Generals of the British Army / Portraits in Colour with Introductory and Biographical Notes

by Unknown

The Germans had secretly concentrated behind their screen of cavalry in Belgium. Sordets' cavalry had made a gallant raid through the country without gaining any sure information of where the main enemy forces lay. The French had made tentative moves eastward without finding any great force in their path. So the third week of the war dawned with no trustworthy evidence of the existence of that huge force that was to make its gallop to Paris. In such circumstances Sir John French landed with his staff. The Allies were groping in the dark and the British Army was cast for a rôle that it never had a chance of performing. Suddenly the German force emerged from behind its concealing curtain of horse. Without any trace of hesitation it moved westward over Belgium. Everything was in its place. Uniforms were new and fresh. Every scientific aid was in use, and the whole superstructure of the Allied strategy began to disappear. But only the superstructure.

It seems strange now to state that the rôle of the British Army was to outflank the German right wing. With our present knowledge of the sequence of events it is difficult to think that it was ever possible. The German Army had been trained for speed, and the German policy was based on getting in the first blow. When it fell it found the Allies unprepared. A full half-million picked German troops marched across Belgium on the 20th and 21st of August; but when the first encounters began on the Sambre the British Armies were not in their positions. The first Allied plan was already impracticable before the British Army took its place about Mons and prepared to give battle. The Sambre line could be no longer maintained; but the British commander, not yet notified of the fact, set himself to the forlorn hope of forbidding the advance of an army many times greater than his own force.

The Battle of Mons was decided before it had begun; and the troops who were compelled to retreat had planned quite another sort of episode. Sir John French and his Generals had to retire in haste from the peril of being surrounded and cut off.

At some phases of long drawn out war of positions it was forgotten that the Army which first took the field had to face the war of movements, and that only their astounding skill and courage enabled them to cope with it in its worst aspect. German generals have recently proclaimed their belief that the British Army will not be able to succeed in open warfare. Bernhardi even said that he doubted if the troops could face a European army. But this latter statement was made before the war, and it has perished in the light of numerous German defeats. The former can never survive our recollection of the conduct of the most difficult operations in open warfare by Sir John French and his Generals. An enforced retreat is a more searching test of military skill than any that is known to soldiers, and it was such an experience that met the British Army on the threshold of the War.

At Mons the Army made retreat possible. The battle was not of long duration; but it was sufficient to put an end to Bernhardi's hopes. The fierce onset of the Germans was broken by the amazing skill and coolness of a numerically inferior army, provided with hardly any of the instruments which were to give the tone to the war. Yet the few British machine guns and the incomparable riflemen inflicted losses that had never been expected by the enemy. German officers have explained their amazement at seeing the cool unhurried firing after the troops had been hammered time and again with an overwhelming weight of artillery.

They had scarcely any cover; but when the bombardment was over the quiet orders were instantly obeyed and the men met the enemy as though on manœuvres. Dispositions had been carefully made and the Germans met a deadly check. But this skill and courage was called upon more searchingly in the retreat which followed. The Germans seemed to be round both their wings. Indeed the first few days were fought in certainly what must have appeared to be partial envelopment. Le Cateau was a rearguard battle, such as perhaps has never been fought in history before. The men were too tired to do anything but put their fortunes to the final test; and, though overwhelmed by shrapnel, they won through. Courage alone cannot explain such a feat. Experience and the coolness that is born of it only explains half; the skill of the commanders could alone have justified the decision to stand at such hazards and could alone have brought the men through them. Le Cateau was won by the better troops. The British were moved back; but the check they administered gave them breathing space for the future.

The proportions of the force they had to meet were now clearer to the British commanders. By the Marne they had taken a surer measure. On the Aisne they put their judgment to the test and the successes of the First Corps in winning to the crest of the ridge, but lately cleared by the French, shewed that their reading of the situation was correct. Yet they were still to go through the final ordeal. They were taken north and set to tasks that were again incommensurate with their force. The army was still smaller than that of Belgium; and yet they were encouraged to look forward to Bruges, whence great German reinforcements were at that moment hastening south. Part of the army was falling back towards Ypres, and before this peaceful old Belgian town one of the decisive battles of history gradually emerged.

How the British Army survived Ypres is one of the mysteries upon which time can throw little light. But how it saved Ypres and survived at the same time can only be known from an investigation into the courage and surpassing skill of the splendid organism which had our honour in its keeping. The endurance under a ceaseless battering, the repeated readjustments that were necessitated by the mere weight of the onslaught, the mere mechanism of carrying on from day to day under such a strain can only be explained by a tribute to skilful handling that needs no emphasis. Officers acted with an insistent recognition of the issues at stake. The line, momentarily breached at Gheluvelt, was immediately restored before the orders of the supreme command could direct the operation. But this was only one great example of the skill that found expression everywhere and all the time.

Many of these generals, whose lives shine but vaguely through the facts which outline them, fought through these days of trial. All of them had other and stranger experience under other suns; but the experience they had garnered met its supreme test in the first phase of the war. When it had passed the barque of the army had ridden the troubled waters and was safe in harbour with only its terrible wounds to bear witness to the ordeal it had survived. Some of the commanders were fighting in other climes and came to the decisive theatre of the war when the great crisis had passed. They and all are part of the country's patrimony, part of its insurance of victory. They form a striking ensemble. Guardsmen some of them, with the halo which surrounds that name since the war began; engineers others, with the cool and calculating craftsmanship of their kind; others, again, of the artillery with bitter memories of the numerical weakness of their arm in the hour of trial and yet remembering fierce and glorious hours at Le Cateau, where they stood to the service of their guns and did the work of ten times their number. And there is not wanting a representative of the newest arm—the air service, which have many things to teach soldiers yet.