Mons: An Artillery Battle by David Hutchison

[Robert Dunlop]

This book was recently published by Helion & Company. It focuses on the Battle of Mons, which took place on 23rd August 1914, and the second day of fighting along the line Dours - Wasmes - Ciply - Harmignies - Givry. The latter excludes the action around Elouges (which is very interesting in light of comments about the ineffectiveness of German field artillery - see below). As the title suggests, the author has paid particular attention to the artillery involvement. He has drawn heavily on the British war diaries from GHQ down to the infantry battalion, artillery regiment, cavalry regiment, signals, and engineer company levels.

 

The book starts with a nicely worked summary. The author quotes the British Official History of the battle but highlights in bold those statements that he contradicts or provides significant alternative evidence. The Introduction provides background information about the gunners, guns, and artillery munitions used by both sides. This information, which has the right level technical detail for a general reader, is supplemented by a similar level of detail about how artillery was meant to be used at the time. This includes a review of the 1912 Field Service Regulations. Given that the bulk of artillery was to be controlled by individual infantry divisions, the author provides an overview of senior command as well from both infantry and artillery perspectives..

 

The First Twenty Days of August 1914 and the 21st & 22nd August are covered in separate chapters. The former deals with mobilisation and the move to France, thence towards Belgium. There is a brief summary of the German plans and movements as well. The latter covers the British plan of operations and immediate build-up to the battle itself. The remainder of the book is devoted to a detailed analysis of the British movements and conduct of the battles over the next two days. The final chapter sets out the author's perspective on the artillery tactics that were used. He then covers the potential lessons of the battle.

 

The strength of this work lies in the details of the British artillery. The author has done an excellent job in describing the movements and locations of the various artillery brigades. He links this information to the mechanics of infantry - artillery cooperation and command/control. He describes how the artillery brigades, and in some cases individual batteries, fought to support their infantry colleagues in the difficult terrain surrounding Mons and in the confusion of the first major battle for the BEF in WW1. The war diary details are supplemented with anecdotes from gunners who served during the battle. The maps are excellent. It takes some effort to cross-reference the text with the maps, given the scope of the battle and the number of artillery units involved. This problem is not unique to this book, however; indeed the author has made the process as easy as possible.

 

Despite the valuable information about the British artillery, this is not a definitive account of Mons. Not even from an artillery perspective. The German perspective is extremely limited. The author repeatedly refers to the ineffectiveness of German field artillery, which he attributes mainly to faulty ammunition (German field guns used a complex shell that mixed shrapnel and HE capabilities with a difficult fuze). He records the numerous accounts from British sources about German field artillery shells bursting too high or having minimal/no effect in close proximity. The relative paucity of British casualties speaks to this issue as well. Had the German perspective been included, however, then the same criticism would have been exposed for the British field guns too. If the author had been aware of this then I suspect his analysis would have been more balanced. Unfortunately, the author has relied on the British interpretations of the effects of muskets and artillery fire on the German forces. This includes the quotes from German authors in the British Official History that, along with the British regimental accounts, influenced perceptions until recent times. The efforts of Jack Sheldon and, to a lesser extent, Zuber have rendered these perceptions obsolete. From my own work in translating the German official history of Mons, there are several examples of field guns being used to demolish buildings and pave the way for the successes in the Nimy-Obourg salient and across the Condé Canal west of Mons. Although the author quoted information about the difficult terrain from a gunnery perspective, he seems to have neglected subsequently how such terrain would affect the accuracy and effectiveness of air-burst shrapnel (on both sides). The author's reflections on German howitzers is more accurate. 

 

The second key deficiency, from an artillery perspective, relates to the conclusions and potential lessons. The author conflates the use of artillery at Mons with the subsequent use of artillery in static trench warfare. He correctly identifies that some perceptions of artillery command and control had to change significantly to accommodate the requirements of the huge break-in battles during most of the war. It would have been helpful, however, to correlate the way artillery was used at Mons with the limited but crucially different periods of mobile warfare, such as the follow-up of the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line and the mobile defensive actions fought during the German spring offensives of 1918.

 

The author has used the book to criticise Haig's handling of I Corps at this time, along with analyses of Smith-Dorrien and Sir John French/GHQ. These detract from the main focus of the book IMHO.

 

In summary, this book offers some very important details about the British artillery during the Battle of Mons on both 23 and 24 August 1914. This is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the battle and will be of interest to anyone who wants to study this aspect more closely. It is not so useful for a general understanding of the battle; other sources should be consulted in this regard.

 

Robert

[lostinspace]

Thanks for the review Robert, I'm a sucker for any new material on the August '14 battles even if it is less than perfect.