Meeting the Enemy (6 page)

My dear Dorothy . . .

I write you now to tell you something about our victories, for we did not sustain only one defeat as you are thinking. Dorothy, I do not want all this to hurt you, but we know that you do not know the truth about the war, the battles and our people, you only hear cruel things of our soldiers and much of our defeats but all this is not true, I hope you will believe me. Your Government is only too cowardly to speak the truth, it hopes to make us more enemies by all these lies, but till now
we
are the conquerors and we shall slay them . . . I can tell you so many and so cruel things about our enemies, it is really terrible. The French and Belgian people had cut off the tongues of our
wounded
soldiers, their arms, their hands, they have struck them blind!

But you wish to annihilate our dear Germany, oh, you shall not succeed. We are so strong, much stronger than you can imagine. We must win, we want to win and so we shall win. If you could see the enthusiasm of our people that is resolved to give all for this country, or the soldiers how gayful they are going into the war, you would be astonished . . .

Oh, Dorothy you are all so very afraid of our dear Germany. In fourteen days we got seven declarations of war, but we laughed about them! And the eighth was that one of Japan – and this was your work! Dorothy, once I told you that I hated France and liked England. Today I shrug the shoulders about France but I despise England! Why did your Government declare us the war? Because we have broken the neutrality of Belgium. Now you may hear that France broke it much earlier, our soldiers found French officers at Liege, and your Government knew it surely but did not say one word, so that it was only a pretext for the war. You wanted the war with us because you are enemies of our navy and our power. Now you felt not strong enough to fight alone against us on the sea . . . You have betrayed us.

And not only that, you did not fight with us with honourable arms, our soldiers found at the French army and yours anti-social shots that make the terriblest wounds you can imagine. Sir Edward Grey disputes it, but he is a liar. I send you a picture of those shots. I hope you will be honourable enough to dispute the doing of your Government after knowing all this. All the English living in Germany now disputes his politics. Now when you can write me soon what are you thinking. Though your navy destroyed some of our ships we are not a bit afraid of it, we shall see which will be the stronger one, you have lost several ships too, perhaps you do not know it. But do you know that you destroyed one of our ships when it was lying in a neutral port? That was anti-social too, you may be ashamed of it . . .

I must go to dinner now so I must end the letter. Please tell your friends all I wrote you. Many greetings for you, your father and sister, Lotte

Lotte’s letter lacks all subtlety but it does capture the prevailing Zeitgeist in Germany: the public impression of British betrayal and the sense of national euphoria at imminent victory.

It was three weeks since German and British forces had clashed just outside the Belgian town of Mons on 22 August, as forward units of the British Expeditionary Force met with advancing German forces of General Alexander von Kluck’s First Army.

The first ‘shot’, a cavalry-on-cavalry engagement, saw British Dragoons overwhelm German Curassiers, ending with a number of enemy dead and prisoners taken. These men, their horses and a wagon full of lances were paraded past excited onlookers including troopers serving with the Queen’s Bays, another cavalry regiment. Private Alfred Tilney, of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards who had taken part in the scrap, recognised a friend:

He asked me where we had been. I pulled his leg, said we had been out to fetch a sample, and if they saw any chaps like these they were to shoot them, as they were Germans. When we reached the Regimental Headquarters, Colonel Mullens [the Dragoons’ Commanding Officer] asked, ‘Who caught this one?’ I stuck out my chest and said, ‘I did, sir’. He told me I was a damned fool.

The men should not have been taken prisoner. Mullens’s order was that anyone surrendering was to be searched, stripped and turned away. Prisoners would hamper the work of cavalry on the move, especially when involved in such an important role as advance guard to the BEF. As it was, these Germans had to be passed back and up the chain of command. Before leaving, they had their wounds dressed by Captain Arthur Osborn, medical officer attached to the Dragoon Guards.

Ploughboys in German uniforms – that was all they really were . . . I was not surprised, when I saw them, that several of these young Bavarians had turned tail. I could speak a few words of German and I asked them what they thought of the War. They said they did not know what to make of it, nor what it was all about. They had, they said, been called up for military training only a few weeks before War broke out . . . I asked one of the prisoners for a button, which he cut off – my first souvenir! Rather tearfully, he insisted that his brother had been shot in Munich for refusing to join up, and that he himself was very pleased he had been taken prisoner and would not have to take any further part in the war.

An Operational Order issued by Brigadier General de Lisle, commanding the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, congratulated those who had taken part in the ‘spirited action’ that resulted in ‘establishing the moral superiority of our cavalry, from the first, over the German cavalry’, which in this particularly brief and frenzied encounter was undoubtedly the case.

The next day the war began in earnest with British infantry battalions taking position on or close to the Mons-Condé Canal, a more than useful barrier on which to base a defence of Mons. Lance Corporal Alfred Vivian was there, serving with the 4th Middlesex Regiment. He had been sent with several others to a cottage on lookout. After finishing a morning wash, Vivian and his mates sat sunning themselves behind a wall when a sentry bounded in.

‘Blimey! Corporal, grab your bloomin’ pop-gun and have a dekko at the Kaiser’s bodyguard prancing down the road, but be bleedin’ careful’ . . .

Coming carelessly along the road towards us was a Uhlan patrol consisting of seven or eight men, then a scanty eighty yards away. The surprising nature of the sight robbed us of our breath and wits, and left us standing in a row gasping and looking like a lot of cod-fish.

In their astonishment, Vivian and his friends gazed on, and it was the enemy’s officer who fired first. Brought to their senses by this brazen act, the Middlesex men returned the devastatingly accurate fire of professional soldiers, wiping out the German party ‘with an ease that was staggering’.

We stood aghast, overcome with horror by the enormity of the thing we had done. We had despatched fine, big, healthy men, full of the joy and the vigour of the prime of life, into the great unknown with scarcely a warning. We were all, I believe, absolutely stunned by the shock of this revelation. I felt, unaccountably, physically sick [and] I had a distinct fear of the consequences of breaking one of the most solemn laws of civilisation . . .

Accompanied by a volunteer, we approached the frightful scene slowly, and with great circumspection. On arrival, we found that, without any doubt, they had all been killed, the majority of them bearing at least two marks as evidence of the terrible accuracy of our fire. Neglecting precaution, we stood looking down at the sad fruits of our first clash with the enemy, the sight of these dead men exercising a dreadful fascination for me which I found very difficult to dispel. Thrusting aside its baneful influence, I pulled myself together with an effort, and we collected the peculiar headdress of these unlucky men.

The fighting at Mons that day was intense but brief. The men of the 4th Middlesex Regiment and neighbouring battalions defending the canal inflicted heinous casualties on the enemy. ‘My sensations during this baptism were too numerous and confused to analyse,’ wrote Vivian. ‘I clearly remember being reduced to a profuse state of perspiration, the sweat pouring down my face and into my eyes in such volume as to render me temporarily blind. Gradually I became cooler, and the only sensation then noticeable was one of grim and increasing interest in the business of slaughter.’

The horror at such butchery was suspended if not dispelled. ‘We had, in fact, become transformed into killers,’ Vivian grimly accepted; the fields in front became littered with enemy dead. Only when the fighting died down and the audible cries and groans of the wounded reached the men of the Middlesex Regiment did humanity return. Yet just as the men were about to venture forward to offer help, the Germans attacked again. Once more they were cut down.

Parties of enemy stretcher-bearers made their appearance, greatly to our relief, and entirely without interference, and were permitted to carry out their errands of mercy . . . It was necessary for some of these to come within thirty yards of the hedge behind which we were entrenched and they interested us tremendously, especially when one or two of them hailed us in our own language. This resulted in a great deal of chaffing, which was given and received by all with great good humour.

One of our wags, very unfeelingly, with an immense lack of tact, implored them to inform him ‘how they liked their eggs fried’, which drew the extremely rueful reply that we were inclined to season them with a little too much pepper. As they were retiring on the completion of their job, one German, with a great grin, shouted ‘Next time you will make the visits to us!’

The weight of attacks at Mons, and the risk of being outflanked by the numerically superior Germans, made the British positions increasingly untenable. To the astonishment of those who could see no more than the results of their marksmanship, a retirement was ordered, and the men fell back through Mons and on to the hot and dusty roads leading south.

Captain William Morritt was serving with his battalion, 1st East Surrey Regiment, on the German side of the Mons-Condé Canal, around three miles west of Mons. His battalion was deployed on the forward side of the canal, defending a railway bridge. During the engagement, he went to see some men on his right flank, returning to discover that those he had just left were falling back from their positions towards the canal. Morritt shouted to them to stop but was told that Germans were behind them and that they were in danger of being cut off. The enemy had managed to reach a rising embankment that led up to the bridge. If there had been an order to his company to retire, Morritt had not received it and he took the only course of action that seemed open: he ordered those men still under his command to fix bayonets and charge the Germans between him and the canal.

I got my revolver out to load. I had just done this when I was hit in the right wrist which knocked it out of my hand. I could not then draw my sword as I had no strength in my right hand, when I rushed forward I got a bullet in my calf and another just above the right knee which brought me down. I then had the satisfaction of seeing a German 20 yards off aiming carefully at me. I was saved by a miracle; the shot hit the solid hilt of my sword, square in the middle, bent it and broke it in halves, the bullet which otherwise would have gone through me was turned off. The shock of the bullet shook my body, and the German seeing that he had hit me, left me for dead.

Morritt remained where he lay for the rest of the day and night. ‘Luckily I had fallen on my wounded arm and the arm being slightly twisted, I think the weight of my body stopped the flow of blood and saved me.’ Morritt, and seven of those who survived, were picked up not by the Germans but by civilians who took them to a Franciscan convent for treatment.

A retirement became a retreat. Two days after the Dragoons demonstrated their ‘superiority’ over enemy cavalry, the same men, along with Lancers and Hussars, took part in a wild charge against German machine guns and artillery. It was a frantic attempt to stop enemy infantry from enveloping the left flank of the BEF. Success this time was measured in hours bought for hard-pressed British infantry but at the cost of De Lisle’s 2nd Cavalry Brigade, which was temporarily scattered to the winds. On this occasion, they had been no match for such a blizzard of shells and bullets.

Lieutenant Alexander Gallaher of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards was brought down in this charge. His horse fell, pinning him to the ground until, in pain, he struggled free and crawled into a cowshed where three men were already sheltering. In no position to escape, they waited for the enemy to arrive.

A German officer and two German soldiers with bayonet on rifles, came through the doorway. In the officer’s hand was a tiny pop-gun of a pistol, which he pointed at each of the four of us as he went from one to the other. Reaching my corner he stooped and relieved me of my revolver and my map-case, the later containing a notebook in which were an entry or two that I knew would hold his big, round blue eyes.

Running through my pockets he came to a purse with seven sovereigns in it. This he tucked back in the pocket of my tunic, then stepped out of the door to examine my notebook in the fading light. Other wounded men were brought in with those slightly injured taken away to help collect the dead and injured, both friend and foe, who still lay on the battlefield.