During the night of 25/26 August the Germans consolidated their position on the Le Cateau battlefield, rounding up British stragglers and preparing for the coming day’s operations. But at just the moment when Kluck’s forces needed to move swiftly to pursue their beaten foe they displayed neither energy nor focus. IV Corps had admittedly been heavily engaged in the day’s fighting and needed time to reorganize. III Corps, however, had begun to arrive on the battlefield at Honnechy as night fell, and with hard marching could have caught a part of the retreating British. But both German corps advanced only a few miles south on the 27th, because the German commander thought the BEF to be elsewhere.
Central to Kluck’s thinking was his persistent belief that the British would retreat due west towards Calais and Boulogne. Accordingly, he despatched his mobile forces – Marwitz’s Cavalry Corps – in that direction, supported by the recently arrived II Corps. Both of these formations would engage General d’Amade’s Cavalry Corps and the Territorial divisions of General Sordet, but they would find no sign of the BEF.
The BEF, of course, continued its southerly line of retreat, holding position on the left flank of the French Fifth Army. Such was Kluck’s confusion that his army’s progress throughout the Allied retreat might be seen to resemble that of a drunken boxer, staggering on a zigzag course with fists flailing, occasionally catching an opponent with a glancing blow but failing to deliver the knock-out punch that would decide the contest.
General Smith-Dorrien and his command had had a lucky escape. Yet on 27 August this hardly seemed the case. The British, driven from the battlefield, had suffered 7,812 casualties, with 38 guns lost.1 Because of the disorderly nature of the retreat, losses in the immediate aftermath of the battle appeared higher; some retreating groups and individuals rejoined their regiments more than two weeks later. Enemy casualties were considerably fewer, totalling around 2,900 and indicative of the sound tactics employed by the German Army throughout the battle.2
The prime cause of the British defeat at Le Cateau was poor leadership. These failings occurred at all levels, but were most significant at the top. And yet accounts of the battle of Le Cateau from senior British officers – including those by Smith-Dorrien, Fergusson, Headlam and Haldane – adopted a strangely passive voice to suggest that they had played little or no active part in the battle, that British misfortunes were a consequence of external events rather than their own decisions.3 With this in mind, the notion that the Germans had a vastly superior numerical advantage when the battle was being fought was avidly seized upon.
Major A. F. Becke’s semi-official account of Le Cateau (albeit written while the war was still in progress) asserted that as well as the German II Cavalry Corps ‘no less than four Corps of the I German Army [had] been engaged at Le Cateau’.4 Possibly taking its lead from Becke’s work, the Official History – and the accompanying map of the battlefield – implied that the German III Corps and IV Reserve Corps had taken part in the battle, whereas, in fact, IV Corps only marched onto the battlefield as the British 4th Division was withdrawing, while III Corps arrived well after the British retreat.
More egregious still was the prominence given to descriptions of isolated heroic acts as being of consequence to the outcome of the battle; used, in fact, as an attempt to cover for weak leadership. To take one instance: in his memoirs, Smith-Dorrien mentioned the chaos of the 5th Division’s retreat from its front-line positions, and with a masterly non sequiter concluded: ‘Thanks, however, to the determined action of Major Yate of the Yorkshire Light Infantry, who sacrificed himself and his men in holding the Germans off, the troops of the 5th Division got back on the road.’5 While there could be no denying the determined action mounted by the KOYLI, and its contribution to delaying the German advance, we know from Colonel Bond’s own report of the engagement that Yate’s ‘charge’ had no effect at all on the course of the British defence.
News of the British defeat caused profound dismay at GHQ that, at times, bordered on panic. Field Marshal French believed II Corps to be ruined, his already poor relationship with Smith-Dorrien further damaged by the latter’s decision to disobey his orders and fight at Le Cateau. On the night of the 26th, Smith-Dorrien motored to GHQ at St Quentin to make his report to French, only to find that, unknown to him, the headquarters had moved 35 miles south to Noyon. On finally arriving at GHQ at 2 a.m., Smith-Dorrien engaged in a fractious interview with French before returning to St Quentin as dawn was breaking.
At GHQ, Lieutenant-General Murray, the Chief of the General Staff, had been overcome by stress, leaving Wilson in charge of staff matters. Managing the difficult feat of being cheerfully despondent, Wilson sent out a general order at 8 p.m. on the 27th to discard all ammunition and baggage not directly required by the BEF, so that more wagons would become available to transport exhausted soldiers. Although carried out by some units of the 4th Division, the two corps commanders wisely ignored what was a well-meant but defeatist and unnecessary instruction. Smith-Dorrien was particularly perturbed, noting in his diary: ‘I am at a loss to know why this order has been issued and conclude the Headquarters know something we do not. I am afraid the order has had a bad effect on some of the officers, whose nerves have been shattered by the heavy fighting and want of sleep.’
The strain was particularly evident among senior staff officers, who spent both day and night planning and preparing orders. Smith-Dorrien, also under enormous strain, accepted that ‘some of the staffs of brigades and divisions are quite worn out and almost unequal to working out orders.’ 6
On the 26th, Colonel John Vaughan, the chief of staff of the Cavalry Division, had collapsed, followed on the 30th by Colonel J. E. Edmonds of the 4th Division. Colonel F. R. F. Boileau, senior staff officer to the 3rd Division, suffered a complete breakdown. Seemingly overcome by the defeat at Le Cateau, he ‘went off his head’ on the afternoon of the 27th.7 A less than sympathetic Captain H. B. Owens, MO to the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, attended the tragic outcome: ‘Arrived in Ham at about 4 p.m. Had to see a staff officer who had just shot himself in the head with a revolver in a motor car. He was still living.’8 Boileau died shortly afterwards; Smith-Dorrien diplomatically described his death as a result of being ‘very seriously wounded’.9
The great mass of British troops heading away from the Le Cateau battlefield experienced all the wretched emotions of defeat. Lieutenant George Roupell of the 1st East Surreys recalled ‘a feeling of intense depression to think that the British Army should be in full flight’.10 There was also the anguish felt by those who had lost friends and comrades. Lieutenant Henry Slingsby was one of the survivors from the KOYLI: ‘After the battle was over we assembled together some miles away, and to see the few that remained – My God, it was awful. Shall I ever forget it? I was very heartbroken after it, to think of our dear Regiment cut up like that. Words cannot simply express my grief.’11
On the 27th, Captain Arthur Osburn, the 2nd Cavalry Brigade MO, encountered individuals and small groups cut off from their units, some of whom were officers lacking maps or other directions. Among the stragglers were ‘five privates blackberrying, without caps, packs or rifles, declaring they were all that was left of the 2nd Whiteshires and had nothing to eat for forty-eight hours.’ Osburn also noted that ‘some of these unarmed stragglers were evidently not unwilling to be “found” by the Germans’, which he put down to their ‘extreme fatigue’. 12
The exhaustion of the troops seemed total. ‘We walked along as if in a dream,’ wrote Lieutenant Tower of the 4th Royal Fusiliers, ‘seeing only the backs of the men in front and longing for the end of it all.’13 In the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles, Corporal Lucy revealed how the strain was pushing some individuals to breaking point, among them Captain J. C. Colthurst: ‘One captain turns his whole company about and marches back towards the Germans. The commanding officer gallops after him, and the captain tells him he is tired of retreating. It is bad for the morale of the troops, so he prefers to fight and perish if necessary. The unnerved captain is relieved of his command [sic], and his gallantly docile company comes back to us under a junior, and joins the tail of the column.’14
But within the confused mass surging south, staff officers worked hard to impose order, directing lost soldiers to their regiments and holding open separate routes for the three divisions and the 19th Brigade. Attempts were made to provide the men with food, whether through hot meals from the battalion ‘cookers’ or simple food dumps placed alongside the road. Captain James Jack of the Cameronians commented on how, ‘in the twinkling of an eye organisation and food produced a happier air’.15 Maurice Baring, private secretary to RFC commander Brigadier-General Henderson, also observed the restorative powers of a hot meal:
The remains of a broken division was said to be arriving. It did arrive and was supplied with food by our transport officer, St John. How he did this was a miracle. These men arrived in a state of the greatest exhaustion, but it was curious how quickly they recovered. One man, who seemed to be a state of utter collapse, as soon as he had been given some food, produced a small hand looking-glass, which he put up on a lorry and began to shave. As soon as he had shaved he said he felt quite restored.16
For the pilots of the RFC the retreat developed into a series of last-minute hops from airfield to airfield to stay ahead of the German advance. Lieutenant Louis Strange had become separated from his squadron, and during the evening of the 27th he helped a hard-pressed staff officer direct stragglers:
We stood at the junction of four cross-roads, sending the men of various divisions to their proper rallying points. We heard many stories that night – grim tales of whole regiments wiped out, while it was a terrible sight to watch the return of those splendid troops who had marched up to Mons so recently. Some were minus weapons, tunics, and boots, with their puttees wrapped around their feet. All were utterly worn out with ceaseless marching and fighting.17
Brigadier-General Aylmer Haldane, leading the remnants of his 10th Brigade on the night march to Voyennes on the 27th/28th, was certainly grateful for this staff guidance: ‘The arrangements made for this march by the divisional staff officer were admirable. Every side road had been blocked by sending men in advance, so as to preclude the possibility of our losing the proper direction in the dark, and in addition a staff officer handed over to me a fresh guide at each village to which we came.’18
Haldane was fortunate that he and his men were marching along the recognized route for the 4th Division’s retreat. Much of the rest of the 10th Brigade was scattered across a wide area, soldiers forced to make their escape as best they could. The group under the command of Major A. J. Poole – originally over 600 strong – were among the last to leave the Le Cateau battlefield, and spent much of their time hiding by day and marching by night. Among the party was Lieutenant Montgomery, who described the retreat in a letter to his parents:
I shall never forget that march: we call it the ‘Retreat from Moscow’. We were behind our own army and in front of the Germans; we had several narrow escapes from being cut up and at times had to hide in woods to escape being seen by Uhlan patrols. We had no food & no sleep, and it rained most of the time. We were dead tired when we started so you can imagine what we were like when we finished it. Our men fell out by the dozens & we had to leave them; lots were probably captured by the Germans.19
On the morning of the 28th they caught up with the BEF, and like many other stragglers were sent via Le Mans to rejoin their regiments. This first taste of action left a deep impression on the future field marshal: the incompetence of some of his superior officers and the fortitude of others (not least Major Poole), and the poor communications that existed at all levels within the army.
The ‘Retreat from Moscow’ was a first-class adventure for a young officer, but of more significance was the experience of the remainder of the lost troops of the 10th Brigade. The 5th Division and 19th Brigade had been instructed to pass through St Quentin on 27 August, but such was the confusion of the retreat that soldiers from all formations ended up in the town. Among them were substantial elements of the 1st Royal Warwickshires (Lieutenant-Colonel John Elkington) and 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers (Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Mainwaring). Both of these battalions from the 10th Brigade were led by their colonels to St Quentin in the hope of being taken by train to the rear. But the exhausted and dispirited troops discovered that the last train had already left St Quentin; they also came across stragglers from other units in a decidedly mutinous mood. The Warwickshires and Dublin Fusiliers now refused to move.
In desperation, the two COs asked the town’s mayor for assistance, but fearful of German retribution he demanded that they either leave immediately or sign a document of surrender. Elkington and Mainwaring erroneously believed the Germans to be on the outskirts of the town, and unbalanced by a lack of sleep and the drama of events they signed the document.
Fortunately for the British troops, Major Tom Bridges of the 4th Dragoon Guards was acting as the rearguard commander. On his arrival in St Quentin, during the hot afternoon of the 27th, he encountered hundreds of British troops milling around the town, many of them drunk. On hearing the news of the ‘surrender’ Bridges acted swiftly, tracking down the mayor and relieving him of the surrender document. His next step was to get the men away from eventual but certain capture in St Quentin.
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening Bridges and his rearguard collected all the horses and carts they could find to carry those men unable to walk. Of those gathered around the station, he encouraged, cajoled and threatened them to move, initially to no effect. Bridges also had to behave with considerable discretion; he knew both colonels and was, of course, junior to them in rank. After great effort, however, he managed to persuade the soldiers to form up and prepare to leave march away.
Over 400 troops from many regiments remained in the town square. Bridges described his novel method to get them to move:
The men in the square were a different problem and so jaded it was pathetic to see them. If one only had a band, I thought! Why not? There was a toy-shop handy which provided my trumpeter and myself with a tin whistle and a drum and we marched round and round the fountain, where the men were lying like the dead, playing the British Grenadiers and Tipperary and beating the drum like mad. They sat up and began to laugh and even cheer. I stopped playing and made them a short exhortation and told them I was going to take them back to their regiments. They began to stand up and fall in, and eventually we moved slowly off into the night to the music of our improvised band, now reinforced with a couple of mouth organs.20
Captain Arthur Osburn had helped round up the men, stop the drinking of alcohol and instead provide bread and tea or coffee. He recalled how Colonel Mainwaring had been persuaded to march at the head of the column:
My recollection is that he looked very pale, entirely dazed, had no Sam Browne belt, and leant heavily on his stick, apparently so exhausted with fatigue and heat that he could hardly have known what he was doing. Some of his men called to him encouraging words, affectionate and familiar, but not meant insolently – such as: ‘Buck up, sir! Cheer up, Daddy! Now we shan’t be long! We are all going back to “Hang-le-Tear”!’ Actually I saw him saluting one of our own corporals who did not even look surprised. What with the fatigue, heat, drink and the demoralisation of defeat, many hardly knew what they were doing.21
Mainwaring and Elkington were court-martialled a few days later, found guilty and cashiered in disgrace. Mainwaring disappeared into obscurity, but Elkington enlisted in the French Foreign Legion (at the advanced age of 48) and served bravely as a private soldier in the bloody Champagne battle of September 1915, where he was badly wounded. When news of his exploits reached Britain, he was reinstated to his former rank by the King, his error of judgment on 27 August redeemed by personal bravery.
While II Corps was fighting at Le Cateau on 26 August, Haig’s I Corps maintained steady progress, marred only by a rearguard encounter at Le Grand Fayt, which cost the 2nd Connaught Rangers 300 casualties.
Meanwhile, the remainder of I Corps continued to endure the painful discomforts of a day’s march in sun and rain. Captain H. C. Rees, of the 2nd Welch Regiment, was angered at the order to dispense with their packs – ‘neatly stored in a barn for the Germans to ransack at their leisure’22 – but was reassured to discover the piles of rations dumped by the roadside: ‘Every man took anything that struck his fancy. It was rather amusing to see what the men selected. One man near me had seven tins of bully beef and not a single biscuit. He threw one tin away per mile on the average as he grew tired.’23
On the 27th the rearguard of I Corps was assigned to the 1st (Guards) Brigade, with the 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers, a two-gun section from the 118th Battery and a cavalry troop holding the most rearward position at Étreux. During the morning, units of General von Bülow’s Second Army – pulled westward to close the gap with Kluck’s First Army – collided with the British rearguard. The German attack began a little before 11 a.m. Under the resolute command of Major P. A. Charrier, the Munsters held their ground with relative ease, and with the main body of I Corps clear of Étreux by 1 p.m. orders were sent to the rearguard to retire. But as had occurred with the Cheshires at Élouges and the Gordon Highlanders at Le Cateau, the message failed to get through.
The Munsters were then surrounded. An attempt to break through the German ring failed; Charrier was killed and the remainder of his men overwhelmed by the Germans at around 9 p.m. There were so few survivors that the battalion was withdrawn from the line, replaced by the 1st Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. Brigadier-General Ivor Maxse, the commander of the 1st (Guards) Brigade, earned Haig’s displeasure: ‘I consider that Brig-Gen Maxse committed an error in not withdrawing the Munsters before they were surrounded. The whole rearguard seems to have been placed in jeopardy owing to the large gap which existed between it and the main body before Brig-Gen Maxse commenced to withdraw from his first position.’24
Despite the setback at Étreux, I Corps kept to its timetable and by the 28th the main body was clear of the Germans. In fact, Bülow’s Second Army, while trying to readjust to the westward movement of Kluck’s First Army, had exposed its flank to I Corps. Aerial reports from the RFC had revealed this movement, and Haig saw the possibility for a counterattack. He signalled to General Lanrezac that he would be prepared to use his troops to co-operate with any French assault on the German Second Army. Lanrezac – who was being firmly prodded by Joffre to attack – was gratified at this offer of support. Unfortunately for Anglo-French relations, Haig’s offer was angrily rescinded by Sir John French, who would have nothing to do with Lanrezac. It was a missed opportunity, especially when the French Fifth Army counter-attacked on the 29th, and inflicted a sharp defeat on the Germans at Guise, bringing Bülow’s Army to an abrupt if temporary halt.
For II Corps, 28 August was another gruelling day, but one which brought it behind the River Oise. French decided to spend the day visiting the troops. He had a great affection for his men, and he liked nothing better than to be in their company. He did his best to raise morale, addressing the retreating infantrymen at roadside halts, relaying Joffre’s telegram of congratulation for their efforts. He wrote: ‘The wonderful spirit and bearing they showed was beyond all praise – ½ a million of them would walk over Europe!’25 French’s own spirits were fortified by his day away from the cares of command, although he also saw that his soldiers were exhausted, and a rest day was ordered for the 29th.
If French was encouraged by the fortitude of his troops, he remained troubled by the overall military situation. He believed his losses to be greater than they actually were, and with his new and intense distrust of his French ally, he feared for the survival of the BEF. Aware of his responsibility to protect Britain’s sole military force in being – as explained to him in Kitchener’s Instructions of 6 August – he certainly did not want to be remembered in history as the man who lost his army. In his mind was a growing conviction that his forces must be allowed time to retire out of the line of battle to rest and refit.
This was a blow to General Joffre’s new plan to contain and defeat the powerful German right wing. For the plan to work it was essential that the BEF hold its position between Lanrezac’s Fifth Army (to the east of the BEF) and a new Sixth Army that was being assembled to the west and north. On 30 August French telegraphed Joffre with the news that the BEF’s retreat would continue:
I feel it very necessary to impress upon you that the British Army cannot under any circumstances take up a position in the front line for at least ten days. I require men and guns to make good casualties which have not been properly estimated owing to continual retirement behind fighting rearguards. You will thus understand that I cannot meet your wishes to fill the gap between the Fifth and Sixth Armies.26
Not only did this undermine Joffre’s strategy, but it also revealed a worrying despondency in French’s hopes for the BEF. In an exchange of telegrams with Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, French outlined his fears, while Kitchener encouraged him to ‘conform to the plans of General Joffre for the conduct of the campaign’.27 Kitchener was sufficiently concerned at French’s state of mind that on the evening of 31 August he obtained Cabinet authorization to travel to France to stiffen his resolve. At 2 a.m. Kitchener boarded the boat train from Charing Cross, a destroyer in readiness for a fast night sailing to Le Havre.