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The Battle of Mons (Flemish name for Mons is Bergen) 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 Casteau, a small village along the Chausée de Bruxelles on the edge of Mons. Major Thomas Bridges was in command of C Squadron, Royal Dragoon Guards, and he gave the order to open fire on the German cavalry (after a brief cavalry chase) causing them to fall back. Drummer Edward Thomas got the honour of firing the first British rifle shot of the war, while Captain Hornby who led the charge got the honour of killing the first German by sword. Thomas, who survived the war, later transfered to the Machine Gun Corps and was awarded the Military Medal.

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 shallow 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 First 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.

The 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (UK) defended the northern approaches to Mons. The battalion defended a swing bridge located at this point and a railroad bridge further west. This bridge was opened, cutting the Mons-Brussels road. At the swing bridge the British had held the Germans to a standstill. A German soldier, August Neiemeier, swam the canal under British rifle fire and operated the machinery to close the bridge. While he died after closing the bridge, his heroic effort enabled the Germans to cross the bridge. This bridge was later demolished and a modern concrete one stands in its place.

A few hundred yards west, the machine gun section of the 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers (UK) provided heavy weapons support to the battalion's positions. The section took heavy losses from German rifle. Lt. Dease, the only unwounded member of the section began firing one of the machine guns. He was soon wounded five times and evacuated to the battalion aid station where he died. A wounded gunner, Private Sidney Godley, operated the other gun, covering the battalion's withdrawal. Before he was overwhelmed and taken prisoner by the enemy, Private Godley destroyed the section's guns. For their actions, Lt. Dease and Pvt. Godley were awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour in the British army, and the first awarded during the war. The railway bridge they were defending was demolished at a replica stands in its original place, there is a memorial comemorating the Fuslier's gallant deeds.

At 0800 on the 23rd of August, D Company came under German fire from the village of Obourg. Their attackers, the 31st Infantry Regiment, suffered huge losses but were soon reinforced by the 85th Infantry and 86th Fusilier Regiments. These three regiments comprised the German's 18th Division, a unit made up of divisions from Northern Germany. The 18th Division engaged the British front while using the unguarded canal lock, located about 1 km east of the Gare, to cross cavalry. By midday, the British began a withdrawal. To assist them, they requested reinforcement from the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish. Reinforcements arrived under fire. By that time, however, the German 17th Division had crossed the canal in strength at Havre and moved along the Havre-Mons road folding up the British right flank. At the Obourg Gare, an unknown soldier sacrificed himself to cover the retreat of his unit. Remaining in the burning station building, the soldier engaged the advancing German troops with rifle fire. His sacrifice allowed the remainder of D and B Companies to retreat to St Symphorien cemetery on the outskirts of Mons.

At 1400, 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 II Corps under Smith-Dorrien falling back to Le Cateau and I Corps under Douglas Haig to Landrecies. 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.

Fusilier Hauptmann Walter Bloem wrote in his diary after the battle:

“…the men all chilled to the bone, almost too exhausted to move and with the depressing consciousness of defeat weighing heavily upon them. A bad defeat, there can be no gainsaying it… we had been badly beaten, and by the English – by the English we had so laughed at a few hours before.”

Soldiers of the BEF who fought at Mons later became eligible for a campaign medal, the Mons Star. Kaiser Wilhelm's 'Order of the Day' on August 19 1914 was for "my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English; walk over General French's contemptible little Army." This led to the British "Tommies" of the BEF proudly labelling themselves "The Old Contemptibles".

The Germans made the St Symphorien cemetery after the Battle of Mons. The site was an existing cemetery but they created an artificial mound in the centre of the circular burial ground. On the highest point of the mound, they erected a grey granite obelisk, 23 metres high, 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". They originally buried 245 German and 188 British soldiers here. Another 27 British graves were brought after the Armistice. Subsequently additional British, Canadian and German graves were moved here from other burial grounds. There are now over 200, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, over 60 are unidentified and special memorials are 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 enemy in Obourg Churchyard, whose graves could not be found. This cemetery contains the graves of two soldiers deemed to be the first (Pte. J. Parr, Middlesex Regt., 21st August, 1914) and the last (Pte. G. L. Price, Canadian Infantry, 11th November, 1918) Commonwealth soldiers to be killed during the 1914-18 War. A tablet in the cemetery sets out the gift of the land by Jean Houzeau de Lehaie. Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The commune of Mons has created a battlefield tour. Maps and guidebooks can be obtained from the Tourist Office in the Grand Place.

See Also

• Order of battle at Mons

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).
• Mons 1914 : The BEF's Tactical Triumph (Campaign) by David Lomas (Osprey Publishing)
• The Advance from Mons 1914: The Experiences of a German Infantry Officer by Walter Bloem (Helion and Company Ltd) Published October 2004. ISBN 1874622574

External links

• A source for Kaiser Wilhelm's Order of the Day
• Victoria Cross Reference

• Battles of the Western Front (World War I)