23-25 August, 1914
TERROR and TRIBULATION
The writer of this chapter is pictured here as a subaltern shortly before the war. He served at Mons in the 2nd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment, which formed part of 6 Infantry Brigade; his Platoon was No. 7, B Company.
In war it is well known that he who sees most is likely to take least away. It was not the soldier's duty to gaze about him to see what was happening. He must enlarge his bit of trench, and be ready to meet the enemy when he himself is attacked. Therefore, if you asked a veteran of Mons about the battle, all he would be able to tell you – as likely as not – would be, ‘marching and digging, and then marching mostly’.
The company on the left was astride a railway embankment in front of a large mine. B Company was directly in front of the village itself [Harmignies]; another company to the right, and the fourth in local reserve. The work of entrenchment began immediately. There was not time to construct a trench as laid down in the Manual of Field Engineering. Each man had to scrape with his entrenching tool as big a hole as he could before the enemy came upon him.
British positions at Mons, August 1914.
A subaltern had many things to arrange: the ‘field of fire’ had to be cleared and any refuge behind which the enemy might lurk within two hundred yards of the trenches had to be, if possible, cut down. Sheaves of corn standing upright presented the first problem for the defence. Should he burn as many of them as he could, or overturn them, or beat them down? No, he decided, sheaves were not bullet-proof, a man could be shot behind them easily.
He told off a small party to improve what natural obstacles – in this case wire fences – lay in front. He next went to arrange for the methods of effecting a retirement, if it should be necessary, breaking through one or two fences so that this could be effected in perfect order. As some of the houses were still occupied, he went to the owners, and not knowing the French for pick and shovel, said: ‘Monsieur, voulez-vous me preter des choses pour faire des troux dans la terre?’ [would you lend me things to dig the earth?].
‘Ah, oui, Monsieur, des pioches!’ [pick] As many of these as possible were sent forward to the men, together with many pounds of biscuits which he bought from a shop, and buckets of water for the wounded.
So busy had he been that he had almost been unable to concern himself in the battle which was already beginning to develop on the left. While he was in the village a stretcher was carried through. The body on it was covered with a mackintosh sheet, but the man's face was visible and if he had not been so occupied, the ashen face might have upset him a little. The face was absolutely calm, and its expression was contorted neither by pain nor hate nor fear – the face of one who appeared indifferent, and very, very weak.
With that he returned to the trenches.
‘Ere yer are, sir, I've started this 'un for yer,’ one man shouted. He threw off his equipment and began to dig as he had never dug before. Each spadeful was safety for another inch of his body. It was fighting against time for protection of life and limb. The work was engrossing, exhilarating. Some of the men were too tired, too apathetic, too lazy to dig trenches as deep as they might have done. They had to be urged, cajoled, enticed, ordered.
The day was beautiful, hotter a great deal than those the men were accustomed to. The senior subaltern had been occupying a small hut as an advanced post. The enemy came within his range in some force, but having the presence of mind to restrain himself from firing, he managed to withdraw without loss. All the while the British cavalry were being rapidly driven in.
This was about three o'clock, and the sound of a terrific bombardment could be heard from some miles to the left. This puzzled them, as it was naturally expected that the battle would develop from the north-east. The regiment on the right had been occupying a small copse this was set alight to the rear of them, and they were forced to draw back through it, which must have been a terrible operation.
British soldiers preparing a street barricade and defending trench at Mons.
Fresh meat, in the form of a stew, was brought out to the trenches at about three o'clock. The bombardment on the left, like a terrific thunderstorm, rolled on till dusk. A few aeroplanes flew overhead, looking like huge birds in the blue sky. As yet the troops found it very hard to distinguish the Germans from the English, although several pamphlets had been issued on the subject of aircraft identification.
As evening drew on, the trenches began to assume a more workmanlike aspect, although when one got down deeper than three feet the ground was like chalk and very difficult to cut. Thus ended that memorable Sunday, when the English line, the last hope of the French, was pierced at Mons, when the appearance of a huge force, above all strong in cavalry, appeared on the left of the English line, and rendered the whole strategic position of the Allies so dangerous that there was nothing for it but to fall back in order to avert a terrible catastrophe.
A section of infantry preparing a line of withdrawal across the Condé-Nimy canal at Mons.
German Uhlans in a charge.
Intermittently throughout the whole night firing continued. A searchlight had been played continually on the lines and, if anything, the artillery duel began before it was light. This was his first opportunity to watch shell fire. The shells sailed overhead so slowly that we half expected to see them in their flight. The noise they made was very difficult to describe. They hurtled, they whizzed, they shrieked, they sang. He could imagine the thing spinning in its flight, creating a noise something like steam escaping jerkily from an engine.
An English battery was firing from somewhere unseen on the right, to meet an attack apparently launched on the left. Furious messages were passed up the line that the artillery were firing on their own men and, whether this was true or not, soon afterwards the attack ceased. At about seven o'clock the major gave orders to withdraw his platoon when the company on his right should retire. This surprised him; for, knowing nothing of the general situation, he had felt that they would hang on and fight the battle out then and there, to the last gasp. He gave orders to his section commanders, and then lay down to await the development of events.
At about nine o'clock a general retirement seemed to be taking place on the right. It is a very difficult thing to pick upon exactly the right moment to retire. If you retire too early, you allow the enemy to advance without having inflicted sufficient loss, that is, you allow him to succeed too cheaply, to say nothing of rendering the position of units on your flanks precarious. On the other hand, if you hang on to your position too long, you become committed to a close fight from which it is almost impossible to withdraw without the most serious losses.
There are no hedges in Belgium; the ground was perfectly open, and west of the line showed signs of envelopment. Eventually, however, the retirement to the village was effected quietly and without loss. He led his platoon to a second defensive position about a mile behind the village, but already shells were beginning to drop around and even beyond it.
THE BRITISH RETREAT
It was from this point that the great 'retreat from Mons’ really began. The road in front of the battalion was hit by one or two shells. Apparently it was being 'searched’, and so the battalion was hastily moved into the open fields, assuming what is known as ‘artillery formation’, i.e. small collections of troops, moving on the same objective, with ‘irregular distances and depths’. By this means many lives must have been saved. After about a mile of very hurried marching through turnip fields and stubble, the road was again reached, and the battalion was apparently out of the range of the German guns. The heat was beginning to be intense.
The men had marched for the last three days almost incessantly and without sufficient sleep. Sunday night in the firing line had been full of excitement of battle, and all Monday morning had been spent at digging trenches. Imagine the state of the men: dirty from digging, with a four days’ growth of beard, bathed in sweat, eyes half closed with want of sleep, ‘packs’ missing; lurching with the drunken torpor of fatigue, their own mothers would not have known them. There was no time to rest and sleep, when rest and sleep were the most desirable things on earth. Those men assuredly knew all the agonies of a temptation to sell for a few moments' sleep their liberty and lives. During a halt the subaltern threw himself so heavily in a cabbage patch that his revolver became unhitched from his belt, and when the halt was over he lurched to his feet and went on, without noticing its loss. Careless? Perhaps, but one of his men lost his rifle and never noticed it, because he was carrying a spade. There was, however, one consolation: the Germans had, for the time, been shaken off: although the noise of battle could still be heard uncomfortably near on the left. But if a man waits long enough, the hottest sun must go to rest, and drag its horrible day with it.
About six o'clock that evening the battalion at last came up with its ‘cookers’ and transport. Glory of glories, rest had at last been achieved. Never had bacon been so welcome, never tea so desirable, so stimulating, so wonderful. The quartermaster-sergeant had some terrifying tales for the company about disasters on the less fortunate of the line; but there was no time to go into the matter, for the battalion was ordered to parade immediately. This was the last straw. The men had been looking forward to, and longing for, a good sleep that night. Every aching limb of their bodies cried out for rest, and here they were going to be put on outpost duty for yet another night. Imagine their state off mind. Is there a word to cope with the situation? Assuredly not, though great efforts were made. Darkness fell so swiftly that the officers had scarcely time to site the position of their trenches. Then the weary business of entrenching began again. Have you ever heard the tinkering, tapping, thudding sounds made by entrenching implements or spades? None of the men who heard it that night will ever forget it. It will give them a memory of energy, promoted by the desire for safety, clogged by heat and fatigue.
At about eleven or twelve that night a fair cover had been made, and the long-sought for rest became possible at last – not, however, the sleep that the subaltern had been longing for all day, not complete oblivion to body and mind, for the fear of surprise was upon him even in his sleep, and he knew that if his precautions should prove insufficient, he would have to answer for sixty good lives. In addition, there was the cold of the cloudless night, and the clinging wetness of the dew. These things would not have allowed him to sleep, even if he could.
A fresh day began very similar to the last. There were no signs of the enemy to the immediate front, so the work of entrenching continued. A fatigue party went to draw rations, which were distributed at about seven o'clock. This was their first introduction to bully beef and hard biscuits.
Also, wonder of wonders, mail was distributed. He was lying in the corn just beginning to eat a biscuit and read a letter when the voice of a senior subaltern called him from somewhere up the line. Thinking he had got another letter, or something of that sort, he did not wait to put letters and rations in his haversack but reported to his senior officer.
‘A party of Uhlans, about a 100 strong have broken through the line further up. We have to prevent them from taking us by surprise on this flank. So you had better take a couple of sections to keep them off.’
Commands on the battlefield must never be didactic and narrow. Tell a man what to do, give him his mission – and how he will carry it out, the methods he will employ are for himself to determine. He hurriedly collected his men and took up a position astride a road that ran behind and was parallel to the lines. In peacetime manoeuvres one had generally been told the direction from which to expect the enemy hours before he actually came; now, when the great game was being played in real earnest, he found he had to guess the direction of the threat. The Uhlans might have come unsuspecting along the road, in which case the game would be his or they might come blundering along from somewhere in the rear and enfilade him, in which case the game would most assuredly be theirs. Fortunately the Uhlans did not come at all.
Meanwhile, a rare and fortunate circumstance was beginning to be apparent. The enemy were actually attacking from the direction they were expected. The senior subaltern was left to hold out in a small cottage in the firing line until the rest had got away. With characteristic forethought and presence of mind he not only got his men away without loss, but seized all luxuries in the place.
British cavary during the retreat from Mons.
As on the day before, in getting clear away from the enemy the company had to pass a large stretch of ground which was being literally peppered with shrapnel. The noise was louder than it had seemed on the previous day. Thunder seemed muffled beside it. Moreover, thunder rolled – seemed to spread itself into space – but not so with bursting shells. The clap of sound caused by one is more confined, more localized, more intense. The earth seems to quiver under it. It suggests splitting, a terrible splitting. Only the nerves of the young and healthy can stand it. It would not be so bad if one could see the thing whistling through the air, or even when it bursts; but one cannot. After the explosion a man may scream or moan, totter and fall, but for all one can see he might have been struck down by the wrath of God.
The road safely reached, the retreat was continued, but under very trying circumstances for the company. The brigadier in charge of the rearguard action, not having sufficient cavalry at his disposal, ordered the company to take up the role of flank-guard to the retreating column. The company, extended over a long front, had to move across rough country, intersected with all sorts of obstacles, at the same rate as the infantry on the road, which, as the wise Greek Euclid says, ‘is impossible’. In war, however, the logically ‘impossible’ is not impossible really, only very fatiguing.
Things grew from bad to worse. The men could no longer keep their places in the ranks. If one had seen them and not known the spirit of the British Army, one would have thought that they were a dispirited, defeated rabble. Yet, in their own minds, the officers and men had no doubts about what was going to happen: they were going to fight even though they might not sleep, and their determination was shaken not one whit. There was a very welcome halt for an hour in the town for the men to fill their water-bottles and rest.
The men's feet were beginning to suffer terribly, for the road along which they were marching had been cobbled – cobbles, not as we know them in England, but rounded on the surface; cobbles that turned one's ankles; cobbles that the nails of one's boots slipped on, that were metallic, that gave not the fraction of a millimetre. Hobnails in the subaltern’s boots began to press through the soles. To put his feet to the ground was an agony, and they swelled with the pain and heat. The bones of them ached with bearing his weight. They longed for air, to be dangling in some cool, babbling stream.
The mental strain of the morning’s action was as nothing compared to the physical pain of the afternoon. The colonel, seeing his plight, offered to lend him his horse, but he thanked him and declined, as there is a sort of grim pride in sticking it. The men, too, took an unreasonable objection to seeing their officers avail themselves of these lifts. Then the heavens were kind and it rained; they turned faces to the clouds and let the drops fall on their features, unshaven, glazed with the sun, and clammy with sweat. They took off their hats and extended the palms of their hands. It was refreshing, invigorating, a tonic. Somebody had heard Brigadier General Davis say that they should have a rest, a real rest, that night. High hopes filled weary hearts. It was rumoured that they were to be billeted in that suburb of Landrecies through which they had just passed, Maroilles.
At about five o'clock on that aching day Maroilles was reached. All through the streets there were halts and delays, intolerable to those in whom the want of rest had become a positive passion. At last the members of the billeting party were sighted – here at last was rest and sleep.
The general, followed by the brigade-major and an orderly, came trotting down the road. A few hasty commands were thrown at the adjutant, accompanied by gesticulations towards the road leading out of the town. Assuredly some fresh devilment was rife, and for the moment, anyway, an attack on the town was expected by a large detachment of cavalry. The wretched men had to be hurried out to line a row of hedges to the west of the town. They waited about half an hour, but saw not a sign of the famous square-crested Uhlan helmet. It appeared that the enemy had been content with destroying the canal bridge, which formed the communication between Maroilles and Landrecies and had then withdrawn. There was a whole brigade in Maroilles, which was therefore cut off from the rest of the division and from its natural line of retreat. That, however, did not greatly upset the rank and file, and billets were at last achieved.
The subaltern found that he was billeted in the same house as the headquarters of the battalion – colonel, his second in command, adjutant, etc. The subaltern’s servant brought him his valise from the regimental transport and he began to change the offending boots for a fresh pair, without nails. Someone procured a footbath and ablutions began.
During the retreat British transport pass a memorial (which stands today) to the Battle of Malplaquet, which was fought 11 September 1709. The memorial practically marks the Franco–Belgian border.
Taking a much needed and well-deserved rest during the Retreat.
The medical officer came in to say that the colonel seemed to be very ill. The subaltern was glad he had declined the offer of his horse. He then began to shave and wash. Just as he was in the middle of this, with his boots and puttees off, his captain came in to say that his platoon was being sent off as infantry escort to a battery of artillery.
By the time he had re-dressed himself, the battery and his platoon had both gone. The streets were filled by French peasants, as usual excited and garrulous, and by men settling down to their billets. The subaltern failed absolutely to discover what route his platoon had taken, but pursuing the road along which they had come, he soon left the town.
It was raining and blowing most fiercely; the darkness was intense, otherwise absolute silence reigned. Suddenly, excitedly, a voice, saturated with fear, cried out from the darkness, ‘Who goes there?’ A face, with a bayonet in front of it, loomed up from the side of the road. ‘Friend’ – this tersely. ‘Sentry, have you seen a battery of artillery and a platoon of South Staffordshires pass here? ‘No, sir; you're nearly in the outpost line. There's only royal Berkshires in front, sir.’ So they had evidently not come this way. Where next? They must be found. He felt that to lose his men would be a sort of dishonour. Even while he was thinking a shout was wafted on the wind out of the darkness and chasing it, overtaking it almost, a rifle shot. It was as if a match had been applied to the whole line. With, the rapidity of wind the crackling spread to either side.
Soon the whole line in front was blazing away into the darkness. Should the subaltern stop and try to lend assistance where he was, or hurry back to his own unit? Before long a couple of men rushed along the road crying out for stretcher bearers, and he learnt from one of them that in the darkness and confusion of the retreat, British had been fighting with British. The pitch darkness shrouded every action with a ghastly uncertainty.
Then news came through that another bridge had been captured by the Germans. A fresh company arrived in reinforcement. There was nothing for it but to effect a retreat before the morning light could betray their weakness to the Germans. Apparently, however, the capture of the bridge had only been a precautionary measure, for the enemy did not press his attack home. The subaltern saw that the best thing he could do would be to return to the remainder of his battalion at Maroilles. If he were to grope about the countryside in the dark, looking for that battery, he would most likely be shot down for a spy; moreover, in a little over two hours the morning would dawn. So he trudged back to Maroilles.
He felt that he ought to have been on the verge of exhaustion from lack of food and from fatigue, and he vaguely wondered why he was not. The truth was that the excitement of the attack, coupled with the chill of the night, had restored him in mind and body, although he had marched over twenty miles on the previous day, had had no sleep that night and no meal since the evening of the Battle of Mons.
The battalion was taking its rest as well as it could on the pavement of the street, so as to be ready to move at a minute's notice. The subaltern found his major and reported that he had failed to find his platoon. The major was too sleepy to be annoyed. ‘I expect they’ll turn up,’ he said. We got some food in that house there; I should go and see if there is any left if I were you.’
There followed a couple of hours or so of interrupted sleep, disturbed by the cold. Then came dawn, and with it the shells whizzing and bursting over the town. The retreat of the brigade had been cut off by the breaking of the canal bridge the previous evening, so the battalion had to retire to the east, and not to the west. As the subaltern marched along he reflected with grim amusement on the ease with which the most confirmed Sybarite [seeker of pleasure and luxury] can get accustomed to hardships. At home, if he did anything early on an empty stomach, he very soon felt faint and tired. Now, this was taken as a matter of course, one was only too glad to restore the circulation to the limbs, cramped with the cold and damp of dawn.
An hour or so later they ran into a French battalion, apparently preparing to occupy an outpost position along the bank of the road. This was a cheering sight. Tommy, who had expected to fight mixed up in some weird way with ‘le petit Piou-Piou’, had not yet seen a Frenchman in action. In a vague way he fancied that ‘the Frenchies’ had let him down’. He knew nothing of the battles of Charleroi and Namur, nor of the defence of Verdun, and the French were getting dreadfully un-popular with him. Things were thrown at anyone who ventured to sing the Marseillaise.
A French unit withdrawing before the invading German army, though one man finds time to light his pipe.
‘Oh, ’ere they are; so they ’ave come. Well, that’s somethink.’
The Marseillaise broke out once again.
‘Look ’ere, Bill, there's too much of this ruddy Marslasie abaht this show.’
‘Ow d'you mean, Sam?’
‘Why, it's all march on, march on and I’m sick of it – and I'm bloody-well sick of the singing that goes with it!’