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© Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com CHALLENGE OF BATTLE THE REAL STORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN 1914 Adrian Gilbert © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com CONTENTS List of Maps 7 List of Images 8 Introduction 10 Prologue: First Blood 15 PART ONE: ADVANCE TO BATTLE 1 Opening the War Book 20 2 Across the Channel 30 3 The March to Mons 40 4 The Kaiser’s Army 53 5 Encounter at Mons 63 PART TWO: THE GREAT RETREAT 6 Disengagement 82 7 Le Cateau: the Decision to Fight 97 8 Le Cateau: the Defeat 116 9 Failures of Command 132 10 The Retreat Continues 143 PART THREE: FROM THE MARNE TO THE AISNE 11 Turn of the Tide 154 12 Battle on the Aisne: Assault 164 13 Battle on the Aisne: Entrenchment 180 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com PART FOUR: DECISION AT YPRES 14 The Opening Moves 200 15 Storm over Ypres 213 16 Battle in the South 227 17 Ypres: the Test 240 Epilogue: Death of the Old Army 261 Appendix A: BEF Order of Battle 1914 264 Appendix B: British Army Organization 269 Acknowledgements 271 Source Notes 272 Bibliography 290 Index 297 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com LIST OF MAPS France and Belgium, 1914 38 The Battle of Mons, 23 August 1914 72 The Battle of Le Cateau, 26 August 1914 100 The Battle of the Aisne, 15 September 1914 168 The Battle of Ypres, 25 October 1914 221 The Battle of Armentières-La Bassee, 19–27 October 1914 229 7 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com LIST OF IMAGES 1. Field Marshal Sir John French. (IWM, Q 69149) 2. Lieutenant-General Douglas Haig with I Corps senior officers, 1914. (IWM, Q 54992) 3. General Smith-Dorrien (along with Forestier-Walker; chief of staff II corps), ceremonial dress. (IWM, Q 66151) 4. Cavalry from the 18th Hussars question locals before the battle of Mons. (IWM, Q 83053) 5. 4th Fusiliers, Grand Place, Mons, 22 August 1914. (IWM, Q 70071) 6 Private Carter, 4th Middlesex Regiment Royal, Mons, 22 August 1914. (IWM, Q 70070) 7. The 1st Middlesex come under shrapnel fire, Marne, 8 September 1914. (IWM, Q 51489) 8. Officers of the 1st Cameronians confer, Le Cateau, 26 August 1914. (IWM, Q 51480) 9. British cavalry (5th Brigade) during the retreat from Mons. (IWM, Q 60698) 10. Pontoon bridge over the River Aisne, September 1914. (IWM, Q 54988) 11. Naval armoured car, Menin Road, 14 October. (IWM, Q 57194) 12. British wounded loaded onto ambulance, Gheluvelt, October 1914. (IWM, Q 57215) 13. German prisoner brought in by Scots Guards, Gheluvelt, October 1914. (IWM, Q 57253) 8 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com LIST OF IMAGES 14. Indian troops man defences near Wytschaete, October 1914. (IWM, Q 56325) 15. J Battery RHA, deployed at Wytschaete, 31 October 1914. (IWM, Q 56307) 16. 1st Cameronians, Cabbage Patch trench, La Boutillerie, 5 November 1914. (IWM, Q 51524) 17. 18-pdr gun crew, Armentières, 7 December 1914. (IWM, Q 51542) 18. 1st Cameronians, Houplines trenches, December 1914. (IWM, Q 51550) 19. 11th Hussars machine-gun section, winter of 1914–15. (IWM, Q 51194) 20. 2nd Scots Guards digging trenches, Armentières, late 1914. (IWM, Q 57380) 9 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com INTRODUCTION ‘In every respect the Expeditionary Force of 1914 was incomparably the best trained, best organised, and best equipped British Army that ever went forth to war.’1 With these words Brigadier-General J. E. Edmonds summed up the British Expeditionary Force in his introduction to the Official History of the First World War. Edmonds was the editor of this multi-volume series on the army’s contribution to the war, an epic undertaking not completed until 1948. The first two volumes, published in 1922 and 1925 respectively and directly compiled by Edmonds, described the army in the 1914 campaign, from the opening encounters at Mons and Le Cateau, through the great retreat and advance to the Aisne to the desperate battles in defence of Ypres. These initial works swiftly established a commanding presence as the definitive account of British Army operations in 1914, casting a long shadow over subsequent histories of the campaign. James Edmonds was a gifted multi-linguist whose intellectual abilities saw him pass out top at the Staff College, Camberley in 1898. As the 4th Division’s senior staff officer in 1914, he took part in the opening phase of the war, but the strain of work led to a breakdown in September 1914 and reassignment to GHQ for the remainder of the conflict. In 1919 Edmonds took over as head of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, then engaged in the preparation of the history of the war. Subsequent volumes of the Official History became the subject of fierce controversy, but those devoted to 1914 were excluded from these 10 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com INTRODUCTION debates. Yet, close examination of the 1914 campaign reveals flaws in Edmond’s account that have distorted our view of the army in this period. Tribute must be paid, however, to the quality and depth of research conducted by Edmonds and his small team of historians. This will be evident to anyone who has examined the files in the National Archive at Kew and read the correspondence with key individuals, after- action reports and interviews with front-line officers. And yet, the question remains: what material was included and how was it used? In some respects, Edmonds was producing his work too soon after the end of conflict – with little time for reflection – and he was certainly too close to its major figures, having spent most of the war in their company. Despite his personal, often waspish attitudes towards senior colleagues, he was reluctant to belittle them in public. And as a regular officer with a lifetime’s attachment to the army, he was understandably protective of it from the threat of outside criticism. The 1914 volumes comprised a chronicle of operations, with the emphasis on the actions of individual regiments, battalions or batteries. This had the tendency of turning the work into an enormous, composite regimental history, with limited room for historical analysis and the development of wider themes, leading the military theorist Basil Liddell Hart to quip that it was, ‘“official” but not “history”’.2 Despite this limitation, Edmonds intended the Official History to have a definite instructional purpose. In a letter of 1932 he wrote: ‘I want the young officers of the army who are to occupy the high places later on to see the mistakes of their predecessors, yet without telling the public too much.’3 Consequently, where there was criticism, it was muted and oblique, and for most readers, all but invisible. Considering the 1914 volumes it is possible to see significant instances of evasion and omission, and, on occasion, outright distortion. A striking example of this can be found in the chapters dealing with the battle of Le Cateau on 26 August. The Official History transformed a British tactical defeat into a successful delaying action fought against great odds. Those aspects of the engagement that raised uncomfortable truths were conveniently forgotten. The virtual destruction of the 1st King’s Own, from the 12th Brigade, was treated as bad luck rather than bad judgment, and the knowledge that the brigade’s retreat across the Warnelle ravine was unauthorized 11 © Osprey Publishing • www.ospreypublishing.com CHALLENGE OF BATTLE and against the wishes of the divisional commander was ignored. Also overlooked was the rout of part of the 8th Brigade during the general withdrawal from the battlefield later in the day. There may have been some coded disapproval of the inept deployment of the 5th Division, although the passive voice adopted by Edmonds would seem to lay the blame elsewhere. But most damning to the veracity of the Official History’s account was the unsupported and disingenuous assertion that British forces ‘had turned upon an enemy of at least twice their strength’.4 Other examples of the Official History’s coy attitude to British embarrassments included the discrete veiling of incidents such as the attempted surrender of two infantry battalions at St Quentin on 27 August and the collapse of the 1st West Yorkshire Regiment in the face of a German attack at Paissy on 20 September. These shortcomings would be of less importance had the Official History not been so influential in defining the outlook of subsequent histories of the war. Although the analysis of the British high command before and during 1914 has been the subject of much illuminating research in recent years,5 books published on the army at the tactical level – which include most popular accounts – have remained in the hands of those following the line set by Edmonds. Indeed, rather than challenging the Official History they have embellished it for greater effect. To return to the example of Le Cateau, the historian John Terraine described it as ‘one of the most remarkable British feats of arms of the whole war’.6 George Cassar went half-a-step further: ‘The stand of 4th Division and the II Corps in the delaying action at Le Cateau ranks as possibly the most brilliant exploit of the British Army during the whole war.’7 A more moderate assessment of the battle by Antony Bird still maintained that the British commander had inflicted a ‘smashing blow’ on the Germans.8 British histories of the 1914 campaign typically adopt the emotionally comforting paradigm of the plucky Briton giving the overbearing foreign bully a bloody nose. Histories of previous wars helped establish this national military stereotype, whether the small band of English archers taking on the overwhelming mass of French knights at Agincourt, or Wellington’s steadfast infantry saving the day at Waterloo.