The Great Retreat of 1914: From Mons to the Marne by Spencer Jones

Author:Spencer Jones [Jones, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2015-08-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7: Surrender and Sacrifice

Surrender at St. Quentin

The night of 26/27 August was a trial of endurance for the men of II Corps. They had fought all day and now marched all night. John Lucy remembered: ‘Our minds and bodies shrieked for sleep...Men slept while they marched, and they dreamed as they walked...One sergeant kept up a long dirge for hours on end about his lost pack, yet he was still wearing it’. Captain Tudor St. John recalled being ‘nearly asleep all the time we were marching’ and as a result he ‘imagined all sorts of weird sights.’

Dawn brought no relief. The day was stiflingly hot and the sunlight revealed, according to St. John ‘signs of hurried retreat, overturned motor vehicles, and wagons and dead horses’ although ‘nowhere among this was to be seen the rifles or ammunition carried by the exhausted infantry’. Officers worked tirelessly to maintain unit cohesion. St. John was disgusted by the sight of broken men sitting dejectedly at the roadside and resolved: ‘This was not to happen in the ranks of the FIFTH...all the time [I was] urging persuading and even kicking men on.’ Despite exhaustion, heat and sleeplessness, II Corps kept up the pace.

However, the day was marred by a notorious incident at the town of St. Quentin. British troops were evacuating the area, either on foot, in trains, or on wagons. Frederick Coleman, an American civilian who had volunteered as a staff car chauffeur remembered seeing ‘rare scenes and strange sights’ as overworked staff officers tried to impose some form of order on the confusion.

The 1st Royal Warwickshires and 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers had arrived at the town in the afternoon. It was initially believed that trains would take the battalions onwards. Whilst waiting for the locomotives, the shattered men seized the opportunity to rest. One cavalryman remembered: ‘The whole square was thronged with British infantrymen... Scores had gone to sleep sitting on the pavement, their backs against the fronts of the shops. Many exhausted men lay at full length on the pavement.’

But whilst the soldiers rested, a crisis had overtaken their commanding officers, Lieutenant Colonel J.F. Elkington of the Royal Warwickshires and Lieutenant Colonel A.E. Mainwaring of the Dublin Fusiliers. They were negotiating with the mayor of the town over the provision of trains when a frightened civilian burst in carrying a report that claimed the town was surrounded by Germans. According to Mainwaring this caused the mayor to fall into despair, insisting that all was lost and that the enemy would destroy the town and its inhabitants. Deciding that capitulation was the only option, the mayor harangued Elkington and Mainwaring, insisting that they sign a document of ‘unconditional surrender’ that would hand over their battalions to the Germans without a fight. The two officers were exhausted, confused and uncertain that their men were capable of marching any further. To their shame, they signed the mayor’s document and allowed the French authorities to disarm a number of their soldiers preparatory to marching into German captivity.

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