The Angels of Mons is a popular legend
about a group of angels who supposedly
protected members of the British Army in
the Battle of Mons at the outset of
World War I.
History
On 22–23 August 1914, the first major
engagement of the British Expeditionary
Force in the First World War occurred at
the Battle of Mons. Advancing German
forces were thrown back by heavily
outnumbered British troops, who suffered
heavy casualties and, being outflanked,
were forced into rapid retreat the next
day. The retreat and the battle were
rapidly perceived by the British public
as being a key moment in the war.
Despite the censorship going on in
Britain at the time, this battle was the
first indication the British public had
that defeating Germany would not be as
easy as some had thought.
= Arthur Machen and "The Bowmen"=
On 29 September 1914 Welsh author Arthur
Machen published a short story entitled
"The Bowmen" in the London newspaper The
Evening News, inspired by accounts that
he had read of the fighting at Mons and
an idea he had had soon after the
battle.
Machen, who had already written a number
of factual articles on the conflict for
the paper, set his story at the time of
the retreat from the Battle of Mons in
August 1914. The story described phantom
bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt
summoned by a soldier calling on St.
George, destroying a German host.
Machen's story was not, however,
labelled as fiction and the same edition
of the Evening News ran a story by a
different author under the heading "Our
Short Story". Additionally, Machen's
story was written from a first-hand
perspective and was a kind of false
document, a technique Machen knew well.
The unintended result was that Machen
had a number of requests to provide
evidence for his sources for the story
soon after its publication, from readers
who thought it was true, to which he
responded that it was completely
imaginary, as he had no desire to create
a hoax.
A month or two later Machen received
requests from the editors of parish
magazines to reprint the story, which
were granted. In the introduction to The
Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
Machen relates that an unnamed priest,
the editor of one of these magazines,
subsequently wrote to him asking if he
would allow the story to be reprinted in
pamphlet form, and if he would write a
short preface giving sources for the
story. Machen replied that they were
welcome to reprint but he could not give
any sources for the story since he had
none. The priest replied that Machen
must be mistaken, that the "facts" of
the story must be true, and that Machen
had just elaborated on a true account.
As Machen later said:
It seemed that my light fiction had been
accepted by the congregation of this
particular church as the solidest of
facts; and it was then that it began to
dawn on me that if I had failed in the
art of letters, I had succeeded,
unwittingly, in the art of deceit. This
happened, I should think, some time in
April, and the snowball of rumour that
was then set rolling has been rolling
ever since, growing bigger and bigger,
till it is now swollen to a monstrous
size.
Around that time variations of the story
began to appear, told as authentic
histories, including an account that
told how the corpses of German soldiers
had been found on the battlefield with
arrow wounds.
In "The Bowmen" Machen's soldier saw "a
long line of shapes, with a shining
about them." A Mr. A.P. Sinnett, writing
in the Occult Review, stated that "those
who could see said they saw 'a row of
shining beings' between the two armies."
This led Machen to suggest that the
bowmen of his story had become the
Angels of Mons. This last point was
challenged by Harold Begbie in his book:
On the Side of the Angels: A Reply to
Arthur Machen, London 1915.
= Angels=
On 24 April 1915, an account was
published in the British Spiritualist
magazine telling of visions of a
supernatural force that miraculously
intervened to help the British at the
decisive moment of the battle. This
rapidly resulted in a flurry of similar
accounts and the spread of wild rumours.
Descriptions of this force varied from
it being medieval longbow archers
alongside St. George to a strange
luminous cloud, though eventually the
most popular version came to be angelic
warriors. Similar tales of such
battlefield visions occurred in medieval
and ancient warfare. Atrocity reports
like the Rape of Belgium and that of the
Crucified Soldier paved the way for a
belief that the Christian God would
intervene directly against such an evil
enemy. However, there are strong
similarities between many of these
accounts of visions and Machen's story
published six months earlier.
In May 1915 a full-blown controversy was
erupting, with the angels being used as
proof of the action of divine providence
on the side of the Allies in sermons
across Britain, and then spreading into
newspaper reports published widely
across the world. Machen, bemused by all
this, attempted to end the rumours by
republishing the story in August in book
form, with a long preface stating the
rumours were false and originated in his
story. It became a bestseller, and
resulted in a vast series of other
publications claiming to provide
evidence of the Angels' existence.
Machen tried to set the record straight,
but any attempt to lessen the impact of
such an inspiring story was seen as
bordering on treason by some. These new
publications included popular songs and
artists' renderings of the angels. There
were more reports of angels and
apparitions from the front including
Joan of Arc.
Kevin McClure's study describes two
types of accounts circulating, some more
clearly based on Machen, others with
different details. In a time of intense
media interest all these reports
allegedly confirming sightings of
supernatural activity were second-hand
and some of them were hoaxes created by
soldiers who were not even at Mons. A
careful investigation by the Society for
Psychical Research in 1915 said of the
first-hand testimony, "We have received
none at all, and of testimony at
second-hand we have none that would
justify us in assuming the occurrence of
any supernormal phenomenon". The SPR
went on to say the stories relating to
battlefield "visions" which circulated
during the spring and summer of 1915,
"prove on investigation to be founded on
mere rumour, and cannot be traced to any
authoritative source.” Given that the
Society for Psychical Research believed
in the existence of supernatural forces,
the conclusions of this report are
highly significant.
The sudden spread of the rumours in the
spring of 1915, six months after the
events and Machen's story was published,
is also puzzling. The stories published
then often attribute their sources to
anonymous British officers. The latest
and most detailed examination of the
Mons story by David Clarke suggests
these men may have been part of a covert
attempt by military intelligence to
spread morale-boosting propaganda and
disinformation. As it was a time of
allied problems with the Lusitania
sinking, Zeppelin attacks and failure to
achieve a breakthrough on the Western
Front, the timing would make military
sense. Some of the stories conveniently
claimed that sources could not be
revealed for security reasons.
The only real evidence of visions from
actual named serving soldiers provided
during the debate stated that they saw
visions of phantom cavalrymen, not
angels or bowmen, and this occurred
during the retreat rather than at the
battle itself. Furthermore, these
visions did not intervene to attack or
deter German forces, a crucial element
in Machen's story and in the later tales
of angels. Since during the retreat many
troops were exhausted and had not slept
properly for days, such visions could be
hallucinations.
According to the conclusion of the most
detailed study of the event it seems
that Machen's story provided the genesis
for the vast majority of the tales. The
stories themselves certainly boosted
morale on the home front, as popular
enthusiasm was dying down in 1915 and
they demonstrate the importance of
religion in wartime.
Postwar developments
After the war the story continued to be
frequently repeated but no evidence to
support the claim that the Angels
existed was ever given by those who were
there. The best evidence provided was in
Brigadier-General John Charteris'
memoirs At G.H.Q., published in 1931,
which said the story of the Angels of
Mons was a popular rumour amongst the
troops in September 1914; this was the
earliest any account said the rumour was
in circulation. However it appears from
examination of his original letters he
wrote those entries after the war and
falsified the dates. Given his
association with pieces of allied
propaganda like the story of the “German
Corpse-Rendering Works” this might
indicate Charteris had been behind an
attempt to use the Angels for propaganda
purposes.
Machen was associated with the story for
the rest of his life and grew sick of
the connection, as he regarded “The
Bowmen” as a poor piece of work. He made
little money from the story then or
later.
The sudden revival of interest in
appearances of angels from the 1980s
onwards, especially in the United
States, not only amongst Christians, but
those interested in the New Age, has
caused uncritical accounts of the story
of the angels who saved the British army
to be regularly published in books and
magazines. Similarly, the story is also
often used by sceptics as a good example
of how believers in the supernatural can
become convinced of fantastic things by
slender evidence. References to the
story can be found in World War I set
novels and films like FairyTale: A True
Story. The Friends of Arthur Machen
frequently publish articles on
developments in the case.
= William Doidge hoax=
In 2001, an article in The Sunday Times
claimed that a diary, film and
photographic evidence proving the
existence of the Angels of Mons from a
World War I soldier named William Doidge
had been found. The article discussed a
long involved story in which Doidge was
involved with an American GI and an
angel seen years later in Woodchester
Mansion. It was claimed Marlon Brando
and Tony Kaye were going to spend
£350,000 to buy the evidence to make a
film. Other papers like Variety and the
Los Angeles Times and television
programmes soon followed up the story
and a website connected to the mystery
became very popular. The footage was
supposedly found in a trunk in an
antique shop by Danny Sullivan in
Monmouth, close to Machen's birthplace
of Caerleon In 2002 in a BBC Radio
documentary The Making of an Urban Myth
Sullivan admitted the story was a
complete hoax to drum up interest in
Woodchester Mansion; the footage and
soldier never existed.
= In popular culture=
In the film Fairy Tale: A True Story
based on the Cottingley Fairies, the
Theosophic Society organises a seminar,
where a participant speaks to the
audience claiming to be an eyewitness of
the apparition.
The Angels of Mons were depicted as
phantom bowmen from the Battle of
Agincourt sighted by the immortal
Orlando during the Battle of Mons in The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black
Dossier.
In Promethea, Margaret, a previous
incarnation of Promethea, refers to
imaginary things like herself and the
Angels of Mons as the only comfort the
young soldiers in the trenches had. She
is seen earlier guiding a lone, wounded
soldier home.
The Angels of Mons are referenced in the
Black Library novel Ghostmaker by Dan
Abnett, where a sniper is advised by the
statue of an Imperial Saint.
In the 2013 published historical novel,
Raiffe and the Angels of Mons by Mark
Hadley, there is reference to the
sightings during the Battle of Mons.
The Explosions in the Sky album artwork
for Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die,
Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live
Forever is said to be inspired by the
Angels of Mons.
At the start of the film Ed Wood, Wood
is shown producing a play based upon the
legend.
"The Whole Enchilada", the second
episode of the first series of Demons
makes reference to hundreds of troops on
the western front simultaneously
sighting the Angels of Mons.
The Angels of Mons are featured in and
partly inspire the short story The Hound
of Death by Agatha Christie.
In 1979, former Genesis guitarist, Steve
Hackett released the instrumental,
"Clocks - The Angel of Mons", on his
album: Spectral Mornings. The album also
includes another World War I ghost
narrative in a song entitled
"Tigermoth".
Is referenced in the 2010 Harper Teen
novel Unearthly by debut author Cynthia
Hand
In the ITV series Eternal Law, the
protagonist, an angel going by the name
Zak Gist, claims to have been an Angel
of Mons. He says that he couldn't bear
the idea that all the soldiers were
going to die, so he showed them an
escape route.
In David Mitchell's 2004 novel Cloud
Atlas the character Robert Frobisher
composed a piece called "Angel of Mons".
In the 2015 Novel The Long Utopia by
Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, the
Angels of Mons were identified as a
secret unit of 'Steppers' who were using
their abilities to bring the wounded to
safety.
See also
Peter Rugg
Cottingley Fairies
Angel of Hadley
References
External links
The Angels of Mons: the bowmen and other
legends of the War at The University of
Adelaide Library
Arthur Machen, The Bowmen,
David Clarke, Rumours of angels: a
legend of the First World War – detailed
study in Folklore
Kevin Maclure, Visions of Bowmen and
Angels
The case of the Elusive Angels of Mons
H. Begbie, On the Side of the Angels
