British mauled Kluck’s leading regiments, as the day wore on their own casualties rose; meanwhile, the trickle of Germans crossing the canal swelled into strong streams. Early in the afternoon, Douglas Haig crawled to the crest of a low hill three miles north of Le Bonnet and overlooking the battlefield, accompanied by a staff officer, and viewed in grim silence ‘masses of grey-clad figures advancing’ upon his neighbours of II Corps. So accurate was enemy artillery fire in some sectors that Smith-Dorrien’s soldiers, like those of every other nation that August, became morbidly convinced that spies must be spotting for the enemy’s batteries. Eventually, unit by unit II Corps began to fall back, its men scrambling in small groups towards the rear, platoons taking turns to cover each other’s withdrawal, some soldiers supporting wounded mates. The difficulty was to make retreat a disciplined manoeuvre, not a headlong flight. When Col. Hull saw one of his platoons retiring under the orders of a sergeant – its two company officers had been hit – he told his adjutant to identify the NCO. After a glance through his field glasses, Tom Wollocombe gave the name, causing Hull to say furiously, ‘if Sgt. — had not had any order to retire, he would have him shot’. In the event, the suspect proved to be on
the battalion’s ‘Missing’ list that night, so escaped the threatened firing squad.

Pte. Sid Godley took over a Royal Fusiliers machine-gun at Nimy after its crew was killed, to such effect that both he and Lt. Maurice Dease were awarded Victoria Crosses – the latter posthumously – for their defence of the rail bridge. Godley, though wounded in several places, allegedly kept firing to cover the retirement of the battalion, until that evening his position was overrun by the Germans, and he became a prisoner. Sceptics have cast doubt on the reality of this action, pointing out that no German account mentions having encountered such resistance: they suggest that the feats of Dease and Godley were chiefly attested by the latter, while the high command was eager to identify plausible heroes. But there is no dispute about the courage of Capt. Theodore Wright of the Royal Engineers, who at 3 p.m. began a brave but hopelessly belated journey along the canal, to attempt demolition of five bridges along a three-mile front. Wright’s party was under fire most of the way, and his driver was understandably alarmed by the experience of threading a path across a battlefield in a car containing eight crates of guncotton.

Shot at from three sides, the engineer was eventually successful in destroying the crossing at Jemappes. While he was working on another at Mariette, he sent off his vehicle to take a wounded man to the rear. He was then grazed on the head by a shell fragment, and found himself without electricity to detonate his charges. He hastily ran a cable to the mains of a nearby house. Still getting no live current, he tried again and again to achieve a contact, while men of the Northumberland Fusiliers provided covering fire. Then exhaustion caused Wright to slip into the canal. An NCO, Sgt. Smith, fished his officer out, but by now it was 5 p.m., and the Germans were shooting at them from a range of thirty yards. The engineers abandoned their efforts and retired. For this gallant day’s work, and others before he was later killed, Wright received a VC. It was all in vain: only one bridge on the British front was ever blown – the necessary orders had been given far too late.

By nightfall, the Germans held Mons. There is no reliable record of their losses, but Walter Bloem’s battalion commander of the Brandenburgers lapsed into emotional lamentations: ‘You are the only company commander left … [it is] a mere wreck, my proud, beautiful battalion!’ Their regiment had lost killed one battalion commander and his adjutant, three company and six platoon commanders; a further sixteen officers were wounded; other ranks had suffered in proportion.
Bloem reflected miserably: ‘Our first battle is a heavy, an unheard-of heavy defeat, and against the English, the English we laughed at.’

Though this remark is often quoted in celebration of the BEF’s achievement, it was a wild exaggeration, reflecting the writer’s sensitivity to losses, common to all novice warriors. Bloem’s battalion suffered much heavier casualties than any other German unit that day. The British had been unable to frustrate Kluck’s advance, merely delaying it by a day before relinquishing their positions to the enemy. Another German regimental narrative recorded triumphantly that at nightfall ‘the spirit of victory was overwhelming, and was enjoyed to the full’. I Corps and Allenby’s cavalry had scarcely been engaged. The good fortune of Mons was that enemy bungling allowed the BEF to withdraw almost intact, having lost an estimated 1,600 men, many of them taken prisoner. A former travelling salesman from Hamburg who spoke fluent English marshalled some of the latter good-humouredly: ‘Gentlemen, please, four by four!’ Almost half of the losses fell on just two battalions – 4th Middlesex with over four hundred, and 2nd Royal Irish with more than three hundred; several units were obliged to abandon their precious machine-guns. German total casualties were roughly similar, but with a much higher proportion of killed and wounded, rather than prisoners.

The British regarded their allies with contempt. Yet it was critical to the brief stand at Mons and the subsequent escape of II Corps that a scratch force of French territorials led by Gen. Albert d’Amade covered Smith-Dorrien’s left flank. Even as the little British action was being fought, Lanrezac’s Fifth Army suffered far more heavily, at Charleroi. Further south still, in the Ardennes on the 23rd and 24th the Fourth French and Fourth German armies lost 18,000 dead between them. In woods near Bertrix, an entire French corps panicked and fled, abandoning its artillery. Elsewhere the Germans began to bombard the fortress of Namur, garrisoned by 35,000 French and Belgian troops, and took it two days later at a cost of only nine hundred casualties. Their Third Army, commanded by Gen. Max von Hausen, prepared to cross the Meuse at Dinant using pontoons and barges. Hausen had fought with the Austrian army against the Prussians in 1866. Now sixty-seven and Saxony’s war minister, he saw an opportunity for his forces to envelop Lanrezac. Franchet d’Espèrey, ablest of Fifth Army’s corps commanders, on his own initiative launched a counter-attack, which pushed back the Germans. Late that night, Hausen’s men nonetheless secured the town – and conducted a brutal massacre among its population. But Franchet
d’Espèrey had won time for Fifth Army’s withdrawal, and Hausen lost over 4,000 men.

By comparison with all these engagements, British doings at Mons receded in significance – though not in the minds of Sir John French and his senior officers. At 3 o’clock on the afternoon of the 23rd, the C-in-C returned from his trip to Valenciennes, still prey to delusions that the allies might soon renew their advance. By nightfall, however, he was forced to recognise reality, to accept Col. MacDonogh’s assessment that his army faced an overwhelmingly powerful enemy. Kluck’s men were crowding in upon II Corps’ right – now south and west of Mons – and threatened to isolate it from I Corps; finally and most disturbing, Sir John knew Lanrezac had begun to withdraw Fifth Army from the Sambre valley, heedless of Joffre’s wishes to the contrary. The BEF had started the day nine miles ahead of the French. Now, that gap was about to widen dangerously, inviting the Germans to fill it. Sir John acknowledged that his own command must pull back fast, to avert almost inevitable destruction.

The BEF bivouacked for the night some three miles south of Mons, its men expecting to fight on their new line next morning. That evening Tom Wollocombe ‘even had time to think that a battle was a wonderfully exciting thing when it was in progress … our men, instead of being downcast, were much impressed with the superiority of their rifle fire and extended order manoeuvring, over the enemy’s fire and movements “
en masse
”’. But at 1 a.m. on the 24th, GHQ issued new orders for a retreat, unassisted by guidance about how this was to be carried out, which was left to the corps commanders. Here was renewed evidence of incompetence at British headquarters, especially by Murray and Wilson, who simply did not know their jobs as staff officers. The only man who did was quartermaster-general Sir William ‘Wully’ Robertson, who through the weeks that followed improvised a supply system for the BEF with energy and skill.

In the space of a few hours, Sir John French had lapsed from jaunty confidence into gloom, even panic. Now, he talked at one moment of leading his force to take refuge in the old fortress of Maubeuge; at another, of withdrawing north-westwards to Amiens, severing all contact with his allies. A few days’ experience of campaigning caused the British C-in-C to leap to the hyperbolic conclusion that French soldiers were not people with whom he could do business, not ‘proper chaps’ with whom he wished to continue fighting a war. Such an attitude would merely have invited ridicule, did it not threaten grave consequences for the allied cause.

Meanwhile in Paris that morning of the 24th, Joffre told Messimy, the war minister, that for the time being the French army had no choice save to abandon the offensive, which had failed. The nation’s strategy was discredited. The French army had almost spent itself in futile attacks; it could aspire only to a protracted defence. ‘Our object,’ the commander-in-chief told the politician, ‘must be to last out as long as possible, trying to wear out the enemy, and to resume the offensive when the time comes.’ In the face of the news from the north, Joffre’s vast illusions about German deployments and intentions were at last falling away. He understood Moltke’s purpose.

Hitherto, the C-in-C had paid only casual attention to the left wing. Hereafter, it became the focus of all his fears – and then of his hopes. Next day, the 25th, he issued to his commanders, copied to Sir John French, his later famous
Instruction Général No. 2
, declaring an intention to start transferring large forces northwards, to create a new army on the left of the BEF. He was anxious to confront the peril on his flank with forces which he could rely upon to accept his orders – as the British would not. But Joffre’s immensely complex redeployment could not be completed before 2 September, an eternity away, in the circumstances of the moment. Much must necessarily happen, for good or ill, before that day came, some of it to the BEF.