I'm looking for the original source(s) of a common legend of the battle at Mons in August 1914: that the British troops fired their rifles so rapidly that the Germans thought that they were being fired upon with many machine guns.

I encountered this in Tuchman's The Guns of August. Her source appears to have been Smith-Dorrien's account of the battle in his Memories of Forty-Eight Years Service.

He writes in Chapter 24: "The rapid and accurate rifle-fire to which our men had been trained was an eye-opener to the enemy, and they believed at the time that they were opposed by an enormous number of machine-guns."

My question is how did Smith-Dorrien know what the Germans believed. Is there a known German source for his statement?

Many thanks for considering my question.

--Bob

If I recall correctly it had to do with the British use of the volley sights on their SMLE rifles. Those sights allowed the rifles to be used for a type of plunging fire on area targets at long ranges.

Walter Bloem springs to mind, he was an officer with the Brandenburg Grenadiers,

Jon

This is not a definitive reply, merely a few remarks for your consideration. One of the most detailed German regimental histories is that of IR 84, the regiment which stormed the bridge at Nimy. As far as Mons is concerned, it contains eleven detailed and mostly lengthy descriptions of the battle. None of the eyewitnesses confused rifle fire with machine gun fire. There are descriptions of 'heavy/very heavy fire', 'well-aimed fire', 'skills of concealment, camouflage and good shooting acquired in colonial wars' etc etc. Two witnesses, specifically describe 'rifle and machine gun fire'; two more 'very heavy Infanteriefeuer '[i.e. rifle fire]. One witness, Theodor Schroeder, decribes the locations of Dease's machine guns up on the railway bridge abutments precisely correctly. So I think we can take it that at least one of the regiments pricipally involved was under no false impression about the type of fire with which it had been engaged.

I shall check a few other sources, but I have to say I bracket this idea with other self-congratulatory assertions such as, 'as everyone knows, the such-and-such division was the one most feared by the Germans.'

One final point, which I raise not to knock the Holts, many of whose books I own, but to make the point about how myth and legend grows with the re-telling. This is their description of events at Nimy (Battlefields of the First World War p 10) :'A solid mass of soldiers in columns of fours came on towards the canal from the north. The Tommies were astounded. Their opponents moved as if on parade, as if taking part in some Napoleonic war game. They were ducks in a shooting gallery to the riflemen of the BEF who were trained to fire fifteen rounds a minute and capable of almost double that with such a target...The two machine guns commanded by Lieutenant Dease, sited on top of the embankment where you are standing at the southern end of the bridge, wreaked terrible havoc among the grey horde...'

Here are the casualty figures of IR 84, aka 'the grey horde', as supplied by the regimental adjutant. Note that these are the totals for the entire two day battle.

Killed: 1 officer, 3 NCOs, 20 OR
Wounded: 6 officers, 10 NCOs, 45 OR

Given that the strength of a regiment in 1914 was (give or take a few) 70 officers and 3,200 OR, losses of 7 officers and 78 OR, mean that most of the 'ducks in [the] shooting gallery' got away with it and, as for the machine guns, I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'terrible havoc.' It is instructive to walk St Symphorien cemetery, laid out by the Germans originally and count the German graves by regiments. There are not many.

Jack

Major Pridham in "The superiority of fire" quotes from German Official Statements as saying. " over every bush, hedge and fragment of wall floated a thin film of smoke betraying a machine gun rattling out bullets" ...... "The enemy's superiority in machine guns was two fold, three fold, even four fold"

On Aug 24th 1914 the 2nd Batt Duke of Wellingtons Regiment stopped (at 800 yards) and drove back six German battalions on the Boussu Quevrain Rd. On the 11th Nov 1914 on the Menin Rd the same battalion stopped the advance of the 2nd Guard Grenadier Regiment of the Prussian Army killing or seriously wounding 15 officers and 500 men .

I wonder where Pridham got his information? One of the earliest published official versions of First Ypres is the monograph Die Schlacht an der Yser und bei Ypern im Herbst 1914, published on behalf of the General Staff in 1918. Of the British tactics, this states (pp 21-22), 'The British, following years of colonial campaigning against wily opponents in close country, would let the attacker move to within close range, then from hedges, houses and trees would open a hail of rifle and machine gun fire at point blank range...' The search goes on.

Jack

Pridham was originally in the Duke of Wellingtons and then an Officer Instructor at Hythe. Given that he had retired by the end of WW2 I would guess that he had WW1 experience and may even have taken part in the action quoted. I would suspect that Hythe had access to German official reports when these became available in order to access the effectiveness of particular tactics.

Barnes "The British Army of 1914" quotes an officer of the 24th (Brandenberg) Rgt "If we thought that the English had been shelled enough to be storm ripe we were fairly mistaken. They met us with well aimed fire ..... Suddenly when we were well in the open they turned their machine guns on" [Barnes comments that there were no machine guns]. The officer goes on to say that his battalion "lost three company commanders, every second officer and every third man"

Barnes also quotes an official German report

"Well entrenched and completely hidden the enemy opened a murderous fire ... the casualties increased ... the rushes became shorter, and finally the whole advance stopped .... with bloody losses the attack gradually came to an end"

Jon-
Thank you for the reference to Bloem; his The Advance from Mons is available online. Bloem's account of the Mons canal battle does distinguish between rifle and machine gun fire, but also reports fairly heavy casulties in his unit.

--Bob

Jack, your revelations shatter our cherished myths. I am disillusioned. Didn't German accounts testify to the Old Contemptibles giving a good account of themselves at Mons?

Were there any missing in addition to those casualties you cited?

As for the local cemetery, might the Germans have been moving on so quickly that they didn't stop long for recovery of their dead? Maybe many were taken to bigger cemeteries elsewhere. I have even read that the Germans cremated some of their dead: an intriguing picture in your book on the Somme comes to mind.

Or are we to accept the prospect that German casualties at Mons were relativley trivial? The figures you provide certainly suggest that they were.

Phil.

After the battle the battalion commander of the 12th Brandenburg Genadiers is reported to have said 'my proud, beautiflul battalion...shot to peices by the English, the English we laughed at'

Jon

Henry Williamson took part in the Christmas truce of 1914 and claims to have spoken to a young German in no man's land who referred to the British 'machine pistols'.

There are just too many specific references to high casualty rates amongst individual German units engaged to ignore. For example the German 64th Regiment lost "the adjutant, every fourth man and of three companies, every lieutenant"

Casualties are tricky - especially in the German army where exact information depends on how assiduous the authors of the regimental histories were and, as far as the Forum is concerned, if I happen to have a copy. In view of the fact that IR 64 has been raised, here are the figures for the two engagements at Mons (Jemappes and Frameries)

Jemappes: 2 OR of 9th Coy KIA, 1 Officer (Lt Morgenbesser of 11th Coy - wounded near Nimy) and 10 OR wounded

Frameries: Lt and Adjt Harald Vierow 1st Bn, Res Lt Wenzel 12th Coy and Offizierstellvertreter Liebenow 9th Coy plus 50 OR KIA; 8 Officers and 207 OR wounded; 14 men missing. Most of the casualties were from 1st Bn.

So between 55 and 69 were KIA and 217 wounded. Serious enough, but not enough to fill up the cemeteries and, incidentally, they inflicted at least the same number of casualties on the South Lancashires at Frameries, their machine guns up on a slag heap taking a particualrly heavy toll. One of the issues is the fact that when troops come under effective enemy fire (i.e. begin to take casualties), everyone hits the ground and takes cover. If they remain pinned down for some time, and there is ample evidence that this was so at both Mons and Le Cateau, there is a natural tendency to assume that huge numbers have been hit. Every fourth man? I do not think so. It was more like every eleventh man, though the percentage would have been higher in 1st Bn and lower in the other two.

Jack

This proves little either way. Casualties do not appear to have been evenly distributed across the battle area so for example on the British side the 8th Brigade suffered over 50% of the casualties - the 1st corps only suffered 2.5% of the total. If we just look at one or the other we get two very different pictures. What we do know is that some German units received a severe mauling. If we take the casualties of the IR 64 and the 12 Brandenberg these two alone between them amount to half those of the British army.

The every fourth man is it seems a German not a British estimate.

David Ascoli wrote that the Germans suffered a minimum of 6,000 casualties in the battle. The figures that you supply, Jack, indicate that this is a preposterous exaggeration.

I'm beginning to wonder if the Germans suffered fewer casualties than the British, who lost 1,600 men, of whom several hundred were unwounded prisoners.

Phil.

On the evidence that Jack supplied plus figures from several sources it would seem that two German Regiments alone suffered over 800 casualties. It would seem unlikely that the rest of the German forces involved suffered less than 800 casualties betwen them

I shall try to find some additional information about casualties, but I do not hold out much hope of getting close to an overall definitive figure for German losses. As I have already said, it is a fraught subject, but we should be able get closer to a reasonable general impression. Certainly as Centurion says, the losses for IR 24 were high. So far I note that its 3rd Bn alone had only nine officers and 560 men from 1065 present for duty at the post-Frameries roll call.

Jack

Bob
Some evidence from the IWM Oral History Collection. From his recollections of operations as an officer with 1st Bn Northumberland Fusiliers defending the Mariette canal bridge, Mons 22/8/14

"...... by that time the firing was general alllll down the canal and was a most remendous noise; a most magnificet noise of rifle fire it sounded like all the Bisleys in the world going on at the same time with of coursethe echoes off the walls."

Officer was thet hen 2nd Lt Eric Dorman-Smith, later to become major-general and Aucheleck's CoS in the Middle East in WW2

Peter

A reasonable general impression would be much appreciated, Jack. This bothers me, as we are touching a raw nerve with our cherished perceptions of The Great War. We've been weaned on the stories of The Old Contemtibles , Kipling's "barrack room sweats", the professional working class soldiers of the BEF, "shooting the German attacks flat" at Mons. If you don't have an inkling of what the real figures were, nobody does.

Phil.

OK, here is another contribution. I have searched the Roll of Honour of IR 24, the regiment referred to in my last post. Here are the officer and company breakdowns (fatal casualties only)

Lts Georg Schiffmann, Johannes Graebke and Walter Ernst were KIA at Jemappes. Hauptmanns Ernst von Lorentz, Hans Lange, and Max Seeman; Oberleutnants Paul Philippi and Erich Muck; Lts Oskar-Heinrich von Klass and Kurt von Koenig were KIA at Frameries.

Jemappes Frameries
1 3 2
2 2 6
3 1 0
4 3 4
5 4 2
6 2 0
7 0 0
8 0 3 (+'Mons' 2)
9 1 3
10 6 6
11 0 11
12 0 29


In addition it appears that 3 of 10th Coy and 7 of 11th Coy died of wounds a day or two later - probably associated with these battles, so we end up with. 10 officers KIA (high figures, which suggest a lot of leading from the front in difficult circumstances) and 90 OR - 100 if we add those DOW. I have not managed to come up with a better figures for wounded and missing, other than that already quoted, but it does appear from the IR 64 figures and those for 3rd Bn IR 24 that the ratio of wounded to killed was rather high. This may be because the lightly wounded, whom the German army did not strike off the strength of their units, were included. Evidence from other battles suggests that this percentage tended to be high amongst the overall wounded figures, but to say any more would be speculation.

Jack

I see that my table did not work well. The first figure is the company number; the second Jemappes and the third Frameries.

Jack

Thank you, Jack.

And so we have for IR 84 - Killed: 24; Wounded:61. For IR 64 - 69 killed ( assuming MIA were dead); 217 wounded. The hardest hit unit of those you've cited is IR 24 which lost 100 killed in action and 10 died from wounds; no figure for wounded or missing. The high ratio of officers killed to OR is significant in this regiment. The ratio of killed to wounded is high for IRs 84 and 64.

Forgive my ignorance, but were Jemappes and Frameries fought on seperate days i.e. 23rd and 24th August, or were they both part of the fighting on 23rd?

Phil.

This is the first part of an attempt at a more considered reply regarding casualties. It comes with every imaginable health warning, but is likely to be reasonably accurate as far as it goes.

There were three German corps operating in or around Mons: IX Corps (Gen der Inf von Quast), IV Corps (Gen der Inf Sixt von Arnim) and III Corps (Gen der Inf von Lochow). They and their constituent formations played widely varying roles over the two day period and only some of them were heavily engaged.

The first formation, IX Corps, was organised as follows: 17th Inf Div, comprising 33 Inf Bde (IRs 75 & 76) and 34 Inf Bde (Gren R 89, Fus R 90 & Jaeger Bn 9) & 18th Div comprising 35 Inf Bde (IR 84, Fus R 86) and 36 Inf Bde (IR 31, IR 85)

Here are the figures I have gleaned:

33 Bde (St Symphorien)

IR 75 KIA 39 OR; Wounded 5 officers and 232 OR; Missing 'up to' 40
IR 76 KIA 11 Wounded 79

34 Bde (Not much involved)
Gren R 89 KIA Lt Georg Gade & 2 OR; Wounded OLt Stratmann, 3 NCO & 19 OR
Fues R 90 History exists, but I do not have one. Figures unlikely to be high.
Jaeg Bn 9 was already working with Higher Cavalry Commander 2 by this stage.

35 Bde (Storming of bridges at Nimy and Obourg, advance into Mons)

IR 84 (Nimy) KIA 1 officer, 3 NCOs & 20 OR, Wounded 6 officers, 10 NCOs & 45 OR
Fues R 86 (Obourg) KIA 30 OR, Wounded 6 officers & 90 OR

36 Bde
IR 31 KIA 2 OR, Wounded 13
IR 85 KIA Hauptmann Hermann Groepper, Lts Heinrich Driver, Freiherr von Schele & Ernst Trebitz, Wounded 2 officers. There were also 184 OR casualties (KIA and wounded not differentiated).

The only tentative conclusions we can, perhaps, draw from these figures is that the fight for the bridges does not seem to match the popularly reported German blood bath. Work continues.

Jack

Sorry

I failed to answer the question: Jemappes 23 Aug; Frameries the following day.

Jack

I've seen a Red Cross reference to 70,000 German casualties having been evacuated by ambulance trains after the fighting

If that refers to the entire front, it is entirely probable. I suspect it could even be more. 22 August, for example, was a day of immensely heavy fighting between the French and the German armies. In overall terms Mons was but one battle of many at that time.

Jack

No it refers to the British facing sector - it will however include Le Cateau

A fascinating thread and whilst not seeking to be controversialI would add; the figures are extremely interesting and the question as to the the Germans mistaking rifle fire for that of machine gun fire as yet inconclusive, and fascinatingly illusive. However the effects of British fire seem very clear on the assaulting Germans. It certainly severely disrupted attacks and German freedom of movement. (And from the reports quoted had an effect on moral (morale) as the British put it, not least Thompson Capper (CO 7th Infantry Division and Inspector of Infantry until Sept 1914) preached loudly the objective of creating/and need for troops having higher moral than the enemy before the war)

Has disruption, denial of freedom of movement and morale sapping not always been an acceptable, and recocgnised, objective of smallarms fire? As an aside, I do not see that the fact that the German casualty figures may - well - be lower than popularly accepted in any way traduces the BEF or questions its effectiveness with the SMLE and all the primary evidence that I have seen for the early stages of the war (particularly at 1st Ypres) indicates the reputation that the BEF earned from the Germans. (Perhaps the boys just hadn't got their eyes in yet!)

Private in the West Kents "They made a nice target, even if you were a third class shot you were bound to hit something"

Another RWK private on reaching a dressing station was asked by Major H S Thurston (RAMC) "How are things up at the front" and replied
"Grand Sir, I was a first class shot when I left the army. Since then I have been employed as a game keeper to an estate in Kent. I have just been recalled to the colours. Both our machine guns got overheated through continuous firring and jammed. With my rifle, before I was wounded, I fired 130 rounds at from 200 to 300 yards range. If I haven't killed and wounded 80 of them I ought to be reduced to a third class shot tomorrow. To tell you the truth Sir, rabbit shooting aint in it."

The Germans initially attacked in close order, making themselves particularly good targets, and persisted in their assaults.

Getting back to the original subject it should be considered that most of the German troops of all ranks probably had relatively little experience of being under fire (training involving live rounds being fired just over head being a thing of the future) and especially not machine gun fire. Telling rifle from machine gun fire in what must have been a very noisy and very stressful environment would have been difficult. If you have been pasted by a force of inferior numbers and one which you underrated its natural to look for a reason for this - such as overestimating how many machine guns they had.

I am trying to retain a narrow focus as much as possible and produce the best casualty figures that I can - for the sake of interest as much as anything. A couple of supplementary remarks are probably in order. Virtually all the German sources express respect for the British following the first of their clashes with them. This applies equally well to Le Cateau as Mons. The only real exception is a derogatory remark about the Highlanders captured at Mons, where one of the histories remarks that they all had a good laugh at the Scots in their 'little coloured skirts.' I suspect that they changed their tune on closer acquaintance. I cannot find a shred of evidence in support of the original contention that the Germans thought that they were being machine gunned, when rifles were involved. This does not mean that it does not appear somewhere; merely that I have not found a sound reference yet. It would certainly help this discussion if somebody could produce one of the references or 'official sources' that appear in British assertions on the subject. I have nowhere near finished looking for figures from Mons, but even now I simply do not buy into the British causing 70,000 wounded in the early clashes; Le Cateau notwithstanding. Nigel Cave and I did a lot of work on the casualties for that battle and decided that the British figure ascribed to the battle was grossly exaggerated, whilst that for the Germans - even using the most pessimistic figures and adding some on for luck - could not be made to exceed 2,000. I do not want to start an argument over this point either but, regardless of all the factors involved, the side in possession of a battlefield at the end of a battle has won it, especially when meeting engagements are involved. The BEF fought well it both Mons and Le Cateau, where the German army blew a great opportunity to surround at least II Corps, but in both cases the BEF retreated from the field leaving it to the Germans, who were in no doubt that they had won victories.

Jack

Thank you again, Jack. Why, I wonder, with these definitve German casualty figures being available, have no historians hitherto come forward with them? They certainly make my perception of the battle change.

Might we extrapolate from the figures you've cited and draw a tentative conclusion about the order of magnitude of German casualties against the British in those two days? The range of loss is very different, from trivial to serious, and if we average them out and apply them to a notional total of all the German regiments engaged, we might be able to take a reasonable guess. This is how Martin Middlebrooke arrived at his estimate for German losses on March 21st 1918.

If the German casualties at Le Cateau did not exceed two thousand, then the Ascoli estimate of 6,000 for August 23rd at Mons is totally discredited. I find it confusing, especially after reading the accounts of Bloem, Binding etc.

Sorry to press you on this one, Jack, I know you find statistical analysis of casualties unpalatable, but I really want to get some kind of assesment as to how effective that British firepower was at Mons.

Phil.

There has been much recent discussion of this phenomenon in the "Turkish Machine Guns at Gallipoli" thread in Classic Threads. Some Australian reports on one of the landings there apparently overstated the amount of machine gun fire that was received.

Sorry to be a fuddy duddy but any reasonable estimate must be based on accurate figures. We can play around with averages and means and so on until the cows come home but unless the figures are accurate, we are not making an estimate, we are making guesses. I think Centurion has touched on an important point. The Germans had started well and were flushed with success. When they were checked to some degree at Mons and Le Cateau, they naturally looked for a reason to explain why an army which had been and still was at that time, underestimated, had delivered that check. High numbers of machine guns would be one possible reason which might be seized upon. The actual number of casualties would be less important than the fact that they were considerably higher than expected and high enough to allow the BEF to make a fighting withdrawal and escape envelopment.

I am currently homing in on III Corps casualties because that corps was rather more closely associated with the main fighting for Mons, than was IV Corps, which only seem to have come into the battle on 24 August and then their effort was aimed at Audregnies, a solid 20 km or more from Mons. I am not quite sure, truthergw, whence you have derived your thoughts about the Germans seeking an explanation for the checks they had received. As far as I can tell, they fought the British where they found them then pressed on, rather as they were doing all along the Western Front at that time. There does not seem to have been any pause for reflection at all, though their historians all made the point strongly after the war that the opposition offered by the BEF was way in excess of anything they had encountered from the Belgians. Although they suffered quite high casualties during this phase of operations, they were no worse than those they were experiencing elsewhere at the time and certainly no cause for particular alarm.

Jack

For the whole month of August, the German casualties on the Western Front, according to their Medical History, amounted to 136,000 of whom 47,000 were killed or missing and 89,000 wounded. Bearing in mind the enormity of the battles between the French and the Germans, it's hard to imagine that the fighting against the BEF could have accounted for any more than ten per cent of that total. Indeed, ten per cent seems on the high side. And only a fraction of those would have occurred at Mons.

Phil.

Jack,

I know you do not want to be drawn into an argument, and this is not for argument's sake. However, I still feel it needs to be pointed out (in the event of any interested parties) that there was no intention of 'defending Mons to the last' or hold ground indefinitely. It was a delaying operation (for 24 hours) to allow the French to sort out their issues. The plan was to fall back to positions a couple of miles back. As I am sure most people with an interest are aware, but apparently unbeknown to the British at the time, that the French 5th Army (Lanzerac) had pulled back and the BEF had to pull back in sympathy. I do believe, however, that the British pulling back was fortuitous (regardless of the grizzling of the British troops about retreating), as, with an exposed right flank, I am sure that this would have amounted to the separation of the BEF from the mainstay of its large coalition ally (the French Army) and would have most probably resulted in it being surrounded and defeated.

It is also worth pointing out that there are good first had accounts from both sides (I appreciate that this is a narrow sample - but it's all I have at hand):

John Lucy (2nd Royal Irish Rifles): There's a Devil in the Drum

Walter Bloem (12th Brandenburg Grenadiers): The Advance from Mons 1914: The Experiences of a German Infantry Officer

Regardless of ground taken, it is worth noting that John Lucy feels that the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles have issued a good hammering, and conversely, Walter Bloem feels that his unit has received a good hammering. He puts in an interesting account of the advance to the British (and how they were difficult to see) and as you have stated: the fast and deadly fire they were to come under - at close range.

I was wondering whether the Germans had an equivalent of Soldiers Died in the Great War, or listings of casualties by date, in sources such Appendices of their equivalent of Regimental Histories?

Anyway, food for thought.

Aye

Tom McC

Since we were discussing casualty figures as quoted by various historians, I thought that a comment on why historians might exaggerate figures or not go out of their way to correct misapprehensions, might be apposite.

Read Lyn MacDonalds 1914 recently,she mentions that" the germans believed,and long after the war they went on believing,that the british had beaten them back with machine guns" Am not sure if she names her source.

I don't think it has been said yet, but, if found, a German account of being shot at by British machine guns may be because they were shot at by British machine guns. We did have a few.

Again,L MacDonald "but there were only two,placed high above the canal on the buttresses of the vital Nimy railway bridge,"

Have we just been kidding ourselves about this battle for generations, then?

If it transpires that the Germans succeeded in gaining the field at Mons without suffering casualties that were significantly heavier than those they inflicted, then all the impressions that British accounts ( and, indeed, several German accounts) convey about the events of the first major clash between the BEF and the German army are discredited.

Phil.

Phil, you seem to be quickly jumping to conclusions. At the moment, the only evidence of "light" German casualties at Mons are a few figures quoted by Jack (which carry, as he says himself, a massive health warning) and a bit of statistical sleight-of-hand. I think a little more "evidence" is needed before readily jumping to such conclusions i.e. whether heavy casualties or not, the Germans only took the field at Mons after the BEF withdrew, they didn't take it by direct force of arms on the day (when in theory, given the size of the opposing forces, they should have done).


Cheers-salesie.

centurion-

Would you be so kind as to furnish a source for the quotes from the Privates in the West Kents, which you gave above? I am regrettably ignorant of much of the literature pertinent to the battle at Mons.

Many thanks.

--Bob

Mons by John Terraine contains a few references to confirm the German's thought they were facing MGs including ....

Hauptmann von Brandis 24th Brandenburg Regiment

'There were only dead and wounded to be seen. Tommy seems to have waited for the moment of the assualt.
He had carefully studied our training manuals, and suddenly, when we were well in the open, he turned his machine guns on.'

The 'machine guns' were of course the rapid rifle fire of the 1st Licolns assisted by the shrapnell of the 109th Battery.
Certainly a book to consider when studying Mons and le Cateau in any depth.

Regards Jarvis.

Hi All,

Just out of interest, if you google: The Advance from Mons 1914,

the first hit is: books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1874622574....

Click on this and you can read Walter Bloem's account. Pages 38-52 cover Mons. Page 45 covers a small excerpt of British MG fire. In the footnotes it covers the British units involved. 'Grey corpses lying all over the meadow' page 46. Officer casualties page 48.

Page 49 (Below), sums up Bloem's opinion of the action. The whole account (pages 38-52), describes the transformation from a confident battalion to one considerably depleted in Fighting Power - IMHO.

Aye

Tom McC

Superiority of fire - the basic principles of Fire Tactics by Major C H B Pridham Duke of Wellingtons Regiment and later Officer Instructor at Hythe. In his forward to the book he acknowledges the regimental history of the Royal West Kent Regiment.

Sorry I have been out of this for a bit, finishing off a chapter of my Cambrai book. Salesie, the few figures I have provided so far give you an overview of of the casualties suffered by one third of all the forces deployed against the BEF. You are right that they are few, but that is because this battle only involved a few German regiments and even fewer of these were heavily engaged. As far as ground being captured/or evacuated is concerned (not that it makes much difference in battle) I suggest you take a closer look at events by the bridges at Nimy and Obourg. They were pretty evidentally taken by storm. The key to Nimy, for example, was an action by Musketier Niemeyer of 8th Coy IR 84, who swam the canal under fire, got hold of a boat which enabled Sergeant Roewer's section to get across, again under heavy fire then, whilst Roewer's men kept up the firefight, managed to swing the bridge open, which enabled the men of IR 84 to swarm across. Niemeyer was killed moments after this, but his action would have earned him the VC if he had been British.

I hope to produce the III Corps figures later. These include heavy casualties suffered by Grenadier Regts 8 & 12.

Jack

This is the information relating to casualties in III Corps. The organisation of this corps was: 5th Inf Div with 9 Bde (Gren Regt 8 & IR 48) & 10 Bde ( Gren Regt 12, IR 52 and Jaeger Bn 3 (with HKK 2)); 6th Div with 11 Bde (IR 20 & Fus Regt 35) & 12 Bde (IR 24 & IR 64)

Casualties were as follows:

Gren 8 KIA Lt Dennstedt (11th Coy), Lt Wieser (12th Coy)., Lt von Boretzky-Cornitz (1st Coy) and Offizierstellvertreter Zimpfer (10th Coy) plus 29 OR; wounded 62, of whom six were officers.

IR 48 was barely engaged. It suffered KIA 3 OR, Wounded, Hptm Gerlach plus 24 OR.

Gren 12 (hardest hit by far). KIA Maj Prager (CO 3rd Bn, OLt von Hangwitz, Adjt 2nd Bn; 3 Company Commanders: Hptm Spiegel (12th Coy, Olt Drees gen Goerdt (4th), Hptm von Stocki (9th); 6 platoon commanders: Lts Grapow, Thiele, Leo, Graeser, Faehnrich Tettenborn, Offizierstellvertreter Riese. Wounded Regtl Adjt von Hagen, 2 Coy Commanders and 13 platoon commanders.
KIA 62 OR wounded 401 OR, missing 137 (but some (fig unknown) turned up later)

IR 52 KIA Olt von Negelein, Lt Koopman, Lt Burgatzky plus 24 OR; wounded 3 officers and 125 OR; missing 11 OR.

IR 20 KIA 40; wounded 151 (including OLt Rank 7th Coy) 10 missing. Most casualties were from 2nd Bn.

Fus Regt 35 Corps reserve for Frameries. Not enaged. No cas

IRs 24 and 64 have already been covered. I could tackle IV Corps if anyone is interested, but none of its formations operated within twenty km of Mons.

Hope this helps.

Jack

Jack,

Do you have any casualty figures for Infantry Regiments 75 and 76 on the British right flank (1st Gordons, 2nd Royal Irish [Regiment], & 2nd Royal Scots) please?

Aye

Tom McC

Jack, that does indeed help; thank you very much.

Taking a very quick stab at the arithmetic, and applying guesswork to where breakdowns into categories of killed, wounded and missing are not given separately, it looks as if the aggregate German casualty list for those two days would be in the order of 3,000, of whom roughly 500 were killed outright. The British are said to have suffered 1,600 casualties on the 23rd and 2,000 on the 24th. Allowing for the fact that the British figures include a substantial proportion of unwounded prisoners, the suggestion is that in terms of killed and wounded, the German loss might have exceeded that of the British, but only by a small margin. This repudiates the traditional image of the battle. From now on, I will have to view the British accounts of the slaughter meeted out by "fifteen rounds rapid" with more circumspection.

Phil.