The East Surreys at Mons, 23rd August 1914

I wrote the following piece some years back when I was researching men who had a connection with Chailey in East Sussex. Charles Sabourin, a favourite of mine over the years, was a regular soldier with the East Surrey Regiment. This is his story, 100 years to the day after he was wounded at Mons.

Opening Shots

Charles Sabourin, old sweat, accomplished rifleman and Private in His Majesty’s 1^st East Surrey Regiment, the old 31^st (Huntingdonshire) Regiment of Foot, crouched low on the North bank of the Mons-Conde canal. It was August 23^rd 1914 and only eight days since the battalion had arrived in France from Dublin.  Already though, if Sabourin and his companions never had to see another pave road in their lives, it would not be a day too soon.  The long, straight cobbled avenues of Northern France and Belgium, coupled with new boots for some of the men, had wreaked havoc on their feet.  Now, to make matters worse, sprawled amongst the slag heaps of unlovely Mons on a hot Sunday afternoon, they were waiting for the might of the Kaiser’s armies to fall upon them.

C Squadron of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards had fired the first shots of the war the previous day.  An hour later, patrolling along the Mons - Soignies road, they had encountered a party of horsemen from the German 9th Cavalry Division and given chase.   At close quarters, the Dragoons’ swords had proven to be more than a match for the Cuirassiers’ unwieldy lances and C Squadron had come out clear victors; not a single casualty and prisoners to boot. 

An encouraging start for the British Expeditionary Force it may have been but it was of little consequence to a hungry Sabourin and the men of the 1st East Surreys.  Whilst the Dragoons and other cavalry contingents were engaging in minor skirmishes on the 22nd, the battalion was sore-footedly marching towards Mons along Belgium’s unforgiving roads.  It had already suffered its first casualty four days earlier.  Despite the rescue efforts of two men who were almost over-powered themselves, and the Medical Officer who rendered First Aid at the scene, 8108 Private A Walters had ignominiously drowned during a platoon bathing parade before the East Surreys had even seen their first German.  Now though, it would be a different matter.  That they would soon be in the thick of the fighting was inevitable.  For even as the men of the 3rd and 5th Divisions of the BEF’s II Corps marched to take up positions around Mons, the massed ranks of Von Kluck’s First Army and Bulow’s Second Army were sweeping down through Belgium towards them.

Arriving along the canal at around three in the afternoon, the East Surrey’s had immediately begun strengthening their positions.  The canteens were still somewhere to the rear and as they were without supplies, the order was given for the men to eat half of their iron rations.  It was a welcome command.

The BEF at Mons

Along the length of the South side of the canal, from Conde to Mons and forming a small salient facing Nimy and Obourg, the East Surreys and the rest of the soldiers of II Corps, BEF were holding a line twenty-one miles long and bisected by eighteen road and rail bridges.  Situated on the extreme right of 14th Brigade’s two and a half mile frontage between the railway bridge of Les Herbieres and the Pommereoeul road bridge, the East Surreys held the railway bridge itself.  Sabourin and the men of C Company had been pushed forward to make up an advanced party on the north of the canal and they were now busy building barricades.  To their right, a company from the 2nd Kings Own Scottish Borderers of 13th Brigade were doing the same.  All along the line, wherever a bridge afforded the opportunity to fashion a defensive outpost - and still provide a means of retreat - pockets of infantrymen scraped together as much shelter as the slag heaps and waterways of the bleak Belgian landscape would allow.  The work continued through the night.

 

 

To the east, desperately trying to stay in touch with the extreme left of the French General Lanrezac’s Fifth Army, I Corps BEF commanded by General Haig also prepared for battle. 

The following morning at 5:30am, General Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force called a conference with his Generals and issued orders for the outpost line to be strengthened and for the bridges over the canal to be prepared for demolition.  In fact, Lieutenant General Sir Hubert Smith-Dorrien, commanding II Corps, had already issued an order to that effect some three hours earlier.  Later he would issue an order directing them to be destroyed if retirement became necessary but for the time being, apart from sinking all the barges in the canal with gun-cotton charges, all his men could do was improve what entrenchments they had managed to construct, and wait for the attack which was expected the following morning. 

By 9am, well to the east of Sabourin’s position by the bridge at Les Herbieres, the first German shells began bursting along the extreme right of the line held by the 4th Middlesex and 4th Royal Fusiliers. And as the southward wheel of Von Kluck’s Army progressed westward along the canal during the course of the morning and early afternoon, what faced the BEF were not the two enemy corps and a cavalry division that General French had intimated to his generals earlier that morning, but two entire German Armies.

And yet, as vastly outnumbered as the British were, Von Kluck had little idea of either the composition or the strength of the force opposing him.  Despite the encounter with the Dragoon Guards the previous day and despite the fact that a British aeroplane had been shot down coming from Maubeuge, south of Mons, Von Kluck was convinced that the BEF had landed at Ostend, Dunkirk and Calais.  So convinced was he that the British force would arrive on his flank rather than already be in position ahead of him, that a sighting of troops detraining at Tournai to the west caused him to halt his march southwards for two hours.  In fact, the soldiers were not British but French, yet even when it was clear that there were enemy soldiers in and around Mons, Von Kluck believed that they might be “only cavalry” and deployed only two of the six infantry divisions at his disposal.   He was soon to be dispelled of his notion.  Vastly outnumbered by the eight German battalions advancing towards them, the four companies of the 4th Middlesex and further to the west, the 4th Royal Fusiliers, greeted the approaching formations with concentrated rifle and machine-gun fire that cut swathes through the massed ranks of field grey.

Meanwhile Charles Sabourin and the 1st East Surreys were still strengthening their defences.  In fact it was not until around 1pm that the German advance, still panning out westwards along the canal and meeting stiff resistance from the British troops at every turn, approached the East Surrey’s positions.  At this point, the battalion war diary notes, “all work had to cease.”

The soldiers of the German 6th Division signalled their arrival at Les Herbieres by opening up with a machine gun about a mile and a half from the barricade put up by the East Surreys.  Though the Official History states that this was ‘instantly silenced’ by one of the East Surrey’s machine guns, a deadly game of cat and mouse then commenced with the German artillery directing its fire at the houses round the railway bridge in an attempt to find it.  This they followed up with shrapnel and machine gun fire directed against the East Surrey’s defences before launching an attack with two battalions at around 1:30pm.  “At this point,” The Official History reports, “the Germans were decisively repulsed with heavy loss, at the cost of trifling casualties to the East Surrey.” They fought on for the rest of the day and it was not until 6pm when German guns finally destroyed the barricade on the Les Herbieres road bridge that the advanced parties of the 2nd Kings Own Scottish Borderers and the 1st East Surreys withdrew south of the canal. 

Wounded and captured at Mons

 

One of those "trifling casualties" was Charles Sabourin. A South Londoner brought up amidst the dockyards of Bermondsey, he had joined the army in 1900 and soldiered half way around the world.  While Kitchener was appealing for volunteers, Sabourin was sailing from Ireland for Havre.  While the lines outside recruiting stations grew long, he was already shouldering his pack in France and when the might of the German armies had fallen upon the little Belgian village of Mons, Sabourin was lined up on the canal firing his rifle at the ranks of Field Grey coming towards him as fast as he could.

By the time The East Surreys had retreated to Brigade Headquarters at Thulin and then marched south to Bois de Boissu where it bivouacked at 2am in a factory yard, total officer casualties for the action were listed as two wounded and three missing whilst other ranks numbered two killed, three wounded and 128 missing. 

Sabourin was wounded and missing and noted by name in the Battalion War Diary.  The shrapnel that finished his war either blew off his right leg at the time or wounded him so severely that amputation of his leg in a Belgian or German hospital became inevitable.  It would be a further five months however, before he would be repatriated to England.  Limbless prisoners of war were of no use to their captors.  Fit men you could put to work in the fields or factories but sick men were simply a burden.  If they couldn’t fight again, better to send them back to where they’d come from.

Where is Charles Sabourin?

Back in London though, all Charles Sabourin’s relatives had wanted was news and they were frantic with worry.  Soon after the action at Mons in which he was wounded and captured, the letters from them started coming.  “… since 11th or 12th August I have not heard anything of him.  I am unable to get to the office to make enquiries so would be very grateful to you if you could let me know something.  Yours…” 

News had been conveyed to the family that he was missing but then there had been nothing.  On 6th October the war office received an anxious communication requesting that they advise, “… anything more about him at any time, his mother’s address is Mrs Sabourin, 26 Lacey Road, St James Road, Bermondsey”  Dutifully the clerk filed the letter.  The following month there was another.  “Dear Sir, I am very sorry to trouble you,” it began, “but have you heard any more information of Pte C Sabourin 6738 of The East Surrey Reg.  It is now two months or so since I heard anything…” 

There wasn’t anything more to report but that hadn’t stopped the correspondence.  In January 1915 there was a further enquiry.  “I am very sorry to trouble you again,” it began, “but have you heard any more of Private C Sabourin No 6738 of The East Surrey Regt.  I came down a month or two before Xmas but I have heard no news about him…”

With customary efficiency, the letter was stamped at No 10 District Infantry Record Office and filed for future reference.  There was nothing more they could do.  Within the month however, Pte Sabourin would be repatriated and the letters would stop.  On December 10th, the British Government had proposed, through the United States Government, to the German Government, that arrangements should be made for an exchange of British and German officers and men who had been taken prisoner and who were physically incapacitated for further military service.  The German Government had accepted this proposal on 31st December and the wheels were set in motion.  Charles Sabourin, his name mis-spelled as “Sabairin” In The Times report that covered the event, was one of two East Surrey men who arrived at Charing Cross Station on Wednesday 17th February 1915, before being whisked away by ambulance to Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital in Grosvenor Road.

Hickwells Convalescent Home, Chailey

After the trauma of his injury and almost six months in captivity, what he needed most of all was a period of convalescence and here, in the tranquillity of Chailey, a world away both from the battlefield and Bermondsey, he  found it.

Nurse Oliver approached him in his chair, his right trouser leg sewn high at the hip.  She had begun her album earnestly enough, proudly drawing two British Red Cross Society badges on the opening page and adding to them with a photograph of Margaret Cotesworth, Commandant of the Detachment.  The other members of Sussex/54 had signed their names around the borders and there were further photos of the Detachment in action during the local Red Cross Field Day in 1913.  Here they were unpacking their equipment.  Here was another of them building a camp fire; another one of them cooking and putting up the dairy. Friends had added their own contributions and there was the pretty postcard of the clock tower at Hastings which she had bought on a visit to the seaside town some years earlier.  When the first arrivals had been brought to Hickwells she had taken some photos of them and pasted them onto a blank page.  Now it was time to ask those same men if they would like to add a few words.

Charles Sabourin took the album that was offered to him and began to write:

Pte C Sabourin. 1st East Surrey Regt.
Wounded and captured at Mons. 
I would like to meet the German who fired that shrapnel. I would certainly treat him. Returned 17/2/15. Prisoner of W.

Charles Sabourin drew a line under his entry and handed the album back to Nurse Oliver.

 

Today, on the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Mons, I remember and offer grateful thanks to Charles Sabourin and the men of the BEF.

 

 

Map reproduced from David Ascoili's The Mons Star.