Gilbert - Challenge of battle: the real story of the british army in 1914

In every respect the Expeditionary Force of 1914 was incomparably the best trained, best organised, and best equipped British Army that ever went forth to war. With these words Brigadier-General J. E. Edmonds summed up the British Expeditionary Force in his introduction to the Official History of the First World War. Edmonds was the editor of this multi-volume series on the armys contribution to the war, an epic undertaking not completed until 1948.

The first two volumes, published in 1922 and 1925 respectively and directly compiled by Edmonds, described the army in the 1914 campaign, from the opening encounters at Mons and Le Cateau, through the great retreat and advance to the Aisne to the desperate battles in defence of Ypres. These initial works swiftly established a commanding presence as the definitive account of British Army operations in 1914, casting a long shadow over subsequent histories of the campaign.

James Edmonds was a gifted multi-linguist whose intellectual abilities saw him pass out top at the Staff College, Camberley in 1898. As the 4th Divisions senior staff officer in 1914, he took part in the opening phase of the war, but the strain of work led to a breakdown in September 1914 and reassignment to GHQ for the remainder of the conflict. In 1919 Edmonds took over as head of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, then engaged in the preparation of the history of the war.

Subsequent volumes of the Official History became the subject of fierce controversy, but those devoted to 1914 were excluded from these debates. Yet, close examination of the 1914 campaign reveals flaws in Edmonds account that have distorted our view of the army in this period. Tribute must be paid, however, to the quality and depth of research conducted by Edmonds and his small team of historians. This will be evident to anyone who has examined the files in the National Archive at Kew and read the correspondence with key individuals, after-action reports and interviews with front-line officers. And yet, the question remains: what material was included and how was it used?

In some respects, Edmonds was producing his work too soon after the end of conflict with little time for reflection and he was certainly too close to its major figures, having spent most of the war in their company. Despite his personal, often waspish attitudes towards senior colleagues, he was reluctant to belittle them in public. And as a regular officer with a lifetimes attachment to the army, he was understandably protective of it from the threat of outside criticism.

The 1914 volumes comprised a chronicle of operations, with the emphasis on the actions of individual regiments, battalions or batteries. This had the tendency of turning the work into an enormous, composite regimental history, with limited room for historical analysis and the development of wider themes, leading the military theorist Basil Liddell Hart to quip that it was, official but not history. Consequently, where there was criticism, it was muted and oblique, and for most readers, all but invisible.

Considering the 1914 volumes it is possible to see significant instances of evasion and omission, and, on occasion, outright distortion. A striking example of this can be found in the chapters dealing with the battle of Le Cateau on 26 August. The Official History transformed a British tactical defeat into a successful delaying action fought against great odds. Those aspects of the engagement that raised uncomfortable truths were conveniently forgotten.

The virtual destruction of the 1st Kings Own, from the 12th Brigade, was treated as bad luck rather than bad judgment, and the knowledge that the brigades retreat across the Warnelle ravine was unauthorized and against the wishes of the divisional commander was ignored. Also overlooked was the rout of part of the 8th Brigade during the general withdrawal from the battlefield later in the day. There may have been some coded disapproval of the inept deployment of the 5th Division, although the passive voice adopted by Edmonds would seem to lay the blame elsewhere. But most damning to the veracity of the Official Historys account was the unsupported and disingenuous assertion that British forces had turned upon an enemy of at least twice their strength.

Other examples of the Official Historys coy attitude to British embarrassments included the discrete veiling of incidents such as the attempted surrender of two infantry battalions at St Quentin on 27 August and the collapse of the 1st West Yorkshire Regiment in the face of a German attack at Paissy on 20 September.

These shortcomings would be of less importance had the Official History not been so influential in defining the outlook of subsequent histories of the war. Although the analysis of the British high command before and during 1914 has been the subject of much illuminating research in recent years, books published on the army at the tactical level which include most popular accounts have remained in the hands of those following the line set by Edmonds. Indeed, rather than challenging the Official History they have embellished it for greater effect.

To return to the example of Le Cateau, the historian John Terraine described it as one of the most remarkable British feats of arms of the whole war.

British histories of the 1914 campaign typically adopt the emotionally comforting paradigm of the plucky Briton giving the overbearing foreign bully a bloody nose. Histories of previous wars helped establish this national military stereotype, whether the small band of English archers taking on the overwhelming mass of French knights at Agincourt, or Wellingtons steadfast infantry saving the day at Waterloo. It was only a short move to view the soldiers of 1914 in the same light, red coats merging into khaki, firepower transferred from Brown Bess musket to Lee-Enfield rifle. Contemporary wartime histories understandably viewed the campaign through this prism, a perspective that has surprisingly continued over the years.

In this book my intention is to look afresh at the British Army during 1914. While paying due respect to the research that lies behind the Official History, I have not felt bound by its conclusions. My aim is not by any means to belittle the armys many achievements but to provide a more realistic assessment of the army set within a general narrative of the war in 1914.

My interest in the campaign was sparked in the reading room of the Imperial War Museum, when looking through the memoirs (subsequently published) of General Thomas Snow, the 4th Divisions commander. Snows unusually frank description of Le Cateau and beyond chimed with half-remembered books dealing with the same period by John Lucy and the future Field Marshal Montgomery. Their accounts made it clear that not all had gone well, describing incidents completely absent from the standard record. Further research suggested that there was another story to be told of the armys campaign in France and Belgium.

For reasons of space I have confined this history to the seven infantry divisions and cavalry of the original British Expeditionary Force, while acknowledging the contributions made by the Indian Corps and the Territorial battalions during the latter stages of the campaign.

I have made deliberate and extensive use of first-person narratives, drawing material from wide sources: published accounts (well-known and obscure) and unpublished memoirs, diaries and letters. I have also consulted official papers from the National Archives that include diaries, letters, reports and questionnaires. Together they provide vital evidence of how the battles of 1914 were actually fought, sometimes confirming the traditional view, sometimes not.