Dimming of the Day

9 Foreword length of the Mons-Conde Canal on 22 August to the left of their French allies, both armies poised to prevent the German advance into Belgium and France. It was here that the Schlieffen Plan, guaranteed to finish hostilities within six weeks, would be tested – and found wanting. There had been what the military historian, John Keegan, in his The First World War (1998) described as ‘a curious interval of calm’, almost three weeks of inactivity following the onset of war. This inaction was unusual and, from a purely English viewpoint, a further reinforcement of domestic composure or, more specifically, three cricketing weekends. There followed a grim irony. For about the last time in this or any other future war, there was a straightforward old-style gun battle which the British won hands down. This was the First Battle of Mons. Outnumbered by six divisions to four the BEF, which Kaiser scornfully dismissed as ‘a contemptible little army,’ destroyed the German opposition. With most of them hard-bitten veterans of the South African War and with extra pay having motivated them to achieve a grade of marksmanship, they ensconced themselves in the industrial properties around the canal and utilised their superior Lee-Enfield rifles to lethal effect. So damaging were their ‘fifteen rounds a minute’ salvoes that the dismayed German troops thought that they were suffering from extensive machine-gun fire. To extend the parallel, the battle lasted about as long as the Battle of Waterloo, about the same number of British soldiery, some 30,000, were involved and the losses comparatively mild by later yardsticks – 1,500 dead, 6,500 injured, but also the same as in the 1815 victory. I should declare an interest. My favourite Great Uncle Sam, having been at the Relief of Ladysmith in the Boer War, was one of these genuine ‘Old Contemptibles’, who won the Military Medal, happily recovered his sight after mustard gas blinding and later distinguished himself in the civil defence on Manchester Docks during the blitz in the Second World War. So filial pride as well as patriotism may slew the judgement that had the French acquitted themselves with the same competence as Uncle Sam and his mates to the British right at the Battle of the Sambre, the war might have taken a distinctly different and maybe shorter course. The immediate point, however, is to note that the first news item of the war, from a British standpoint, reflected the conventional view that warfare was conducted by a standing army which fought pitched battles and that we were very good at it. The press, always encouraged to be optimistic, cheerfully reported this success. No cause for panic, then, for yet a few more days of the cricket season. It was only at this point that things began to unravel. The French defeat on the Sambre led to ‘the Great Retreat’ that also forced the victorious BEF to retire, the Germans sustained their advance through Belgium, there was ferocious fighting on and around the Marne and both sides undertook ‘the Race to the Sea’, as each desperately tried to avoid being outflanked. That was the key to this novel form of industrial war, with trenches strung out from the North Sea coast through eastern France to the Swiss border. Mass mobilisation, heavy manufacturing back-up and the fast rail transport of