Battle of Mons
The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the Allies clashed with Germany on the French borders. At Mons, the British Army attempted to hold the line of the Mons–Condé Canal against the advancing German 1st Army. Although the British fought well and inflicted disproportionate casualties on the numerically superior Germans, they were eventually forced to retreat due both to the greater strength of the Germans and the sudden retreat of the French Fifth Army, which exposed the British right flank. Though initially planned as a simple tactical withdrawal and executed in good order, the British retreat from Mons lasted for two weeks and took the BEF to the outskirts of Paris before it counter-attacked in concert with the French, at the Battle of the Marne.
For the 1918 and 1944 battles, see Second Battle of Mons and Battle of the Mons Pocket.Background[edit]
Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914 and on 9 August, the BEF began embarking for France.[1] Unlike Continental European armies, the BEF in 1914 was exceedingly small. At the beginning of the war, the German and French armies numbered well over a million men each, divided into eight and five field armies respectively; the BEF had c. 80,000 soldiers in two corps of entirely professional soldiers made up of long-service volunteer soldiers and reservists. The BEF was probably the best trained and most experienced of the European armies of 1914.[2] British training emphasised rapid-fire marksmanship and the average British soldier was able to hit a man-sized target fifteen times a minute, at a range of 300 yards (270 m) with his Lee–Enfield rifle.[3] This ability to generate a high volume of accurate rifle-fire played an important role in the BEF's battles of 1914.[4]
The Battle of Mons took place as part of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the advancing German armies clashed with the advancing Allied armies along the Franco-Belgian and Franco-German borders. The BEF was stationed on the left of the Allied line, which stretched from Alsace-Lorraine in the east to Mons and Charleroi in southern Belgium.[5][6] The British position on the French flank meant that it stood in the path of the German 1st Army, the outermost wing of the massive "right hook" intended by the Schlieffen Plan (a combination of the Aufmarsch I West and Aufmarsch II West deployment plans), to pursue the Allied armies after defeating them on the frontier and force them to abandon northern France and Belgium or risk destruction.[7]
The British reached Mons on 22 August.[8] In the afternoon of that same day arrived a message from the French Fifth Army commander, General Charles Lanrezac, sent to Field Marshal Sir John French requesting the BEF to turn right to attack von Bülow's advancing flank. The French Fifth Army, located on the right of the BEF, was engaged with the German 2nd and 3rd armies at the Battle of Charleroi. French refused, instead agreeing to hold the line of the Condé–Mons–Charleroi Canal for twenty-four hours, to prevent the German 1st Army from threatening the French left flank. The British spent the day digging in along the canal.[9] [10]
Legacy[edit]
The Battle of Mons has attained an almost mythic status. In British historical writing, it has a reputation as an unlikely victory against overwhelming odds, similar to the English victory at the Battle of Agincourt.[71] Mons gained two myths, the first being the a miraculous tale that the Angels of Mons—angelic warriors sometimes described as phantom longbowmen from Agincourt—had saved the British Army by halting the German troops. The second one was the Hound of Mons, which alleged a German scientist engineered a hellhound to be unleashed on British soldiers at night.[72][73]
Soldiers of the BEF who fought at Mons became eligible for a campaign medal, the 1914 Star, often colloquially called the Mons Star, honouring troops who had fought in Belgium or France 5 August – 22 November 1914. On 19 August 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm allegedly issued an Order of the Day which read in part: ". . . my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English; walk over Field Marshal French's contemptible little Army." This led to the British "Tommies" of the BEF proudly labelling themselves "The Old Contemptibles". No evidence of the Order of the Day has been found in German archives and the ex-Kaiser denied giving it. According to the controversial book Falsehood in War-Time, an investigation conducted by General Frederick Maurice traced the origins of the Order to the British GHQ, where it had been concocted for propaganda purposes.[74]
The Germans established the St Symphorien Military Cemetery as a memorial to the German and British dead. On a mound in the centre of the cemetery, a grey granite obelisk 7 metres (23 ft) tall was built with a German inscription: "In memory of the German and English soldiers who fell in the actions near Mons on the 23rd and 24th August 1914."[75] Originally, 245 German and 188 British soldiers were interred at the cemetery. More British, Canadian and German graves were moved to the cemetery from other burial grounds and more than 500 soldiers were eventually buried in St. Symphorien, of which over 60 were unidentified. Special memorials were erected to five soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment believed to be buried in unnamed graves. Other special memorials record the names of four British soldiers, buried by the Germans in Obourg Churchyard, whose graves could not be found. St. Symphorien cemetery also contains the graves of the two soldiers believed to be the first (Private John Parr, 4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, 21 August 1914) and the last (Private Gordon Price, 28th Canadian Infantry Regiment, 11 November 1918) Commonwealth soldiers to be killed during the First World War. A tablet in the cemetery sets out the gift of the land by Jean Houzeau de Lehaie.[76] A bronze tablet was erected on a wall of Obourg railway station, commemorating British soldiers who lost their lives around Obourg including an unnamed soldier who is said to have stayed behind at the cost of his own life, perched atop the station, in order to cover his withdrawing comrades.[77] The small portion of the wall supporting the plaque was preserved when the rest of the building was demolished in 1980.[78]