From Mons To Ypres With General French; A Personal Narrative [Illustrated Edition]

Frederic Abernethy Coleman

• Publisher: Lucknow Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781782890720
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Prima guerra mondiale

When the British troops advanced into Belgium in 1914 to face the German foe, it was with a sure and steady confidence in the outcome. These same men trudged back, grumbling, along the same path toward France as the full weight of the German steamroller advanced toward the numerically small British Expeditionary Force. At Mons they turned at bay and gave the Germans a tough time, but little more than a check as two corps could not hold up two huge armies. As the static battlelines began to coalesce, from Switzerland to the English channel, the fierce fighting flared up for any advantageous town, and none more so than Ypres. The first battle of Ypres was a bitter, bloody affair which ended the German advance but at terrible cost to the last of the regular soldiers of the B.E.F.Along with these hardened professional soldiers went a handful of amateurs determined to help; these members of the Royal Automobile Club with their motor cars were attached to various headquarters to aid in transmission of orders. As the eyes and ears of the army, the two cavalry brigade were in need of the most help from the R.A.C. volunteers as they ranged far and wide. The author was attached to the cavalry during retreat from Mons to the first battle of Ypres; he admired and had grown fond of the men with whom he had shared much danger. His post enabled him to meet a great number of the high-ranking officers, and in his capacity as messenger would have been better informed than most. His book is excellently written and deserves reading and re-reading.Author — Frederic Abernethy Coleman 1876-1931Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in New York, Dodd, Mead and company, 1916.Original Page Count – xvii and 381 pages.Illustrations – 50 illustrations.

FROM MONS TO YPRES WITH FRENCH.

CHAPTER I.

Arrival in France—Le Cateau and Sir John French's Headquarters—The retreat begun—A hospital in Landrecies—The cavalry fight at Audregnies—Sordét's Cavalry—A narrow escape in Haussy—In the midst of the retiring army—Refugees—German prisoners—Le Cateau on the morning of the great battle—General Smith-Dorrien at Bertry—The night fight in Landrecies—A lost supply train—Back to Noyon

ON a pleasant August evening in 1914 I embarked on a troopship at Southampton. I was one of twenty-five members of the Royal Automobile Club who had each volunteered to take his motor-car and proceed at once to the General Headquarters of Sir John French’s Army. That Army, the original British Expeditionary Force, was in France or Belgium, we knew not exactly where. It was generally anticipated by all and sundry that, if not actually fighting on that Friday evening, August 21st, it would soon be engaged with the Germans advancing towards France through poor Belgium.

The day before, Brussels had fallen. At the time I left Southampton the British 1st Corps and 2nd Corps, with a Cavalry Division, were in Belgium entrenching a position from Condé east to Mons and on to the eastward as far as Binche, on the road to Charleroi.

The twenty-five volunteer motorists who composed our party had been sent officially from London by the War Office to drive officers of the General Headquarters Staff at the Front. Our troopship arrived in Havre at an early hour on Saturday, the 22nd, but owing to lack of facilities for disembarkation of the cars night had closed in before the little band was ashore and ready to proceed across the North of France to the Belgian Line. Sunday morning the twenty-five cars were en route for Amiens. Three of the party ran ahead with General T. D’O. Snow, commanding the 4th Division, and his staff, and the remainder lunched at Neufchatel, and reached Amiens at tea-time. Here the majority of the party remained, to be assigned on the morrow to various duties. Six of us pushed on that night to Le Cateau. Arriving after dark, we found that Sir John French’s Headquarters were in a château near the town, and G.H.Q., as General Headquarters proper was termed, was located in a large school in the centre of the town. The drive had been long and dusty. After a late and meagre dinner at the Hotel du Nord, a hostel of modest pretensions, we spread our blankets underneath the trees of the schoolyard and were soon wrapped in sound slumber.

That Saturday and Sunday had seen part of the German invading army under Von Buelow take Charleroi from the French 5th Army and win the crossing of the Sambre. The Sunday had seen the first clash between the German and British armies. By the middle of the day the first great German attack against the British force had developed, and Von Kluck, with his German 1st Army, was outnumbering and, at one or two points, beating back the British troops before night had fallen. On Sunday night Sir John French had learned that the retirement of the French 5th Army on his right had rendered the Mons line untenable, and orders had already been given to fall back.

The great retreat had begun.

I awoke at daybreak on Monday, the 24th, to the sound of the guns. Drummond’s 19th Infantry Brigade had disentrained at Valenciennes the night before. A new line from Jenlain, a few miles from Valenciennes, eastward through Bavai to Maubeuge was to be our new front, and we were retiring under cover of an attack by our 1st Corps.

I was asked to take two medical officers and two male nurses from Le Cateau to Landrecies. British wounded were being hourly brought into the town, where French wounded had arrived in some numbers already. At the door of one of the improvised hospitals, formerly a school, I had a chat with a wounded gunner. He was a corporal in one of the batteries attached to Haig’s 1st Corps, and had a shell sliver through his right knee, another through his arm, and a flesh wound in his hand. He had little idea where he had been except that the fighting had been in Belgium. Four of our batteries of field-guns had been placed near each other on a hill, and the men told that the position was to be held at all costs. The German infantry and some of their cavalry had come within range and been badly cut up until the German guns got the range of our batteries. “Their shells burst well up in the air,” he said, “throwing out dense clouds of smoke in three colours. The fumes of the shells were overpowering and bullets the size of marbles rained all about. Two of our lot were killed and thirty wounded while we were serving the guns. Finally, we had to leave the position, taking away our wounded. We had to abandon the guns, as the enemy’s fire was too fierce to allow of our removing them.”

High explosive shell made him and his fellows “go hot all over“ when struck. These pieces of shell burnt him when they struck him, he said, a quick burning pain following the contact with the hot bits of projectile.

In the afternoon I ran from Le Cateau to Inchy, on the Cambrai road, to pick up General J. A. L. Haldane, who was in command of the 10th Brigade. While waiting in a lane by the road I spent an interesting hour watching a Battalion of Dublin Fusiliers, a part of the newly-arrived 4th Division, which had that day dis-entrained at Le Cateau, break camp in the adjacent field. Their eagerness to engage the enemy and their thirst for information were both great. The tension was high, for the significance of the French retirement on the right of the British Force was sinking in. I encountered a number of English officers from time to time who openly reviled a retirement the strategical needs of which had not been explained to them, the plain necessity of it not as yet having become apparent.

I was back and forth between Inchy and Le Cateau several times during the afternoon. General Henry H. Wilson used my car to drive slowly and carefully over the road in order to reconnoitre the surrounding country. He explained to me his dislike of the best available ground in that vicinity as a defensive position.

During the afternoon stories of the day’s fighting had begun to come into Headquarters. Le Cateau had seen but few wounded men until that Monday evening. In spite of the exaggeration which accompanied the tales of casualty from the Mons and Condé fighting, I gathered that Haig’s Corps had effected a successful retirement and reached the protection of the guns of Maubeuge on the right, whilst Smith-Dorrien’s 2nd Corps had retired cleverly during the afternoon and reached the vicinity of Jenlain. The retirement as a whole, therefore, difficult as it was, had been carried out admirably. A jumble of reports poured in regarding an action at Audregnies, where rumour persisted that the 2nd Cavalry Brigade under General de Lisle had been well-nigh wiped out. One dust-covered subaltern told me that the Brigade was going out of the village in column of sections when it was attacked by German infantry, with the result that but 240 men out of the original 1,500 remained. Ninety of the 9th Lancers, eighty of the 4th Dragoon Guards, and seventy of the 28th Hussars were, he said, all that was left of the command. Close on the heels of this first report was a more intelligible and infinitely more reliable one, brought in by Captain Francis Grenfell, of the 9th Lancers, who had been shot twice through the leg. He told me that the cavalry had charged a German infantry division well supplied with machine-guns, and never reached a point closer than 800 yards to them. Grenfell and some of his Lancers had that day saved the guns of the 119th Battery of R.F.A., for which he was subsequently awarded the V.C.

I spent several hours gathering a coherent story of that fight at Audregnies, which had covered the retirement of Sir Charles Fergusson’s 5th Division as he was falling back not far south of the canal line between Condé and Mons. The Germans were working round the 5th Division left. Unless they were checked it appeared to Fergusson that his force would be cut off. General Allenby with his Cavalry Division was on the left rear of the 5th Division. When Allenby received word of Fergusson’s danger the 2nd Cavalry Brigade was in and near the little village of Audregnies. The German infantry could be seen coming south in considerable numbers and heading straight for the town. A couple of squadrons of the 18th Hussars were a bit north of Audregnies and to the east of it under the shelter of a railway bank. The 9th Lancers and 4th Dragoon Guards were in and back of the village proper. Away on the left, to the west of Audregnies, was the 1st Cavalry Brigade, the 11th Hussars occupying a walled farm practically due west of the village, and the Queen’s Bays in support a bit to the south. Still further west, in Baisieux and in front of it, was General Hubert Gough’s 3rd Cavalry Brigade, which had to deal with another German infantry column coming down from the north.

Thus the 2nd, 1st, and 3rd Cavalry Brigades were facing the German advance, which was in two distinct sections. The Germans appeared to be in such numbers in front of Audregnies that de Lisle gave orders to Colonel David Campbell, commanding the 9th Lancers, to hold the Germans at all costs and to charge if necessary. One of our batteries was not far from the village, and the noise made by the German shells searching for it, and by our guns firing a reply, was incessant.

By some slight misunderstanding of the verbal order given by de Lisle, Colonel Campbell took it that he was to charge the enemy at once. The 9th Lancers pushed on through the village and galloped down a lane which converged into an open field in plain sight of the enemy. When the 9th Lancers had passed through the lane as fast as they could get through it, for it was narrow, tortuous, and thick with dust, they had not far to ride across the field when they were confronted with a stout wire fence. The 4th Dragoon Guards were coming on after them. The enemy’s shell fire was at once directed at the approaching horsemen. The German infantry opened with machine gun and rifle fire at points variously estimated at from 500 to 800 yards distant. There was no getting across the wire. The only thing left to be done was to wheel to the right and gallop for safety to the eastward across the German infantry front, thus affording the enemy such a target as infantry rarely obtains. Swinging around to the right past a sugar mill, then out from the momentary protection of its adjacent piles of slack and cinders, they kept on to the eastward, then turned south, some seeking the cover of the railway embankment, others making for a cemetery which lay to the east of Audregnies, or scattering to the high ground to the south. Captain Francis Grenfell, who had been wounded, found himself under the railway bank with what he was convinced was the sole surviving remnant of the 9th Lancers. In fact, it was not until next morning that it was realised how many had escaped. The 9th Lancers lost in killed, wounded, and missing about seventy-five all told. The 4th Dragoon Guards’ casualty list included two officers and fifty-four men.

The great value of the Audregnies charge was that it accomplished the object in view. It stopped the advance of the German infantry and allowed the 5th Division opportunity to retire southward. The German line did not make a further move forward from that position for at least four or five hours after the charge. The troopers themselves, as more than one of them told me, “could not see what we were charging either going or coming.” The field across which they had to gallop was so plastered by all sorts of fire that to do more than simply gallop and keep clear of fallen and falling comrades was all that the men could do. De Lisle issued a special Brigade Order at Le Plessis on August 28th, which read as follows:—

“I wish to express to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade my extreme pride and satisfaction with their conduct in the severe engagement at Audregnies on Monday, August 24th. The fight was necessary to save the 5th Division from an organised counter-attack during their retirement, and the object was achieved by the steady and gallant conduct of the Brigade. Major-General Sir Charles Fergusson, commanding the 5th Division, thanked me personally for saving his Division, adding that but for the Cavalry Brigade his Division would have been destroyed to the last man. I especially wish to commend the true cavalry spirit of the 9th Lancers in daring to charge unbroken infantry in order to save neighbouring troops, and that of the 4th Dragoon Guards in the effective support given without hesitation or thought of danger. I intend to bring to the notice of high authority how greatly I value the devotion of my Brigade. This to be read to all units on parade to-morrow.”

I was first shown this order by one of the troopers of the 9th Lancers who had been with Captain Grenfell in the charge. He had become possessed of one of the original copies of the order, and proudly showed it to me as a souvenir of the event. “It was hell, that charge,” he said with a grin, “but I suppose it had to be done. Anyway, to read over that order made it seem to have been worthwhile.”

I slept in my car on Monday night, and before dawn on Tuesday, the 25th, was aroused from pleasant dreams by a sharp request to get under way. The driver who left his car opposite the door of G.H.Q. and slumbered in his seat was apparently considered fair game for early risers. Before I was thoroughly awake I was tearing off to the north-east along the Roman road that led to Bavai. The Forest of Mormal looked cool and refreshing in the early light as we spun past it along the dusty road. I was told that General Smith-Dorrien’s 2nd Corps, the 4th Division, and the 19th Brigade were to retire on Le Cateau, and General Haig’s 1st Corps was to move south on the eastern side of the Forest of Mormal to a position about Landrecies and Maroilles. As we neared Bavai troops were already on the road. After delivering a message we turned and were soon back in Le Cateau.

Following the example of a couple of Tommies in the stableyard of the school, I negotiated a bath under a water-tap and treated myself to a shave. I then departed in search of breakfast. I found the Hôtels du Mouton Blanc and de France completely sold out of food, and in but little better case for drinkables. A glass of coffee and a bottle of beer were all I could forage for breakfast. The Royal Automobile Club drivers had arrived in the thick of things and been put so continuously to work that no one, they least of all, had thought of how they were to be rationed. Events of such great import were crowding so fast on one another that so trivial a matter as breakfast or dinner was not to be worried about.

The lady of the house wherein I had been billeted volunteered to wash some clothing for me. I accordingly left a goodly proportion of my wardrobe in her charge, where, so far as I know, it may be still. $y eight o’clock all was bustle and movement. I drove General Henry Wilson to Sir John French’s Headquarters and sat for a time listening to the German guns. British losses of the day before were reported to have been heavy—heavier than, later, they really proved to be. A staff officer told me that the Worcester regiment had been practically wiped out. A feeling of pessimism was creeping over us and becoming universal. Even General Wilson, imperturbable and invariably of good cheer, said to me, “We are not doing any too well!“ General officers, of whom there seemed to be an unusual number about, all wore a worried look on their faces.

The early morning was hot, and the sun’s fierce glare promised a scorching day. The British troops, tired, had far to go, with no chance to obtain needed rest before their start. There was a general lack of understanding as to why we should be leaving the line Jenlain-Bavai-Maubeuge. Few of us were cognisant of any details of the situation. The inhabitants of Le Cateau were very badly worried. Stories became circulated throughout the countryside to the effect that the British had suffered a crushing defeat and were being driven in full flight before a remorseless enemy. Tales of Uhlan atrocities were to be heard on every side. The French folk had seen the British Army marching northward in the full pride of its strength, and had wrapped themselves in quiet satisfaction, confident that their Allies from Albion would save them from the horrors of invasion. The British retirement came to them at first as an unbelievable thing. Before midday on that Tuesday, driven by mad rumours of any and all sorts, the whole community was in full flight to the southward.

Between eight and nine o’clock Le Cateau was treated to the sight of long lines of Sordét’s French Cavalry, 14,000 of whom were moving from our right to our left rear. I was not very favourably impressed by their appearance, although I heard that in the earliest part of the campaign they had used their sinister-looking black lances to good effect. From their yellow helmets and blue tunics to their red breeches they appeared more campaign-soiled than one would have thought likely at so early a stage of the proceedings.

The Duke of Westminster drove up in his big car, and we chatted for a few moments. Interesting tales of a car-load of Germans shot to bits and a German aeroplane brought down at Dinant helped to pass a cheerful few minutes. As we stood in the headquarters yard young Robert Rothschild strolled up in the uniform of a French Staff officer. Colonel Seely, ex-Minister of War, wandered about, apparently waiting for someone, and looking lonesome.

Before ten o’clock I had a run to the village of Croix, on the Bavai road, with Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Loch of the Grenadier Guards, who was attached to Sir John French’s Staff. Running along the roads in that part of the world was getting to be quite a business at this time. French cavalry, British cavalry, British infantry, and no end of supply columns monopolised every square inch of the roadway. French lines of vedettes crossing the hills stretched away to right and left. A German aeroplane sailed by us and over Le Cateau, and then sailed back again. Rifle fire from the Tommies rose and fell in waves of sound as the graceful monoplane soared high out of range in the clear sunshine.

Seeker, one of my R.A.C. comrades, came into Le Cateau from Haussy, a village north of Solesmes, with the report that the Germans were there. At six o’clock in the morning he arrived in Haussy from Jenlain. H...