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.