Analysing the Battle of Le Cateau.

[dansparky]

That sounds fascinating, Joe, I would definitely reference that if it was already published.  That angle adds a lot the debate and contributes greatly to thought on the traditional narrative and how the British managed to avert disaster. 

 

Would be interesting to see where the fault lies, German mistakes and the switch of the first army towards that of the second helped preserve the integrity of the B.E.F.  

 

Essential reading I look forward to it.

 

Best

Dan

[Jools Mc]

Thanks to everyone on this thread who has shared information about this battle. While I can't add any insight as to casualty numbers or movements during the battle I would like to share some information about one of my relatives who took part in the battle:

 

My great-great uncle, Brigadier-General C.W. Compton C.B., C.M.G., who was then a major and 2 OC 1st Bt Somerset Light Infantry, took part in the Battle of Le Cateau and was wounded at Ligny on 26 August 1914, just four days after he had arrived in France. For those interested in the backgrounds of the soldiers and officers who took part in the battle, I have included some details of his military career.

 

Born in 1869, Charles William Compton was commissioned into the 1st Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's) Regiment as a 2nd Lieut. on 14 January 1891 and within a short period was sent with the Regiment to India, where he undertook a number of postings until August 1897, when he saw action in the Northwest Frontier and Afghanistan as an officer with the Mohmand Field Force. In 1899 he was posted to Rawalpindi, Punjab Province, in the capacity of Captain of Oudh Rifles, Lucknow. He was promoted to the rank of Major in 1904 and remained in India until 1908.

 

At the outbreak of the Great War Major Compton was sent to France with his Battalion as 2OC, arriving in France in the early hours of 22 August 1914 and was severely wounded on 26 August at Ligny. He was eventually sent back to England and hospitalised before being promoted to Lieut.-Col. on 11 November and returning to France on 21 December 1914 as Battalion C.O. (due to the previous C.O., Col. E.H. Swayne being removed from his command and sent back to England to command a Home Battalion after he was found unfit to lead his men in the field.) Lieut.-Col. C.W. Compton was Mentioned in Despatches on 22 June 1915 and then appointed a Companion to the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George (C.M.G.). On 28 July he was appointed to the rank of Brigadier-General, G.O.C. 14th brigade, 37th Division, replacing Sir Stanley Maude, who had been wounded. Either in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel or Brigadier-General, C.W. Compton was Mentioned in Despatches a total of five times between June 1915 and December 1917, taking part in many of the major battles of the Western Front until November 1918. He was appointed a Companion to the Most Honourable Order of the Bath (C.B.) and Commandeur Odré De Leopold (Belgium) on 1 January 1918. After the war he retired to his home in Devon, where died in 1933 at the age of 64.

 

Incidently, his brother, Lieut.-Col. H.W. Compton (C.O. 12th Royal Fusiliers), who as a Captain had been severely wounded and Mentioned in Despatches (30 November 1901) during the South African War 1900-1, was promoted to the rank of Major in 1903, and like his brother Charles, had retired from the army with the same rank until being recalled in August 1914. He was Mentioned in Despatches on 15 June 1916 after his Battalion had been subjected to gas attacks in the Wulverghem sector and a year later found himself commanding his unit in the same sector as his brother, whose Brigade HQ was only three or four miles from his own Battalion HQ.

Lieut.-Col. H.W. Compton died from wounds received on 7 July 1917, after being mortally wounded at the Battle of Messines Ridge, when a shell fell on his Battalion HQ in Oosttaverne Wood on the evening of 9th June.

 

 

   

Edited 4 March , 2020 by Jools Mc
typo

[phil andrade]

Jools Mc,

 

Thanks for that truly remarkable story : a tale of “ Brothers in Arms”, indeed !

 

It’s really made me think.

 

Here was a man well into his middle age, retired for ten years, and then plunged into the deep end.

 

A terrific shock to body and soul : disembarked one day, wounded four days later....and then sent back to replace another officer who had been found unfit to command in that stern test.  I wonder how his failure had been manifest.

 

It wasn’t just the junior officer cadre that was shattered in that ordeal : the fate of your distinguished forebears reveals how more senior leaders were fully exposed, and paid the price.

 

Phil

[Jools Mc]

Hi Phil.

 

Thanks for your message. 

 

I'm not actually sure that either of the brothers retired as majors, though I was assuming at least H.W. Compton did, though that might not be the case with C.W. Compton. I'm trying to get hold of their service records, though I believe some of 1SLI's earlier records where destroyed by fire during the Blitz.

 

I've discovered a lot more about the 1st Somerset's involvement at Le Cateau just in the last day, as I received a copy of "Good Old Somersets: An 'Old Contemptible' Battalion in 1914" in the post yesterday afternoon. It describes how the Battalion got to the front and their part in the battle, and how Major Compton and other officers and men were wounded by German machine gun fire. 

 

“By 6.30 a.m. masses of Germans were advancing from the main Cambrai-Le Cateau road, west of Beauvois. They were supported by their artillery in action near the road. Their machine-gun detachments, which had worked their way round Fontaine and through the village, now opened very heavy flanking fire on the right of the 11th Infantry Brigade, and casualties amongst the 1st Somersets became severe. Major Compton was hit in the shoulder, Major Thoyts (commanding C Coy.) in the neck, Capt. Broderip and Lieut. J. Leacroft in the head, and Lieut. Philby in the leg; many other ranks also became casualties.”

 

It seems that Major Compton was lucky to have been shot in the shoulder, as at least he was one of the 'walking wounded' who could make their own way to the rear when the forward companies were ordered to pull back from their positions, as many of those who were more seriously wounded in this action ended up being taken prisoner, as there were no field ambulances available to evacuate the wounded.

 

As for the debate on German casualty figures, from the war diaries I've read so far, the claim of approximately 2,900 killed or wounded seems laughable at best. 

Edited 1 March , 2020 by Jools Mc

[phil andrade]

Jools Mc,

 

Remember that the cited estimate of 2,900 German killed or wounded appears very plausible when we consider that the number of BEF dead on the 26th August 1914 was in the order of 850, if the CWGC database is to be believed.  If we allow for the ratio of wounded to deaths being in the order of two or three to one, then the British killed and wounded would be approximately equal to that of the Germans.  

 

The problem here is reconciling this with the official figure of the battle’s casualties : 7,812.  I am convinced that this implies that an enormous number of British prisoners who were captured before, during and after the battle have been lumped together and consigned to the battle of the 26th August. Maybe that’s a kind of default method.  The retreat had been exhausting and traumatic, and I would imagine that thousands of British soldiers straggled or fell out through desperate fatigue, only to surrender or be captured.  Rather than try and identify where and when these men were made prisoners- an impossible task - it was , perhaps, deemed more desirable to conflate them with the battle of Le Cateau and simplify the narrative.

 

Supposition on my part, I confess, but otherwise how can we account for such a relatively low number of British dead ?

 

Phil

[lostinspace]

Thanks to both of you for reviving one of the old Le Cateau threads, I've often wondered why this particular battle has never been researched in depth, but usually mentioned in relation to another subject like; command and control, battlefield touring or the career of Smith-Dorrien. I would also like to suggest a thread from 2014 on the same subject that might be of interest to Jools called "Le Cateau 1914: Triumph or Disaster?". I'm sure Phil remembers that lengthy conversation as he contributed much valuable information to it.
In regard to casualties, I doubt that anyone will ever be able to sort out the exact number of a battle's killed/wounded/missing, the records are too murky and contradictory. For example, you would think that the casualties for 4th Division would be relatively straightforward because they arrived after Mons, (you don't have to calculate the personnel lost before 26 August), plus there is a list from 4th Division's Adjutant & Quartermaster General file with a summary of killed/wounded/missing from the division's date of arrival to 5 September (WO95/1449). Well, if you calculate the number of dead in the twelve infantry battalions (CWGC via Geoff's Search Engine) you will come up with 509, but the September list shows 100. To determine who was killed outright on 26 August, who was wounded but then died in the next few days and who was captured and died in captivity is very difficult a hundred years later. 

 

Dave

[phil andrade]

Dave,

 

One of the things about the casualties of the August 1914 fighting is very apparent : it was a situation of frantic convulsion, and I note that the French and German official statistics were very incomplete....not by dint of deliberate concealment or distortion, but simply because the task of recording them was beyond the powers of the clerical departments.  It was in the aftermath  of the war, when the authorities had more leisure to collate information, that the disparities became apparent. I think that the British were not at quite the same disadvantage here, because the scale of loss was so much smaller - not in proportionate terms, I hasten to add.,

 

The first shock of the war created casualties that were not only enormous, but suffered in incredibly short periods of intense fighting.

 

The most authoritative statistics that were compiled by the French armies for August and September 1914 stated that there were 419,959 casualties, of whom a shocking 229,529 were posted as killed or missing.  In 1920, a more complete assessment was presented to the French Parliament, and the total of killed and missing for those two months was revised to 313,000, an increase of more than one third.

 

The German equivalent was revised upwards also, by a factor of more than fifteen per cent.

 

The British did much better, but I reckon they were simply unable ( or unwilling ?) to assess Le Cateau properly.

 

Sir John French himself initially claimed that the British had lost fifteen thousand men there....well he would, wouldn't he ?

 

The official history reduced that figure to just under eight thousand.

 

My own guess is that they were rather more than five thousand, of whom half were unwounded prisoners.

 

Phil

[Jools Mc]

It seems clear from some of the war diaries that in the chaos of the immediate aftermath of the battle at Le Cateau there was much confusion, mainly owing to poor communications, with the Germans and many of the retreating men of the 4th Division sharing the belief that the entire B.E.F. had been destroyed. 

 

As to German losses, the diaries of a few of the 1st Somersets, who were situated on the eastern flank of the quarries at Ligny commanded by Major Compton, with the East Lancs on the right, gives an idea of German casualties in just one small, though very active part of the battle;

 

"I had not gone far when a bullet struck the earth a yard in front of me and nearly blinded me with dirt. That was a narrow escape. We continued to advance in extended order, in spite of heavy machine-gun fire, up a slope into line with a hedge where we lay down and opened fire on the advancing Germans. Wave after wave fell under our carefully aimed fire as taught on the ranges. The only difference was now we had something alive to fire at which made it more interesting for, strangely enough, none of us minded killing another human being. Here we were giving the enemy Hell, but as soon as a gap was torn in their ranks it was filled up from behind. We too were getting casualties for men were being killed right and left of me."

(Arthur Cook)

 

"My God, we could see thousands of Germans swarming out of a wood straight in front of us about a thousand yards away. We started dropping them like wheat before the scythe but still they came. At last I heard the call to my right for an ambulance, but there was none there, so the only thing to be done was to crawl or roll for safety and our men started to go back, one or two at a time, wounded. But let it be understood that, it was not the thousands of infantry that were doing the damage, it was the German shrapnel. They had the range splendidly. But what a sensation to see the shells bursting all around us and expecting to get your head blown away at any minute.

We kept dropping the German infantry until I felt something strike me on the back of the head. I knew no more for some time. Then I heard someone say 'Go for it.' but I was too dazed to do anything. Soon however, I started to crawl for safety. A shell burst a few yards in front of me and caused me to stop for some time. I had to crawl on my stomach for the last 30 feet to safety. Then the orderly started to put on my field dressing, but before he finished we had to retire, as we could not hold the position any longer."

(Thomas Tadd - Bath Chronicle)

 

"They came on like a great grey moving hedge the men firing, as Germans usually do, with their rifles on their hips. When they were about 250 yards from us the order was given to open fire. And then the Somersets rifles began to whistle. The first few volleys made the enemy shiver and gaps here and there began to appear like shords in an untidy hedge. We pulled them up but, as the enemy were in vastly superior numbers, we had orders to retire and fell back a good way. The Somersets withstood the onslaught splendidly but I'm afraid we lost heavily. While we were descending the slope of the hill the fire was terrific, in fact one of those who had gone through the Boer War said it was like the whole three years of the South Africa campaign rolled into an hour or so. Our chaps kept dropping and some of the sights were awful. I can vividly recall quite a youngster Private - saying to me as we descended the slope "I don't think the beggars could hit me if they tried.' At that instant a shell caught him in the forehead and his head was shattered."

(Thomas Parkman - Wells Journal)

 

"We were waiting in a village to the north of Cambrai after an all night march during which we didn't see any Germans, and at 6.00am we marched into position. Two minutes later I was rolling over the ridge, shot in the head by a shrapnel shell. It burst right over the top of where I was lying. A couple of inches more and I would have been blown to pieces. As it is I have a hole just above my right temple. My regiment is nearly all killed, wounded or missing. It was simply terrible to witness it. Although our forces lost a lot the German losses were three or four times more. It was impossible to miss them, but as fast as one lot had gone under there were thousands more to take their places. The work of their big guns is magnificent but their infantry is almost useless at shooting. We'll beat them if men will roll up to take the place of those who are killed or wounded."

(Private Evans - Bath Chronicle)

Edited 2 March , 2020 by Jools Mc
typo

[phil andrade]

Jools Mc,

 

Wave after wave fell under our carefully aimed fire, as taught on the ranges.

 

How many of these Germans were lying down - “hugging the dirt” - in American parlance , as opposed to being hit ?

 

The depictions you provide certainly conform to the folklore of the battle, which was how I was taught about it.

 

I remember in 1965, when I was twelve years old, my family drove to Italy and stopped for a picnic at Le Cateau en route.

 

My Dear Old  Dad told me this wonderful story about how the Old Contemptibles slaughtered the Germans at the very place we were having our bivouac .... They  were coming forward in huge hordes, and our boys, with fifteen rounds rapid, shot them down in thousands, left, right and centre. And there was a host of heavenly archers, ghosts in the sky, standing behind them and firing their longbows at the enemy....remember, Son, August the 26th was the anniversary of Crecy !

 

I never forgot that story, and it still excites my imagination now.

 

The Germans did take significant punishment from the British fusillade ; they actually admitted this and mentioned the skill of the marksmen who administered it.

 

If memory serves me, the German 1st Army reported about ten thousand casualties for all the August 1914 fighting ....a significant understatement , I daresay, but a reckoning of about three thousand killed and wounded for Le Cateau alone certainly implies that the British fought effectively.

 

Phil

Edited 2 March , 2020 by phil andrade

[lostinspace]

Jools,

 

I would be cautious in relying on the accounts of the Somersets for a full picture of German casualties, their opponents consisted of the (dismounted) 2nd Cavalry Division and three Jaeger battalions.  I'm quite sure the Somersets caused casualties, just not to the extent indicated by the above excerpts.  Marwitz's cavalry divisions were not designed for an attack on two infantry brigades but found themselves in that position on the morning of the 26th. The heavy lifting was supposed to be done by the infantry corps coming down from the north, which never arrived. As the British Official History pointed out in the 1937 edition (page 210) -  "Of the 4 German corps (the III., IV., IV. Reserve, II. and half of the IX.), that is nine divisions, within reach of the battlefield at dawn, we now know that General von Kluck managed to bring only two divisions (the 7th and 8th), with three cavalry divisions against General Smith-Dorrien's three."  Not sure if all of these corps could have reached Le Cateau in the best of circumstances but, be that as it may, the larger problem for Smith-Dorrien was the German artillery, which, for the most part, did arrive. That, plus the abundance of German machine guns (I believe each Jaeger battalion had six) led to the cavalry and Jaegers forcing 11 Brigade back to Ligny.

 

Dave

 

[phil andrade]

Le Cateau looks to me like an anomaly in the narrative of the 1914 fighting .

 

These contentious casualty statistics are, in themselves, indicative of this.

 

It’s the only battle of the Great War on the Western front that I can think of which was characterised by the British Official Historian ascribing more casualties to it  than actually occurred.

 

At least, the officially stated figure of just under eight thousand is irreconcilable with the evidence of the CWGC, which reveals a figure of fewer than nine hundred deaths.  Are we to believe that the lethality of German fire was so reduced that British soldiers were less likely to be killed, and more likely to escape with wounds ?  Surely not : the German artillery made havoc on that field....hardly a recipe for reduced fatalities among its victims. There is, I believe, scope to argue that the figure was inflated by the inclusion of large numbers of prisoners who were attributed to Le Cateau because it was too difficult to find out when - and where - they had been captured..but I’m labouring this point to excess.

 

You can make of the Battle of Le Cateau what you will : a successful “ stopping blow” that imparted desperately needed confidence to a faltering Entente ; an imprudent and badly managed battle that nearly destroyed the BEF in defiance of orders ; or an engagement that  was forced on to the British commander who had to make a virtue of necessity .

 

Phil

 

 

[nigelcave]

No mention in all of this of Becke's excellent (tho' slim) book, with numerous maps, 'The RA at Le Cateau' (or similar, I am away from my books).

 

The problem with looking at the 4th Division at Le C is that of all the BEF's formations, it was the most 'dislocated' - lacking its train, rushed up to the line, acting as a rear guard and hardly getting into what turned out to be its position on the 26th before the fighting started.

 

As regards msg and number of same, a significant number, I suspect, had been lost at Mons - any indication that these were replaced by the time of Le C - I rather doubt it.

 

Whatever Sordet's cavalry might or might not have been doing, German concern about its undefined presence possibly has as much to do as anything else with the Geran failure to follow up the BEF on 27 August (indeed, initially to head off in the wrong direction). So much for the use of all of that cavalry!

 

Having said all that, I have not looked at le C for several years now - even tho' it is one of my favourite Great War battlefields to visit, significantly unchanged and a 'one day' battle, therefore reasonably undemanding to follow.

 

A further thought: one has to be realistic about the value of the WDs for these chaotic days; as also casualty figures. In my and Jack's book there are several quoted examples of battalions split up, ending up in different divisions and even different Corps. IIRC the DCLI did not get together until after the Marne! In the same book I did a bit of casualty analysis as possible and reckoned that the BOH casualty figures were considerably too high for Le Cateau per se. I any case, almost certainly most of the casualties were PoWs, wounded or otherwise.

 

[lostinspace]

Phil,
But do we know for a fact that the British casualty information is not valid? First of all where did 7,812 come from? I'm assuming the O.H., but as you say, Edmonds wasn't in the habit of magnifying British casualties. The figure I came up with for 4th Division's infantry battalions must be fairly close, given the fact that they likely didn't have many fatal casualties (or very few) before Le Cateau, also, that number wouldn't include any who died of wounds after the battle. If the 4th Division had a minimum of 509 deaths for the day, is it likely that the other two infantry divisions together had less than 400?

 

Nigel,
My interest in looking at the 4th Division was to be able to divorce its casualties completely from the Mons casualties. That way the men who died in the infantry battalions on 26 August per the CWGC had to have been killed at Le Cateau. I also checked to make sure that none of the other battalions of the regiments involved were present in France.
Dave
 

[phil andrade]

Dave,

 

You have me flummoxed there !

 

Let me be the first to admit that the Le Cateau casualty figures defy explanation  : it’s the CWGC figure that throws things into disarray.

 

Maybe I place too much reliance on that source.

 

I can only square the circle by attributing five thousand prisoners to the casualty total of 7,800, a bit of a cop out on my part. That, or a suggestion that the actual toll of the day was only about two thirds of the BOH figure.

 

I would have thought that the Germans and the British inflicted roughly equal bloodshed on each other, with the British loss being doubled by virtue of all those prisoners they lost.

 

Phil

 

 

 

 

[lostinspace]

Phil,

 

I found what might have been the first reference to the casualties of Le Cateau as a footnote in the 1922 edition of the Official History (page 182). I'll quote the footnote in full: "The total losses, after the stragglers had come in, were 7,812 men and 38 guns, including one 60-pdr. abandoned (see note, p. 224). A Large proportion of these losses fell on the 4th Division, which had no field ambulances to remove the wounded."
Here is the note from p. 224, a summary of casualties, totals, not broken down as K,W.M.:

"II British Losses 23rd to 27th August 1914
(Excluding Missing Who Returned to Their Units)
Cavalry Division - 23 Aug.- 6; 24 Aug.- 252; 25 Aug. - 123; 26 Aug. - 15; 27 Aug. -14.

I Corps:
1st Division - 23 Aug. - 9; 24 Aug. - 42; 25 Aug. - 32; 26 Aug. - 61; 27 Aug. - 826.

2nd Division - 23 Aug. - 35; 24 Aug. - 59; 25 Aug. - 230; 26 Aug. - 344; 27 Aug. - 48.
II Corps:
3rd Division - 23 Aug. - 1,185; 24 Aug. - 557; 25 Aug. - 357; 26 Aug  - 1,796; 27 Aug. - 50.
5th Division - 23 Aug. - 386; 24 Aug. - 1,656; 25 Aug. - 62; 26 Aug. - 2,366; 27 Aug. - 76.
4th Division - ----------------------------------------- 25 Aug. - 65; 26 Aug. - 3,158; 27 Aug. - 58.
19 Brigade - 23 Aug. - 17; 24 Aug. - 40; 25 Aug. - 36; 26 Aug. - 477; 27 Aug. - 108."
 

Totals: 23 Aug. - 1,638: 24 Aug. - 2,606; 25 Aug. - 905; 26 Aug. - 8,217; 27 Aug. - 1,180.

note - I didn't check the math on this. Hopefully this won't be all jumbled up after I post it....
 

 

[phil andrade]

Dave,

 

Thanks for the breakdown : that’s really helpful.

 

The preponderance of the 26th August is so apparent : about sixty per cent of the aggregate for the five days.

 

What is lacking - and this is so much to the fore of my perception - is the breakdown into categories of killed, wounded and missing.

 

If my guess is correct, the missing would have exceeded five thousand on the 26th.....but, then again, we would be in the dark as to how many of the missing were prisoners.

 

The Germans themselves made mention of 2,600 British POWs from the battle, and that has been the basis for a widely cited assumption that the BEF lost 5,200 killed and wounded at Le Cateau.....a rather simplistic but entirely legitimate assessment, reconciling the 7,800 total with the German claim for prisoners captured.

 

If true, it speaks of a superior German performance, allowing them to deploy firepower far more effectively than the British, and is a complete slap in the face for the legend of the battle which has been cherished by British people for generations.

 

The only antidote to such a debunking would be to agree with Jools Mc, and accept that the Germans lost far more than the roughly three thousand that their regimental histories allow for.

 

I’ll try and look under the bonnet of the British totals and extrapolate .

 

Phil

 

 

 

Edited 3 March , 2020 by phil andrade

[phil andrade]

Here’s a kind of audit on those figures that you were kind enough to provide, Dave.

 

It’s a baffling exercise.  

 

Am I on a fool’s errand here ?

 

The database of the CWGC for deaths in France and Belgium, set alongside the daily casualties as recorded in the Official History :

 

23 August, 1,638 casualties : deaths (CWGC) 539 ; fatalities as proportion of casualties : 33%

 

24 August, 2,606 casualties, with 461 deaths : 17.7%

 

25 August, 905 casualties, with 68 deaths : 7.5%

 

26 August, 8,217 casualties, with 887 deaths : 10.8%

 

27 August, 1,180 casualties, with 203 deaths : 17.2%

 

How might we interpret this anomalously small percentage of fatalities for what was clearly the biggest fight of the campaign ?

 

Perhaps 25 August provides a clue.....a tiny number of the casualties were killed.  The day before the stand at Le Cateau, it’s apparent from these figures that a great preponderance of the BEF casualties were men who were captured or surrendered.  There was a lot of “ fight to the death rhetoric” before the big battle, with senior officers insisting that their men must not surrender, but fight to the last. Perhaps Smith Dorrien felt that if he didn’t stand and fight, his army would fall apart and end up in German captivity, as exhaustion and demoralisation took their toll.  A bit of the old protesting too much, methinks .  It looks like Le Cateau yielded vastly greater numbers of British prisoners than dead.

 

 

 

In the outcome, did Le Cateau turn out to be an Isandlwana or a Rorke’s Drift ?  

 

As virtually the  only officer surviving Isandlwana, Smith Dorrien himself  might have reflected on this question !

 

Phil

 

[lostinspace]

Phil,

 

You have obviously been crunching a boat load of numbers. Great stuff! I have run across an account or two that mentions concerns over whether the rank and file would fight when confronted with the Germans. Fergusson in particular, on 13 August, had issued his "... no man of the 5th Division ever surrenders."  manifesto, but he seems to have been the only senior officer to do so. I suppose a fear that the virus of trade unionism might have infected the British army could have, at least subconsciously, influenced some officers to make those kind of statements, unfortunately I only noticed the comments in passing and didn't write down the source. Not that a couple of off hand observations like that would move the needle one way or another.

In regards to the percentages of dead to captured, I came up with a figure of 2,099 dead for all arms to the end of August, whereas you have a total of 2,158 dead from 23 to 27 August, obviously we are using different data. I used Geoff's Great War monthly totals in an old document downloaded in 2010 that lists fatal casualties for each infantry regiment, cavalry regiment and arm of service monthly. All of his data was transcribed from the CWGC website, which I would imagine is where you got your information?
 

Dave 

[Derek Black]

3 minutes ago, lostinspace said:

I came up with a figure of 2,099 dead for all arms to the end of August, whereas you have a total of 2,158 dead from 23 to 27 August, obviously we are using different data. I used Geoff's Great War monthly totals in an old document downloaded in 2010 that lists fatal casualties for each infantry regiment, cavalry regiment and arm of service monthly. All of his data was transcribed from the CWGC website, which I would imagine is where you got your information?

Ten years of IFTC additions possibly?

The outnumbered professionals of the B.E.F. doing enormous damage for its size in 1914 is oft repeated, but the numbers clearly struggle to support that.

I see the collective popular opinion of the 1914 retreat fighting similar to the "Conptemptibles" title. Being so cherished by many, they're not likely to give up on that view, even though its probable origin is a UK propaganda dept.

[lostinspace]

Hi Derek,
 

I have no idea, we will have to wait and see what Phil says. It's doubtful that we will ever come up with an all encompassing solution in regards to numbers, for either side. There is always "the Germans lied about their casualties" argument that will pop up sooner or later (as past forum threads prove).

Dave

[phil andrade]

Dave,

 

Yes , the figures for deaths that I cited are all from the CWGC database .

 

I am aware that circumspection is required, even with this.

 

Look at the proportion of deaths for 23 August ....why so high, especially since we know that the Germans captured hundreds of British soldiers that day ?  There is , of course, the fact that many of the prisoners were wounded : but, even so, it’s a disconcertingly high ratio of fatalities and very disparate from the rest of the August fighting.

 

I can consult the monthly British casualty returns in SMEBE, and see if they can be reconciled with CWGC.

 

I’ll go upstairs before the football, do a quick reckoning, and report back .

 

 

Phil

 

 

 

Edited 3 March , 2020 by phil andrade

[phil andrade]

From SMEBE ( Stats. Military Effort Brit. Empire) monthly return of casualties, Western Front, August 1914

 

Total casualties : 14,409

 

Of which : 

 

Killed : 1,161

Died of wounds : 219

Missing : 9,765  ( ! )

 

The balance of 3,264 represent the wounded, less the died from wounds.

 

The outstanding feature is the proportion of the missing ….nearly 68% of the entire casualty list.  Fewer than one third of the casualties were confirmed as killed or wounded.  

 

We need to think about the fate of the missing. SMEBE tells us that 8,190 of them were confirmed to have been taken prisoner, a very large proportion, equating to 57% of all the battle casualties. That leaves a balance of 1,575 unaccounted for.  Many of them were dead, no doubt about that. 

 

To take a stab here, I cite the CWGC figure for 23 August to 31 August, 1914, France and Belgium, and I see that 2,269 are commemorated.  A small number of these - probably fewer than fifty, would have died from non battle causes. The confirmed killed and died from wounds were 1,380, which suggests that roughly 850 of the missing had been killed or were left dying on the field.  I would think that the balance  - about 725 - were wounded who went off the radar, so to speak, or were stragglers who laid low in the ensuing days, weeks, months, or even years.  Isn't there a story about one or two of them who were found and executed ?

 

It takes a brave soul to extrapolate from these suggestions and apply them to Le Cateau , but applying the ratios above I would submit, with diffidence, a summary :

 

625 confirmed killed ; 120 died from wounds ; 1,750 wounded and 5,300 or more missing.  The fate of the missing here is a matter of guesswork, but at least a hundred of them must have been killed, and many of the rest ( at least a thousand ?) were wounded left in enemy hands.  The implications here are that no more than one half of the 7,812 were actually killed or wounded.

 

It's been claimed that Le Cateau was as big a battle for the British as Waterloo.  In terms of the number of British  killed or mortally wounded, I'm sure that Waterloo surpassed it, and Inkerman was a close rival.  So, too, was Isandlwana !

 

Enjoy the football !

 

Phil

 

 

[phil andrade]

A kind of recent historiographical watershed in regard to Le Cateau was marked by the work of Terence Zuber.

 

This was the research that brought us the German casualty figure of 2,900 for the battle.  Zuber was writing this in 2005.

 

It has not been welcomed by all : there is significant criticism - some of it legitimate, in my opinion - on account of his determination to give the Germans credit for superior skills and performance in this and other battles.

 

I believe his assessments of the German casualties are based on bona fide and meticulous investigation into regimental histories.

 

I know  that Jack Sheldon relied on these estimates, and I hope you won’t think me “ out of order” if I suspect that you did, too, Nigel.

 

I remember reading your book !

 

Here are  passages from two highly regarded British military historians giving their verdict on Le Cateau.

 

Peter Hart, in his one volume history of the Great War, published in 2013....

 

The overblown British accounts claiming miracles cannot mask the fact that the Germans had rather the better of the cash. The truth might be indicated by the casualty figures : the British officially lost some 7,812 killed, wounded and missing ( 2,600 of them prisoners ),

while estimates of the total German losses come in at around 2,900. While some individual British battalions or batteries resisted with great courage, overall they had not fought well or cohesively as brigade, division , corps or even army.  Communications, command and control were all poor or non-existent, and with good reason : the BEF was both new to the task at hand and had no practical experience of the sheer complexities of modern warfare .  After the battle the French certainly thought the British had been beaten, and the Germans were convinced they had won. The German pursuit was complicated not so much by a ‘bloody nose’, as the British assumed, but more delayed by nightfall and von Kluck’s failure to anticipate correctly the direction of Smith-Dorrien’s retreat.

 

That went well, didn’t it ?

 

So much for the anniversary of Crecy !

 

Writing more sympathetically in 1995, the late Richard Holmes, without the resource of Zuber’s analysis, in his Riding the Retreat....

 

Total British casualties at Le Cateau, once stragglers had come in, were 7,812 men and thirty-eight guns. Most of the lost guns were from 5th Division, while 4th Divisions lack of ambulances ensured that a disproportionate amount of its wounded fell into German hands. We cannot do more than estimate German losses at around 5,000. ........However, with the clarity of hindsight therecan be no question that Smith-Dorrien was right to give battle.  Although II Corps was badly mauled - and might have paid more dearly for its stand had Kluck had a better idea of its dispositions and intentions - it would have been in an infinitely worse state if Smith-Dorrien  had simply withdrawn as ordered.

 

Bearing in mind the hyperbole that characterised so much British perception of the battle, I reckon Richard Holmes deserves great credit for offering such a sober estimate of the German casualties .

 

Phil

[Derek Black]

Phil,

 

Thanks for your work on this. It's worthy of the old thread, which, among others, i reread once in a while.
This kind of analysis shows the best of the forum in looking at events with a more critical eye.

Cheers,
Derek.

[Pat Atkins]

My grandfather was (like so many!) made POW at Le Cateau, so I welcome the continued life of this thread - thanks to all who have contributed so far, folks, very instructive.

 

Pat