The third surprise was the vast numbers of the enemy that made the attack. Our first line did not consist, at any time, of more than 80,000 men, and against them von Kluck hurled at least 150,000 men, without counting the masses of cavalry which were moving towards the space between our left at Condé and the town of Tournai. Though the Germans were shot down in thousands, they continued to roll on like the waves of an incoming tide. "It was like the crowd leaving a football ground on a cup-tie day," was the description of one of our soldiers. For every five men which the French and the British had in the field in the early days of the war the Germans had eight.
Against these terrible odds our men fought stubbornly. Again and again the dense masses of the Germans pressed towards them, and as they did so a sheet of flame flickered along the line of British trenches, and they were beaten down like a field of standing wheat before a hailstorm. But no sooner were they swept to earth than their supports appeared, only to meet the same fate. Our men grew sick with slaughter. In some places the crowded ranks of the enemy managed to come close to the British trenches. Then our men leaped forward with a cheer and drove with the bayonet through and through the ranks, until the survivors turned and fled, followed by the pitiless fire of Maxims and field guns.
The British in their Trenches at Mons. From the picture by Dudley Tennant.
One important feature of the attack was the very large number of machine guns used by the Germans. They were mounted on low sledges, so that they could be rapidly brought into the firing line and worked by men lying down. It seemed in these early days of the war as though the enemy was going to do the real fighting with artillery and machine guns, and that his infantry were only to act as supports.
You already know that von Kluck was throwing his main strength chiefly on the British right, but there were also furious fights along the canal towards Condé, where our men were holding the bridges. Frenzied attacks were made on these bridges, but they were stubbornly held. When, however, the overwhelming numbers of the enemy appeared, our troops were withdrawn to the south bank, and orders were given to blow up the bridges and the barges in the canal. The engineers did the work with the coolest courage in the face of a deadly fire.
A hundred deeds of gallantry were done that day. One bridge was held by a devoted company of the Scottish Borderers. When they saw that it must be abandoned, a sergeant and three men dashed on to it to fire the fuse. The three men dropped in their tracks, and the sergeant went on alone. He hacked the fuse short and fired it; but with the destruction of the bridge he too was destroyed.
Foiled at the bridges, the enemy now attempted to cross the canal by means of pontoons. Our guns were trained on them, and an awful scene of slaughter and destruction began. Ten separate times the Germans managed to throw their pontoons over the water, and ten separate times the guns of the British smashed them to fragments.
Stubbornly as our men were fighting, the terrible pressure of the Germans could not be resisted. About three o'clock Sir Philip Chetwode's cavalry brigade, which had been guarding the flank, had to be withdrawn; whereupon the enemy occupied Binche. Sir Douglas Haig then drew in his right, and slowly fell back to a long swell of ground south of the village of Bray. You know that the British line had been almost straight; the retirement of the 1st Army Corps swung the right half of the line towards the south, so that there was a sharp angle between it and the 2nd Army Corps, holding the line of the Mons-Condé canal. The British were now in the same sort of dangerous position as the French when they held the angle between the Meuse and the Sambre. General French saw at once that his men in Mons were exposed to attacks from the front and the flanks, and that they were in peril of being cut off; so he directed the commander of that part of the line "to be careful not to keep the troops on this salient too long, but, if threatened seriously, to draw back the centre behind Mons."
Hardly had this message been sent off before a startling telegram from General Joffre reached General French. It gave him news which he ought to have received hours before, and made his gallant stand quite unavailing. It told him that Namur had fallen on the previous day; that the 5th French Army and the two reserve divisions on his right were in retreat; that the passages of the Sambre between Charleroi and Namur were in the hands of the enemy; that at least three German army corps were moving on the front of his position, while another was making a wide turning movement round his left by way of Tournai. Probably at this time some 200,000 Germans were about to attack Sir John French's 80,000. All this meant that the little British army, though it had done, and could still do, miracles of valour, was in peril of being cut off, enveloped, and destroyed. There was nothing for it but to hold on until nightfall, and then retreat. You can imagine the bitter disappointment of our men, who now knew that they were more than a match for the Germans.