23 August, 1914
THE FIRST HOURS AT MONS
Major Corbett Smith was an officer in the Royal Field Artillery during the Battle of Mons. His impressions of that memorable day in the little town, from its first beginning to its melancholy close, form the subject of this chapter. Corbett Smith was Mentioned in Dispatches for his valuable services during the fighting.
The dawn of Sunday the 23rd broke dim and misty, giving promise of heat. From the late afternoon of the previous day, squadrons and reconnaissance patrols from Chetwode’s Cavalry Brigade had been pushing well forward on the flanks and front of the British line. It was pretty, though delicate, work, this feeling forward to get into touch with enemy outposts and patrols. Nor was there a troop which did not have some story to tell that evening of a tussle with enemy cavalry.
But as our cavalry pushed farther and farther northwards they found themselves confronting ever-increasing numbers and retirement became necessary. Thus were the first shots fired.
The morning wore on. The countryside was not unlike one of our own mining districts, the little villages and low-roofed houses giving that curious smoky, grimy effect of mean suburbs of a large industrial town. Here and there great heaps of slag or disused pits and quarries; gaunt iron girders carrying great wheels and heavy machinery.
The soldiers were billeted all through the houses or in odd barns and yards. Looking over the garden gate of one little house I saw the company cooks of one regiment getting the Sunday dinner ready, peeling the potatoes, swinging the pots on to the camp fires.
From a barn close by came the sound of singing. A padre had looked in as the rollicking chorus of ‘Who’s your lady friend?’ rang out into the roadway, and with gentle interruption he improvised a short service, suggesting ‘Rock of Ages’ as a substitute for the music-hall ditty.
Down the road a couple of sergeants of the West Ridings leant idly over a gate, smoking and watching the folk going off to Mass. Into this peaceful scene a motorbike dispatch rider hurled himself, causing astonishment to a group of West Kents. ‘Where’s the officer? Get moving, you’re wanted up there!’ and he jerked his thumb over his shoulder. The men rushed for their kit and rifles. Away to the west there was the crack of an 18-pounder. Down the street the cyclist panted. A subaltern burst in on the Sunday dinner of the Bedfords.
The village main street of Frameries, 24 August. Brigadier-General F. C. Shaw, commanding 9 Infantry Brigade, is seated with his staff. Down the street a barricade can be seen. Already, occasional shots are coming down the road from the far side of the barrier.
‘Fall in outside at once!’
All down the line there errupted the crack of rifles. Beyond the canal, outposts of the Lincolns, Royal Scots and others were coming in at the double. A curtain of shell fire was lowered behind them as the British batteries came into action. A curtain fire rolled down before them as the German guns took the range. It was now close upon one o’clock, and enemy shells had begun to creep nearer and nearer, in from the suburbs and upon Mons itself. North of the town where our lines bulged out, making a salient, the fighting became desperate. Here three regiments, especially the Middlesex, Royal Irish and Royal Fusiliers, lost very heavily as they sturdily contested every yard of ground. This point had, from the first, been recognized as the weakest in our lines.
Barely an hour since the first shots were fired and now, by one o’clock, practically every gun and every rifle of the British Force was blazing away as though the powers of hell were let loose.
As yet it would seem that the ammunition was being merely wasted for the sake of making a noise. There was no enemy in sight save in the air the circling aeroplanes, and away on the flanks dimly seen clouds of horsemen. A modern battlefield, with its curious emptiness, has so often been described that here one need only record the fact in passing. There was nothing to be seen. The men were firing, in the first flush of excitement, at corners of possible concealment, the line of a hedge, the edge of a wood, the very occasional flash of a field-gun.
On the left, in the Second Corps sector, the British fire slackened somewhat as the men pulled themslves together. No one had the foggiest notion of what was really happening. It was the officers’ business of the moment to steady the ranks and keep them under cover.
But away on the right, out towards Binche, where the Guards were, the storm had burst forth in fullest fury. No slackening there. The German gun fire was incessant and amazingly accurate. The effect of shells from their heavier guns, later so familiar, was at that time overwhelming.
Still, the British guns out towards Binche went gallantly pounding on, hopelessly outmatched though they were.
The fighting on the right, where General Lomax had the 1st Division, did not slacken for a moment, but steadily became more intense. Now, for the first time, the enemy was really seen. And, as his infantry began an advance, the German shell-fire redoubled in intensity. Every house where British soldiers could be concealed, every possible observation post, every foot of trench, every hill-crest and 400 yards behind it, was swept and devastated by the fiery tornado.
German infantry marching to their attack position
What communication between units was possible in such a storm? Now battalions and batteries found themselves cut off from their neighbours, each fighting and carrying on alone.
Chetwode’s Cavalry Brigade was caught in the thick of it. The Guards held on almost by their teeth.
The cavalry had to withraw and the Munsters and Black Watch lost horribly as they covered the retirement. No finer fighting regiments in the world than these on the right, but nothing human could stay there and live. The little town of Binche was abandoned – the first enemy success.
It must have been about 2.30 in the afternoon that this happened. But it was before the fall of Binche that the German infantry attacks began all along the line.
One end of the 1st Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry’s trench ended in a little stone-walled pigsty. At least it was a pigsty about church time that morning, but a German gunner thought it would look better without any roof or walls. There was still a fragment three feet high on the weather side and the KOYLI commanding officer found it to be a convenient shelter.
For some minutes he had been watching intently through his glasses and observing the corner of a wood about 500 yards in front. He handed the binoculars to a sergeant
German infantry receiving orders just prior to a mass attack on the British positions.
‘What do you make of it? That corner over the little shed.’
The sergeant had a look and returning the glasses slowly nodded.
‘It might be an entire brigade, sir, from the number of them.’
‘Yes,’ said the CO, ‘I thought it was about time they turned up. Get word along that there is to be no firing until the order is given.’
‘Very good sir!’ The sergeant scrambled to his feet, saluted, ducked hastily as a shell whistled past alarmingly close, and promptly took a dive into the enlarged rabbit burrow in which his men were squatting.
The officer commanding a British battery, in position some distance to the rear, had evidently spotted that particular target, for puffs of bursting shrapnel had begun to appear over the wood and round its edges. Then there was a distinct movement of troops coming from behind the wood. It was a movement which could barely be discerned, for the packed ranks merged in against the grey-green countryside.
Suddenly, at about the same time the advancing troops became evident, it seemed as if all the guns in the world had been turned on to those few miles of British front line and on to the artillery batteries situated behind.
The KOYLI commanding officer held his fire until the last moment. When he did give the order for rapid fire (fifteen aimed shots a minute per man) it was impossible to miss. You cannot help hitting the side of a house, and that was what the massive grey-green target looked like. It was just slaughter. The oncoming ranks simply melted away.
The massed attack still came on. Though hundreds, thousands of the grey coats were mown down, just as many more crowded forward to refill the ranks.
Nearer still, and with a hoarse yell, the Yorkshires, Dorsets, Cornwalls and others were out of the trenches, officers ahead of them, with bayonets fixed and heading straight at the enemy. A murderous machine-gun fire met them, but it did not stop them, and within minutes they were thrusting and bashing with rifles, fists and stones, in amongst the enemy ranks.
Again the German gunners dropped their range and poured shells indiscriminately into friend and foe alike. It was all too much for the attacking regiments and they broke up, turned and began to struggle back. It was impossible to attempt any recall of our men. They pursued until they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers and were killed or captured. Some did struggle back to our lines as best they could in knots of twos and threes, or wandered aimlessly on to the flanks and got lost.
Such was one single attack. But no sooner was it broken than fresh regiments would march out to begin it all over again. Here was no Pass of Thermopylae where a handful of men could withstand for indefinite time an army. What could the British Army hope to do against such overwhelming numbers?
The cavalry, the only reserves available, were working hard, surely, as no cavalry has ever worked before. Squadrons were everywhere at once. Wherever a gap was threatened they were there in support. And wherever they went there also went the Horse Gunners, working hand in glove with them. Charge and counter-charge upon the flanks of the attacking infantry, dismounting to cover with their fire a British infantry rally; fierce hand-to-hand encounters with enemy squadrons. Wherever they were wanted, each man and horse was doing the work of ten.
But this could not last for long. Now it was becoming only too evident that far from there being a reasonable superiority against us, the British were everywhere along the line hopelessly outnumbered in every arm.
At 6.00 pm the enemy had concentrated their fire upon the town of Mons and it became untenable.
Only six hours – six short hours since the Belgian townsfolk had come peacefully home from Mass to their Sunday déjeuner, proud and hopeful in the presence of their British allies. Now their houses, their town, was a heap of smoking ruins.
In those short hours how many women had seen their children crushed by falling walls or blown to atoms by bursting shells? How many children were left helpless and alone in the world, with no mother or father to take them by the hand and guide them from the hell of destruction?
About 2 am, 24 August, orders to begin retiring were issued from General Headquarters (GHQ). Some four hours before a few of the units – those north of the canal – had begun to fall back and so the beginning of the move was made. As the last of these crossed the bridges the detonator fuses were fired and the bridges blown up.
For the rest, the men crouched ever in their places. Bayonets fixed, rifles always ready, waiting, waiting.