Battle of Mons

Although the French armies on his right were in full retreat from the Belgian frontier on August 23, 1914 following their defeat first at Neuf chateau and then at Charleroi, Gen. Sir John French, the commander of the British forces, still remained in fatal ignorance of this important fact for at least 24 hours. His intelligence department appears to have functioned imperfectly. Gen. French was unaware that his little expeditionary force of 76,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry had been left in complete isolation on the 25-mile front along the Mons-Conde Canal. He knew nothing of the sweep of von Kluck's army through Belgium and the German intention to turn his left flank. His airmen had failed to detect the presence of swarms of German soldiers in the adjacent woods. Serene in the belief that he was supported on the right by Lanrezac's Fifth French Army and on the left by a screen of French cavalry, and confident that only two German corps at most opposed him in front, Gen. French tranquilly sat him down amid the slag heaps of the Mons region on that fatal Sunday, August 23, 1914 to await the attack of the Huns.

Gen. Smith-Dorrien's Second Army Corps held the left of the British line in front of Mons, while Gen. Douglas Haig's First Army Corps lay at Binche on the right, nearest to the position just vacated by Lanrezac's French army. Gen. Allenby's cavalry, numbering 10,000 horses, was stationed in the rear, while a French cavalry force under Gen. d'Amade, guarded the British left flank. In addition, a cavalry corps of three divisions, under Gen. Sordet, rested farther south at Maubeuge, prepared to assist in any emergency that might arise.

At high noon, on Sunday, August 23, 1914 while the church bells in the neighboring villages were pealing joyously and the British soldiers were variously engaged at play or in washing their soiled garments, the heavens were rent with the screech of German shells fired from the cover of the woods fronting Mons. Squadrons of ...

The first great field battle of World War I took place at Mons in Belgium, where a victorious German army, driving hard after the outgeneraled and defeated Allies, came up with Britain's "contemptible little" professional army (80,000 men). General von Kluck threw 250,000 men against-them. But the Old Contemptibles stood their ground until their ranks were shot through & through.