Battle of Mons

The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I. Following the surrender of the Liège forts by the Belgian army on the 16th of August, the Germans continued advancing towards Paris in accordance with the Schlieffen Plan. The remainder of the Belgian army began to retreat towards the BEF, which was advancing to attack the German forces. Meanwhile the French were being pushed back and slaughtered on the southern end of the front, and were unable to assist the Belgians. So the weight of the German army fell on the small British force. The BEF had advanced into Belgium on the left of the French Fifth Army and took up position on a 20 mile (32 km) front along the Mons-Condé Canal on August 22. When the Fifth Army was defeated in the Battle of Charleroi, the BEF commander, General Sir John French, agreed to hold his position for 24 hours.

At 6 am, on August 23, the advanced guard of General Alexander von Kluck's German First Army, arrived at the edge of Mons. The B Company of the 4th Middlesex Regiment, opened fire on the German cavalry, causing them to fall back.

The BEF comprised four regular army divisions arranged in the I Corps and II Corps. The British were experienced and professional soldiers, capable of producing rapid, accurate fire with their Lee-Enfield rifles at the rate of 15 rounds a minute. Hurriedly they prepared deep defensive positions.

At 9 am, eight German battalions, aided by artillery fire, advanced against the 4th Middlesex & 4th Royal Fusiliers in the "parade ground formation" and were decimated. So intense and continuous was the shooting that the Germans believed they were facing machine guns, but at the time the British had only two machine guns per battalion—nearly all the damage was done by riflemen.

Soon afterwards, the rest of the German 1st army arrived and matters worsened for the Allies: Artillery fire was forcing the British from their positions and a German advance was looming. Yet they still put up strong resistance. The British suffered 1,600 casualties but morale remained high and the troops believed they could continue to hold off the German advance.

At 2 pm, the British began to see they were being overwhelmed. After hearing of the French army's retreat to the south and seeing the Belgian army had retreated, they realized their right flank was exposed. So the BEF followed its allies and retreated from Mons, the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, in a classic rearguard action held nine German battalions while suffering severe casualties until being cut off and finally overwhelmed on the 27th at Etreux, only 240 men surviving. But they secured the unmolested withdrawal of their division, the British falling back to Le Cateau. The retreat would continue for 14 days, taking the BEF close to the outskirts of Paris.

Newspaper accounts of the battle and retreat resulted in a rapid rise in army recruitment in Britain. By April 1915 rumours were circulating which claimed a "miracle" or the intervention of the "Angels of Mons" had aided British troops.

Following Mons, Kaiser Willhelm ordered his general staff to "Destroy Britain's contemptible little army!". This led the British "Tommys" of the BEF to proudly label themselves, "The Old Contemptibles".

References

• Military Heritage did a feature of the Battle of Mons and the Angels of Mons (Robert Barr Smith, Military Heritage, August 2005, Volume 7, No. 1, p. 14, p. 16, p. 17, and p. 76).