On the evening of 20 August GHQ issued orders for the BEF to march due north, so that by the 23rd it would be holding a line facing north-east between the Belgium village of Lens and the town of Binche. There it would guard the left flank of Lanrezac’s Fifth Army, which was also advancing northwards, towards the River Sambre. General Sordet’s Cavalry Corps and three divisions of French Territorials would in turn protect the BEF’s open left flank, although they had yet to materialize. As to the enemy, news had arrived that troops of General Alexander von Kluck’s First Army had entered Brussels, but where the Germans would strike next remained unclear to the Allied high command.
The four brigades of Allenby’s Cavalry Division, plus a fifth, independent brigade, led the advance and by the end of the first day had reached Binche and pushed beyond the Condé canal at Mons. The infantry set off in high spirits on the morning of 21 August: the 3rd and 5th Divisions of II Corps marched to the west of Maubeuge, while the 1st and 2nd Divisions of I Corps advanced to the right of II Corps. According to Lance-Corporal A. P. G. Vivian of the 4th Middlesex Regiment, the departure of his battalion resembled more of ‘a carnival procession than the grim march of men going to wage war. Flowers and ribbons streamed from the barrels of our rifles, and from every conceivable portion of our uniform, while swarms of giggling and shrieking girls and women weaved in and out our ranks, presenting us with all manner of good things, such as chocolate, fruit and eggs etc.’1
Thus far, the BEF – and the French and German armies – had been conducted to war by rail, providing a swift and relatively comfortable transit to the war zone. But once beyond the rail-heads, the infantry were reliant on their own legs, no more mobile than Marlborough’s army, which had tramped the same roads two centuries earlier. The strain of the first day’s march soon became apparent, the hot weather, the hard, cobble-stoned pavé roads and general unfitness of the reservists all taking their toll.
Harry Beaumont had returned to the 1st Royal West Kents from his job as an insurance agent: ‘We were saddled with pack and equipment weighing nearly eighty pounds, and our khaki uniforms, flannel shirts, and thick woollen pants, fit for an Arctic climate, added to our discomfort in the sweltering heat. By midday the temperature reached ninety degrees in the shade! We were soon soaked in perspiration, and all looked almost as if they had been dragged through water!’2
Despite the best efforts of the officers, whether carrying rifles and packs or simply encouraging the men, growing numbers began to fall out. A. L. Ransome of the 1st Dorsets recalled the progress of a fellow battalion in the 15th Infantry Brigade: ‘I can only describe the battalion in front of us as being in “pear-shaped” formation, with the pear’s stalk leading. Its colonel and the adjutant rode at the rear, striving to get the mass of humanity into some semblance of order, but all the time more and more men, reservists, no doubt, dropped out and seated themselves at the road-side.’3 The brigade commander, Lord Edward Gleichen, was sympathetic to his men’s plight:
Stragglers, I regret to say, were already many – all of them reservists, who had not carried a pack for years. They had every intention of keeping up, of course, but simply could not. I talked to several of them and urged them along, but the answer was always the same – ‘Oh, I’ll get along all right, sir, after a bit of a rest; but I ain’t accustomed to carrying a big weight like this on a hot day’, and their scarlet streaming faces certainly bore out their views. To do them justice, they practically all did turn up.4
The 52 battalions of infantry struggling through the late August heat towards the Belgium frontier were the chief fighting element of the BEF, and success would ultimately depend on their battlefield ability. Modest efforts to improve the quality of the infantry had begun in the 1890s, but the overall inadequacies in training, tactics and weapons were brutally exposed in the Boer War. In the aftermath of the war, the reforming process continued with more urgency, but ultimately it was unable to answer the fundamental question of modern warfare: how to develop tactics that would accommodate the recent and revolutionary developments in firepower.
The magazine-fed, bolt-action rifle, which fired a high-velocity bullet using smokeless propellants, had become the standard firearm of the infantryman during the closing years of the 19th century. The modern rifle could fire accurately at large targets up to 1,000 yards, while its flatter trajectory greatly increased the ‘killing zone’ through which the enemy would have to pass. The new propellants (cordite in the British Army) did not produce the billowing clouds of smoke typical of gunpowder rifles, enabling the rifleman to see his target while not giving away his own position to the enemy. The British Army of 1914 was armed with the excellent .303in. Short, Magazine, Lee-Enfield (SMLE); its high rate of fire produced the devastating barrages that won infantry fire-fights.
A second, fundamental increase in infantry firepower originated in 1884, when the American-born inventor and entrepreneur Hiram Maxim produced the first effective machine gun. The army saw the Maxim’s potential, and within ten years it was being used in colonial campaigns in Africa. It was capable of firing around 500 rounds per minute, which gave it the equivalent firepower of just under 30 modern bolt-action rifles.5 A lighter, improved version was developed by Vickers, and by August 1914, the Vickers – roughly equivalent to 40 rifles – had been issued to the cavalry, although the infantry still relied on the Maxim during 1914.
These advances in firepower gave the defensive enormous advantages over the offensive. Attacking forces moving in close formation would be massacred at long range. To minimize casualties, the attacking troops were forced to spread out, making use of the ground for concealment and protection, with small groups of infantrymen advancing in short rushes, being covered by fire from their comrades. Such tactics made the control of troops by their officers exceptionally difficult, and called for highly trained, self-motivated soldiers who had the nerve and skill to maintain a dispersed advance amidst a storm of steel. Many military commentators believed this to be impossible.
Despite the imbalance between defence and attack, the British Army maintained a determined belief in the inherent superiority of the offensive – a ‘cult of the offensive’ according to some historians.6 Military success ultimately depends upon a philosophy of aggressive, offensive action, and, at the tactical level, British commanders were correct in trying to combat the tendency of an advance to stall into a long-range fire-fight with the attackers at a disadvantage. But they lacked an appropriate tactical system to integrate firepower into a war of movement, relying too much on physical courage over tactical finesse.
The focus on the offensive also tended to downgrade attention to a mastery of defensive tactics. ‘In order to foster the offensive spirit’, wrote the historian of the Cheshire Regiment, ‘retirement as an operation of war was ignored during training.’7 This comment was typical of an overall lack of concern with one of the less exciting branches of military operations. Edward Spiers, writing of the pre-war army, noted that ‘some reforms, especially practice in the construction of entrenchments, proved exceedingly tedious in peace time. The poor quality of the entrenching tools, the laborious nature of the task, and the subsequent chore of refilling the trenches, ensured that this was the least relished and least practised of the post [Boer]-war proposals.’8
Within the army there was a small group of officers – based around the School of Musketry at Hythe – who demonstrated a fuller understanding of the nature of modern warfare. Major N. R. McMahon, chief instructor at Hythe between 1905 and 1909, urged an increase in the number of the battalion’s machine guns from two to six. More radical still, he also called for light machine guns (such as the new Lewis gun) or automatic rifles to be used by attacking troops to provide local fire supremacy in the vital, final phase of the assault.
McMahon and the other progressives were stoutly opposed by the army’s reactionary wing, who countered with the argument that increased firepower slowed the tempo of the offensive, which, in turn, undermined the morale and resolve of the soldier. In this they had a point, but their case was totally undermined by a fantastical belief in the primacy of cold steel, despite all evidence to the contrary. An example of this attitude came in the confused series of assertions made by Brigadier-General Launcelot Kiggell – subsequently Commandant at the Staff College, Camberley – during the summation to the 1910 Staff Conference:
After the Boer War the general opinion was that the result of the battle would depend on fire-arms alone, and that the sword and bayonet were played out. But this idea is erroneous and was proved to be so in the late [Russo-Japanese] war in Manchuria. Every one admits that. Victory is won actually by the bayonet, or by the fear of it, which amounts to the same thing as far as the actual conduct of the attack is concerned. This fact was proved beyond doubt in the late war. I think the whole question rather hangs on that; and if we accept the view that victory is actually won by the bayonet, it settles the point.9
Somewhere between the progressives and the reactionaries, and often oscillating between the two poles, were the modest reformers who ultimately held sway in the army, and who included senior officers such as French and Haig. They were well aware of the need for improvement in the army’s tactical ability but lacked the vision to comprehend both the problems and the opportunities of the firepower revolution, and, as a consequence, clung to the mental template established in the late-Victorian colonial army of their youth.
Despite the inability of most senior officers to come to terms with new ways of waging war, the decade before 1914 was one of real if limited tactical improvement. This was especially the case with developments in musketry (the tactical use of firearms) carried out by McMahon and his fellow progressives at the School of Musketry, even though they lacked authority to impose their views on the army (hence the rejection of the request for more machine guns).
Marksmanship had been at low ebb during and immediately after the Boer War. At a competition held by the Aldershot Command in 1902, the 12 best marksmen fired 1,210 rounds at targets ranging from 210 to 2,600 yards. Only ten hits were recorded (the results were not published).10 In the early years of the 20th century much effort was put into improving British marksmanship, ranging from Lord Roberts’ efforts to encourage rifle shooting in general to the more specific proposals of the Hythe enthusiasts. McMahon used the rejection of his plea for more automatic weapons as a spur for better musketry. ‘There is only one alternative open to us,’ he wrote. ‘We must train every soldier in our army to become a “human machine gun”. Every man must receive intensive training with his rifle until he can fire – with reasonable accuracy – fifteen rounds per minute.’11
But McMahon also realized that marksmanship was only a part of the infantry firepower equation. He even spoke out against those obsessed with target shooting, explaining that in field conditions crack shots did little better than soldiers with average shooting skills. The key to success in the infantry fire-fight was to lay down a rapid, intense barrage of fire into a zone that would kill or incapacitate any enemy soldier moving within it. In these conditions, disciplined volume fire was more important than individual accuracy.12
As part of the improved tactical training, soldiers fired at realistic targets. C. L. Longley recalled aiming at a ‘brown life-sized head and shoulders against a green ground’, while Benjamin Clouting of the 4th Dragoon Guards fired at moving, full-sized cavalry targets operated by a pulley.13 But these imaginative techniques were not universal, and many battalion commanders – who exerted enormous control over training – were content with simple bulls-eye shooting.
Overall, improvements in musketry – and tactics – did make the infantry who took to the field in 1914 far more effective than their predecessors in South Africa, but these advances failed to go far enough in providing a solution to the problem of reducing the terrible vulnerability of troops advancing in the open against a well-entrenched enemy. The best way of protecting attacking troops was through artillery support: smashing in front-line defences and forcing the enemy to keep their heads down and, in so doing, reducing the intensity of their fire. But this was a complex process that demanded training and tactics not yet in place in the British Army.
As was the case with the rifle and machine gun, artillery had also undergone a process of transformation. The introduction of powerful smokeless propellants during the 19th century increased accurate field-gun ranges out to 4,000 yards and more, thus enabling artillery to fire from deep positions at targets beyond the front line, and to maintain a high degree of concealment through the reduction of muzzle smoke.
A further significant advance came with the invention of a hydrostatic buffer and recuperator system that absorbed recoil without any movement of the gun’s carriage. This advanced recoil action ensured that the gun was still accurately aligned on target after each shot; there was no need for the crew to manhandle the gun back into position, and this made rapid fire a reality. The new artillery pieces were appropriately known in Britain as Quick Firing (QF). They had a secondary advantage, in that the absence of carriage recoil allowed the gun crew to remain close by their artillery piece at all times, and so could be protected from rifle bullets and shrapnel by the addition of a small steel shield.
The French 75mm field gun, introduced in 1897, was the first of the new QF artillery pieces, producing an extraordinarily high rate of fire of up to 30 rounds per minute. In 1904 the British followed the French lead when the 18-pounder (84mm calibre) field gun entered service, with the smaller and lighter 13-pounder (75mm) assigned to the cavalry. The 18-pounder was an effective field gun, capable of 20 rounds per minute in short bursts and firing an 18½lb shrapnel shell. An infantry division was allotted three brigades of 18-pounders, with each brigade consisting of three six-gun batteries.
During the opening months of the war, British field guns were only supplied with shrapnel shells, and it was not until the battle of Ypres in October that high-explosive shells first arrived at the front line. Although not effective against entrenchments or buildings, accurately fused shrapnel was deadly against troops in the open. An 18-pounder shrapnel shell contained 374 bullets and a small explosive charge. Once the target had been selected, the fuse timer was set to the appropriate distance and primed to burst the explosive charge just above and in front of the chosen spot, causing a hail of bullets to be projected down and forwards on the enemy troops below. Estimating the range correctly involved both skill and luck, and troops on both sides regularly observed shrapnel bursting too high to cause casualties.
The 18-pounder field gun was partnered by the 4.5in. field howitzer, with one brigade of three six-gun batteries allotted to each division. The howitzer entered service in 1910, and as well as shrapnel fired a 35lb high-explosive shell in a high, plunging trajectory that could drop the shell into enemy trenches. The last artillery piece in the BEF’s arsenal was the 60-pounder field gun, with a four-gun battery attached to each infantry division. This was the only heavy gun deployed by the British in the first phase of the campaign, and while few in numbers it was an excellent artillery piece, firing a 60lb high-explosive shell in a flat trajectory to a maximum range of 10,300 yards.
The increased rate of fire and extended range of the modern artillery piece opened up new tactical possibilities in both attack and defence. There was the usual struggle between reactionary and progressive elements. The reactionaries failed to grasp the key advantage of modern artillery – that fire could be concentrated while allowing the guns themselves to be dispersed and hidden from enemy view, in what would be called indirect fire. The old guard was still attached to the idea of the guns themselves being concentrated, stretching out in long lines, wheel-to-wheel, and deployed in the front line, firing over open sights directly at the enemy. In the back of their minds was the feeling that there was something cowardly in not deploying the guns amidst the infantry they were there to support.
British artillery was divided into three branches, each with differing approaches to the conduct of operations. The Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) was the most prestigious branch, adopting the dashing approach of the hussar or light dragoon; but, assigned to the cavalry (and armed only with 13-pounders), they were of limited value once major hostilities began. The bulk of the BEF’s artillery came under the control of the Royal Field Artillery (RFA), which supported the infantry divisions with their 18-pounders and 4.5in. howitzers. Like the RHA, the RFA highlighted the dashing aspects of their calling at the expense of the technical side. This was the preserve of the decidedly unfashionable Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA), responsible for the long-range heavy artillery that would come to dominate warfare on the Western Front.
Some idea of the artillery’s thinking can be seen in this extract from the memoirs of Major-General S. C. M. Archibald, a distinguished artilleryman who was a lieutenant in a battery of 18-pounders in 1914:
When the war broke out early in August 1914 we had almost completed our training season and were pretty smart and efficient, according to our lights. But these lights were somewhat limited. Our gunnery and methods of fire were very simple and elementary. Targets were only engaged by observation, so the battery commander had to get someone where he could see the target. If this was not possible, nothing could be done about it.14
Archibald had described one of the enduring problems of indirect fire by observation: if an artillery battery was hidden, then it had to use a forward observer to visually locate the enemy target and guide the battery’s fire onto it. The best communication method between observer and battery lay in running out telephone cable between the two, but telephone lines were easily cut, with communication then reliant on runners, semaphore or other forms of visual communication. Only the introduction of wireless would solve the problem, but the necessity of using indirect fire to protect exposed guns from counter-battery fire was essential – as the British were to discover to their cost at Le Cateau.
Archibald also recognized that he and his fellow gunners had little experience of other seemingly arcane but vital aspects of the gunner’s craft, such as knowledge of atmospheric conditions, firing by night or map shooting. But his chief criticism was the absence of communication between artillery and infantry: ‘There was no liaison between gunners and infantry; in fact it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that at the beginning of the war, gunners and infantry fought separate wars.’15 Co-operation between the different arms was the cornerstone of success in battle, and in 1914, for defence and especially attack, this demanded a complete integration of the infantry’s rifles and machine guns with the guns of the artillery.
At 4 p.m. on 21 September, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien arrived in Bavai and took command of II Corps. The next day the BEF crossed into Belgium. Lieutenant G. C. Wynne of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) was one of many who noticed the change in landscape as they marched over the border:
During the morning we crossed the Belgium frontier with its small custom-house in a dip of the road and passed from the metalled chaussées of France on to the cobbled roads of Belgium. The difference from the prosperous and neatly kept French farms and the poor ill-conditioned Belgian cottages was very noticeable. Everything seemed on a poorer scale and dirtier; though perhaps it is scarcely fair to pass judgment on Belgium by one of its uglier parts.16
The BEF had advanced into the Borinage, Belgium’s great mining and industrial district, and Wynne described how the view north from the village of Dour was covered ‘with mountainous coal-pit slag-heaps and away beyond them to the east could be seen the chimneys of Mons’.17 The area was criss-crossed with small lanes and light railways, and long, straggling villages that merged into each other. The slag heaps restricted movement and visibility; they would also narrow down the field of fire for the artillery.
While the infantry continued to march, the cavalry and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) gathered intelligence. On the afternoon of the 21st an aircraft of the RFC spotted large numbers of German cavalry with infantry and guns south-east of Nivelles, less than 20 miles from Mons. Other reports confirmed the appearance of General von der Marwitz’s II Cavalry Corps.
George Barrow had been co-opted by Major-General Allenby at the outbreak of war to act as the senior intelligence officer in the Cavalry Division. As the division pushed into Belgium, Barrow was assailed by rumours of an impending German onslaught. He drove into Mons on the 21st in an attempt to confirm the truth of these numerous but still vague reports:
With the consent of the French authorities, I took possession of the railway telephone office. Here I sat all day and far into the night ringing up all possible and impossible places in Belgium not known to be in German hands. Replies took the following forms: ‘No signs of enemy activity, but rumours they are in A---’. ‘Germans are five miles distant on road to B---’. ‘Have just received message from C--- that enemy close to town. Germans are on outskirts of town; we are closing down.’ A German voice or failure to get contact told that the enemy had already arrived.
It was easy from these replies to get a fairly accurate picture of the German line of advance. Allenby sent this information on to GHQ. It showed the German right extended much farther west than had been suspected. But GHQ preferred to rely on its own agents and more orthodox intelligence methods. It replied: ‘The information which you have acquired and conveyed to the Commander-in-Chief appears to be somewhat exaggerated. It is probable that only mounted troops supported by Jägers are in your immediate neighbourhood.’ Events showed that the information was far from exaggerated.18
On 21 August the French Fifth Army’s advance was abruptly halted by Bülow’s Second Army, and by nightfall the French had been thrown back across the Sambre River. Lanrezac’s fear of being overwhelmed by superior numbers was reinforced by reports of Hausen’s Third Army advancing towards his right flank. On the 22nd Lanrezac ordered a general retreat without informing Field Marshal French, an unfortunate omission that was to have lasting consequences. But on that day, the RFC flew 12 reconnaissance missions that clearly demonstrated the presence of substantial German forces bearing down on the BEF. These aerial reports were backed up by the experiences of the Cavalry Division, which fought a series of sharp engagements with the German cavalry screen advancing from the north.
The 4th Royal Dragoon Guards were the victors in the skirmish north of Mons, guaranteeing them a place in history in the first encounter between the BEF and the German Army. Elsewhere, the 6th Dragoon Guards crossed over the Condé canal to the west of Mons and discovered German cavalry lurking in the woods to the north of the canal. According to the regimental history, ‘Several successful mounted attacks against German cuirassiers were carried out by A Squadron, before the regiment withdrew across the two bridges [over the canal] at St Albert.’19
To the east of Mons, the independent 5th Cavalry Brigade advanced towards the small town of Binche, acting as the flank guard for the BEF’s right wing. Further east still was the French Fifth Army, but no meaningful contact had been made with any French units. Among the brigade’s three regiments were the Royal Scots Greys, although their famous grey horses had been dyed a khaki-brown shade for reasons of security.20
On their landing in France the Greys had taken on Paul Maze, a bilingual French artist, as a semi-official interpreter. On the morning of the 22nd, Maze reported to regimental headquarters, deployed on a small rise beyond Binche and overlooking a valley where two dismounted squadrons of the Greys had taken up a forward defensive line. Maze trained a telescope on a railway embankment just over a mile away and saw ‘a number of little grey figures scrambling down on to the flat. Moving along the railway line more and more were appearing and beyond, from a slight rise in the ground, others were coming up.’21
The transformation from peace to war was as swift as it was dramatic: two French cavalrymen were seen escaping from the enemy lines like hunted animals; scouts from the Greys told their CO that they had been attacked by German lancers; and from across the valley a line of gun flashes broadcast the enemy attack with shells exploding around the headquarters. Meanwhile, the two forward companies of the Greys fought off a German attack, claiming at least 30 casualties for the loss of one officer wounded before retiring.
The commander of the nearby 3rd Cavalry Brigade, Brigadier-General Hubert Gough, could see the fight going on around Binche, and he brought up his 16th Lancers and two batteries of Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) in support. The German artillery fire was heavy, if not particularly accurate, and at 11.15 a.m. Gough ordered the guns of E Battery into action; in so doing they fired the first British artillery shells of the war.
To Gough’s annoyance, the 13-pounder guns lacked the range to hit their targets.22 But the battery’s gun flashes did not go unnoticed. In a significant portent of the future, Bombardier Saville Crowsley recorded this incident in his diary: ‘We had not been long in action before a German aeroplane came hovering over our position, dropped a time fuse, giving the range to our guns, and returned to its own lines. Then came our first experience of being under shell fire as their first round fell in the ground 15 yards from me.’23 Gough sensibly withdrew the battery to a safer position.
During the afternoon of the 22nd the cavalry of both the 3rd and 5th Brigades moved back to protect Haig’s I Corps. The 3rd Brigade then joined the other cavalry brigades advancing westwards to take up position on the left flank of the BEF. The British cavalry commanders were encouraged that their regiments had stood this first test of battle, in part a consequence of the post-Boer War reforms to the cavalry.
During the war in South Africa mounted infantry had often demonstrated a combat edge over conventional cavalry, and calls were made for the entire cavalry arm to be converted in this manner. This was anathema to the influential cavalry lobby, horrified that the ‘cavalry spirit’ – where man and horse operated in close and sympathetic harmony – would be lost, replaced, in their view, by a foot soldier astride an old nag. The debate between the proponents of mounted infantry – who included the army reformer Lord Roberts – and the cavalry school – with Sir John French in the lead – continued until 1914, and although the cavalry school won the day it incorporated ideas from its opponents.
The enthusiasm of the diehards for lance, sword and the charge was tempered by a serious attempt to come to grips with dismounted action and the effective application of firepower. The new .303in. SMLE rifle was introduced with great attention paid to gaining good musketry skills. In the 14th Hussars, for example, 71 per cent of its troopers had gained their marksman badge in 1908, far in advance of many infantry battalions (by way of comparison, marksman percentages for the 10th Infantry Brigade in 1912 were: 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers, 17.5 per cent; 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, 15.2 per cent; 2nd KRRC, 25.7 per cent; 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers, 8.2 per cent).24 The cavalry also enjoyed the advantage of being equipped with the lighter, more efficient Vickers machine gun.
The Boer War had underlined the importance of good animal care, and the quality of horsemastership demonstrated by the British cavalry was superior to that of the French or Germans. And given the essential fragility of the horse at war, this enabled British cavalry regiments to operate in the field for longer periods.
The intelligence provided by the cavalry (and RFC) on the 21st and 22nd should have rung alarm bells in the minds of Field Marshal Sir John French and GHQ. The bulk of the German First Army – more than twice the size of the BEF – was pressing forward with terrifying haste, holding the potential to overwhelm the British on both flanks. Added to German numerical superiority was the knowledge that its army was considered the finest in Europe.