Analysing the Battle of Le Cateau.

[Jools Mc]

Wow! What an amazing response with so much knowledge. I must bow to all of your superior knowledge and deeper understanding of this battle. I think perhaps my intital reaction to some of the reports of the casualty figures was because of an interesting documentary video about Le Cateau I watched on Youtube 

 and had responded to the video's claim of German casualties as I had read elsewhere that they were substantially higher - closer to 15,000 in fact. Perhaps I was being sensitive to figures that could be used to underpin the cliche of 'Lions led by donkeys'. But certainly, as more than one Somerset infantryman pointed out at the time, although they were badly beaten, they gave a good account of themselves.  In any case, the fact that people are still interested in and researching this subject can only lead to greater knowledge and understanding. I salute you! 

Edited 4 March , 2020 by Jools Mc
typo

[lostinspace]

Phil,

 

An excellent summation, with particularly good excerpts from Hart and Holmes. Given the facts as we know them, the casualties as reported in the O.H. are likely correct, especially in regard to the 4th Division wounded, something I honestly hadn't thought about before. Without their field ambulances, the wounded probably didn't receive any attention at all, let alone a chance to escape imprisonment. In addition, the entire right flank had been overrun. Two battalions, the K.O.Y.L.I and the Suffolks, paying the price for either not getting the word, or refusing to budge. The casualties were bad, no doubt, but could have been so much worse. 

I think you have admirably tied all the available resources together to explain the figures given by the CWGC and O.H., which will, in turn, give us fodder for more discussion!
 

Jools,
 

Thanks again for your interest and contributions to the thread. New insight and information is always welcome.

 

Dave

[phil andrade]

Thanks, pals, for your kind comments.  They’re especially appreciated, since I confess that I’ve put heart and soul into this, and you’ll see that I am struggling to cope with the CWGC figure, and reconcile it with the high casualty total recorded in the official account.

 

Something really just doesn't click here, does it ?

 

I’m pleased that I mentioned Isandlwana and Inkerman as rivalling Le Cateau in terms of the loss of British lives.

 

Uncannily, the recorded toll of British officers and men killed at Isandlwana was 858....almost identical to the number for 26 August 1914 as commemorated by CWGC !

 

The fact that Smith-Dorrien was present at both battles is equally astonishing .

 

There is something exquisite in the hubris and nemesis implicit in the   comment of Lord Chelmsford on the eve of Isandlwana :    Gentlemen , the n*****s won’t fight !.......the young officer who was one of a handful of survivors from that massacre was to say before he committed to battle at Le Cateau  a third of a century later  Gentlemen , we will stand and fight !

 

There are some things you wouldn’t dare make up.

 

As for Inkerman, I have always been shocked at the bloodiness of that affair, with 2,573 British soldiers being killed or wounded from a force of 9,482 ; while the four thousand French who fought alongside them lost 1,780 ; the slaughter of the Russians was extreme, with 3,286 being killed and 8,673 wounded.

 

Inkerman was what, I believe , many British commentators would have liked Le Cateau to have been.

 

Phil

Edited 4 March , 2020 by phil andrade

[lostinspace]

But Phil, can we really trust those figures for Inkerman? Just kidding.

 

Dave

[phil andrade]

15 hours ago, lostinspace said:

But Phil, can we really trust those figures for Inkerman? Just kidding.

 

Dave

 

Dave,

 

You’re right to kid me....sad fool that I am, I get too agitated over these statistics.

 

By and large, you can consult the CWGC database and you get a sense of symmetry : the big days of the war are represented by commensurate commemorations .  They certainly don’t always click : the CWGC figure for July 1st 1916 is rather too low, and that for September 25th 1915 is too high, to conform to the official accounts of casualties for those days. There are bound to be disparities ....but you don’t find anything that sounds alarm bells.  Except for Le Cateau.

 

There is no other big day in the Great War that I can think of where such a singularly  heavy report of casualties is so under represented on the CWGC database.  Eight thousand British casualties on one day in 1914 : no other day in that year approaches that, not even the crisis at First Ypres. How can it be that there are fewer than 900 deaths attributed to it ?

 

Phil

[lostinspace]

4 hours ago, phil andrade said:

You’re right to kid me....sad fool that I am, I get too agitated over these statistics.

Phil,

Don't get agitated, life is too short.
It's been a long time since I used Geoff's WWI & WW2 website, he might have taken it down. But If I remember correctly, you could plug in a regiment and get daily death totals, which works great as long as you don't have more than one battalion from the same regiment taking casualties on the same day. Let me see if I can find it again.

Dave
 

Edited 5 March , 2020 by lostinspace

[lostinspace]

Hurrah, it's still there. I plugged in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and the search engine came up with 27 named fatalities for 26 August, one of which was from 2nd Battalion (he died in Malta) which left 26 for 1st Battalion at Le Cateau. The site links over to the appropriate CWGC information which indicates the cemetery, or if missing, those who are commemorated on the Le Ferte-Sous-Jouarre Memorial to the missing.
Here is a link to the site - http://www.hut-six.co.uk/cgi-bin/search1421.php   

It takes some time but you can also search through the following days and catch at least some who died of wounds by looking at the cemetery details.
 

Dave

[lostinspace]

Well, I searched through the Warwicks from 26 August through 2 September and came up with 32. The original 26 plus 6 others buried in the area. Interesting that the exhumation reports listed each of them with a death date of 26 August, but Graves Registration changed the dates to 27 & 28 August. I think the disparity you're talking about is spread through the days following the battle.
 

Dave

[phil andrade]

Dave,

 

This research into the Royal Warwicks that you've made excites my interest for a particular reason.....I associate it with the account of Lt Bernard Law Montgomery.

 

His story of the Battle of Le Cateau endorses the way that Peter Hart depicts it.

 

As Monty would say a dog's breakfast!

 

Do these fatalities that you allude to apply to the same battalion that Monty served in ?

 

He tells us in his memoir that his unit suffered many casualties as a result of its imprudent deployment.

 

If ' many casualties' entail thirty fatalities, then we have a benchmark of sorts.

 

Again, I get the impression that the great numbers of prisoners lost in the Retreat defied categorisation by time or place, because it was all too chaotic, and in the end, perhaps, the historians who attempted to allocate them just decided to bung them in to the Le Cateau bin, so to speak.

 

Phil

 

 

[lostinspace]

Phil,

 

10 Brigade was supposed to be in reserve, but during the early morning of the 26th split up while moving into position, with the Warwicks and Dublin Fusiliers in one group, and the Seaforths and R. Irish fusiliers in another. Montgomery was with 1 Bn. Warwickshire. "Many" casualties is relative isn't it, all depends on what you have gone through before, in Montgomery's case I doubt he had ever experienced anything like Le Cateau. By the way, The Warwicks and Dublin Fusiliers were the units involved in the "Colonels' Surrender" at St. Quentin on the 27th.

I'm going to (eventually) work through all the infantry battalions in 4 Division to see what the total number of fatalities look like.
 

Dave

[phil andrade]

Dave,

 

Good of you to bear with me on this.

 

That surrender at St Quentin is notorious.

 

I wonder if any information is available about the numbers of prisoners that these battalions yielded to the Germans.

 

Phil

[Derek Black]

Adrian Gilbert looked at Le Cateau and the St Quentin surrender in a book called Challenge of Battle: The Real Story of the British Army in 1914

 

article link

 

 

[phil andrade]

Thanks, Derek.... Blimey !

 

Not much lipstick on THAT pig, is there ?

 

Phil

[lostinspace]

I wonder if any information is available about the numbers of prisoners that these battalions yielded to the Germans.

In the 2nd Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers' History, "Crown and Company, 1911-1922" there is no reference to the "incident". Only the officers and men who eventually returned to the battalion are mentioned. I do have both battalion war diaries ( Dubs & Warwicks) so will take a look and get back to you later.

 

Dave

[Jools Mc]

Relating to the 1st Battalion Somerset Light Infantry, according to 'Good Old Somersets: An 'Old Contemptible' Battalion of 1914' by Brian Gillard, "At the conclusion of this action only some 8 officers and 150 men were collected by the C.O. Other parties however collected under Major Prowse and Lieutenant Montgomery respectively and ultimately joined the C.O.'s party. After the last formed body had rejoined the casualties were found to be 19 N.C.O.s and men known to be killed, 9 officers and 150 N.C.O.s and men known to be wounded (and some thought to be killed) and 100 N.C.O.s and men missing, of the latter many were killed or wounded. It is worth recording that the Battalion went into action at this battle without any stretchers, as the whole of the first line transport (less SAA carts) had been withdrawn from the Battalion the previous evening."

 

"Well over one thousand men of the 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry crossed to France on 22nd August 1914. (it is thought that the 1st Reserve embarked with the Regular Battalion.) Four days later they had lost a quarter of their strength at the Battle of Ligny (Le Cateau), including 63 killed or missing and 180, mainly wounded, prisoners of war."

[phil andrade]

Excellent vignette, Jools Mc, thanks.

 

The cwgc figures will always take account of the missing who were later classified as dead, as well as died from wounds on that day, so we’re still left with eight hundred or so British dead for the battle.

 

It bothers me that it doesn’t click with the accounts .

 

Phil

 

 

[gmac101]

 

The army's management of casualty information during that early phase of the war was pretty poor, this is a minor incident, but shows how the army was prepared to mark somebody down as KIA with no solid evidence (later in the war I'm sure he would have been marked down as missing) 

 

Extract form a short pieces I did for a local website 

 

"G W Cairns, a Lance Corporal  in the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, was born in Glasgow in 1895 and by 1911 was working as an apprentice draper in Glasgow. Sometime between then and 1913 he spent time in Galashiels and made an impression on the town.

He joined the King’s Own Scottish Borderers in 1913, they recruited in the Borders, if he had returned home to Glasgow to join up he would have likely been recruited into the Highland Light Infantry so he may well have joined up with friends from Galashiels. He was posted to the 2nd Battalion, based at that time in Ireland.  ......

 

.... A defensive line was prepared by French civilians consisting of shallow trenches on either side of the roman road that ran near Le Cateau  (now the D932). Here the KOSB held the Germans for several hours whist withstanding a  large artillery barrage.  During this barrage George Cairns was struck in the head.  One of his comrades must have seen him wounded and possibly knocked unconscious and reported him dead as his name was included on the list of killed in action that day and subsequently published in the newspapers.

The residents of Galashiels keen for news from the front noted the name of an ex-resident of the town in the daily casualty lists but George was not as dead as his comrade had assumed.  Georges sister still living in Glasgow received a letter from him in November written from a German Hospital in France where he was being held prisoner, she wrote to the Army and they noted his new status as a prisoner but nobody in Galashiels noticed the retraction and he remained in their thoughts as an early victim of the war and was listed in June 1915 as having been killed.

George, after being reported dead again in late 1915, was finally released in late 1918 and returned to Glasgow where he worked as a machinist and draper.  He married in 1920 and died in Glasgow in 1958, the last man on the Galashiels War Memorial to die.

I can only assume he never returned to Galashiels and lived out his life unaware that he was mourned for many years in a town he spent a small portion of his life in."

[phil andrade]

.....held the Germans for several hours whilst withstanding a large artillery barrage.

 

I wonder how much that might sum up the Battle of Le Cateau.

 

It’s sometimes depicted an an artillery battle, with the Germans enjoying advantage of terrain and firepower.

 

If that was so, then it’s tempting to see it as an affair which saw British infantry being served up and getting knocked about badly.

 

A very demoralising and frightening business.

 

How much infantry versus infantry combat actually occurred ?

 

I am sure that, when the British were able to use their musketry, they made a good account of themselves : but I’m wondering how many episodes of this took place that day.

 

The sacrificial conduct  of the British field gunners at Le Cateau , moving their pieces up to fight near the infantry, suggests that they might have been aware of faltering morale among the battalions, and were determined  to bolster up resolve thereby.

 

The loss of nearly forty guns speaks volumes here.

 

Tell Sparta !

 

Phil

Edited 9 March , 2020 by phil andrade

[gmac101]

4 hours ago, phil andrade said:

.....held the Germans for several hours whilst withstanding a large artillery barrage.

 

I wonder how much that might sum up the Battle of Le Cateau.

 

 

Phil

 

The KOSB history (which I paraphrased) says " There is nothing intricate about the battle. It was an unequal artillery duel and an object-lesson in the volume and accuracy of German fire, which was for so long to damage and put at a disadvantge to the B.E.F.  At no time was there a serious infantry attack opposite the 13th I.B.. But a worse way of spending a fine warm August day then crouching in shallow trenches during a rain of shells hour after hour from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. can hardly be imagined. "

 

I think the units on the right of the British line had a very different experience with much more infantry action 

[stiletto_33853]

I can only add a little to this, but according to the Nominal Roll of N.C.O.'s and men, Prisoners of war of Rifle Brigade in accordance with War Office letter No. 121/Supplies/100 (Q.M.G.6) dated January 6th, 1919, and The Rifle Brigade Prisoners of War Help Fund the total for the 1st RB was 330 captured for 26/8/14. These lists continue for many pages.

Edited 9 March , 2020 by stiletto_33853

[lostinspace]

Thanks Andy, would it have been noted on these rolls if they were wounded & captured? It not, I guess you would have to go through the Red Cross files for each individual to determine if they were first sent to a German hospital before being transferred to a POW camp..
Dave

 

[stiletto_33853]

Hi Dave,

no note on if these were wounded or not, however as some of these died in captivity reasonably soon after capture one would presume that a good few were injured. A reasonable amount, from the records I have looked at, were reservists mobilised on 5/8/14. However 330 confirmed by both lists is a staggering amount for what was their first action, quite a baptism of fire.

 

Andy

[stiletto_33853]

The Rifle Brigade History does make a few notes that need highlighting though.

1. The failure of communications needs to be dwelt upon because it must bear a full weight of blame for the confusion that reigned on the night of August 25th - 26th. It should be added moreover that, bad as communications may have been in other formations, they were probably at their worst in the 4th Division by no fault of the Divisional commander, but because his Signal Company, R.E. for some undisclosed reason, like his Field Ambulances, his Field Companies, his Heavy Artillery, his Divisional Cavalry, and his Cyclists, had been impounded at St. Quentin by order of G.H.Q.

2. Sir John French at 7.30pm on 25th issued orders  for the retreat to be continued a further 10 to 15 miles to the South West. Sir John French's order threw upon General Allenby's cavalry the task of protecting this movement. The 4th Division marching parallel with II Corps, was to proceed to Le Catelet. In order to carry out the tasks assigned to him, it was necessary for General Allenby to hold the ground that the 4th Division held during the 25th and retain it until the main bodies of II Corps and 4th Division should move off on the 26th. In other words the Cavalry should have relieved the 4th Division in the Solesmes position, after the 3rd Division rearguard had passed through. But there had been a hitch. The orders issued at 7.30pm by French on the 25th did not reach General Allenby until 11pm. General Allenby hurried to Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and told him that, unless his troops and the 4th Division could begin their retirement before daylight the enemy would be on them before they could start. By then it was 2am on the 26th. As if Allenby's bombshell were not sufficient of a shock, the Corps Commander then learned from General Hubert Hamilton that the 3rd Division was not in a position to move before 9am on the 26th. If the retreat was not to become a rout, there was only one course for Smith-Dorrien to pursue. He must stand his ground, strike back hard at his pursuers and resume his retreat under cover of their discomfiture.

3. Any movement had to be timed carefully as the battlefield was totally covered by artillery fire, machine gun & rifle fire.

Edited 10 March , 2020 by stiletto_33853

[phil andrade]

According to German regimental accounts cited in Zuber’s book,  the infantry regiment that overwhelmed the KOYLI at Le Cateau captured 16 officers and 320 men from that battalion, of whom 170 were wounded.....if that’s worthy of extrapolation, we can reckon that more or less half of all the British prisoners captured at Le Cateau were wounded.  The oft cited claim of 2,600 British prisoners would, in my opinion, have been alluding only to  unwounded captives.  It’s a legitimate assumption, I think, that very few Germans were captured at Le Cateau : the Zuber calculation of 2,900 German casualties equates to killed and wounded, if I’m right.

 

There’s an interesting summary of casualties in Anthony Bird’s book GENTLEMEN, WE WILL STAND AND FIGHT, which I’ll consult and comment on soon.

 

Phil

[phil andrade]

Anthony Bird estimates Le Cateau BEF casualties as 1,200 killed, 4,012 wounded and 2,600 prisoners.

 

He bases his total for killed on CWGC data for 26 and 27 August.

 

My investigation fails to corroborate that : there are 869 commemorations in France for the 26th, and 200 for the 27th, which includes deaths in fighting other than that of Le Cateau.

 

The 2,600 prisoners , he emphasises, include the wounded who had to be abandoned, which thoroughly refutes my suggestion.

 

Bird  published this  two years before Zuber unleashed his book, and I wonder if he might have changed his tabulation if he had seen the conclusions of Zuber.

 

If memory serves me, Bird cited a British Officer training manual that was a guide to the battle, and gave a figure of 8,970 German casualties , which is a threefold increase of Zuber’s assessment. 

 

There are still British accounts of the battle that state the German casualties to have been fifteen thousand, or more.

 

I think the authors must have read the same books as my Dad !

 

Phil

Edited 10 March , 2020 by phil andrade