By September 5, 1914, the agonizing retreat from Mons was at an end. The Germans had missed their objectives of encircling Paris and forcing an easy surrender. Conforming to the forward movement of the French armies, the British Expeditionary Force now took part in the advance, which involved the crossing of five rivers, the chief of which were the Marne and the Aisne. The battles which ensued are here described by writers who were on the spot when these historic events took place.

5-10 September, 1914

WOUNDED, CAPTURED, THEN RESCUED
The Diary of a Casualty

by Aubrey Herbert

Aubrey Nigel Henry Molyneux Herbert MP, son of the 4th Earl of Carnarvon, served as a captain in the Irish Guards. In 1915 he joined Military Intelligence and served in Gallipoli, where his ability to speak Turkish was vital in negotiations with the Turkish forces for a truce to bury the dead. He spoke French, Italian, German, Arabic, Greek and Albanian. He also served in Mesopotamia and was involved in the siege of Kut. He ended the war as head of the British mission to the Italian army in Albania, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He died in September 1923.

As I swung into the saddle a shot came from behind, just missing me. I rode back as fast as my horse, Moonshine, would go. The lull in the firing had ceased, and the Germans were all round us. One could see them in the wood, and they were shooting quite close. The man who finally got me was about 15 to 20 yards away; his bullet came into my side broken up. It was like a tremendous punch. I galloped straight on to my regiment and told the Colonel. He said: ‘I am sorry that you are hit – I am going to charge.’ He had told me earlier that he meant to if he got the chance.

I got off and asked them to take over my horse. Then I lay down on the ground and a Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) man dressed me. The Red Cross men uttered a loud whistle when they saw my wound, and said the bullet had passed right through me. The firing was still frightfully hot. The men who were dressing my wounds were crouched down or lying on the ground. While one of them was dressing me a horse – his, I suppose – was shot just behind. I asked them to go, as they could do me no good and would only get killed or captured themselves. The doctor gave me some morphine and I gave them my revolver. They put me on a stretcher, leaving another empty stretcher beside me. This was hit several times by bullets. Shots came from all directions, although the firing seemed to be less than earlier in the day. The bullets were passing just above me and my stretcher. I lost consciousness for a bit; then I heard my regiment charging. There were loud cries and little spurts of spasmodic shooting: then everything went quiet and peace fell upon the wood. It was very dreamlike.

The German advance into France was stalled as they were halted before Paris.

As I lay on the stretcher a jarring thought occured to me. I had in my pocket the flat-nosed bullets which the War Office had served out to us as revolver ammunition. They are not dum-dum bullets, but would naturally not make as pleasant a wound as the sharp-nosed rounds, and it occurred to me that those having them might well be shot. I searched my pockets and flung my snubbed-nosed revolver rounds away. It was first hearing German voices close by that jogged my memory about these bullets. The same idea must have occurred to others, for I heard the Germans speaking angrily about the flat bullets they had picked up in the wood, and saying how they would deal with anyone in whose possession they were found. The glades became resonant with loud, raucous German commands and occasional cries from wounded men.

After about an hour and a half a German with a red beard, and with the sun shining on his helmet and bayonet, came up looking like an angel of death. He walked round from behind, and put his serrated bayonet on the empty stretcher by me, so close that it all but touched me. The stretcher broke and his bayonet poked me.

In broken, yet polite German, I asked what he proposed to do next. This was prompted by what I had been reading in the English newspapers concerning atrocities being carried out by the German forces.

He was extraordinarily kind and polite. He put something under my head; offered me wine, water and cigarettes. ‘Wir sind kamaraden,’ he said

Another soldier came up and said:

‘Why didn't you stay in England – you who made war upon the Boers.’

‘We obey orders, just as you do,’ I replied. ‘As for the Boers, they were our enemies and are now our friends. And it is not your business to insult wounded men.’

My first German friend then cursed him heartily, and he moved on.

A sunny day in early Autumn and men ot the 2nd Cavalry Division are halted for a rest on their way to take part in the Battle of the Aisne.

During the second day of the Battle of the Marne an important part was played by 19 Infantry Brigade in the operations which resulted in the British and French recrossing the river and driving the Germans back. Here elements of 19 Brigade are seen going into action at Signy Signets, and the capture of that place carried the British to the high ground overlooking the Marne. Guns of 29 Brigade Royal Field Artillery are seen on the right, coming into action to support the infantry.

Royal Engineers have thrown a bridge across the Marne at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre and British troops begin to pour across to help push the Germans back to the River Aisne.

The Germans passed in crowds. They seemed like steel locusts. Every now and then I would hear ‘Here is an officer who speaks German,’ and the crowd would swerve in like a steel eddy. Then, ‘Schnell Kinder!’ and they would be off. They gave an impression of lightness and iron.

After some hours, when my wound was beginning to hurt, some carriers came up to take me to a collecting place for the wounded. These men were rather rough. They dropped me and my stretcher once, but were cursed by an officer for it. They then carried me some distance, and took me off the stretcher, leaving me on the ground. The Germans continued to pass in an uninterrupted stream.

One motor cyclist who came to look at me was very unpleasant, he carried a bayonet in his hand, ‘I would like to stick this in your throat and turn it round and round,’ he said thrusting his bayonet in front of my nose. That sort of thing happened more than once or twice, but there were always more friendly among the enemy than nasty. As night fell the chance of being left without the more friendly inclined captors increased.

As it grew dark. I began to feel rather cold. One of the Germans saw this, covered me with his coat ‘Wait a moment, I will bring you something else,’ he said as he went off and, I suppose, stripped a dead Englishman and a dead German. The German’s jersey which he gave me had no holes in it; the Englishman’s coat had two bayonet cuts.

The wounded began to cry dreadfully in the darkness. I found myself beside a fellow officer named Robin, who was very badly wounded in the leg. The Germans gave me water when I asked for it but every time I drank it made me sick. At, I suppose, 9.30 or 10 pm, they took us off into an ambulance and carried us to a house that had been turned into a hospital. I was left outside, talking to a Dane, who was very anti-German, though he was serving with them as a Red Cross man. He cursed them loudly in German. He said it was monstrous that I had not been attended to and that the Germans had had a defeat and would be beaten. I said, ‘Yes, it's all true, but please stop talking like that because they'll hear you and punish me.’

Just before mid night they carried me into the make-shift hospital and on to the operating table where my wounds were dressed. Then I was helped out to an outhouse and I was laid beside Robin. It was full of English and German wounded. They gave us one drink of water and then shut and locked the door and left us for the night. One man cried and cried for water until he died. It was a horrible night. The straw was covered with blood, and there was never a moment when men were not groaning and calling for help. In the morning the man next to Robin went off his head and became like an animal with pain. I got the Germans to do what was possible for him. I asked the Germans to let me out, and they helped me outside into a chair, and I talked to an officer called Brandt. He sent a telegram to the German authorities to say that Robin and I were lightly wounded, and asking them to let our families know. He would not let me pay. I would have liked to have done it for everyone, but that wasn't possible.

They took us away in an ambulance at about 11 o’clock. It was a beautiful September day, very hot indeed. The heat in the covered ambulance was suffocating and Robin must have suffered horribly. He asked me the German word for ‘quick,’ and when I told him, he urged the Germans on.

At the town of Viviéres I found fellow officer Shields, who said to me, ‘Hello, you wounded, and you a volunteer, at that,’ as if a volunteer ought to be immune from wounds. We were carried upstairs and told that Valentine and Buddy [fellow officers], whom I had last met under the cedars, were in the same hospital. Valentine had the point of his elbow shot away just after I had left him. He had raised his hand to brush a wasp off his neck, and could only remember pitching forward when a bullet struck his elbow. He woke up in a pool of blood. A German came up and took the flask of brandy that I had given him after my visit to Soissons. He gave Valentine a drink and then, when Valentine had said he did not want any more, swigged the whole of the rest off. It was enough to make two men drunk, solidly, for hours. Later, five Germans came up to Valentine and ragged him. One of them kicked him, but an officer arrived, took all their names, promised Valentine they would be punished and assigned an orderly to stay with him for the night. Buddy was badly wounded in the back and arm. He found his servant in the church at Viviéres.

It was there in the house at Viviéres that we all met up. The doctors gave Robin and me a strong dose of morphia. That afternoon a German doctor, whose name was Hillsparck, came in and woke me. He gave me a gold watch with a crest on it, and a silver watch and a purse of gold (£8 in it). He said that a colonel to whom the watch belonged had been buried close by in the village of Haraman, and asked me if I knew who he was. We heard that our Colonel had been killed, and I imagined it must have been his. We could not tell for sure, as apparently every single man of the seventy odd who had charged with him had been killed. The doctor left that watch with me.

Our experiences on the field were all the same. We were all well treated, though occasionally we were insulted. In hospital an old oberstadt was in command of the doctors. He was very good to us. The English doctors were named Rankin and Shields. They were both good doctors. Rankin and Shields were excellent fellows. Rankin was later killed while dressing a wounded man on the field of battle and was recommended for the VC. Shields was killed in the same way [in October 1914], and I believe would also have been recommended for the decoration but his CO was also killed. They were both the best sort of man you could find.

After a couple of days I moved into Buddy and Valentine's room. A little way down the street there was the chateau, full of wounded Germans. Our men were carried there to be operated upon. Our doctors who went to help discovered that there were 311 wounded Germans as against 92 of our own, so we didn't do badly.

German and Allied wounded soldiers lie side by side in this make-shift hospital.

Every morning the German sentries used to come in and talk to us. Our German was very weak, but we managed to get along all right. Downstairs those who were lightly wounded sat outside in the chairs they took from the house in the sunny garden. It was a fairly luxurious house, with notepaper marked ‘F.H.’ I thought it was a girls’ school, for the only books we could find were the Berger de Valence and Jules Verne.

My side was painful the first few days. Then they cut me open and took out the fragments of the bullet, which was in bits. It was rather hard lines on the others to have operations performed in the room, but I felt much better after it. The food difficulty was rather acute. There was very little of it and what there was was badly cooked. We lived principally on thick, un-leavened biscuits.

Some among the captured wounded men began to give trouble. There was, of course, nobody in command of them. There was an ex-comedian who was particularly tiresome. We even had to ask the Germans to punish one particular man for us. About the fourth day one of the orderlies escaped, a man called Drummer McCoy. He passed for four days through the German lines, and on one occasion watched a whole Army Corps go by from the boughs of a tree. Then he found the French, who passed him on to the English, where he went to the Staff and told them of us. That is how we were picked up so quickly on the 11 September.

German infantry prepare to meet a French attack in the fighting at the Marne. Note the German skirmish line out in front; the French are almost upon them.

There follows a some entries made in my diary.

Wednesday 9 September:
The people are beginning to return, but not the priest, who is with the army. We want him for the regiment. Up till this time only six of the wounded have died. The Germans tell us every kind of story – the United States are declaring war on Japan; Italy on France; Denmark on England, etc., etc. Also that Paris has been given twelve hours to accept or reject the German terms, and if the French Government is obdurate the city will be bombarded. We are told that we are to be taken as prisoners to Madgeburg. It is a week since I have had a cigarette.

Thursday, 10 September:
We are all very anxious to get news home, but there is no chance. Last night S. Herbert died. I had a Testament, and Valentine and I found verses which Valentine read over his grave. Valentine has bad pain. Three bones broken in his arm and the point of his elbow gone. Buddy is better, but hit cruel hard. Robin has a bad wound, and is very restless. They don't like giving us morphia. Luckily. I have got my own medicine chest, which is a good thing for all of us, as I can give the others sleeping draughts. Last night a French cavalry patrol came within two miles of us. Early this morning there was rifle fire close by. It sounded to be coming from the wood that we supposed was Haraman.

We think the Germans may evacuate this place any time. The bandages have been given out. Stores are not coming in. There is a big aeroplane depot quite close by and the whole air is full of aeroplanes. It looks and feels as if there might be a big battle round here soon. They have shot an old man wandering about the aerodrome. But he was asking for it.

9 am
The aeroplanes are being shifted from the depot. Last night we heard that arms were issued to all the wounded Germans in hospital who could carry them. This morning the Germans are digging trenches hard. There are Red Crosses everywhere. The doctors want us to go down to the cellars if we are shelled. The French women in the village say that the French are coming; firing is increasing.

9.15 am
The German Hospital across the way is ordered to be ready to move at once.

10.25 am
An order has come for all prisoners to parade at the church at 12 o'clock. The German lightly wounded are being sent on. We are very anxious as to whether they mean to take us too. More of our wounded who have died are being buried.

11.10 am
A German doctor has arrived. He said: They are leaving and taking all of the British prisoners; 18 of our lightly wounded, and leaving 25 of their badly wounded.

French wounded are now coming in. We have no more bandages at all. A German sentry with whom I had talked has just come in. I asked him some days ago to buy some handkerchiefs. He said: ‘I have not been able to buy you any handkerchiefs, or to get the cigarettes you wanted, but here is one of my own handkerchiefs, which I have washed. We have got to go.’

8 pm
The last order is that the previous orders are countermanded and the Germans are to stay on ten more days.

Friday, 11 September
Our English prisoners were marched off this morning. We are full of speculation as to what has really happened. Valentine, Buddy and I are well.

10.10 am
There are machine guns firing about four miles away.

10.30 am
There is heavy rifle fire within a mile. It is very trying lying here in bed. We have nothing to read except The Rajah's Heir, which V. sent to me, and which has become known as the treasure-house of fun. It’s a sort of mixture of Hymns Ancient and Modern and the Fairchild Family.

2 pm
There is a Maxim within a few hundred yards of the house. Rifle volleys outside in the garden. A rising wind and rain threatening.
3 pm
Heavy rain. The French are visible, advancing.

3.10 pm
The French are here. They came in in fine style, like conquerors; one man first, riding, his hand on his hip. The German sentries who had been posted to protect us wounded walked down and surrendered their bayonets. The German doctors came to us for help. I offered to go, but W. went. The French infantry and cavalry came streaming through. Our wounded went out into the pouring rain to cheer them. They got water from our men, whose hands they kissed. The German guns are on the skyline. The Germans are in full retreat, and said to be cut off by the English.

The French attacking to drive the invader out of their country.

5 pm
A heavy bombardment of the German guns began from here. I have come upstairs to a long, low garret with skylights, in order to leave Valentine and Buddy more room. Through the skylight one can see every flash of the French and German guns. The doctors all came up here to watch with their field glasses through my skylights.

Saturday, 12 September
Yesterday when W. went down he found the German doctors receiving cavalier treatment from the French. He explained to the French that they had treated us with the greatest kindness; after that the French treated with courtesy the old oberstadt. Shields carved a great wooden tombstone for the thirteen men who had died up to date. It is a month today since I left England.

This afternoon Colonel Thompson, the English Staff Officer attached to General Menmry, who had been attached to the Serbian Army through Balkan War, came in. McCoy, who had escaped, had found him and told him about us at Viviers. He said he would take me into Villers-Cotterêts after he had done some other business. We talked a lot about the Balkans, but I finally went back and lay down in my garret and shall not get up again today.

Sunday, 13 September
I went off with Thompson this morning. We passed through the wood where we had had the fight and a long grave of 120 men was shown to me by McCoy.

A British officer’s grave, with its rough cross, on the field of the Marne.