Military Myths and Legends: The Angels of Mons

The World War I Battle of Mons was famous for a number of notable firsts. It was the first test of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the first time Mons switched hands during the war, and probably the first time ghosts reinforced a living army to cover their retreat; ghosts who absolutely slaughtered the enemy – or so the legend goes.

The First Battle of Mons took place on August 23, 1914, one of the earliest battles on the Western Front of World War I and the first time the British operated jointly with the French against the German invasion. The British were trying to protect the French left flank from an advance by the German 1st Army, and they held their ground well. 

For 48 hours, they fought outnumbered three to one, yet they inflicted an incredibly disproportionate number of casualties, with estimates as high as three German casualties for every British one. It was a good start to the war. It would have been a great start, but the French lines began to break, and the British found out much too late. As the French fell back, the British had to retreat as well. 

British troops had dug in well, as the outcome of the battle showed, and so the order to retreat was an unexpected one. With the French in a full and sudden retreat, the Germans began approaching the British lines faster and in increasingly larger numbers. Realizing they were being outflanked, the BEF had some quick decisions to make. They decided to leave a contingent of British troops behind to fight rearguard actions as the rest of the expeditionary force made their frantic but orderly escape back toward France. 

As they marched away with the Germans nipping at their heels, the English troops passed the site of the medieval Battle of Agincourt, where English longbowmen under King Henry V famously defeated a French army which outnumbered them by more than six to one. The British Army of 1914 probably felt similarly outnumbered as they passed by the historic site. Legend has it that one of the Tommies in retreat said a prayer to Saint George as the Germans harassed their retreating forces.

That's when some believe that Saint George decided to come through. Shortly after saying the prayer, wrote author Arthur Machen, a spectral force of English longbowmen appeared. They were veterans of the Battle of Agincourt and were (apparently) in no mood to watch their countrymen get killed by some relentlessly pursuing enemy. The ghostly bowmen not only managed to frighten off the Germans, some of their equally ghostly arrows slaughtered them en masse.

Machen's story was supposed to be a work of fiction, but since it was originally printed in a London newspaper and not labeled as fiction, there were many who accepted it as factual. Within a few days, Machen himself could not convince interested parties that he'd made the whole thing up as a story. Other versions of the same story began to pop up as well. 

One version has it that an army of angels intervened for the British at Mons, another said it was a luminous cloud while yet one more has Saint George himself on the battlefield. While there were British troops who claimed to have seen spectral visitors during their retreat. They claimed to see ghostly cavalrymen and other troops, but those visions did not attempt to halt or attack the Germans. The most likely story is that the Germans were just as tired as the British and gave up the pursuit. 

What is true is that the British fought as well as their famous longbowmen did at Agincourt. The Battle of Mons was a tactical success for them but a strategic success for the Germans. The most important part was that many British soldiers lived to fight another day, with or without angelic intervention.