II. Events Following the Outbreak of War
Before trying to follow the history of any particular unit it is, of course, necessary to bear in mind the military proceedings as a whole. Most people have a general idea of what took place in the different theatres of war, but events are apt to be forgotten, and it may be as well before describing any particular operations to remind the reader how it came about that such operations became necessary.
On the 4th August, 1914, war was declared with Germany, and in compliance with prearranged and carefully drawn up plans that Power, having already declared war on France on the 3rd, proceeded at once to violate the neutrality of Belgium whose roads supplied the easiest way to the heart of France, and the idea was to strike that country prostrate before Russia was ready to move. It was well understood that the Russians must be slower than any of the other immediate combatants to mobilize their forces.
Thus, on the 5th August, the Germans, who thoroughly recognized the advantage of getting in the first blow, were opposite Liége and occupied that city five days afterwards, although the last fort did not fall until the 17th. On the 14th August the French, too, were in Belgium, and between the 12th and 17th the British Expeditionary Force had landed on the coast and the army was moved into position extending from Condé through Mons and Binche.
During the few days prior to the British landing the Belgians had been driven steadily backward by overwhelming forces, as also had the French; and as the British Expeditionary Force only consisted of four divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th) and a cavalry division its numbers were far too small to make any very perceptible alteration in the situation. The result was a steady general retreat of all the Allies commencing on the 24th August and lasting to the 5th September, by which time the armies were behind the River Marne and in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, and the British base had necessarily been shifted from the Channel ports to the mouth of the Loire.
A cold statement that the Great War opened with a rapid retreat conveys the truth perhaps, but not all of it. Never in its long history of adventure and heroism had the British Army covered itself with such glory. There are retreats and retreats in war. When an army runs away that disaster is described under this term, and there seems to be no other correct military expression for what happened in Flanders and France in August, 1914, though, as a matter of fact, the little army sent from these shores was fighting one long continuous battle against overwhelming odds; its artillery completely outnumbered; its infantry facing death and wounds in the most soldier-like spirit possible to any troops, quite unable to understand why the movement was backward and not forward, but resolved to a man to get some of their own back when their time came.
On the 5th September the retreat had ceased, and by this date the German Colonies of Togoland and Samoa had been wrested from them and their fleet had learnt what the British sailor was capable of, notably in the Bight of Heligoland on the 28th August.
On the 6th September the tide of war had turned on land: a general offensive by French and British troops had commenced, the Battle of the Marne begun and Paris saved.
Strictly speaking, there was no Battle of the Marne, the fighting between the 6th and 10th of September being desultory and chiefly in the nature of independent and to a great extent disconnected engagements, but the struggle or series of struggles, however described, proved, indeed, a turning point—the British crossed the river on the 9th and the Germans were in full retreat.
On the 13th the Allies recovered the important town of Soissons and forced the passage of the Aisne, on which river the enemy stood to fight, and there the combatants were still engaged on the 20th, for now the German retreat was over; on this day the British Expeditionary Force was reinforced by the British 6th Division (16th, 17th and 18th Infantry Brigades) which had landed on the 10th September, and the Buffs once more in their long history came into the presence of England’s foes.
All this time the Territorial Force was working hard to fit itself to help, and in a short time the bulk of it was sent to India to release our forces there which were promptly sent to France.
Meanwhile the new armies, whose numbers under the voluntary system were such as to fill every Englishman with pride, were straining every nerve to prepare themselves for war, and they were drafted off to the different fighting theatres as fast as they could be armed and equipped. The most wonderful fact of the early days of the war was the way that Kitchener’s appeal for recruits was answered. Thousands and thousands of quiet, peaceable citizens, who had never dreamed of anything to do with soldiering, much less of getting into uniform and themselves going off to fight, men from every rank of life, now thronged and jostled each other at the recruiting offices. They took long railway journeys at their own expense, or walked miles if they had no money, for the pleasure of standing, often for days, in queues waiting their turn to enlist. They faced the doctor with fear, hiding their disabilities, and passed the test with a sigh of relief.
What was true of England was true to an equal extent of the Colonies and oversea possessions, and the total number of soldiers raised, equipped and put into the firing line astonished ourselves almost as much as it dismayed the Germans, whose reckonings in this respect, as in all others, were completely at fault. The Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada, the Allied Regiment of Canadian Militia, was represented in several of those gallant battalions which sailed in such numbers from their shores and which did such glorious service in France and Flanders.
The story of the struggle is so long, and the Buffs fought in so many theatres and places, that the clearest and best way of describing the deeds of the regiment appears to be the division of the eventful years of 1914 to 1918 into sections, so that the story of each battalion of the regiment may appear as clearly as possible between certain approximate dates. Of course, this system must be to a certain extent elastic, for, if a fixed date happened to be one during which a particular unit was in the midst of a very particular job, it would obviously be better to finish the description of that operation before drifting off to the doings of its brother Buffs somewhere else. The doings of the ten battalions, then, which together formed the regiment of Buffs, are what the reader is invited to consider in the following pages.