Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

by Max Hastings

  We needed all our courage. What a ghastly sight! Bodies without heads or faces, detached limbs, chests laid open, groans and shrieks agonising to the ears. Most were without their dogtags, and so unidentifiable. Thirty-seven bodies lay there, while just four survived wounded, two of them seriously.

  The stretcher-bearers refused to come forward, so our commandant asked for volunteers to take the two worst cases to the farm. Charles and I and two others came forward. The commandant shook our hands and said, ‘Bon courage, mes enfants.’ As we crossed the open ground, shells fell all around us, sometimes very close. The wounded man groaned terribly at every step, and every twenty paces or so we had to stop because the blanket in which we were carrying him slipped in our muddy fingers.

  At last they reached the main positions, surrendered their burdens, and made their way back to the fort, where they were greeted by comrades astonished to see them alive.

  A formal siege of Antwerp’s sixty-mile perimeter began on 28 September, though the road west, running along the Dutch–Belgian frontier, remained open. Large tracts of surrounding countryside had been flooded, to deny them to the enemy, but the consequence was that defenders outside the forts could not entrench themselves in the waterlogged ground. By the night of Wednesday the 30th, the bombardment had become continuous. Edouard Beer wrote: ‘the spectacle is terrifying; in front of us as well as behind, we see the flashes of the guns; to the north, south and west alike, there are only fires. The whole centre of the village of Havre Sainte Cutheune is blazing like a torch, including the church bell tower.’ Next morning, in the face of the shelling, his unit abandoned their positions; that evening, however, they took advantage of thick fog to reoccupy them. A few days later Beer recorded: ‘Our third night without rest … Four more men died in today’s shelling, bringing to twenty the number killed in this stretch of trench … Oh! The rage of impotence. To see comrades fall at one’s side, others wounded, and to be unable to avenge them! To see men lost to machine-gun fire who cannot even perish fighting! This period of intense bombardment is intensely dispiriting.’

  The men of Churchill’s Royal Naval Division were clad in sea-going rig, scantily equipped and almost wholly untrained for land war. He had already dispatched them on brief and abortive sorties that caught his fancy, first to Ostend, then to Dunkirk and thence to Lille. Now the First Lord abandoned his post at the Admiralty and hastened to Antwerp personally to rally the defence, touring the city in an open Rolls-Royce. One of his entourage, Ordinary Seaman Henry Stevens, described the experience: ‘To me it appeared that Mr Churchill dominated the proceedings and … that he was by no means satisfied with the position … He appeared on occasions to criticise the siting and construction of trenches by the Belgian army … He put forward his ideas forcefully, waving his stick and thumping the ground with it. After obviously pungent remarks, he would walk away a few steps and stare towards the enemy’s direction. On other occasions he would stride away without another word, get into the car and wait impatiently … At one line of trenches he found the line very thinly held and asked where “the bloody men were”.’

  It is hard to exaggerate the absurdity of throwing a small, scratch British force into a battle almost no one thought winnable, given the Belgians’ weakness and the city’s remoteness at the north-western extremity of allied territory. Royal Marine Captain Maurice Festing described the bitterness his men felt about abandoning Lille, whose inhabitants had hailed them as deliverers, in order to hasten to Antwerp at Churchill’s behest. He wrote in his diary on 4 October: ‘Our exodus is a very painful recollection to me, and I hope I may never again be called upon to carry out so humiliating and unpleasant a withdrawal.’

  The Marines who quit the city were disconcerted, as they tramped north, to meet Belgian guns moving the other way, which suggested that the allied commitment to the defence of Antwerp was less than wholehearted. Festing and his comrades were further bewildered about what they were supposed to achieve, 2,500 strong without their own artillery or logistical support, and furthermore extremely hungry. They were astonished suddenly to encounter the First Lord in the flesh, his chubby person attired in a flowing boat cloak and naval cap. ‘He inspected our men on the march and promised them every luxury in the way of foodstuffs. He seemed excited.’ The Marines arrived in Antwerp to be joined by the other brigade of the ragtag Naval Division, and were led to positions where they soon found themselves under shellfire, directed by German observers in captive balloons. Churchill had laid hands on some Rolls-Royce armoured cars and an armoured train, both manned by bluejackets attired for sea duty, which now saw a little action. Orders arrived to hold to the last man. Maurice Festing wrote: ‘the delivery of this message irritated me immensely, for it struck me it would be so much better not to say such a thing about holding onto a perfectly ridiculous and futile position’.

  The pre-war Admiralty had earmarked the Marines exclusively for service aboard warships. Before mobilisation, ‘military training in the Corps had sunk to a very low ebb and become little more than farcical … [Now it] found itself without plans, equipment or training for such an emergency.’ More than a few men committed to the operation were relatively elderly reservists. Festing was appalled, on their first night in Antwerp, to inspect the battalion at its posts and find every man fast asleep, without sentries. Next day, 7 October, they were first ordered to withdraw, then, after marching some distance, told to reoccupy their former line. Festing was appointed brigade-major, in which role his first order was to lower a large Red Cross flag flying over British headquarters, appropriately located in a former lunatic asylum. Next day, his brigadier collapsed with a nervous breakdown.

  Meanwhile, the situation on the Belgian perimeter became ever more desperate. Edouard Beer wrote on the 7th: ‘Evening soon comes, and with it new orders: we must exploit the fog to retake trenches beyond the village; they must be reoccupied “at any cost”, says the general, even if we lose half our strength on the way. The column marches forward in double file, observing absolute silence as we advance into the night. Soon, before us, looms a great red glare; it is blazing Wacherbe; only ruins are left; here and there a burning house still stands; the animals abandoned by the inhabitants wander at will, seeking sustenance; we pass on, grimly impressed, our footsteps echoing on the pavé, where great craters mark the detonation of shells.’

  Churchill later wrote contemptuously of low-grade German reserve formations which ‘wormed and waddled their way’ into the Belgian fortress, but it was apparent that the allied line could not hold: Antwerp was doomed. The Royal Marines received their orders to withdraw from Col. Jack Seeley, the former British secretary for war who had betaken himself to the battlefield – in Festing’s exasperated words, ‘one of those wandering politician-soldiers’ – temporarily attached to the RN Divisional staff. Chaos followed, as British units trickled piecemeal back from the line, and out of the city: ‘… I don’t think I have ever felt more angry with any man than I did with Col. Seeley at that moment. He was, I knew, a great friend of Mr Winston Churchill’s and I sincerely cursed the day when fate had placed the unfortunate brigade in the hands of two professional politicians and amateur soldiers.’

  Once it was plain the British were pulling out, and that the city must fall, the brigade-major, his ailing brigadier and staff crowded aboard their only automobile, some standing on the running boards. In darkness pierced by the flames of burning buildings, they chugged falteringly out of the city with two wheels running on rims after tyre-bursts. Festing wrote: ‘the devil himself was holding high holiday in Antwerp that night of 8 October: It was a real inferno.’ It proved necessary to beg the dubious city guards to open the Malines gate, to enable the British to make their escape.

  Eighty thousand Belgian troops, who also retired from Antwerp, later fought some gallant actions against overwhelming forces of Germans, as Falkenhayn tightened his grip on the country. Among the participants in the retreat was a small group of British nurses and ambulanc
e-drivers who had attached themselves to the Belgian army. On the afternoon of 9 October one of these, ‘Elsie’ Knocker, was in the village of Melle, north of Ghent. She wrote: ‘the Germans suddenly advanced up the street with fixed bayonets & we had to scoot under heavy fire’. Then she heard that many casualties were lying in a nearby turnip field. Driven to the scene, she found scores of dead and wounded Germans lying among French fusiliers-marins. Knocker and Tom, her cockney driver, filled their ambulance. He then drove his passengers away to safety, leaving her to tend three Germans and a Belgian with a smashed shoulder.

  She wrote in her diary: ‘Everywhere there was a deathly silence, not a sound, and I did not realise until I saw the ambulance disappear down the road how utterly alone I was. Sitting in a turnip field surrounded by 200 dead and the four sitting cases. Thoughts went through my head: “Would Tom get cut off and not be able to get back?” “Would the Germans advance over the field and try to retake Melle?” I suddenly heard a voice a little distance away say “Schwester, sprechen sie Deutsch?” I replied, “Ja.” The sitting case who had spoken then said “Take a greatcoat and cap from one of the dead and come and sit with us” … He told me the Germans were only just the other side of the field and might shoot if they saw [my] khaki uniform.’

  At last, in failing light she saw the ambulance making its way back towards her, and an hour later she was safe at her hospital. Nothing more vividly emphasises the stultifying boredom of peacetime existence for middle-class women of that era than Elsie Knocker’s later euphoric comment on her experience: ‘it was a wonderful & grand day & I would not have missed it’. She retained her sense of excitement and romance through the years ahead, not diminished by marrying a Belgian airman and becoming Baroness de T’Serclaes.

  A week later and some miles to the west, the prime minister’s daughter revealed something of the same enthusiasm for adventure amid carnage. Violet Asquith, who had crossed to France to engage in a few days’ privileged war tourism, severely rebuked civilians in Bailleul, three miles behind the front, whom she saw taunting German PoWs: ‘Il ne faut pas se moquer des prisonniers.’ The French were unimpressed: ‘Eh, dame! Il faut bien! Que voulez-vous? Les allemands c’est un sale peuple – des brigands – des barbares – ils ont tout pillé – tout ravagé.’ It is easy to see why the French, whose country was being devastated by German invaders, resented the intervention of an Englishwoman who embraced all that she saw with the enthusiasm of a joyrider: ‘Darling father,’ she wrote home to the prime minister, ‘everything that has ever or can ever happen to me pales & shrivels before the thrilling interest of this expedition.’

  Antwerp surrendered on the afternoon of 10 October, though most of the garrison and British contingent made good their escape down the coast to join the rest of the allied forces on the narrow strip of Belgian soil now remaining in King Albert’s hands. The monarch himself proudly insisted on remaining at La Panne for the rest of the war. The Royal Naval Division was evacuated through Ostend, where the newly formed British 7th Division was landing, although more than a thousand bluejackets ended up as either German prisoners or Dutch internees. The 7th Division was originally intended to strengthen the garrison of Antwerp, but fortunately – although to Churchill’s fury – wiser counsels prevailed.

  The First Lord wrote to Sir John French on 26 October: ‘Antwerp was a bitter blow to me and some aspects have given a handle to my enemies.’ Later, licking his political wounds in a mood of rueful self-pity, he observed: ‘Looking back with after-knowledge and increasing years, I seem to have been too ready to undertake tasks which were hazardous or even forlorn.’ He never acknowledged Antwerp for the fiasco it was. Maurice Festing wrote in disgust, ‘one would have thought a limit would have been placed upon Mr Winston Churchill’s appetite for daredevil pranks and sensational attempts at strokes of genius. Not many months elapsed, however, before he was busy again – this time at the Dardanelles … Should this narrative ever fall into the hands of a publisher, I would ask the great British public to see to it that the Corps of Royal Marines is never again told to go to war on land unless it has been trained, organized and equipped for the purpose.’

  Some of Winston Churchill’s admirers and biographers have treated his Antwerp intervention indulgently, as a picaresque adventure, a colourful addition to a wondrous lifetime pageant. In truth, however, what took place represented shocking folly by a minister who abused his powers and betrayed his responsibilities. It is astonishing that the First Lord’s cabinet colleagues so readily forgave him for a lapse of judgement that would have destroyed most men’s careers. A 3 October telegram to the prime minister, proposing to resign his office in return for ‘full powers of a commander of a detached force in the field’, prompted the derisive laughter of colleagues. Asquith wrote: ‘W is an ex-lieutenant of Hussars, and would if his proposal had been accepted have been in command of 2 distinguished Major Generals, not to mention Brigadiers, Colonels & c.’

  Asquith’s wider view of Churchill’s behaviour at Antwerp remained benign, but senior officers were appalled. The Fourth Sea Lord ‘was very sarcastic about Winston as a strategist’, wrote Admiralty civil servant Norman Macleod on 12 October. The King’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, observed not unreasonably that ‘our friend [Churchill] must be quite off his head!’ Another naval officer said contemptuously that the Antwerp affair ‘read like a story in a child’s picture book’. The Morning Post was fiercely critical of the First Lord’s conduct in an editorial on the 13th, causing the New Statesman to applaud the fact that ‘a prominent newspaper has broken through the self-imposed rule whereby practically all criticism of the Government has been suppressed’. On 16 October Macleod wrote again: ‘Feeling of depression everywhere – public felt loss of Antwerp keenly, especially as reports had been so optimistic … German advance on Ostend and Warsaw … had effect as well – marked loss of confidence in Adm[iralt]y.’

  King Albert’s troops, disorganised and demoralised, fell back to the Yser river and canal, the old medieval waterway by which English wool was carried inland from the sea below Nieuport to the great clothmaking hub of Ypres. Dorothie Feilding, serving nearby, wrote home on 10 October: ‘The Belgian troops have lost their heads now & refuse even to meet the Germans. They just retreat the moment there is a question of a fight. They are utterly worn out at having had to stand the brunt of it all these months & now are in a state of funk & run like hares. But it does one good to see all these British soldiers about & you know you won’t go under with them about.’ Madame Jeanne van Bleyberghe, whose husband was serving with the Belgian army, wrote from Ghent to a friend in England on 11 October: ‘we all admire England so much, it really is a grand and generous nation. When your soldiers pass in the street, everybody cheers.’

  But the British Army would not be seen again in Ghent for many a long day, as the tide of war washed past the city, leaving the Germans in occupation. The 7th Division, whose men Dorothie Feilding met, marched from their Belgian disembarkation ports towards positions north of Ypres. A Royal Welch Fusilier officer met Col. George Malcolm of the London Scottish, one of the newly-come units, who professed regret about arriving at the war ‘too late to have a look in’. Malcolm’s apprehension was unjustified. There would be enough war for all comers, and certainly so for himself. The 7th Division marched towards a junction with the rest of the BEF, which was meanwhile approaching from the south. They met on a battlefield that would become, during the months that followed, the graveyard of the old British Army.

  2 ‘INVENTIONS OF THE DEVIL’

  New technologies created many opportunities and difficulties for the soldiers of 1914; foremost among them were the consequences of man’s achievement of powered flight. On 25 August, staff at a Bavarian corps headquarters east of Nancy saw an aeroplane circling overhead which eventually dropped a brilliant light. While contemplating the significance of this apparently harmless firework, the Bavarians found themselves under French shellfire – their position
had been marked by an air-dropped flare.

  A modern writer, Christian Kehrt, suggests that the new-found vulnerability of the sky to man’s invasion roused in many breasts the same lust for dominance as the wildernesses of Africa. During the previous century, soldiers’ ventures into the skies had been limited to sporadic use of observation balloons, tethered to cables. These had their value, and continued to do so throughout the First World War, but their range of vision was limited, and they could be hoisted only behind a combatant’s own front. Powered flight represented a stunning advance. In 1903 the Wright brothers had ended mankind’s millennia of earthbound bondage with their first successful take-off. In just eleven intervening years before war came, aircraft capabilities advanced at astounding speed. German test pilot Ernst Canter noted in his logbook that while in 1910 he flew at a height of eighty feet, two years later he was ascending to almost 5,000. In 1908 one pilot in five died – a corpse for every thousand miles flown. By 1912, the accidental death rate had fallen to one for every fifty-one pilots – a fatality per 103,000 miles.

  German generals were initially more impressed by airships than by aeroplanes, and rejected a 1907 commercial approach from the Wrights. But some pundits quickly predicted that heavier-than-air machines would prove more efficacious than Zeppelins: Wilhelm Hesse argued that they would ‘soon outstrip all existing mechanical transportation by their speed and freedom from the ground’. In 1909 Germany began to address the new science more seriously, stimulated by knowledge that France was then training forty-one military pilots to its own ten. Dr Walther Huth of the Albatros company paid for his own chauffeur to learn to fly, who there-after became a military instructor.