The "machine guns" of Mons ?

[George Armstrong Custer]

Writing after he had become Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Monty never missed an opportunity to make his own genius in the Second World War shine all the brighter by disparaging command and control in the First, alongside slighting rival Allied commanders in WWII. What he says 40 years later of the limited perspective he had as a junior officer in 1914, and the manner in which he says it, needs to be treated with caution.

As to the original question behind this thread - the origins of the idea that the Germans mistook rifle fire for machine guns at Mons, we have not found a definitive German source for this. However, John Terraine*, in describing the defence of Gheluvelt by the 1/Queens and its subsequent loss to the Germans in October 1914, quotes from the German Official Account, Die Schlacht an der Yser und bei Ypren in Herbst 1914. Herausgegeben im Aufrage des Generalstabes des Feldheeres:

....over every bush, hedge and fragment of wall floated a film of smoke, betraying a machine gun rattling out bullets.

As Terraine points out, it betrayed no such thing: "machine guns were very sparse at this stage; it was British musketry, sixteen aimed rounds per minute, which some experts could work up to thirty in what was called the 'mad minute'. Nothing like it was ever seen again."

As we have seen earlier on this thread, the British Official History nowhere mentions the superiority of British musketry at Le Cateau without also acknowledging the presence of British machine guns - though these were, as Terraine points out, relatively sparse. It's been argued that the Germans would not mistake musketry, however good, for machine gun fire. How, then, to explain the above quote from the German Official Account which does just that? "Over every bush, hedge and fragment of wall floated a film of smoke, betraying a machine gun rattling out bullets," says the German History, when what was actually rattling out from the ultimately doomed 1/Queens at Gheluvelt was British musketry of a standard which would all too soon be lost forever. As far as the original question posed in this thread is concerned, here is a German official source attributing a preponderance of British machine guns to what in fact was a preponderance of British rifles. Are the German histories to be dismissed as simply wrong on instances such as this but cited as scrupulously accurate when it comes to allegations of low German losses inflicted by the British? And if the German history describes the Germans mistaking musketry for machine gun fire at Gheluvelt in October 1914 is it not at least possible that they did so at Le Cateau in August?

*Terraine in Douglas Haig, the educated soldier, p. 113.

ciao,

GAC

[Robert Dunlop]

For anyone who would like to continue challenging his or her view of the BEF 'mad minute', I would strongly recommend Zuber's book 'The Battle of the Frontiers, Ardennes 1914'. He describes the process by which German units were trained to lay down beaten zones of rifle fire. The use of observers to monitor range and effectiveness of fire is particularly interesting. Zuber provides several examples from the encounter battles of late August 1914, supplemented in some cases by information from French sources.

Robert

[salesie]

Sorry, Jack, when I said that Von Kluck believed he'd faced the whole BEF at Le Cateau and the Official German History would seem to confirm this, I may have been mistaken - I was quoting Smith-Dorrien from an earlier post i.e. "The German account of the battle concludes with this statement : "The whole B.E.F., six Divisions, a Cavalry Division and several French Territorial Divisions opposed the First Army," which statement alone is flattering to the prowess of the portion of the B.E.F. who stood at Le Cateau." and I assumed he was referring to the German Official History, perhaps not?

However, the fact is that for the remainder of the retreat the BEF was not harassed by Von Kluck's First Army, there was no close contact pursuit - chasing wild-geese or not, the question still remains why? The paradox of low casualties but healthy respect still exists and until that is adequately answered I'm afraid your casualty figures must continue to have a mighty health warning attached.

To summarise my position:

1) The fog of war, brought about by a lack of reliable intelligence, was just as bad for both sides - so no viable excuse for Von Kluck there.

2) At Le Cateau, II Corps was as much off-balance as Von Kluck's First Army was - again, no viable excuse for Von Kluck.

2) Smith-Dorrien made his own luck by being a competent General, Von Kluck did not - action/reaction created at least some of Von Kluck's errors; "miracle escapes" weren't all down to German error, the BEF's skill-at-arms and Smith Dorrien's bottle, not pure luck, was an important factor in dictating events.

3) The paradox of low casualties but healthy respect is still evident.

Cheers-salesie.

[Hoplophile]

I am loathe add another issue for consideration in an already complex discussion, but, as it seems relevant, I will go ahead.

When reading German accounts of the fighting in the late summer of 1914, to include regimental histories, Bloem's book, and the vignettes published in various "honor books" (Ehrenbucher, which were collections of short accounts by veterans of a certain region or branch of service), I am struck by the contrast between accounts of encounters with French or Belgian troops and accounts of subsequent encounters by the same unit with the BEF. That is to say, the accounts often describe British rifle fire as being much more effective than that of earlier opponents.

The casualties suffered by the German forces as a result of this fire may not have been enormous in absolute terms. However, when combined with such factors as fatigue, the loss of friends, and the loss of officers, its psychological and tactical effect seems to have been considerable. In other words, having become accustomed to rifle fire that was less effective, the German forces in question were subjected to a nasty surprise, and that surprise may well be responsible for a number of the effects we have been discussing, to include a loss of momentum on the battlefield and a tendency towards hyperbolic descriptions.

Please note that I am not at all dismissive of the courage of the French and Belgian troops in question. As a rule, however, their training in marksmanship was not to the same standard as that of the BEF. (The French, moreover, were handicapped by their Lebels, which were not only obsolescent, but also in rather poor shape from years of use as training weapons.)

[Jack Sheldon]

GAC

Many thanks for drawing our attention to the volume from Der Grosse Krieg in Einzeldarstellungen. At long last we may be getting closer to the origin of the assertion. I have a feeling that it probably predates Terraine, however. I can certainly remember this being common currency in the mid 1950s as I listened to my grandfather and his friends discussing the war.

I am also glad that you brought Montgomery back into the discussion, because it illustrates how information can be used selectively to make a point. You write off his account premeptorily as though it has no value, but who was he describing? None other than Lt Col Elkington, one of the two commanding officers courtmartialled and cashiered for their disgraceful conduct at St Quentin on 27 August. Then, of course, Montogmery's next paragragh (Memoirs p 33) contains praise for Elkington's successor, Major Poole, so clearly he did not hold the same view of all his superiors.

Moving on to the Gheluvelt quote. It appears on p 60 of the Ypern book as part of a description of the action which was being observed by the Kaiser: 'The British-French artillery fired as fast as their guns would permit; everywhere the steam of [red] hot British machine guns could be seen coming from bushes, hedgerows and ruins. It was all in vain. Unstoppably, the attackers pressed on.' As you can see, there is no mention of rifles. Point made by Terraine? Yes and no.

The book is littered with descriptions of the use of the attributes of the close country for defence; variations on the,'bushes, hedges and ruins' phrase crop up repeatedly. British infantry small arms fire has already been mentioned (at a quick scan) six times by the time we get to p 60 and there are about five more before the end of the book on p 98. There are also mentions of French and Belgian fire passim.

p 21 'The British, most of whom had experience gained through long years of colonial campaigning against cunning opponents in close country, let the attackers get to close range, then from hedges, houses and trees opened up withering rifle and machine gun fire from point blank range.'

p 30 'The British and French heavy and light guns hammered ceaselessly at the narrow German bridgehead and the crossing points themselves. Lying without cover in the swampy meadow, the German infantry was beyond help and sacrificed to enemy rifle and machine gun fire coming from the west and southwest.'

p 38 '...whilst the XXVII Reserve Corps strived to gain a victory in the woods between Zonnebeke and Becelaere. In amongst dreadful rifle, machine gun and artillery fire, commanders at all levels provided the assaulting infantry with a perfect example.'

pp 44-45 'It was almost impossible to pull ones feet out of the thick clay soil. Anybody who wished to hit the ground in the face of the appalling artillery, machine gun and rifle fire was lost.'

p 54 'It was almost impossible to advance in dressed lines of infantry. Again and again movement was confined to the few tracks, which were sewpt by machine guns.' N.B. No rifles this time.

p57 'The heights east of the place were taken; but the assault against the village [Messines] did not materialise, because heavy flanking fire from the south pinned down the attackers a few hundred metres short of the village.'

p 60 - already described

p 65 'Because the village streets, which were blocked with rubble, could not be used due to heavy rifle and machine gun fire being brought down along them, the attackers forced their way through the ruins... The monastery, with its huge towers and walls metres thick, from which machine guns and infantrymen fired in a wild tempo, appeared to be virtually impregnable.'

So it goes on, with unspecified small arms fire on p 66 and artillery and machine guns on p 69. The attack of the Prussian Guards on Polygon Wood and Nonnenbosch (pp 88-91 gets detailed treatment with artillery on p 88, machine guns on p89 and 'ear-splitting rifle and machine gun fire' on p 90

The Ypern book was written while the war was still going on and published in 1918. The whole things is in a breathless style, designed to convince the readership of the heroics of the gallant Feldgrauen in the face of overwhelming odds. Altogether a bit 'Boy's Own Paper' in style and approach. There were plenty such books on the British side published during the war years, but whether it would be wise to base our historical thinking on them is questionable.

In fact the Ypern book is not total twaddle. It covers the events chronologically and comprehensively, but it loses no opportunity to dish the Allies and praise the Germans. Did the author really believe that rifle fire was mistaken for machine gun fire? Did he introduce more machine guns to boost the heroics of the German infantry advancing against them? Quite possibly. Has Terraine extrapolated faithfully from the book as a whole? That is for you to judge.

One final thought on 'mad minutes.' No doubt somebody will tell us what a British infantryman's battle load of .303 ammunition was. Let us assume he has that, plus an extra bandolier of fifty rounds on him. How many mad minutes before he has none left - assuming an average of fifteen aimed rounds a minute? What does he do then? If, as I suspect, 'mad minutes' were a bit of a luxury, does this tell us anything about the rifle-machine gun debate?

Jack

[George Armstrong Custer]

The casualties suffered by the German forces as a result of this fire may not have been enormous in absolute terms. However, when combined with such factors as fatigue, the loss of friends, and the loss of officers, its psychological and tactical effect seems to have been considerable. In other words, having become accustomed to rifle fire that was less effective, the German forces in question were subjected to a nasty surprise, and that surprise may well be responsible for a number of the effects we have been discussing, to include a loss of momentum on the battlefield and a tendency towards hyperbolic descriptions.

These are, I believe, all key points which seem to be suported by the historiography and ought to be factored into all assessments of what the BEF actually achieved in 1914. As has been said before, absolute numbers of fatal casualties inflicted by the BEF upon the advancing Germans was less important in achieving the BEF's purpose of delay than the undoubted shock value of their musketry. The impact of that shock is reflected in some German official histories from the immediate post-war period claiming that it was machine guns the British had behind every bush, hedge and scrap of cover. From the sum total of evidence given on this thread, the idea that the Germans mistook the impact of the BEF's musketry for more machine guns than they had is clearly not the myth that some latter day iconoclasts would have us believe.

ciao,

GAC

[phil andrade]

Jack uses the official German Medical History for the source of his casualty figures. These statistics were compiled meticulously, and their provenance seems authentic and definitive.

There is, though, a significant disparity between these figures and those that were released by the German government during the war. To illustrate this, the official German casualty list released on October 31st 1917 gave a total of 1,138,768 army combat fatalities on all fronts. This, it must be stressed, was the actual total of killed and died of wounds recorded by that time. It does not allow for hundreds of thousands of missing who were, in reality, dead, and nor does it include soldiers who died of disease or accident. Now the German Medical tabulations give a much lower figure of fatalities. By July 31st 1918, even after the huge losses in their spring and summer offensives, the total from that source was 1,061,740, suggesting a very significant understatement: that the German governmemt acknowledged a significantly higher total of battle deaths seven months previously, when the most gigantic fighting on the Western Front was yet to occur, suggests that the Sanitatsbericht figures, however carefully tabulated, might be incomplete in so far as its count for killed and died of wounds is concerned.

Maybe I'm clutching at straws here; the figures cited by Jack for the 1st Army in the last ten days of August 1914 must not be dismissed or ignored. On the other hand, this might be an explanation for the "paradox" that Salesie mentions about the perception of the battle and the casualty figures recorded in the Sanitatsbericht that Jack relies on.

Phil.

[salesie]

Jack uses the official German Medical History for the source of his casualty figures. These statistics were compiled meticulously, and their provenance seems authentic and definitive.

There is, though, a significant disparity between these figures and those that were released by the German government during the war. To illustrate this, the official German casualty list released on October 31st 1917 gave a total of 1,138,768 army combat fatalities on all fronts. This, it must be stressed, was the actual total of killed and died of wounds recorded by that time. It does not allow for hundreds of thousands of missing who were, in reality, dead, and nor does it include soldiers who died of disease or accident. Now the German Medical tabulations give a much lower figure of fatalities. By July 31st 1918, even after the huge losses in their spring and summer offensives, the total from that source was 1,061,740, suggesting a very significant understatement: that the German governmemt acknowledged a significantly higher total of battle deaths seven months previously, when the most gigantic fighting on the Western Front was yet to occur, suggests that the Sanitatsbericht figures, however carefully tabulated, might be incomplete in so far as its count for killed and died of wounds is concerned.

Maybe I'm clutching at straws here; the figures cited by Jack for the 1st Army in the last ten days of August 1914 must not be dismissed or ignored. On the other hand, this might be an explanation for the "paradox" that Salesie mentions about the perception of the battle and the casualty figures recorded in the Sanitatsbericht that Jack relies on.

Phil.

Phil, I take your point that different sources give different casualty figures, and that this may account for "errors" in Jack's figures, but Jack has always issued health warnings vis-à-vis his assertions, and casualty figures are notoriously variable from different sources; it is the nature of the beast.

That said, the paradox I highlight is abstract in nature not statistical i.e. if, as Jack's figures suggest, the German Army suffered low casualties at Mons and Le Cateau, where did their healthy respect for the BEF come from? It seems to me that the German Army had little respect for the fighting abilities of any army other than their own before hostilities began, and without being given a "bloody-nose" I can't see them gaining such respect for an opponent in so short a space of time. That's the paradox I highlight, it is not statistical in essence but based on a universal phenomenon called cause and effect; if not suffering high casualties when joining battle with the BEF then what caused the almost overnight effect of healthy German respect for their British opponents?

Jack's figures, if accurate, would logically create a different effect to what actually happened; if not given a "bloody-nose" why wouldn't the "steamroller" carry on with its disdain for the "contemptibly small army"?

Cheers-salesie.

[phil andrade]

Well, Salesie, doesn't that amount to the same thing?

The casualty statistics that Jack cites indicate German losses far lower than the general perception of Mons allows for.

The healthy respect that the Germans gained for the BEF seems incomprehensible without the impetus of heavy casualties.

Somewhere in this bewildering picture, we need statistical points of reference.

Phil.

[salesie]

Well, Salesie, doesn't that amount to the same thing?

The casualty statistics that Jack cites indicate German losses far lower than the general perception of Mons allows for.

The healthy respect that the Germans gained for the BEF seems incomprehensible without the impetus of heavy casualties.

Somewhere in this bewildering picture, we need statistical points of reference.

Phil.

I'm not bewildered, Phil. On the one hand we have Jack's statistics, which have always carried health warnings, and on the other we have plenty of eye-witness evidence to say the German First Army received a "bloody-nose" at Mons, plus plenty of written evidence, both British and German, to say the Hun gained a healthy respect for the BEF's fighting abilities virtually overnight. Then we have the undisputed evidence that the German "steamroller" did not roll-over and flatten the BEF, followed by a discussion of why Von Kluck cannot reasonably claim the excuse of bad-intelligence and/or his forces being off-balance; logic says something else must have prevented the "steamroller" from rolling.

On top of all this, "both sides" of this debate seem to have agreed that casualty figures, in the final analysis, are irrelevant anyway - it was the strategic implications of Mons and Le Cateau that were of paramount importance, not the actual numbers killed and wounded. So why forlornly search for a statistical "Holy-Grail" when logic says there is something intrinsically wrong with Jack's figures which are irrelevant anyway? Why focus on statistics when such reference points can be so misleading - why do we need a statistical answer to the paradox that Jack's figures create when logic admirably does the job?

Cheers-salesie.

[Tom A McCluskey]

Robert,

During Mons, and for quite a while afterwards, German musketry was regularly ridiculed by the regular soldiers of the BEF (this is recorded in many accounts). Any professional, experienced soldier will tell you that inexperienced soldiers and amateurs often fire high. The weight of fire delivered by the German artillery, however, quickly gained the respect of the BEF.

Aye

Tom McC

[Paul Hederer]

...what caused the almost overnight effect of healthy German respect for their British opponents..?

Maybe because they were long serving veterans who fought like hell?

A force doesn't have to suffer heavy casualties to learn respect for an opponent. A dose of heavy, accurate rifle fire delivered by steadfast troops everytime a line rose to advance would be a calling card hard to ignore!

On the subject of casualty figures. The German medical service figures are more accurate than the figures reported by the units. The report says this in clear terms, that the unit reports were the "units' perception of the casualties suffered at that time." Numbers of missing were of course higher, number of dead lower, from these unit reports.

I can only imagine what it would have been like to advance across an open field against the BEF. No thanks!

Paul

[George Armstrong Custer]

A force doesn't have to suffer heavy casualties to learn respect for an opponent. A dose of heavy, accurate rifle fire delivered by steadfast troops everytime a line rose to advance would be a calling card hard to ignore!

I can only imagine what it would have been like to advance across an open field against the BEF. No thanks!

That's it in a nutshell, Paul.

On the medical service reports being more accurate on German casualties than their unit reports or official histories, I agree up to a point. But the medical reports are necessarily more accurate on WIA and DOW than on KIA and MIA - and they don't address how many MIA were actually KIA. But as has been rightly pointed out more than once, it's not about conflicting or less than impartial statistics or percentages, it's about cause and effect - the BEF's superior musketry and the shock value it had in buying time. That that was achieved is beyond debate.

ciao,

GAC

[truthergw]

A slight idea of the kind of exaggeration which may have led to the nachine guns idea. It is in " Kitchener" by Brig. Gen. Ballard C.B C.M.G.

" Mons turned out to be a vey good fight indeed. Certainly there had been a lot of shells flying about, but they did wonderfully little harm against even rough cover. And as for the targets presented to the infantry - the worst shot in the regiment, who had never hit a bull's eye in his life, had killed a thousand Huns - more or less. " He gives no casualty figures for Mons but two sets for Le Cateau, Sir John French's (14,000) and those from OH (8,482). He describes Le Cateau as a repeat of Mons.

[MartH]

I will did out a more detailed reference later, but I know the German Official in the series Episodes of the Western War, that covers the Glousters Kindemord action at Langemarck refer's to British machine guns in the trees. Which though incorrect is a reference to British rifle fire being mistaken for machine guns, they had none, though the placement in the trees is a reference is rarely quoted.

[salesie]

...what caused the almost overnight effect of healthy German respect for their British opponents..?

Maybe because they were long serving veterans who fought like hell?

A force doesn't have to suffer heavy casualties to learn respect for an opponent. A dose of heavy, accurate rifle fire delivered by steadfast troops everytime a line rose to advance would be a calling card hard to ignore!

On the subject of casualty figures. The German medical service figures are more accurate than the figures reported by the units. The report says this in clear terms, that the unit reports were the "units' perception of the casualties suffered at that time." Numbers of missing were of course higher, number of dead lower, from these unit reports.

I can only imagine what it would have been like to advance across an open field against the BEF. No thanks!

Paul

Fought like hell - but caused minimal casualties? Heavy, accurate rifle fire - can it be accurate if it missed most of its targets? German troops, with a very high opinion of themselves, become wary of advancing across an open field against the BEF - even though the casualties they inflict are minimal?

I'm sorry, Paul, but am I missing something?

Cheers-salesie.

[Paul Hederer]

Fought like hell - but caused minimal casualties? Heavy, accurate rifle fire - can it be accurate if it missed most of its targets? German troops, with a very high opinion of themselves, become wary of advancing across an open field against the BEF - even though the casualties they inflict are minimal?

I'm sorry, Paul, but am I missing something?

Cheers-salesie.

Yes, I think you're missing what you yourself posted before.

"On top of all this, "both sides" of this debate seem to have agreed that casualty figures, in the final analysis, are irrelevant anyway"- Salesie.

Paul

[David Filsell]

Jack's point on the mad minute is of interest. Although additional ready ammunition supplies (should) have been available shortly behind the firing line, supplies in the front line could be rapidly exhausted. Soldiers would have rapidly grown use to the need to husband ammunition. At Ypres shortages had a significant effect on a nuber of ocassions. Orders I am sure would have been along the lines of "five rouinds rapid fire" etc and "fire at will" did not necessarily mean fire and keep firing at whatever rate you consider necessary. I suspect the mad minute was used selectively to "brown the mass" of a large advance within range to break-up the momentum of the attack. Followed by far more selective firing when targets were clear and identifiable but the liklihood of breakthrough had passed. Equally machine gunners were taught to fire short, effective bursts - they did not simply hose the area in front of them. I am not aware of any reported ammunition shortages at Mons - has anyone else heard of therm. Thus it would seem that British rifle and machine gune fire was well regulated as well as effective.

[phil andrade]

What on earth are we to make of this battle?

How can casualty figures be irrelevant?

They're not the be-all and end-all, obviously, but they indicate the effectiveness of the respective forces involved.

The result of a battle is - to a degree- determined by the ability of the soldiers to kill, wound or capture each other. The more effective the firepower, skill and positioning of one force over another, the more that force is likely to prevail.

Now if the Sanitsbericht figures are accurate, it appears that the men of Von Kluck's army inficted double the loss on their British opponents that they themselves suffered in the last ten days of August. Granted, the capture of eight thousand British prisoners accounts for this disparity : regiments surrounded, cut off, or just surrendering in despair, not to mention stragglers , are bound to swell the numbers of missing inordinatley as an army retreats.

But those hard core casualties - the killed and wounded - seem remarkably low on the German side. We must discount hyperbole in some of the British accounts. Great masses of Germans being cut down in thousands etc....let's put that one to bed. That so, the figures presented in the Sanitsbericht have confounded me somewhat.

Phil.

[George Armstrong Custer]

That so, the figures presented in the Sanitsbericht have confounded me somewhat.

Only if you accept them at face value. If the BEF inflicted comparatively negligible casualties then we must logically conclude that it didn't require many examples of the deadly accuarcy of their musketry to convince the advancing German units to keep their heads down for 24 hours. However, whilst we may indeed discount some British accounts as hyperbole, there nevertheless remain far too many British and German accounts which talk of significant numbers of Germans caught in the open and dropped by British fire to dismiss them on the basis that 90 years later we cannot seem to find sufficient surviving German documentation to back them up. Don't forget, the bulk of the Prussian military archives from the Great War were lost in the firestorms of World War II (those of Bavarian units fared better), and in any case a lack of documentation does not in itself signify that an event did not take place. And the caveats applying to the reluctance to admit casualties in early German accounts of 1914 have been alluded to in earlier posts.

As to your question "how on earth can casualty figures be irrelevant", the answer lies in the scale of the opposing forces. There is no way the BEF was ever going to stop the German steamroller before Mons by killing all or even most of them - wasn't physically possible. In that sense the casualties suffered by the Germans are irrelevant to the fact that the BEF achieved its purpose of a holding action. The question ought to be, how many casualties sustained by unblooded German units did it take in order for them to hesitate for the requisite 24 hours?

ciao,

GAC

[per ardua per mare per terram]

I'm surprised that The Affair at Nery hasn't figured in the calculations yet. A British cavalry brigade literally caught with its pants down by a German cavalry division. Outnumbered in artillery, machine guns and rifles fought said division to a standstill and when British reinforcements arrived it was the British that had control of the battlefield and the Germans who abandoned their guns and ran away.

[truthergw]

I think we have been concentrating on Mons up to now and resisting the temptation to widen the discussion. The original post was asking where the notion of riflefire being confused with machine gun fire at Mons, came from. We seem all to be in agreement that , man for man, the BEF Tommy was at least the equal of any other soldier at the time.

[George Armstrong Custer]

On the other hand, by noting the cavalry at Nery and, as I did earlier, the 1/Queens at Gheluvelt in October, it becomes apparent that the holding action at Mons was not a 'one off' incident lending itself to accusations of having been largely mythologised in the retelling. Even though withdrawal was inevitable, in fact the BEF in 1914 was demonstrably capable of giving the numerically superior Germans a bloody nose - Mons has simply become perhaps the most celebrated example. Superiority in musketry was a vital element in allowing the BEF to punch above its weight on these occasions.

ciao,

GAC

[salesie]

Yes, I think you're missing what you yourself posted before.

"On top of all this, "both sides" of this debate seem to have agreed that casualty figures, in the final analysis, are irrelevant anyway"- Salesie.

Paul

Didn't forget my own post, Paul - just trying to understand how the debate can be moved-on by introducing further paradox.

Cheers-salesie.

[salesie]

My own last words about the Old-Contemptibles in this thread will be those of General Anthony Farrar-Hockley (Farrar the Para), from his book, Death of an Army, subtitled, the first battle of Ypres in which the British Regular Army was destroyed, published 1967, pages 180/181 - it is perhaps the most poignant and relevant tribute to the original BEF that I've ever read:

"...That ended the business of the night (the death in action of Brigadier-General FitzClarence) and, to all intents and purposes, the battle.

O! that a man might know

The end of this day's business ere it come;

But it sufficeth that the day will end,

And then the end is known.

For a little while the attacks dragged on. Attempts were made by the Germans to secure positions of advantage for the trench warfare of the gathering winter. They did not succeed. The line settled. German units began to move back from Flanders en route to Poland. The British handed over to the French their sector of the line between Zonnebeke and the Ypres-Comines railway. I Corps went back for a short spell of rest and refitting. The 8th Division arrived and, with the 7th, reconstituted IV Corps under Rawlinson. Soon the whole Expeditionary Force was settled in and behind the line from Ploegsteert Wood to La Bassee.

No; not the whole Expeditionary Force. It would never be whole in the original sense again. Typical of its battalions, 2nd Highland Light Infantry was relieved on 16th November by the French to set off'... marching through Ypres to Bailleul and losing an officer and four men by shellfire on the way. Out of all the officers and men mobilized at Aldershot a bare three months before, there were now scarcely thirty left.'

The tale of losses is too continuous to sustain an impact; the mind becomes saturated with figures. It is true, too, that the total number of their casualties is insignificant in comparison with those suffered on the Somme or in the attempt to clear the Ypres ridge again in 1917. But it is not for the number fallen, much as they were mourned, that they deserve to be remembered; or for their courage and patriotism - they were, after all, doing their duty as professional soldiers, holding the ring while their countrymen took up arms. What marks them is the standard they set as fighting men, holding for weeks a wide sector of attack against an enemy four to seven times their strength.

Falkenhayn might write after the war, 'That which had to be attained under any circumstances, if the war was to be carried on with any hopeful prospects, was attained' - that is, stabiliza-tion of the western front from the Alps to the sea. But that was not what he had aimed at. He had aimed to break through to Calais.

It is only fair to say that the allies too had hoped to envelop the enemy line or to break through, but the point is that while it was most desirable for them to do so it was not essential. It was essential for the Germans. Time was not on their side, notwithstanding the errors of their adversaries.

One of these errors, often remarked upon, was the retention of the Ypres salient long after all the ground of tactical signifi-cance had been captured by the Germans. The soldiers who came later could not understand the policy. Historians surmise that its retention was due to an obsession by the senior commanders for holding ground - any ground - rather than release it to the enemy gratuitously. But some at least, however mis-guidedly, felt that the army should hold on to what it could because they had fought for the ground; they had hallowed it with the blood and bodies of comrades with whom they had soldiered all over the world through a lifetime. The old British Army with its venial faults and marvellous quality had died there in its defence. They could never forget that. Neither should we."

Cheers-salesie.