Finally!
After all our preparatory discussions - about the prelude to the Great War, French and German warplans, the ground and air reconnaissance elements - we're at the start line of the Great War, the "LD", the morning of 1 AUG 1914, when the German ultimatum that Russia "cease all war measures against Germany and Austria-Hungary" expired without response and the war began.
The operations we can lump into the "Battle of the Frontiers" took place over the next thirty-five days. Here's a rough outline of what happened where, and when.
Again, we're faced with an immense task; millions of soldiers moving and fighting over thousands of hectares of ground of all types from the alluvial plain of Belgium through the forests of the Ardennes to the mountains of the Vosges to the valley of the Ill River.
I think the best way to break down all this fire and movement is first by time. We can break down operations into four main time segments:
1. Preparations (1 AUG to 7 AUG) which includes mobilization, movement to the LD, and preliminary actions in eastern Belgium,
2. First Encounters (7 AUG to 21 AUG) which includes mostly lots of movement but also the actions around Liege in Belgium and Mulhouse and vicinity on the French right/German left,
3. The Crisis (21 AUG to 24 AUG) which includes the major engagements in the Ardennes between the French and German centers, and Charleroi/Mons/Le Cateau on the Franco-British left/German right, and
4. The Great Retreat (24 AUG to 5 SEP) which includes the withdrawal of the Entente forces south and west until the First Battle of the Marne begins.
Within those time increments I think we can break out geographical areas:
A. The Southeast (French 1er/2eme Armee & "Armee d'Alsace", German 6./7. Feldarmee): including the engagement areas along the Franco-German border generally between Nancy and the Swiss frontiers.
B. The Center (French 3eme/4eme Armee, German 4./5. Feldarmee): which includes primarily the Ardennes region and the areas in and around the Franco-Luxembourg border, and
C. The Northwest (French 5eme/6eme Armee, Belgian Army, and British Expeditionary Force, German 1./2./3. Feldarmee): that comprises the heart of Belgium and the Franco-Belgian border.
So my idea is to take each time segment and subdivide it into the actions in the geographical areas. So the first part of this post will be:
Preparations - General (1 AUG to 4 AUG)
If you recall the events of late summer 1914, the Austro-Hungarian government had hoped to solve their Damn Thing in the Balkans by crushing Serbia; the Dual Monarchy declared war on 28 JUL.
Serbia's patron, Russia, issued a general mobilization order on 30 JUL.
Okay, now we haven't really discussed "mobilization" yet, but it's critical to the start of the war. Because it means doing everything the Powers needed to fight a general war; assembling military units - including calling up reserve troops from their civilian lives - first at their barracks, then moving them to their initial deployment areas.
This also meant "mobilizing" all the logistical support elements, too; gathering rations (food and water) from farm to market to depot, marshaling transportation (usually railroad stock but also trucks or boats/barges), plus distributing military stores like arms and ammunition, uniforms, horses...everything armies need.
The thing about mobilizing is that it was effectively a race between the Powers' armed forces (and civilian economies); whoever mobilized more quickly and effectively would be far ahead of the power curve.
So if a nation started to mobilize, all that polity's potential enemies had to mobilize, too, or risk being unprepared when their enemy completed mobilization first and attacked.
By mobilizing the Russian government was effectively warning Austria-Hungary that war with Serbia meant war with Russia. The Austrians weren't deterred (though they should have been, as we discussed in Part 1).
Germany warned Russia to demobilize the following day, and when the Russian government ignored the demand, went to war with Russia on 1 AUG.
France had a treaty with Russia, remember, but the German government jumped in first, declaring war on 3 AUG.
The Asquith government of Great Britain wasn't happy about all this warring but had treaty obligations to defend Belgium from invasion...
(one interesting aspect of this meant that when French General Joffre asked to move preemptively into Belgium in early August the Viviani administration replied a hard no; let the Boche draw British ire.)
...which they did; the UK declared war on Germany on 4 AUG.
The third "power" of the Triple Alliance, Italy, declined to get involved; on 3 AUG the Salandra government announced that Austrian aggression abrogated the alliance and began a fairly sleazy intrigue to try and pry the best deal out of both sides.
With war declared the armies began to move. But first...
A Brief Note on Sources: between the last installment and this one I procured a copy of Matt Bowdon's 2017 work The Great War's Finest, An Operational History of the German Air Service, Volume 1: Western Front 1914.
It's an amazingly comprehensive study of, as the title indicates, the German air operations during our time and place. I'm unfamiliar with the author but his scholarship is truly impressive. He must have spent a tremendous amount of time in the German archival materials.
That said, Bowdon is as biased as his title also indicates. His account includes personal judgements on German ground and air operations that seem to reflect a willingness to give the Imperial commands, at least, the "benefit of the doubt". Where the German commanders or the German Army organization erred he does state that as such, but I'd suggest combining his work with another from the Entente perspective to ensure a rounded view of the events of August 1914.
That said, I have been utterly unable to find a similar level of information for the Armee de l'Air. There's a good bit of information online about the British RFC, but the French fliers?
Non.
My guess is there are such sources in French, which I am not just unable to find but would be unable to read if I could. I have been forced to glean what I can from various accounts which typically mention French air operations only peripherally or obliquely if at all.
If any reader is familiar with such a source I would be deeply beholden for a recommendation thereof.
Okay, so...
Preparations - Northwest (4 AUG - 7 AUG): German Operations
The first reconnaissance moves began on 4 AUG as the reinforced German X. Armeekorps of 2. Feldarmee - this reinforced corps was nicknamed the "Meuse Army" or Maasarmee - began probing the Belgian defenses around Namur.
This included both air assets, including the aircraft of
Feldflieger Abteilung (FFA) 9 and an airship (Z VI), and cavalry units from
HKK 2 including
2te,
4te, and
9te Kavalriedivisionen.Showalter and others (2019) is fairly scathing about the aerial reconnaissance:
"Emmich (commander of X. Armeekorps) received the partially false Fliegermeldung report that the (roads leading to the Meuse) were free (of Belgian forces)...and the Meuse bridges...were intact"
The Showalter (2019) account notes that one problem might be that FFA 9 was not even supposed to be there - if you look back at the "air assets" post FFA 23 was attached to X. AK; FFA 9 was not just attached to a different armeekorps (IVte) but a different feldarmee (1te).
The X. AK air assets were so delayed that the Imperial OHL tasked a "fortress flying detachment" based in Cologne (Festungflieger Abteilung Koln) to support the Liege operations, but Bowdon (2017) points out that the problem was distance; Liege was at the extreme range of a 1914-era Taube or Aviatik, so loiter time was short.
The supporting pilots were operating with a completely unfamiliar maneuver unit, and - as we'll see - an under-resourced "air staff".
We discussed the sad 6 AUG sortie of Z VI (dropped a couple of artillery rounds, was shot down and crashed) in the previous "air assets" post.
The German cavalry did manage to push to the river north and south of Liege by 4 AUG, but the northern bridges were largely either destroyed or covered by fire; 2te and 4te Kavalriedivisionen had to halt at the east bank and probe for a crossing.
To the south 9te Division did manage to send a squadron ahead and seize the Meuse River bridge at Poulseur on 4 AUG, but the remainder of the division had to bivouac for the night well east of that objective.
By 5 AUG, however, all three cavalry divisions of
HKK 2 were west of the Meuse. Belgian resistance was light.
The overall result of the initial German intelligence problems was a bloody failure of an infantry assault on the night of 5-6 AUG; the Maasarmee tried to storm the Liege fortress belt and was shot apart by Belgian defenders behind field fortifications thrown together between the fixed forts that the German reconnaissance had not fully revealed.
By the evening of 7 AUG the German right wing operations were already a day or so behind schedule.
Preparations - Northwest (4 AUG - 7 AUG) - French and Belgian Operations
The Belgian defenders appear to have deployed several of their cavalry units along the Meuse, though the river itself appears to have been the main defensive work and the Belgian cavalry seems to have done little or no reconnaissance or (other than patrolling the riverbank) counter-reconnaissance.
Belgian air operations over Liege are reported to have included:
"Sous Lieutenant Henri Crombez flew one of the first war patrols, in a Deperdussin racer on 4 August 1914...Adjutant Behaeghe was the first to engage an enemy, a few days later."
What results these sorties produced, if any, is not described, but the German main effort in the Northeast was not difficult to suss out; the Liege fortresses had to be masked, stormed, or destroyed. The Belgian defenders seem to have prepared fairly effectively, given the disparity in strength and weaponry.
To the south, French GQG ordered mobilization of the single "strategic" reconnaissance cavalry formation, "Cavalry Corps Sordet" on 31 JUL. By 5 AUG the corps was along the border near Mezieres, and on 6 AUG were:
"...moving the corps forward to the Neufchâteau area...Sordet advanced eastward the next day (7 AUG), almost to the Belgian-Luxembourg and Belgian-German frontiers, with the 5th Cavalry Division riding through Neufchâteau. The French encountered no major German forces (because) Sordet had advanced before the German I Cavalry Corps (HKK 1) had made any move in the Ardennes sector.
Mindful of his overall mission to determine the scope of German deployments, Sordet immediately decided to shift northward toward Liege where he knew there were Germans..." (McGrath, 2010)
Sordet's horse soldiers were on the road to Liege on the morning of 8 AUG.
I'm frankly baffled where the French air assets were during this time. We've talked about the little French airships - not much of anything there - but the Armee de l'Air should have been up over Belgium and either wasn't, or wasn't doing much of anything.
Despite the German 1te and 2te Feldarmee moves into eastern Belgium (and 4te and 5te Feldarmee into southeastern Belgium and Luxembourg) the French air reconnaissance doesn't seem to have sortied aggressively into Belgium. Indeed; as we'll see, the Armee de l'Air doesn't seem to have been aggressive during most of August anywhere.
Preparations - Center (4 AUG - 7/8 AUG)
Both sides spent the bulk of this time either moving off the start line against light (if any) opposition - the German 4te and 5th Feldarmee - or holding in place near the frontier in the case of the French 4eme and 5eme Armee.
Neither appears to have actively reconned their prospective opponents, although Belgian reports seem to have reached the French GQG, because on 8 AUG GEN Joffre alerted his central armies to prepare for an attack on German forces pushing west towards Neufchateau and Longwy.
Bowdon (2017) does a nice job of summarizing the opposing sides' concept of operations:
"Joffre believed the German center was weak and susceptible to attack...the French Third and Fourth Armies were ordered to attack and defeat the German center then turn west against the flank and rear of the advancing German right wing...while...the Fifth Army, with the assistance of the BEF, was to engage and hold the German right..."
Unfortunately for Joffre, the German center did not consist of a weak group of six corps, but was composed of two large armies...three cavalry divisions and the Metz garrison."
Sordet's cavalry was supposed to scout north of the central armies as part of that unit's mission. We'll discuss that in a bit.
You'd think that the Armee de l'Air (and the Belgian air service, to the extent it could help...) should have been extremely motivated to find and either confirm or revise Joffre's initial assessment. I can find no evidence that either service did so. As we discussed in Part 4b, the French airships did do some reconnaissance starting in the second week of August, but we have little or no record of those sorties or what intelligence they produced.
So very little reconnaissance activity in the Central sector during this time period.
Preparations - Southeast (4 AUG to 7/8 AUG)
The Alsace-Lorraine region was the "other" active theater of operations during the first week of war, largely because Plan XVII made it so. The first French encounter came on 7 AUG, near the Alsatian town of Mulhouse in the Ill River valley.
A task force consisting of the VII
Corps d'Armee (VII CA) and a cavalry division moved out that day and closed on Mulhouse early on 8 AUG.
Bowdon (2017) reports what German aviation was on it:
"(German) Seventh Army's flying sections were the first on the Western Front to begin active flight operations. From the 4th to the 6th (August) XIV AK's FFA 20 dispatched at least two flights per day...on the morning of the 7th one of FFA 20's crew spotted Bonneau's (the commander of VII CA) columns on the march and decided on their initiative to land near the front to inform 58 IB (58te Infanterie Brigade)...the verbal report confirmed for the brigade commander that he was facing a much larger force (and)...allowed the small German force to smartly conduct a delaying action..."
The other 7. Feldarmee flying units as well as divisional cavalry did good service reconnoitering the French forces and finding errors, "...including several gaps in Bonneau's line north of Mulhouse...to create a (counterattack) plan to exploit the gaps and envelop the French left..." (Bowdon 2017).
It was this intelligence that informed the German counterattack planned for 8 AUG.
A Close-up View of Operations: Waremme
One incident that occurred in the area of operations around Liege (Northwest) is worth discussing a bit in depth because of the light it sheds on the difficulties faced by mounted cavalry reconnaissance in 1914.
Here's the little town of Waremme, about 32 km (20 miles) WNW of Liege;
On the second day of the German invasion - 5 AUG - three reconnaissance units from HKK 2 were tasked to explore the area. These included two company-sized squadrons from
4te Kavalriedivision; two at nearly full strength -
12te Husaren and
2te Dragoner - and two understrength dragoon squadrons (
17te and
18te) that were operating as a single composite unit.
As detailed in Showalter, Robinson, and Robinson (2020) it appears that the latter unit approached Belgian positions south of Waremme near the Chateau les Waleffes and the even smaller village of Celles.
Here the Belgian infantry opened fire and the German dragoons ran into trouble:
"The (German) squadrons...charged - into a network of hedges, wires and fences before they even reached the Belgians. Some horses tumbled...as the ripe wheat wound round the horses' legs. The rest of the squadron...tried to break through but came under heavy rifle and machinegun fire near Waremme. It suffered casualties and the greater part was captured."
The composite unit seems to have been decimated without gain; what was left of the
18te Dragoner half-squadron was disbanded, the 17te reduced to a single Zug (platoon) used as regimental dogsbodies. Belgian casualties, though not reported, seem to have been minimal.
But the really damning bit comes as an almost throwaway line in the Showalter text:
"The results of their (the German) reconnaissance produced two reports, but neither the reports nor the dispatch riders ever arrived at division HQ"
So the German cavalry attempted to do what recon troopers are supposed to do when encountering enemy forces they cannot observe from distance - fight for intelligence of their opponents. In this the dragoons failed; direct fire shot their mounted attack apart, they seem to have not attempted dismounted action, and in the process lost the better part of 170 troopers, 25% of a regiment. For this loss the unit discovered next to nothing about the Belgian defenses.
And whatever they did discover never made it up the chain to division.
We're going to see this again - and worse - in the next segment.
Summary: Preparation Phase Reconnaissance Operations
Northwest: A mixed bag. The German cavalry seems to have struggled, and German aerial reconnaissance was unsurprisingly sketchy given the ad-hoc organization. French air operations appear nonexistent, and what information the Belgian cavalry and aircraft gained appears to have been meager or poorly understood.
Center: Nothing of significance
Southeast: The German aviators seem to have been active and effective, the French nonexistent. Hard to tell how well the cavalry scouts did, although the German horsemen (per Bowdon) seem to have contributed. The French cavalry are not apparent in the histories, but their issues began to show up shortly, as we'll see in the next post.
Next: The Plots Thicken: 7/8 AUG to 21 AUG
