CHAPTER V

THE GREAT RETREAT

No thought was there of dastard flight Linked in the serried phalanx tight, Groom fought like noble, squire like knight, As fearlessly, and well. SCOTT.

You will remember that the Battle of Mons was fought on the 23rd of August, a Sunday.

On the Monday the whole world, with the exception of Germany and Austria, heard with dismay that the famous Belgian fort of Namur had fallen, after holding out as long as it could against the great German guns.

Now Namur was in a sense the key to France, so you can understand how very very serious a matter for the Allies, as the French and British forces were henceforth to be called, was the fall of this great fortress. In these days it is rather curious to remember that fourteen British regiments, including the Grenadier Guards, the Scots Guards, the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, the Coldstreams, the Royal Irish, and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, bear the honorary distinction, “Namur, 1695,” upon their colours, for having captured this stronghold two hundred and nineteen years ago.

Through the town of Namur flows the Meuse, a lovely river, shared by France and Belgium, which has already seen some of the hardest fighting of this war.

On the banks of the Meuse, Joan of Arc, as a little girl, must often have played, for in France it laves the village of Domrémy. When it reaches Belgium, this storied river flows by the grave of an extraordinary man who in some ways had certain affinities with Joan of Arc—I mean Peter the Hermit, who is buried in the gardens of the old Abbey of Neufmoustier.

The most beautiful description of the Meuse at Namur was written by William Wordsworth:

“Is this the stream whose cities, heights, and plains, War’s favourite playground are, with crimson stains Familiar as the morn with pearly dews? The morn, that now, along the silver Meuse, Spreading her peaceful ensigns, calls the swains To tend their silent boats and ringing wains, Or strip the bough whose mellow fruit bestrews The ripening corn beneath it. As mine eyes Turn from the fortified and threatening hill, How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade, With its grey rocks clustering in pensive shade, That, shaped like old monastic turrets, rise From the smooth meadow-ground serene and still!”

Terrible fighting took place over that “smooth meadow-ground,” and at last the fortress surrendered.

Now let me tell you something of a happy and inspiriting nature.

While Namur was falling, the gallant little French fortress of Longwy was holding out against the Germans, and that though it was what is now called a fortress of the second class.

Longwy has always been regarded as of considerable importance, owing to its position on the Franco-German frontier. In the middle of the Great Revolution it was taken by Germans, and its fall very much upset the citizens of Paris. It put up a splendid fight in 1815, and was then besieged for three full months before it fell.

In the Franco-Prussian War it resisted for one week. But in this war it held out, against infinitely greater numbers and far more formidable siege artillery than in 1870, for twenty-four days! The enemy congratulated the French officer who had conducted the defence on his bravery and skill.

The fall of Namur forced the Allies back, and it was then that there began the British rearguard movement which was so brilliantly, skilfully, and successfully conducted by Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien that it is considered worthy to rank with the great retreat of Sir John Moore at Corunna.

I should like here to tell you something of the soldier to whom Sir John French paid a grand tribute in his official despatches concerning those first momentous days of the War.

General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien is a younger son of a family which has given many distinguished soldiers to the Empire, and for generations has held feudal sway over the Scilly Isles. Those of you who know Cornwall may have visited the beautiful tropical gardens surrounding his old home.

Before he obtained his high command in the Expeditionary Force, Smith-Dorrien had seen a great deal of fighting, and one likes to quote now what he once said during the South African War:

“Give me a thousand Colonials, men well acquainted with the rifle and expert in horsemanship; let me train them for six months; and I shall then be ready to lead them against an equal number of men drawn from any Continental army with absolute confidence.”

Sir Horace has also had experience with another type of splendid soldier of the Empire; for at one time he commanded the 4th Infantry Division of the Indian Army, which includes some of the finest troops in the native ranks.

During the South African War, Smith-Dorrien performed one of the pluckiest deeds ever done by a British officer.

His brigade was moving forward to take a main Boer position, when two battalions, one of the Gordons and the other of the C.I.V.’s, lost touch. The Gordons, to put it shortly, rushed up the hill at Doornkop with such impetuosity that they got cut off, and the General saw that there was great danger of their being surrounded. Without wasting a moment, and under an awful fire which was being kept up by an invisible foe, he galloped straight across the enemy’s front and turned the Highlanders back.

When Smith-Dorrien rode in unscathed, a brother officer protested against the awful risk he had run. “Someone had to stop the Gordons! I couldn’t send anyone else to face that fire, could I?” was his only answer.

It must have been hard for so brave a man to have to organise a retreat, but he knew that it had to be done—and done fighting.

You will have heard of—you may even have known—someone whose name was included in the list sent home after a battle as “missing.”

Now there is something terrible and disturbing in the thought of a man being missing. It makes one feel that anything may have happened to him. But we must always remember that this disturbing word does not necessarily mean that any harm has come to the soldier in question, still less that he is killed. It very often means that he did not hear the order to retreat and so was left behind in the trenches to be taken prisoner by the enemy. Not a pleasant fate, but from the point of view of those who love him, better than if he had fallen, as the French proudly put it, on the Field of Honour. Also it is well to remember that the number of the missing, especially in what is called a rearguard action, is always greater than the number of killed or wounded.

A retreat has been well described as disheartening and painful, but in strategy it is an operation like any other. Very often, as in the case of Smith-Dorrien, it is the way to win in the end.

What is strategy? Strategy is another name for arranging your forces like chessmen on a chess-board with the object of winning in the end. Great strategists are born, not made. Cæsar was a great strategist, so was Napoleon, and so was Lord Roberts. Just as a composer can write a piece of music without the help of a piano or any other instrument, so the born strategist can work out the plan of a battle, and even make a shrewd guess as to who is going to win, when sitting in his study with a good map before him.

It may interest you to know that before each of his great battles Napoleon spent the night in his tent studying a number of large maps laid out on the floor. Lying flat on his stomach, and with a little stick in his hand, he would work out the dispositions of his troops and of the enemy. When he had made up his mind what was going to happen, down to every detail, he would call in his generals and explain to each of them exactly what he was to do the next day. His generals soon found that though he was not always certain what his own side would do, he could always foresee the plans of the enemy.

I have already spoken of Sir John Moore at Corunna. At the time that great soldier made his famous retreat, he was much criticised, but now all military historians regard it as having been a most wonderful piece of work, if only because it forced Napoleon to alter his whole plan of campaign.

Just as General von Kluck wished to obey the Kaiser and destroy the British Army, so Napoleon was most eager to destroy Sir John Moore’s forces. Fresh from a series of brilliant victories, at the head of a splendid host, Napoleon dashed into Spain, but Sir John Moore, by his masterly retreat, defeated all his plans.

The first of his contemporaries to realise the splendid thing Moore had done was Napoleon himself. While the British commanders—Moore’s own contemporaries and even his own friends—were criticising the dead man, for he fell at Corunna, Napoleon was putting on record his unbounded admiration of his foe.

How our gallant soldiers felt when ordered to fall back was graphically described by Private Harman, of the King’s Royal Rifles:

“We did not like the order to retire, for we knew we were doing better than the Germans, and inflicting heavy losses upon them. Our officers also knew we were disappointed. On the fifth day of the retreat—which was the last I was in before being knocked out—our commanding officer came round and spoke to us, saying, ‘Stick it, boys, stick it! To-morrow we shall go the other way and advance.’”

And in time, as we shall see, they did advance, but before that glad moment came they had to retreat, fighting.

Listen to this, written by another private:

“On one occasion seven of us were left to cover a Maxim gun while it was being limbered up to take some other position farther back. We had to take up the position of the gun, and we kept firing rapid so as to make it appear that the Maxim gun was still there. The Germans were shelling the position on both sides of us. Then we had to go at the double for about five miles to catch up to the others. It was a hard jog-trot all the way.”

It was during this skilful retreat that there came the first of those wonderful duels in the air which established, as Sir John French so well put it, the personal supremacy of our flying men, and proved that they are quicker and sharper in the air than those of the enemy:

“Our man got above the German, who tried his hardest to escape,” wrote an eye-witness. “The Englishman was firing his revolver, and the German seemed to plane down in good order, but when he got to the ground he was dead.”

Little by little, in some cases not for many weeks, came through stories of the daring and quenchless heroism which illumined the dark night of the great retreat.

A solitary grave, each day strewn with fresh flowers, is the last resting-place of an English soldier who, quite alone, fought his last fight till overwhelmed by numbers.

During the first rearguard action he had strayed from his comrades, and fallen exhausted from fatigue. Unable to find them, he took up his quarters in a deserted carriage. Thirty-six hours later the Germans appeared and fired at him. Undeterred by the fact that he was utterly alone, he replied, and such was his determination and accuracy of aim that he accounted for six German officers, one of them a general, before he fell under a volley.

The French from a village near by buried him where he had fought, erected a cross, and in honour of his gallantry, laid fresh flowers each day on his grave.

His name was David M. Kay, and he belonged to the 5th Lancers.

Hearken to another exploit, of which the hero was Corporal Shaw, who for three years was the twelve-stone wrestling champion of the Army in Ireland.

He saw a comrade in difficulty with his horse in the first retirement from Mons. The pack had slipped round to its side, and the rider was endeavouring to straighten it. Shaw dashed up and helped the soldier to straighten the pack. Bullets rained round the plucky champion, one darted into the soft part of his shoulder, another killed one of his comrades near by, but the man he was helping rode off clear.