Forgotten Battlefronts of the First World War - Martin Marix Evans - E-Book

Forgotten Battlefronts of the First World War E-Book

Martin Marix Evans

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Beschreibung

The struggle between Germany and the Allies along the Western Front is for many the most familiar element of World War I. However, many less well-known theatres of conflict, key to the overall progress and conduct of the war, hold as much relevance to both the traveller and the armchair enthusiast. In this work, the author sheds light on the fighting methods of the protagonists in less familiar settings, whether in the Italian Alps or in the cloying heat of the Greek coast. In the first weeks of fighting, stubborn Belgian resistance resulted in a desperate battle to stabilise the front and compelled the German advance to be diverted against the British at Ypres. French determination to win back Alsace-Lorraine plunged the Vosges region into fluid conflict for over a year from August 1914 before both sides realised the impossibility of a decisive success in this area. The three-year struggle between Italy and Austria across the alpine passes was to draw German, British and French forces into the region. Anglo-French assistance to the Serbs through Salonika produced a standoff between the Allies and the Central Powers which was only to be resolved in the last months of the war.

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FORGOTTEN

BATTLEFRONTS

OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

FORGOTTEN

BATTLEFRONTS

OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

MARTIN MARIX EVANS

First published in 2003

This edition first published in 2009

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Martin Marix Evans, 2003, 2009, 2013

The right of Martin Marix Evans, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUBISBN 978 0 7524 9995 6

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Introduction and Acknowledgements

THE BELGIAN FRONTS

1.INVASIONAND SIEGE

2.RETREATTOTHE YSER

3.THE COAST

THE VOSGES

4.THE FIGHTFORTHE SUMMITS

THE ITALIAN FRONTS

5.ITALIA IRREDENTA

6.BATTLESOFTHE TRENTINOAND ISONZO

7.BATTLESOF CAPORETTOAND PIAVE

THE SALONIKA FRONT

8.BRIDGEHEADSINTHE BALKANS

9.BALKAN VICTORY

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My interest in the European fronts of the First World War other than the Ypres to St Mihiel frontage was stimulated by family connections and the chance offered by the discovery of a collection of unpublished letters and diaries. The family connection is my great-uncle Robert, who was born in Paris in 1895 and died there in 1970 having survived various unpleasant events in two wars. In the first of those he was in the Chasseurs Alpins. The discovery was of the papers of Guy Turrall by Ian Lyster who is, luckily, a friend of mine. The curiosity thus awakened led to the tracing of the career of a distant cousin, Reginald Marix, who first distinguished himself in the early days of the war in Belgium. Coverage of the Italian campaign then came naturally into the sequence.

The nature of the terrain over which these campaigns were conducted seems to me of central importance in seeking an understanding of how the war was fought. Given the very different kinds of source I have been able to use, the coverage of the four regions is inconsistent, but I can see no reason to exclude an excellent trench map from one section only because I have no similar map for another or skimp on good photographs where they are numerous merely to preserve a notion of equality. Similarly, original, previously unpublished accounts are quoted in the Salonika section while previously published, though perhaps somewhat obscure, sources are used elsewhere. To this unevenness I trust the reader will be willing to extend indulgence. The spelling of placenames has altered a great deal since the early twentieth century. I have reproduced quotations exactly as written and tried to use the contemporary British version when in doubt.

More substantial details of the sources are given in the listing at the end of the book. I am particularly grateful to Ian Lyster and his brother for permission to make use of their father’s memoir and to Ian for access to Guy Turrall’s papers, maps and photographs. For permission to quote from these I am indebted to Dr Ann Turrall. Cleone Woods has kindly given permission for Geoffrey Malins to be quoted. I am also grateful for permission to quote from published sources but, at the time of going to press, the status and ownership of copyright in some of the material remains uncertain and I would be grateful for information to enable me to resolve these matters.

The modern, colour photographs are intended to convey the nature of the terrain and to tempt people to visit the battlefields. I am fortunate to have had help from a number of people who have guided my research, provided information or given permission to use their pictures. Robert Gils of Simon Stevinstichting was generous in his provision of plans and data, more than I could find room for, and with his introductions to the photographers J.-P. Lacroix, Rudy van Nunen and Bart van Bulck who have allowed me to reproduce their work. Alex Deseyne of the Raversijde Museum, Ostend, undertook a photographic tour expressly to make good my deficiencies in illustration and also provided essential information. Guy Cavallaro, whose eagerly awaited new work on the war in Italy is at press at the time of this writing, has lent both modern and contemporary photographs. The British campaign in Salonika is the subject of a substantial and important study, as yet unpublished, by Alan Wakefield, Simon Moody and Andrew Whitmarsh. They have kindly allowed me to reproduce photographs taken recently on their research trips to the region, generously putting aside what must have been an inclination to reserve them for their own, exclusive use. I am grateful to Philippa Carling for allowing me to use photographs she has taken in difficult terrain in the Dolomites and to John Chester for his pictures of the Trentino sector.

Private archive illustrations have come from the Turrall collection, Brian Kibby and the family album kept by my father, Jean-Paul. I am grateful to the administrators of the public archives at the Imperial War Museum, London, the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres, the Provinciale Biblioteek en Cultuurarchief, St Andries, and the United States Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA, for their contributions to this work. The captions to the illustrations include credits as appropriate. Unattributed pictures are either from my own collection or were taken by me. I have had the advantage of access to Leo Cooper’s extensive library and enjoyed the benefit of his advice. It was he who first sparked my interest in the First World War and I am deeply indebted to him. The patience my wife, Gillian, has summoned up to read and correct the text, not to mention soothing the fevered brow and carting spare cameras across mountains, has been heroic.

Martin F. Marix Evans Blakesley, 2003

THE BELGIAN FRONTS

‘All day long stretcher-bearers were picking up the dead and wounded, while we continued to fire from time to time. All the wounded we have picked up are young men, sixteen to twenty years old, of the last levy.’

Observations of a French Marine based at Dixmude, October 1914

ONE

INVASION AND SIEGE

On Sunday 4 August 1914 Germany invaded Belgium. The possibility had long been foreseen, but other options had been given equal weight. The Belgians were so eager to preserve the purity of their neutrality that they were ready to contemplate each of their neighbouring countries as prospective invaders, for while the threat of a German incursion was likely enough, might not France strike against Germany and violate Belgian sovereignty, or Britain land at Antwerp to do the same? The result was that Belgium enjoyed a supportive military relationship with no one and was obliged to fend for herself.

The defence of the country rested on the existence of three strong fortified areas, Liège and Namur on the River Meuse in the east and south respectively and Antwerp in the north-west. The cities were surrounded with rings of forts, massive, subterranean structures now some forty years old. The river-based complexes could be by-passed if not supported by armies in the field alongside them and the North Sea link to Antwerp depended on passing through the territorial waters of the Netherlands, also a country fixed on remaining neutral in which case belligerents were barred from the Scheldt. As late as 1913 steps had been taken to increase the size of the army. The conscription level of 1909 was raised with a view to creating a field army of 180,000 men and having 200,000 older troops for the garrisons of the forts while the rest of the adult males would serve in the Garde Civique. This new programme was designed to reach its full effectiveness in 1926. The effort to expand the army to meet the crisis of the summer of 1914 magnified the problems of poor training and shortage of qualified officers that dogged the Belgian forces when war came upon them. At the start of August the commander-in-chief, King Albert of the Belgians, had a Field Army of 117,000 men, 324 guns, 108 machine-guns and 12 aircraft.

The question then arose of how the troops Belgium did possess should be deployed. The twelve forts around Liège, for example, needed extensive fieldworks between them to make a defensible entity of the position. In the event Lieutenant-General Gérard M.J.G. Leman had a single field division, the 3rd, to deploy in support of the garrison troops facing Germany. The remaining five were placed with the 1st Division at Ghent facing the North Sea coast (against the British), two, the 4th and 5th, near Namur (against the French) and two, the 6th and the Cavalry, near Antwerp in reserve and ready to take position on the River Gette if the attack from the east materialized. There they could be joined by the 5th if a concentration of the army to protect Brussels and the west was needed.

The Germans’ modified Schlieffen Plan called for their First Army to thrust westwards on the right or northern flank before turning south, as the originator of the scheme had put it, ‘with their sleeve brushing the sea’. Alongside, to their south, the Second Army would also advance to the west. The German First Army, under General Alexander von Kluck, had 320,000 men, 910 guns and 396 machine-guns organized in 14 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions. General Karl von Bülow’s Second Army had 260,000 men, 796 guns and 324 machine-guns in 12 infantry divisions. They expected little difficulty in passing through Belgium. With any luck the puny Belgian Army would be ordered to offer no resistance at all.

The immediate pretext for action was the allegedly imminent march of the French from Givet northwards along the Meuse to Namur with the presumed intention to attack Germany. Germany therefore demanded passage to oppose this advance and promised to respect Belgium’s rights at the conclusion of hostilities. However, any resistance would show that Belgium was an enemy. The demand was rejected with the contention that France had no such plans. Germany did not allow this to interfere with the invasion. The Belgians blew bridges over the Meuse and tunnels on the Luxembourg border.

The German cavalry led the advance and took Visé, between Liège and Maastricht. The special task force under General Otto von Emmich struck out for Liège on a frontage of 15 miles (24 km). As attempts were made to cross the river the Belgians had the effrontery to resist. The Germans were both surprised and angered. On 5 August the eastern-most of the twelve forts surrounding the city was attacked. The continuing efforts were futile, for the field artillery accompanying the army was too light to have any effect on the forts and the machine-guns cut down the gallant but imprudent frontal assaults. A Belgian officer described how they advanced, shoulder to shoulder and fell in great heaps, behind which they re-formed and came on yet again. That night six brigades formed up to attack under cover of darkness, the 14th Brigade in the centre and with them Major-General Erich von Ludendorff of the Second Army’s staff. The advance was tentative and poorly directed. Ludendorff came across an orderly leading a horse and discovered that the commander of the 14th had been killed. He took over and pushed the men forward into the gap between Fort d’Evegnée, immediately to the south of the Aachen road, and the more southerly Fort de Fléron. The latter failed to fire on them and the progress in the space between the forts was heartening. By the afternoon of 6 August they had penetrated far enough to see across the Meuse into the city of Liège itself.

Efforts were made to persuade the Belgians to capitulate. Lieutenant-General Leman had refused the day before and on this day he was given encouragement by a Zeppelin attack when artillery shells were dropped as bombs, killing nine civilians. A second offer of terms was still rejected, but it had become clear to Leman that, with his fortress line jeopardized, the single infantry division could not stand against the German strength and he therefore sent it west to join the main body of the Belgian Field Army. Leman himself remained in command, based in Fort de Loncin. The Germans pushed forward into the town and, more by luck than judgement, von Ludendorff himself took the surrender of the citadel. The forts, however, remained in Belgian hands, more vulnerable as, while they were designed for frontal defence, they now had the enemy to their rear, but still resisting. Von Emmich had no artillery that could hurt them.

Aware of the strength of the Belgian installations, the Germans had made provision by ordering from Krupp a mortar of unprecedented calibre, 420 mm. By 1914 five were available and to supplement these four batteries of Skoda 305-mm howitzers had been acquired from the Austrians. Moving these monsters was an immense task and the Krupps required specially built concrete emplacements from which to fire. It was not until 12 August that these guns could be brought into action, but one fort, Barchon, fell to light artillery and infantry attack on 8 August.

The defiance of Liège did not mean that the German progress was halted. The advance up the Meuse on the southern flank of the city progressed and on 12 August the town of Huy, with its hill-top fortress, was taken. On the northern flank the Belgian positions on the River Gette were challenged. The line had been formed between Hasselt and Diest on 10 August and in the centre of it was the village of Haelen (Halen). Two days later the Belgian Cavalry Division, screening the approach of the 1st Division from Ghent, deployed to oppose the advancing German cavalry which was seeking their enemy’s left flank. The Belgian strength was some 2,700 men, 2 brigades, each of lancers and guides regiments. There were also a cyclist battalion of carabineers, three horse artillery batteries, a pioneer company and transport and telegraph sections. German cavalry divisions comprised about 3,600 men. They had three brigades of two regiments of horse, cuirassiers, dragoons, hussars or uhlans, and a jäger battalion, that is, a rifle unit. In addition they had a machine-gun unit, three horse artillery batteries and pioneer and signals units.

The terrain at Haelen is flat and open, affording little protection, but the Belgians wisely elected to fight dismounted, using what cover they could find. General de Witte deployed his 2nd Brigade, 4th and 5th Lancers, his artillery and his Carabineers across the line of the German advance. The Lancers left their horses in the village with the Carabineers, while the 1st and 2nd Guides of 1st Brigade kept their mounts when they took position to the right of 2nd Brigade, ready to fall on the German left. The German 17th Lancers began the action by charging the Belgian 5th Lancers and some of the Carabineers. The defenders’ 1899 Mauser carbines were of limited range and the need to hold fire until the last minute must have been very trying. The Belgian nerve held and the assault failed bloodily. Renewed efforts met a similar fate. The German 18th Dragoons and 2nd Cuirassiers were repulsed in their turn and the 9th Uhlans were also thrown back. As the jäger regiments came into action the Belgian 1st Division’s infantry came up to reinforce the cavalry. The 4th Infantry had scarcely arrived before they faced a charge by the 9th Uhlans and 2nd Cuirassiers and they took serious casualties. After a 10-hour action the Germans withdrew, leaving 1,700 horses killed and having suffered more than 3,000 casualties. The Belgian dead numbered 263. The vulnerability of cavalry to modern weapons, known to others since the Boer War, was now clear to the Germans as well. This success was no more than a short pause in the general retreat of the Belgian Army, for the village fell to the Germans six days later.

Liège’s forts came under heavy fire for the first time that day. The arrival of the guns had been delayed by the damage done to the railway tunnels and the final part of the journey to the front was a laborious and tedious progress by road, but from this day on the reduction of the forts was steady and inevitable. Fort d’Evegnée was the first to fall to the big guns. On 13 August the magazine of Fort de Chaudfontaine was hit and fire swept the casements. The combined power of Krupp 420-mm mortars and Skoda 305-mm howitzers ground Fort d’Embourg into submission by 1730 hours that same day. Fort de Pontisse was assaulted by two Krupps and surrendered at 1230 hours. North of the city on 14 August Fort de Lierres fell and the next day Fort de Lantin surrendered soon after midday. The magazine of Leman’s headquarters, Fort de Loncin, was hit and the unconscious general was discovered among the ruins. Boncelles, south of Liège, had been taken earlier in the day. The two remaining strongholds, shocked by the violence of Loncin’s demise, gave up on 16 August. Liège, a vital railway link for future German supplies, was lost and now, later by a few days than intended, the full force of the German advance across Belgium was released.

As the defences of Liège were crumbling under German shells, an American newspaper correspondent, E. Alexander Powell of the New York World, was arriving in Antwerp. He was soon joined by a press photographer from Kansas, Donald Thompson. While Powell was in possession of a laissez-passer issued by the governor of Antwerp, Thompson’s documentation consisted of his American passport, a certificate of membership in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and a letter granting him permission to photograph Canadian troops issued by the Canadian Minister of Militia, Colonel Sam Hughes. They were to witness the fall of the city.

The French view of the situation was changing. Initially General Joseph Joffre had regarded the attack on Belgium as a preliminary to a strike towards Sedan and the Meuse, but as the German First and Second Armies pushed into the plains beyond Liège it seemed that General Charles Lanrezac’s Fifth Army should mount guard on the Meuse from Dinant to Namur and west along the Sambre. The newly arrived British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to take position on Lanrezac’s left and push northwards and the Belgians could complete the line. The Belgians, however, were falling back to their redoubt within the ring of forts around Antwerp and had no intention of extending their line southwards to link with their new-found allies. Joffre was still convinced that the action would take place not in the west and the low country between Brussels and the coast but in the hills of the Ardennes, east of the Meuse. On 15 August the French and Germans clashed at Dinant, south of Namur, and the young officer Charles de Gaulle of the 33rd Regiment was wounded. But both sides were cautious, particularly along the line of the Sambre, for the area was one of some large and many small towns, industry, factories and, generally, an urban environment in which armies would be hard to control and fighting would be fragmented and uncertain.

Lanrezac took position on the high ground, south of the Sambre, and placed outposts forward to guard the bridges, in spite of having been ordered by Joffre to advance northwards to join with the BEF and the Belgians; he left the gap on the northern side of the Sambre open. The situation along the river itself was not so straightforward for his troops as Lanrezac supposed. The Sambre meanders through the broad, flat plain, running north and south as much as east and west, so that, as a rule, one bank outflanks another. Moreover, there were more bridges across than the French were aware, so that when, on 21 August, the German 2nd Guard Division found one undefended near Auvelais, midway between Charleroi and Namur, they got across and the 19th Division did the same a little to their west. On the same day the heavy guns reached Namur and the ring of fortresses there came under fire. At 1000 hours the Krupps and Skodas started to shell the four forts on the north and east of the defensive circle. They held out for two days and then two and a half German divisions stormed the gap between Forts Cognelée, north of the town, and Marchevolette to the north-east. Once the ring had been broken the Belgian 4th Division was withdrawn, escaping through France to join the defenders of Antwerp. The German guns were moved to deal with the more westerly forts. The last, Fort de Suarlée, fell at 1700 hours on 25 August. The hinge of the defensive line was now in German hands. To the north the Belgians, whose government had left Brussels on 19 August, had nowhere left to go but Antwerp.

The German advance not only destroyed farms and houses, but also civilians. The Belgian rearguard did what it could to harass the invader, in particular by sniping from concealed positions. Unable to see their attackers, the Germans assumed they were being fired on by guerillas, men fighting as irregulars, franc-tireurs as they called them. Reprisals followed. The town of Andenne, east of Namur on the Meuse, was burned to the ground and 110 citizens shot on 20 and 21 August. The graveyard at Tamines has 384 graves marked as those of victims of the Germans.

The National Redoubt, the fortified area around Antwerp, had a perimeter of 58 miles (94 km) made up of old brick-built forts reinforced with concrete, eleven new concrete forts and twelve concrete redoubts. The inner defences consisted of old brick forts and eighteen concrete redoubts. The extent of fortification was beyond the powers of the small Belgian Army’s ability to garrison adequately. Moreover, the chief line of supply, the River Scheldt (Escaut), ran through the territory of the Netherlands, a neutral country, and therefore could not be used to transport munitions or men for the war. For the time being, however, the attention of the Germans was concentrated to the south, towards France, and they were content to by-pass Antwerp in expectation of a swift decision against the French.

Alexander Powell wrote of the Belgian preparations for the defence of the city:

The loveliest suburbs in Europe had been wiped from the earth as a sponge wipes figures from a slate. Every house and church and windmill, every tree and hedge and wall, in a zone some two or three miles [3/5 km] wide by twenty [32 km] long, was literally levelled to the ground. For mile after mile the splendid trees which lined the highroads were ruthlessly cut down; mansions which could fittingly have housed a king were dynamited; churches whose walls had echoed to the tramp of the Duke of Alba’s mail-clad men-at-arms were levelled; villages whose picturesqueness was the joy of artist and travellers were given over to the flames. Certainly not since the burning of Moscow has there been witnessed such a scene of self-inflicted desolation. When the work of the engineers was finished a jack-rabbit could not have approached the forts without being seen.

Trenches, barbed wire and booby-traps were added to the obstacles, he reports. What Powell omits is the observation that the forts themselves now stood out as clear and easy targets for the heavy guns that would soon be arrayed against them. He continues:

Stretching across the fields and meadows were what looked at first glance like enormous red-brown serpents but which proved, upon closer inspection, to be trenches for infantry. The region south of Antwerp is a net-work of canals, and on the bank of every canal rose, as through magic, parapets of sand-bags. Charges of dynamite were placed under every bridge and viaduct and tunnel. Barricades of paving-stones and mattresses and sometimes farm carts were built across the highways.

As yet these defences were untested for the fighting was on the southern border at Charleroi and Mons. The first brush the BEF had with the Germans took place on the morning of 22 August when C Squadron of the 4th Irish Dragoon Guards were on patrol north of the canal and engaged a troop of 4th Cuirassiers, killing an officer and capturing five men. The main British force arrived that night and was ordered to dig in. On the left, between Condé and Mons, was IInd Corps under General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and on the right, astride the Bavay–Binche road between Mons and the River Sambre at the French border to the south-east, Ist Corps under Lieutenant-General Sir Douglas Haig. Each had two divisions comprising three brigades of infantry with mounted troops, artillery and engineers. In addition the BEF had the Cavalry Corps under Lieutenant-General Edmund Allenby with one cavalry division to the rear of IInd Corps’ positions on the canal, close to the Mons–Valenciennes railway. In all about 72,000 troops with some 300 guns to hold against von Kluck’s First Army’s 135,000 or so men now arriving with 480 guns.

At Nimy, north of Mons itself, four bridges crossed the canal. These were defended by 4th Royal Fusiliers, 9th Brigade on the left of the Brussels road and 4th Middlesex, 8th Brigade on the right. The canal bulged northwards at this point and fell away south-east on the Middlesex’s front, while west of Mons it ran straight to Condé and the myriad channels into which the River Escaut, as the Scheldt was called here, divided in the man-made landscape of embanked streams and canals. The Fusiliers set up two machine-gun posts by the railway bridge and the Royal Engineers placed charges to blow the bridges if retreat became necessary.

In the clearing mist of the morning of Sunday 23 August a German cavalry patrol rode cautiously towards the canal at Nimy. The Fusiliers opened fire. The scouts retreated and at 0900 hours the German artillery opened up, to be followed by the massed, grey ranks of the 84th Infantry Regiment advancing at the canal bridges and the 31st Infantry near the railway station a little to the east where 4th Middlesex awaited them. British training had raised the standard of musketry of the regular soldier to aimed firing of fifteen rounds a minute and this rifle fire with the added power of the machine-guns cut the German infantry down with a terrible efficiency; they believed themselves to be facing a British force largely equipped with machine-guns. Undaunted, the Germans returned and returned again to the attack. As more German batteries came up the gunnery front widened westwards.

At Nimy the machine-gun positions of C Company were exposed to, and suffered from, heavy fire from the Germans and the steady pressure from von Kluck’s men slowly wore them down. The massed advances were abandoned in favour of sharp rushes by smaller groups and the closer they came the more cover was afforded by the embankments of the waterway. At the railway station B Company of the 4th Middlesex had fortified the platform with sacks of cement. Here they held until nearly noon, reinforced by two companies from 2nd Royal Irish Regiment, and as they fell back a single soldier positioned himself on the roof to give covering fire. He was killed when the Germans finally took the position. All along the line German pressure was telling. On the east, beyond Obourg station, a party had found an undefended crossing. At Nimy a German soldier set the drawbridge machinery in motion and closed it for his comrades to cross. At 1310 hours the order was given to withdraw to the second line of defence to the south. Back down the Brussels road they went, firing on the approaching enemy, through the main square once more towards higher ground. The invaders set fire to more than a hundred houses as they came, killing twenty-two civilians.

To the west, along the straight section of the canal, the 1st Queen’s Own Royal West Kent faced the 12th Brandenburg Grenadiers. The Grenadiers had come up near St Ghislain on the evening of 22 August and looked across the flat, marshy meadow to see a peaceful scene in which the cows were grazing. The next day it seemed that every innocent building held a British rifleman and the Grenadiers lost some 500 killed or wounded. Once a crossing had been made at Nimy and another further east, this line became untenable for the British and attempts were made to blow the bridges. As evening came on the British were pulling back and the exhausted Germans looked to get some rest. The BEF had suffered 1,600 casualties, killed, wounded and made prisoner. The battle was accorded an exaggerated importance back in Britain, but it was in fact only an encounter action which gave some minor delay to the German advance.

The French and British retreated southwards, pursued by the Germans. The British fought a delaying action at Le Cateau on 26 August and the French slowed the invaders’ progress at Guise on 29 August. The fortified town of Maubeuge drew off a part of the German force with its resistance, just as the Belgian enclave around Antwerp was keeping more of their army tied up further north. Paris itself was threatened until the Germans were eventually halted and pushed back in the Battle of the Marne on 6 September.

Alexander Powell saw his first action on 25 August. He had been in his room at the Hotel St Antoine reading some recently delivered newspapers when, shortly after 0110 hours, he turned off the light and opened his window as he prepared for bed:

As I did so my attention was attracted by a curious humming overhead, like a million bumble-bees. I leaned far out of the window, and as I did so an indistinct mass, which gradually resolved itself into something resembling a gigantic black cigar, became plainly apparent against the purple-velvet sky. . . . It was a German Zeppelin.

Even as I looked something resembling a falling star curved across the sky. An instant later came a rending, shattering crash that shook the hotel to its foundations, the walls of my room rocked and reeled about me, and for a breathless moment I thought the building was going to collapse. Perhaps thirty seconds later came another splitting explosion, and another, and then another – ten in all. . . .

Powell dressed hastily and clambered up to the roof. The night was ablaze with anti-aircraft and small-arms fire; anyone with a gun was firing it. The destruction of buildings and the loss of civilian lives shocked the American.

The Belgians continued to resist as they fell back on Antwerp. Prince Henri de Ligne was mortally wounded in a raid on Herenthals, east of Antwerp on the canal, when attempting to blow the bridges. As a result of this, efforts were made to protect the armoured cars on which machine-guns were mounted by adding a domed turret. Powell wrote of them in glowing terms that stretch belief:

. . . a moveable steel dome, with an opening for the muzzle of a machine-gun, was superimposed on the turret. These grim vehicles, which jeered at bullets, and were proof even against shrapnel, quickly became a nightmare to the Germans. Driven by the most reckless racing drivers in Belgium, manned by crews of daredevil youngsters, and armed with machine-guns which poured out lead at the rate of a thousand shots a minute, these wheeled fortresses would tear at will into the German lines, cut up an outpost or wipe out a cavalry patrol, dynamite a bridge or a tunnel or a culvert, and be back in the Belgian lines again almost before the enemy realized what had happened.

The doubling of the guns’ performance and the rosy view of the effectiveness of the cars was, no doubt, encouraged by Powell’s understandable admiration for their crews. In the retreat from Malines an armoured car covering the infantry was isolated when it ran out of fuel, but the crew filled the tank from cans they had aboard and the driver made to withdraw, Powell wrote, ‘as cool as though he were turning a limousine in the width of Piccadilly’.

The Belgian Army also inspired Powell to the following observations:

As I stood one day in the Place de Meir in Antwerp and watched a regiment of mud-bespattered guides clatter past, it was hard to believe I was living in the twentieth century and not in the beginning of the nineteenth, for instead of the serviceable uniforms of grey or drab or khaki, these men wore the befrogged green jackets, the cherry-coloured breeches, and the huge fur busbies which characterized the soldiers of Napoleon. The carabineers, for example, wore uniforms of bottle-green and queer sugar-loaf hats of patent leather which resembled headgear of the Directoire period. Both grenadiers and the infantry of the line marched and fought and slept in uniforms of heavy blue cloth piped with scarlet and small, round visorless fatigue-caps which afforded no protection from either sun or rain. . . . The gendarmes – who, by the way, were always to be found where the fighting was hottest – were the most unsuitably uniformed of all, for the blue coats and silver aiguillettes and towering bearskins which served to impress the simple country-folk made splendid targets for the German marksmen.

In order to maintain pressure on the Germans in the north of Belgium and thus make things easier for the Allies in the south, the Belgians mounted a sortie from Antwerp on 25 August. A total of 4 divisions, comprising some 60,000 men, took part in the attack with the Cavalry Division and the 3rd Division held in reserve. The axis of the principal thrust, by the 6th Division, was along the Brussels railway line southwards through Malines to Elewyt where the German IXth Reserve Corps stood on a line that ran east to Aerschot. On their right 5th and 1st Divisions advanced in the area bounded by the River Senne to the east and the Willebroek Canal to the west and on the other flank 2nd Division covered any threat along the line of the River Dyle. Across the flat land the railway enbankments form formidable barriers. On the first day encouraging progress was made. The Germans were ejected from Malines and Hofstade and the 6th Division advanced almost as far as Elewyt. On their right their comrades reached Eppeghem, where the Senne and the railway come together, but the Germans were quickly reinforced and on 26 August the Belgians were driven back once more.

Powell had taken up position on the embankment of a railway branch line at Sempst and watched as the invaders regained the initiative.

By noon the Germans had gotten the range and a rain of shrapnel was bursting about the Belgian batteries, which limbered up and retired at a trot in perfect order. After the guns were out of range I could see the dark blue masses of the supporting Belgian infantry slowly falling back, cool as a winter’s morning. Through an oversight, however, two battalions of carabineers did not receive the order to retire and were in imminent danger of being cut off and destroyed. Then occurred one of the bravest acts I have ever seen. To reach them a messenger would have to traverse a mile of open road, swept by shrieking shrapnel and raked by rifle-fire. There was about one chance in a thousand of a man getting to the end of that road alive. A colonel standing beside me under a railway-culvert summoned a gendarme, gave him the necessary orders, and added, ‘Bonne chance, mon brave.’ The man, a fierce-moustached fellow who would have gladdened the heart of Napoleon, knew he was being sent into the jaws of death, but he merely saluted, set spurs to his horse, and tore down the road, an archaic figure in his towering bearskin. He reached the troops uninjured and gave the order for them to retreat, but as they fell back the Germans got the range and with marvellous accuracy dropped shell after shell into the running column. Soon road and fields were dotted with corpses in Belgian blue.

The embankment became the fighting line, assaulted by waves of bayonet-wielding Germans and defended by Belgian riflemen. By 1600 hours only a thin screen of defenders were left covering the withdrawal and Powell remained in his position above the scene, confident he could regain his automobile and run for Antwerp with time to spare when the moment arrived.

Suddenly a soldier crouching beside me cried, ‘Les Allemands! Les Allemands!’ and from the woods which screened the railway-embankment burst a long line of figures, hoarsely cheering. At almost the same moment I heard a sudden splutter of shots in the village street behind me and my driver screamed, ‘Hurry for your life, monsieur! The Uhlans are upon us!’

Powell surprised himself with the speed he achieved across a ploughed field to reach his car. As he was driven north at speed the German cavalry entered the village. The troops marching wearily back to Antwerp were joined by the greater part of the population of Malines, carrying what they could or pushing their possessions on hand carts.

A dire consequence of the fighting was experienced in Louvain. At nightfall a riderless horse is said to have galloped into the city, fleeing from the action further north. In the dark a soldier panicked, a shot was fired and rumour had it that the Belgians were on the outskirts of the town. Germans later asserted that an uprising had been attempted by the citizens. In reprisal Louvain was sacked, houses set on fire and the ancient library, founded in 1426 and custodian of more than 600 medieval manuscripts as well as some 200,000 books, was destroyed. Powell, as a neutral, American newspaperman, was able to make his way into German-held territory in his car, flying the ‘Stars and Stripes’, accompanied by the photographer Donald Thompson. They went to Aerschot first.

A few days before Aerschot had been a prosperous and happy town of ten-thousand people. When we saw it it was a heap of smoking ruins, garrisoned by a battalion of German soldiers, and with its population consisting of half a hundred white-faced women. . . . Quite two-thirds of the houses had been burned and showed unmistakable signs of having been sacked by a maddened soldiery before they were burned. . . . Doors had been smashed in by rifle-butts and boot-heels; windows had been broken; furniture had been wantonly destroyed; pictures had been torn from the walls; mattresses had been ripped open with bayonets. . . .

In Louvain they found yet greater destruction: ‘Here we came upon another scene of destruction and desolation. Nearly half the city was in ashes. . . . The fronts of many of the houses were smeared with crimson stains. . . . And the amazing feature of it all was that among the Germans there seemed to be no feeling of regret, no sense of shame.’

Another attack was mounted on 9 September. The fighting on the Marne had succeeded in driving the Germans back to the River Aisne and there were hopes of another blow here in the north preventing reinforcement of the retreating invaders of France. The significance of the attack was given a somewhat exaggerated standing by Powell, who wrote: ‘. . . the success of the Allies on the Aisne was in great measure due to the sacrifices made on this occasion by the Belgian army. Every available man which the Germans could put into the field was used to hold a line running through Sempst, Weerde, Campenhout, Wespelaer, Rotselaer and Holsbeek.’

The German IXth Reserve Corps had begun to move south, leaving the line to the IIIrd Reserve Corps, when the attack started. The action took place along the line of the canal between Malines and Louvain, further east than the August battle and threatening the German right wing. The Belgian 3rd Division advanced southwards leaving Malines on its right and struck towards Over de Vaart, beyond the River Dyle and the canal. Alongside the 6th Division moved on Thildonck and to the east again the 2nd Division thrust towards Louvain. On the extreme left the Cavalry Division swept towards Aerschot before turning south-west to Louvain. British support for the Belgians was now given in practical form with the arrival of a Royal Navy armoured train. It carried 4.7-in guns and was used in support of the Belgian infantry in the sortie from Antwerp. Powell reported of it:

No small part in the defence of the city was played by the much-talked-about armoured train, which was built under the supervision of Lieutenant-Commander Littlejohn in the yards of the Antwerp Engineering Company at Hoboken. The train consisted of four large coal-trucks with sides of armour plate sufficiently high to afford protection to the crews of the 4.7-inch naval guns – six of which were brought from England for the purpose, though there was only time to mount four of them – and between each gun-truck was a heavily armoured goods van for ammunition. . . . The guns were served by Belgian artillerymen commanded by British gunners. . . . Personally I am inclined to believe that the chief value of this novel contrivance lay in the moral encouragement it lent the defence. . . .

For three days progress was made, but the Germans pulled IXth Reserve Corps back to oppose the incursion and on 13 September the Belgians were forced to withdraw. Powell witnessed the action near Weerde that day, driving out with Thompson and leaving the car near a convent flying the Red Cross; a location they assumed would be secure. They went forward on foot to a farmhouse from which they could see the little town on the other side of the Brussels–Antwerp road, using the trenches where they could and running across the open spaces in between. They climbed up to the attic and broke a hole through the tiles to look out: ‘Lying in the deep ditch which bordered our side of the highway was a Belgian infantry brigade, composed of two regiments of carabineers and two regiments of chasseurs à pied, the men all crouching in the ditch or lying prone on the ground.’ Beyond, in the town of Weerde, its woods and its château, tell-tale smoke showed the origin of the fire from rifle and machine-gun that swept the position. There they stayed, under small-arms fire but convinced that the enemy artillery had been silenced. Orders arrived for an attack to be carried out at 1730 hours. Powell continued:

Under cover of artillery fire so continuous that it sounded like thunder in the mountains, the Belgian infantry climbed out of the trenches and, throwing aside their knapsacks, formed up behind the road preparatory to the grand assault. A moment later a dozen dog batteries came trotting up and took position on the left of the infantry. At 5.30 [1730 hours] to the minute the whistles of the officers sounded shrilly and the mile-long line of men swept forward cheering. They crossed the roadway, they scrambled over ditches, they climbed fences, they pushed through hedges, until they were within a hundred yards [90 m] of the line of buildings which formed the outskirts of the town. Then hell itself broke loose. The whole of the German front, which for several hours past had replied but feebly to the Belgian fire, spat a continuous stream of lead and flame. The rolling crash of musketry and the ripping snarl of machine-guns were stabbed by the vicious pom-pom-pom-pom-pom of the quick-firers.

The dog batteries were the first to pass Powell, racing back towards Antwerp. They were followed by a sorry stream of shattered Belgian infantry, wounded and unwounded alike, many falling to German fire as they attempted to get away. Powell and Thompson also fled, bullets falling around them and the howl of shrapnel hurrying them on their way. They regained the car, but now the road to Malines was held by the Germans, so a long diversion in the dark, without lights, was required to bring them safe again within the barbed wire boundaries of Antwerp.

On the evening of 14 September Erich von Falkenhayn replaced Helmuth von Moltke as the commander of the German armies. The immediate problem was the resolution of the situation in Belgium, an open front north of the First Army’s positions along the Aisne and south of the Antwerp enclave. Von Falkenhayn decided to bring his Sixth Army from Alsace, but that would take a week so it would be necessary to have the forces in France fall back. The commander’s staff disagreed and argued for an attack in France. The compromise was the transfer of the Sixth Army but no retreat in France. Supplies were a problem as the railway crossing the Meuse at Namur was out until the bridge there could be repaired, leaving only the line through Brussels to convey material to northern France, and that was still threatened by the stubborn Belgians in Antwerp. On 28 September Hans von Beseler’s IIIrd Reserve Corps, reinforced with 173 heavy guns, began the reduction of the Belgian National Redoubt.

The British had also arrived in Antwerp some days earlier in the form of the Royal Navy Air Service. Commander Charles Samson had allocated a flight to the place to attack the Zeppelin sheds at Cologne and Dusseldorf and on 17 September he went there to check progress. There were two B.E. Biplanes and a Sopwith Biplane there at the time, with two Sopwith Tabloids expected shortly. On 22 September a strike was attempted but it was foiled by fog over the River Roer; only Lieutenant Collet managing to get through to Dusseldorf. His bombs were dropped from too low an altitude for the safety device to be disengaged and the one bomb that did explode missed the sheds but killed a couple of soldiers.

The forts to the south-east of Antwerp first came under fire on 27 September. Fort Wavre St Catherine was attacked by a 42-cm mortar of 2 Kurze Marine Kanonen Batterie from a distance of 10.1 km (6¼ miles) and by a 30.5-cm gun of 1 Schwere Küsten Mörser Batterie 7.5 km (4½ miles) away. The former fired 171 rounds and the latter 327, denying the Belgians the chance to reply and, when the magazine exploded on 29 September, the wherewithal as well. The fort surrendered on 2 October. On 28 September 2 30.5-cm mortars engaged Fort Waelhem and had smashed it utterly by the next day. Fort Lierre suffered the loss of a 5.7-in gun cupola on 30 September and, on the same day, Antwerp’s water supply was jeopardized with the shelling of the waterworks and the destruction of a reservoir; the artesian wells could not produce a sufficient supply. The village of Lierre (Lier) was burning on 1 October. Powell wrote:

Against a livid sky rose pillars of smoke from burning villages. The air was filled with shrieking shell and bursting shrapnel. . . . While we were watching the bombardment from a rise in the Waelhem road a shell burst in the hamlet of Waterloos, whose red-brick houses were clustered almost at our feet. A few minutes later a procession of fugitive villagers came plodding up the cobble-paved highway. It was headed by an ashen-faced peasant pushing a wheelbarrow with a weeping woman clinging to his arm. In the wheelbarrow, atop a pile of hastily collected household goods, was sprawled the body of a little boy. He could not have been more than seven . . .

The destruction of the forts to the south-east of Antwerp was followed by a German advance to threaten a crossing of the River Nethe. The Belgian government concluded that the city was no longer secure and preparations were made to move the government to Ostend, but these arrangements were suspended when news came of the intention of the British First Sea Lord, Winston Churchill, to visit the city himself. The Royal Marine Brigade, the first of a force including two naval brigades under Major-General Archibald Paris, was sent from Dunkirk and Churchill himself arrived on 4 October. Powell reported:

At one o’clock that afternoon a big drab-coloured touring-car filled with British naval officers tore up the Place de Meir, its horn sounding a hoarse warning, took the turn into the narrow Marché aux Souliers on two wheels, and drew up in front of the hotel. Before the car had fairly come to a stop the door of the tonneau was thrown violently open and out jumped a smooth-faced, sandy-haired, stoopshouldered, youthful-looking man in the undress Trinity House uniform. There was no mistaking who it was. It was the Right Hon. Winston Churchill. . . . It was a most spectacular entrance and reminded me for all the world of a scene in a melodrama where the hero dashes up, bare-headed, on a foam-flecked horse, and saves the heroine or the old homestead or the family fortune, as the case may be. . . . An hour later I was standing in the lobby talking to M. de Vos, the Burgomaster of Antwerp . . . when Mr Churchill rushed past us on his way to his room. . . . The Burgomaster stopped him, introduced himself, and expressed his anxiety regarding the fate of the city. Before he had finished Churchill was part-way up the stairs. ‘I think everything will be all right now . . .’ he called. . . . ‘You needn’t worry. We’re going to save the city.’

The civilians were clearly comforted, but Powell, the hard-bitten journalist, was less optimistic, remarking that the German guns could be heard quite clearly.

The German 37th Landwehr Brigade, reinforced by 1st Reserve Ersatz Brigade, attacked the line of the River Scheldt that day, Sunday, at Schoonarde, west of Termonde, but the Belgian 4th Division held it. As the 6,000 men of the Royal Naval Division arrived on Monday the German blow fell on the River Nethe at Duffel where the redoubt, its ammunition exhausted, had been evacuated. The Royal Marines had arrived near Lierre on Sunday to take over what trivial defensive positions there were. Commander Samson had come up from Dunkirk over the previous two days in command of a convoy of London motor buses and armoured cars, and in the early hours of 5 October he was asked to get a machine-gun to a battalion of Royal Marines in Lierre. He recalled: