This Article Originally Ran On Blumhouse.com
We focus a lot on World War II. Movies, books, cartoons, comics, TV shows. World War II shows up in all of them, and it shows up often. Part of the reason is the atrocities committed off the field of battle aren’t something we should ever forget. Part of it is we have far more footage and stories that came out of World War II than any war before it. Part of it is that World War II has definitive faces that show us the villains and the heroes. Hitler. FDR. Hirohito. Churchill. We have images that will still be shown to kids in schools for generations to come. The mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb. The attack on Pearl Harbor. The sheer horrors of concentration camps.
We will never, and can never, forget what happened and how it came to be.
World War I, on the other hand, is a mess of confusion to most of us. How many people hear Franz Ferdinand and think “popular band” instead of “assassinated by the Black Hand”? How many people know about the use of chemical weapons and the untold amounts of men who were killed because of it?
How many people hear the story of the Angels of Mons; that angels appeared in the sky to save British soldiers from advancing German forces, but don’t know the truth behind it?
The “War to End All Wars” had started just a month earlier when the British set up defenses at the French border to help the French hold off the German army. The goal of the British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army was to ensure that the German forces didn’t make it past the Mons–Condé Canal. The British and French stood with 80,000 men ready to defend. The Germans showed up with 160,000 men, ready to run right through the border on their way to Paris.
As the sun rose on August 23, 1914, the Germans began the battle with a barrage of artillery focused on the British forces. At 9 AM, German infantry moved on the canal. So confidant in their hours of artillery fire, the soldiers advanced in parade ground formation, their infantry looking more like a show than an army at war. The German infantry was met by a well prepared British force that wasn’t in the mood for showmanship. Machine gunners, riflemen, and artillery decimated the German soldiers.
Still, the Germans weren’t about to slow down. They regrouped and attacked again, this time using a more battle tested formation. Lieutenant Maurice Dease of the 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, surrounded by the dead or dying members of his comrades on the Nimy bridge, single handedly held off German forces with his machine gun. Dease refused to give up his post after being shot multiple times, knowing that doing so could let the Germans overrun the remaining British forces. Dease would sustain five bullet wounds before dying. Private Sidney Godley, already wounded in the back by shrapnel from an artillery shell, took Dease’s place, holding the bridge long enough for the remaining forces to pull back. Alone on the Nimy, Godley pulled apart the machine gun and threw pieces into the water below. As he took the weapon apart, Godley was shot in the head. It didn’t slow him down. There was no way in hell he would let the Germans get the gun. His work done, and with the German forces rushing to him, Godley surrendered.
Fighting continued through the day and well into the night. The British were sure they could hold off the Germans long enough for reinforcements to arrive, as long as the French 4th Battalion didn’t run off.
That was when, after suffering massive losses, The French 4th Battalion ran off. The British soldiers were sure to be flanked on their right, and had no choice but to retreat. The pull back began at 2AM.
Word of the retreat spread, and the British, for the first time, realized that defeating the Germans was not going to be as easy as they thought. Still, they took pride that, for two days, the heavily outnumbered British forces were able to hold back the Germans, causing far higher losses in life to the Germans than the Germans had levied on them. Some in Britain saw the Battle of Mons as proof that God was on their side.
That September, writer Arthur Machen and THE EVENING NEWS, a London paper, fed into that belief with THE BOWMEN.
Machen had already been reporting on the war for THE EVENING NEWS when he handed in his first hand account of what had happened at Mons. In it, he told the tale of a group of British soldiers facing certain death with a mix of dry British humor and prayers. One soldier, remembering an image of Saint George on a plate at a vegetarian restaurant back in London, as well as the odd prayer the plate included;
Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius
For those of us who don’t know Latin, that says “May St. George be a present help to the English.”
The soldier muttered the prayer as he shot one last German, and as he did, a shock of power flowed through his veins. The sounds of battle became whispers compared to the thundering cries of “Array! Array! Array!”
There, standing between the British and German forces were human like shapes holding bows. These shapes drew their bows and, with a shout, they let loose their quivers. Each arrow flew true, striking down a German soldier. These forms stood true, saving the British forces from assured death.
The story spread across London, then the rest of England, then the rest of the Allied countries. Parishes reprinted it in their own magazines, and further reports came out. Within a year, the bowmen had become angels, standing with Saint George and the British men. Priests used the accounts, of which there were many, to boost the morale of their flock as the war waged on. These tales told by priests were then reported on in more papers, spreading the story of the Angels of Mon even more. The British government started to use the reports as propaganda, suggesting that it proved God was with them.
All of it, of course, was fake.
Machen had made up the story. He often wrote fiction as well as factualized articles for The Evening News, and this was just another case of that. This time, though, The Evening News forgot to mark THE BOWMEN as fiction. This error lead to people, looking for any evidence of hope in a time of terrible war, thinking the story was fact. When Machen reprinted the story in a book in 1915, he included a preface making it clear that the whole thing was made up, and that he had never intended to trick people. The book was a massive success, as people picked it up to read THE BOWMEN, skipping over the preface to get to the good stuff. Some who those who bothered to read the preface claimed that Machen was a traitor, trying to make people think God wasn’t with the Allied Forces.
Machen, and the Society for Psychical Research would consistently tell people that the Angels of Mons, and other such stories (including one where Joan of Arc stopped by at a battle to check in on Allied Forces) were fake. The Society for Psychical Research pointed out, and still points out, that there were no first hand accounts of these miracles. Every story was second or third hand; never once had a soldier or anyone near the battles stepped forward to tell their story.
Still the story spread. It continued to be told after World War I ended, but gained new traction during World War Two as a way to keep hopes up. In 2001, the The Sunday Times reported that film evidence had been found proving that the Angels of Mon were real. According to the story, a chap named Danny Sullivan found the photographs, as well as the diary of British soldier William Doidge in a trunk at an antique shop. The story spread across the globe; even the LA Times ran with it. The story spread even further when Marlon Brando bought the footage, the diary, and rights to the story from Sullivan for £350,000.
A year later, Sullivan admitted that he made up the whole thing. There was no film footage. There was no diary. Hell, there wasn’t even a William Doidge. Still, some people believe.
We tend to believe that which is printed if it gives us hope. Some of us, on occasion, will even continue to believe things that have been proven false. I know I’m guilty of that. We believe things we know, deep down, aren’t true because it is better to believe than to give up hope. We believe because we want to believe. Sometimes, when it feels like the world is falling apart, when we can’t see how a better tomorrow can happen, it makes us feel better to believe in the impossible.
Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. It's good to believe in the impossible. Sometimes, that’s the only way to make the impossible possible.
If you would like to read THE BOWMEN, it can be found here.