23 August, 1914
LONG LINES of DEATH
The author of this description of his experiences at Mons, was a corporal in 1914. He and his brother had run away from home and enlisted in the Royal Irish Rifles in 1912. He rose through the ranks and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1917, retiring as a captain. He was invalided home with multiple wounds during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. He wrote a famous war memoir, There's a Devil in the Drum.
In 1915 John Lucy was promoted sergeant. He is seen here with his sergeant stripes.
A staff officer came perspiring from behind, and overtook us. He trotted past in a hurry, asking for the commanding officer. A hundred voices answered him: ‘At the head of the column, sir,’ and eight hundred pairs of eyes viewed him with that feeling of amusement peculiar to a mass of men finding entertainment in the efforts of an isolated individual.
The soldiers criticised his accent, his face, his seat, and his mount in turn, and then they cursed him because of the result of his coming. This was the order to turn about, and go back the road they had come, to the trenches abandoned that very morning.
So about we went, and passing back to the rear of the line of trenches, took to open country in artillery formation, and thus extended went forward to occupy the earthworks.
The old Army was familiar with the siting and digging of trenches, although it was trained for open warfare. The type of trench here was called a kneeling trench, as it was roughly only three feet deep, this being considered good enough for temporary occupation by infantry not expected to remain in it for the entire course of a battle. Our motto was ‘Attack, or counter- attack’, and we had very little time for entrenchments, which, though they might be useful during a short period of temporary defence, were generally despised. With many jokes the men settled into their defences and cheerfully waited for the enemy, presenting in his direction a line of first-class riflemen, each trained to fire fifteen well-applied shots a minute. Our two machine-guns poked their squat muzzles in support from their emplacements.
British soldiers manning shallow trenches near Mons, August 1914.
A battery of field-guns wheeled away from the main road, and drew up on the back slope of our position about three hundred yards to the rear. The menacing mouths of the eighteen-pounders slewed round in our direction and remained, while the horses were led rapidly away under cover. The activities of the smart-looking gunners slowed down, and the teams became still behind their gun shields. A young subaltern came forward to our height as observation officer.
British 18-pounder gun crew at Mons.
German artillerymen hauling a 120 mm heavy Krupp Howitzer into place.
All then was ready, as far as we were concerned, for the battle of Mons.
FOUND BY THE ENEMY
At half-past three in the afternoon, as nearly as I remember, the Germans discovered us before we saw them, and three or four dull thuds to our distant front followed by a whirring noise rapidly approaching us marked the discharge of enemy guns, and our first moment under shell-fire.
The salvo of shells passed over our heads, and burst about eighty yards in our rear with a terrific clattering crash. We were fascinated. More shells came and still more, all going over. The heads of our curious men appeared above the trenches looking back to see the bursts.
‘Look’, they shouted, ‘a black one!’ or ‘one only!’ or ‘four more whites’. Some laughingly imagined themselves on butt duty on the rifle ranges at home, and shouted advice to the German gunners: ‘washout!’ ‘another miss,’ and ‘lower your sights.’ One wag, simulating great terror, cried: ‘Send for the police; there's going to be a row on here,’ and another, in mock despair: ‘Oh, mother, why did I desert you?’ Then the enemy gunners shortened, and the shells exploded above our trenches; and the men, already told off for exposing themselves, crouched low.
I had been standing about by my ammunition carts on the open road immediately behind and parallel to our trenches, and not far from the commanding officer, who was, with his adjutant, fully exposed on a little rise nearer to the entrenched companies, when fragments of a bursting shell ripped and slashed all round us. Someone shouted ‘Take cover,” and my men and I, leaving the carts to the drivers, took shelter as best we could in the roadside ditch, amateurishly choosing that side of the road farthest from the enemy.
The Germans now ranged well, and their shell-fire seemed to concentrate heavily on the trenches. The acrid smoke of the explosions blew about us, and screaming pieces of metal and shrapnel balls flew in all directions. One shrapnel bullet hit my pack and – instinctively – I moved a little farther along the ditch to a burly sergeant, who laughed at me when I handed him the still hot ball for his inspection. I was too young to discern nervousness in the laugh. A dispatch-rider coming towards us on the road from the west fell off his motor-cycle when a shell burst over him. His antics distracted and amused us. The shell-fire became hotter and hotter, and we crouched farther down in our ditch. The commanding officer still remained exposed to all the fire, and his adjutant kept taking messages to the entrenched companies. Finally the shelling ceased, and we put up our heads to breathe more freely. Then we heard conch-like sounds – strange, bugle calls. The German infantry, which had approached during the shelling, was in sight and about to attack us.
German infantry awaiting orders to advance.
A British machine gun team operating a British Maxim in the summer of 1914.
DREADFUL RAIN OF SHELLS
Not a shot had been fired from our trenches up to now, and the only opposition to the Germans had been made by our field-gun battery, which was heavily engaged behind us, and making almost as much clamour as the enemy shelling. To my mind it seemed that the whole battalion must have been wiped out by that dreadful rain of shells, but apparently not.
In answer to the German bugles or trumpets the cheerful sound of our officers’ whistles and the riflemen, casting aside the amazement at their strange trial, sprang to action and a great roar of musketry rent the air, varying slightly in intensity from minute to minute as whole companies ceased fire and opened-up again. The satisfactory sharp blasts of the directing whistles showed that our machinery of defence was working like the drill book, and that the recent shelling had caused no disorganisation. The clatter of our machine guns added to the din.
For us the battle took the form of well-ordered, rapid rifle-fire at close range, as the field-grey human targets appeared, and were struck down. The enemy infantry advanced, according to one of our men, in ‘columns of masses, which withered away under the galling fire of the well-trained and coolly led Irishmen. The leading Germans fired standing, from the hip, as they came on, but their scattered fire was ineffective and ignored. They crumpled up – mown down as quickly as I tell it, their reinforcing waves and sections coming on bravely and steadily to fall over as they reached the front line of the slain and wounded. Behind the death line thicker converging columns were being blown about by our field-guns.
A field of German dead after a mass attack in the late summer of 1914.
Our rapid fire was appalling even to us, and the worst marksman could not miss, as he only had to fire into the massed ranks of the unfortunate enemy, who on the fronts of two of our companies were continually and uselessly reinforced at the short range of three hundred yards. Such tactics amazed us, and after the first shock of seeing men slowly and helplessly falling down as they were hit, gave us a great sense of power and pleasure. It was all so easy
The German survivors began to go back here and there from the line. The attack had been an utter failure. Soon all that remained was the long line of the dead heaped before us, motionless except for the limb movements of some of the wounded. Every battle seems endless to those taking part in it. All sense of time is lost, and the minutes appear to be hours. The sequence of events is lost, and the most unlikely tales are told by survivors. I am hazy as to what happened after the first attack. I believe the Germans tried to come on again, but I am not sure. At any rate they did not succeed.
We were not without casualties, but for such a terrific lot of shooting they were very few indeed, and were actually the least we had in any battle in the war. Only three or four men were killed and the same number wounded.
Most of the German shrapnel shells had burst too high, and their rifle-fire was hopeless.
A German shell burst on one of our machine gunners, killing him instantly. His place was immediately taken at the gun by a lance-corporal who was shot almost at once through the arm. He, though wounded, continued to fire the machine gun, but he rather puzzled those near him by weeping at intervals, either with pain or fright. He would not, however, leave his gun until his arm stiffened. One seldom hears a soldier crying, or raising his voice in any way, for that matter, when wounded. A shot through joints like the knee, or through the stomach, often makes a man shout out in great pain, but most wounds are merely numbing for the time. Most of the pain comes afterwards when the wounds are being dressed in hospital.
Our commanding officer still stood on the high ground overlooking the scene of action. He now had fears for our ammunition supply. I had doled out a large number of boxes, and an officer presently came along and ordered all my carts away to be refilled. The sounds of battle had died down, and all was quiet except for some intermittent shelling from the Germans. I was to take my carts off to a refilling point controlled by the artillery a mile or so away to the south-east. lt was getting dark and the lights of enemy camp fires could be seen in the distance.
The summer of 1914: a line of concealed British infantry firing on the massed ranks of German attackers.
Nearer, their red-cross lanterns appeared here and there on our front, showing that they were attending to their wounded.
A mounted bombardier came to guide my carts, and off we went, passing along a road that appeared to me times to traverse No Man's Land for we passed British infantry facing north, on our right hand. They greeted us and joked at us from their trenches.
We had had orders to hurry, and in the rush of our departure no check was made of the total amount of ammunition still in hand. In order to travel lightly we had also been told to leave our packs behind us in our ditch. Having gone some distance in the darkness, I noticed that three of our four carts gave forth the heavy rumble of well-weighted vehicles, and I called a halt to examine them. I found the three almost full, and completing them from the fourth I took matters into my own hands and brought them back at once to the battalion, terrified lest it should be without a reserve of ammunition in case of another enemy attack. The fourth cart I ordered on to the refilling point, with two of my men and the bombardier.
It was after midnight when I rejoined the battalion, and reported my action. The officer who had sent me merely said ‘Good, now go and rejoin the machine gun section.’ I found the section fallen in on the road behind the trenches, and saw that our companies were also evacuating their positions.
All was very still and peaceful. Quiet words of command were passed along: ‘Number’; Form fours’; ‘Right’; ‘Keep silence’; ‘Quick march.’ And off we went stealthily, in columns and in ranks of four from the battlefield of Mons.
In the morning the entire British Army was marching south in retreat.