The Great War (1964) s01e04 Episode Script

"For all we have and are, For all our children's fate, "Stand up and meet the War, The Hun is at the gate.
" The Germans were west of Brussels.
Still they came on.
It seemed that nothing could stop them.
The Schlieffen plan was working beautifully, taking the Germans through Belgium, brushing the Channel coast, down through France, west of Paris, to attack the French armies from the rear.
Everywhere, the French were in confusion.
From Verdun to Charleroi, they were falling back.
The German right wing three-quarters of a million men was coming into position to make its sweep.
This was the loaded tip of von Schlieffen's flail.
The heaviest weight in the tip was General von Kluck's 1st Army.
They skirted the historic battlefield of Waterloo, where, 99 years before, British and Germans had fought the French.
Ahead lay a dreary, industrial region.
Coming straight towards them, not knowing, oblivious of danger, believing they were joining a great Allied advance, marched the four divisions of the British Expeditionary Force.
Only the cavalrymen, under General Allenby, cautiously scouting ahead, were aware of the German presence.
Suddenly, amid the slag heaps and villages of a mining area, the army was ordered to halt.
Field Marshal Sir John French had received new information.
There would be no advance, but instead a defensive battle.
The British formed a broad angle.
The left flank, where the danger was greatest, was wide open.
At its apex stood the little, red-brick town of Mons.
Sunday, August 23rd, came in with mist and scattered showers.
Church bells were calling devout Belgians to early mass.
In their Sunday best, they stared at the foreign soldiers who filled their town.
They found it hard to believe that war was upon them.
BELL TOLLS The men of General Smith-Dorrien's 2nd Army Corps were digging in along the Mons canal, preparing an awkward position for defence.
Quite suddenly, out of the blue, we saw cavalry coming towards us.
They came out on our right flank.
I said, "Good gracious, it's Germans!" So we immediately started to fire.
We fired fuse-nought.
They got about 300 yards, I suppose, from the guns and wouldn't face it.
By nine o'clock, the guns were in full cry.
The British Army began to learn about Jack Johnsons, Black Marias and Coal Boxes, the names the soldiers gave to the shattering explosions of the German heavy shells.
'We were waiting for them.
We didn't expect the blow that struck us.
'All at once, the sky began to rain down bullets and shells.
'I saw shells to my right and left.
I saw many a good comrade go out.
' Then the German infantry began to come forward, surging towards the canal banks to cross at locks and bridges.
There was a surprise in store for them too.
'They were in solid square blocks, standing out against the skyline.
'You couldn't help pitying them.
'We lay in our trenches with not a sound or sign.
'They crept nearer.
Our officers gave the word.
' SHELLS EXPLODE 'The Germans staggered like a drunk man hit between the eyes.
'They made a run for it, 'shouting some outlandish cry we couldn't make out.
' 'Poor devils of infantry.
'They advanced in companies of 150 men, in files five deep.
'The first company were blasted away to heaven by a volley at 700 yards.
'In their insane formation, every bullet would find two billets.
'They had absolutely no chance.
' This was the mad minute 15 rounds of aimed rifle fire per minute that the British infantry alone were trained to do.
At Mons, it worked.
The Germans were shot flat.
'Our first battle is a heavy, an unheard-of, heavy defeat.
'And against the English the English we laughed at!' 'Entrenched and completely hidden, the enemy opened a murderous fire.
'The casualties increased, the rushes became shorter.
'With bloody losses, the attack came to an end.
' It was all to no avail.
On the left flank of the British and the right of the French, German pressure was building.
Sir Henry Wilson, Deputy Chief of Staff, clung to the hope of advancing.
And then 'At 11pm, news came that the French 5th Army was falling back further.
'Between 11pm and 3am, 'we drafted orders for retirement to the line Maubeuge-Valenciennes.
' Retreat from Mons had begun.
We were very disappointed when we got the order to break off battle and retreat.
This was not an easy thing.
It's quite easy to join battle, but not to break it off.
We put down a curtain fire between us and the Germans, which enabled the infantry and cavalry to get away.
'After all their experience of small wars, 'the English veterans brilliantly understood 'how to slip off at the last moment.
' On they came again.
The Schlieffen plan was still going like clockwork.
The whole Allied line was going back the end of a dream.
And for thousands of frightened, homeless people, the end of a way of life.
On the other side of Europe, it was different.
Here, it seemed the Schlieffen plan was not working well.
The Russian steamroller was on the move.
Gathering slowly from the provinces of the Tsar's empire, the limitless manpower of Russia assembled and marched to war.
Movement was slow across the endless plains with bad roads and railways few and far between.
Army by army, with ponderous deliberation, the Russians gathered on the Galician Front, where the equally slow Austrians were taking up positions.
In East Prussia, the Schlieffen plan, counting on the slowness of the Russians, allowed only nine divisions to hold the enemy off.
The Germans received a shock.
On August 17th, Russians invaded East Prussia.
This the Germans had not expected.
German people tasted the tragedies which Belgian and French were learning to know too well.
The fear of the Muscovites, the savage reputation of the Cossacks, the terror of men with slant eyes drove these people from their homes, away from the fields and farms they had worked so hard.
Orderly, submissive, sick at heart, they made their painful parting.
On August 20th, the day the Germans entered Brussels, their eastern army was defeated at Gumbinnen.
Konigsberg, capital of East Prussia, was threatened by this advance.
On August 23rd, the day of Mons, the Russians won another victory at Frankenau.
But it was their last.
Telegraph wires bore their messages across Germany to Belgium to summon new German leaders.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff were sent by Moltke to stop the rot.
Out of the confusion of retreat on a battle front over 100 miles wide, they shaped a bold plan.
The Russian 2nd Army was dangerously ahead of the 1st Army, with the Masurian Lakes between them.
Using the well-developed railways of East Prussia, the Germans would strike at the isolated 2nd Army near the village of Tannenberg.
A German general with a French name von Francois.
A Russian general with a German name Rennenkampf.
A German general with a Scottish name Mackensen.
A Russian general with a tragic name Samsonov.
These were the chief actors.
The lesser actors were half a million soldiers, who did the fighting and marching.
It was mostly marching for the Germans, racing to cut Samsonov's line of retreat, to smash his army before Rennenkampf could bring help.
It took five days to do it.
By then, the Russian 2nd Army was a wreck.
90,000 Russian soldiers were taken prisoner, rounded up like stock in a corral.
The head cowboy was Francois.
General Samsonov walked away into a wood and shot himself.
East Prussia was saved.
The trim towns would not be shattered.
Cossacks would not burn the farmsteads.
Instead, the War would now flow eastwards.
Schlieffen's plan had stood the test, which was ironical, since it was on the point of being abandoned.
No weakening of the German purpose was yet visible in the west.
Each day brought new discouragement to the Allies.
The flail thumped against the left of the Allied line.
The centre continued to give way, and the right held on by the skin of its teeth.
Pressure intensified on the Allied Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre.
Each day brought him new questions, but never an answer.
'My first task was to seek the cause of these failures 'in order to find a remedy.
'Was it the enemy's numerical superiority? 'It appeared that, as regards numbers, we were superior to him.
' Was it the French Army's leaders who were at fault? If so, Joffre knew what to do.
The Minister of War told him: 'Eliminate the old fossils without pity.
' This, Joffre would do.
But another question was more disturbing.
'The French soldier is impressionable, 'losing confidence as readily as he acquires enthusiasm, 'yielding to depression as quickly as he becomes exalted.
'Could he hold out under this terrible strain?' Joffre asked himself a question which went to the very roots of everything.
'Does the trouble lie in the strategic disposition of our forces?' On August 24th, Joffre reached a conclusion which shaped history.
'What concerned me was the encircling movement 'which the Germans were developing on our left.
'The British alone could offset this menace.
'To this army I had no right to give orders.
'I had to content myself with suggesting.
'It seemed necessary, on the left of the British Army, 'to place French troops, to which I had the right to give orders.
' This proposition contained a mighty seed.
Everything that happened confirmed the strength of Joffre's idea.
On August 26th, he went to his second meeting with Sir John French, witnessed by a young liaison officer, Lieutenant Spears.
Joffre began to explain the purport of an order extremely important, that he'd issued.
Whilst he was doing so, in walked Lanrezac, bustling in.
Then Joffre went on, explaining this order of his.
Sir John French said, "What order? I haven't seen an order.
" When General Joffre realised that his orders hadn't even been received and read by the British he seemed overwhelmed with discouragement.
It was the only time I've ever known that he seemed to lose heart, to be deflated.
This was an abject moment for General Joffre.
'When I left British headquarters in the afternoon, 'I carried away a serious impression of the fragility of our extreme left.
'Could it hold out long enough to enable me to regroup our forces? 'If this manoeuvre was to succeed, two conditions had to be fulfilled.
'First, our 4th and 5th Armies 'must interrupt their retreat with counterattacks 'to give me time to assemble a new army on our left.
'Secondly, the British must resist tenaciously 'and yield ground only very slowly.
' Joffre and Sir John French didn't know it, but that was what the British Army was doing.
General Smith-Dorrien had decided to fight at Le Cateau.
2nd Corps was exhausted it would have to stand and fight, strengthened by a new division from England on the left.
Smith-Dorrien hoped that Haig's men would show up soon on the right.
And so, on August 26th the anniversary of Crecy Le Cateau joined the company of the many insignificant French towns pitchforked into history on a summer morning.
Things didn't start too well.
It was not the British 1st Corps which appeared on the right, but the German 3rd Corps.
'They come up like a football crowd leaving Hampstead Park, 'firing rifles from their right hips.
'They had absolutely no idea of aim.
' British cavalry and horse artillery were driven in.
The infantry, in crude trenches and rifle pits, were taken in enfilade but they held on.
Again, their rifles had wonderful targets.
We'd hardly got our head covered, before the ridge about three-quarters of a mile away was literally swarming with Germans in their grey uniforms.
They advanced, and we received the order for rapid fire.
It was probably three-quarters of a mile, an extreme range for a rifle.
But we fired at 15 rounds a minute at these advancing Germans.
They broke up into smaller groups of six or eight, advancing through a cornfield, where the corn was in stooks.
As we rapid-fired, they took cover behind these stooks of corn.
The line held, but the morning passed slowly as more and more German units came into action.
The last British reserves were thrown in.
We were in reserve.
The brigade was formed up.
Orders came that we were required on the left of the line to go fast.
We marched four miles to the left of the line.
We came to a village whose name I don't remember.
We found Smith-Dorrien standing outside his headquarters.
He waved to us as we passed.
He said, "I think we're holding them all right.
You won't be wanted here.
"Everything's going fine.
" The exposed artillery batteries on the right flank lost heavily.
Men drifted from the battle.
It was time to go, if it could be managed.
The great problem was to extricate the guns, many of them silent now, standing on the skyline amid smashed limbers, dead horses and dead men.
The Royal Artillery does not willingly abandon guns.
The teams dashed forward through cheering infantry.
'As they came in view of the enemy, 'they were struck by a hurricane of shrapnel and machine-gun bullets.
'Still they went on.
The officer in charge was killed.
'One team was shot down before the position was reached.
'Two guns of the 122nd Battery were carried out without mishap.
'A third was limbered up, but the horses went down instantly.
' The rest had to be left.
The Germans were 200 yards away.
Incredibly, in the broad daylight of mid-afternoon, Smith-Dorrien's three divisions slipped away.
The Germans did not know which way they had gone.
This was the British Army's first real battle, and the cost was great: nearly 8,000 officers and men and 38 guns.
Now they were retreating again.
They had done everything expected of them and had no sense of being beaten.
Tired troops can look like beaten men to those who don't understand them.
General Smith-Dorrien understood them perfectly.
'It was a wonderful sight men smoking pipes, quite unconcerned, 'walking steadily down the road, no formation of any sort, 'men of all units mixed up together.
'I likened it at the time to a crowd coming away from a race meeting.
' Joffre's liaison officer at General Headquarters, did not understand the British Army.
Joffre was appalled at his report.
'The situation is extremely critical.
'The British Army is beaten and incapable of any serious effort.
'The 3rd and 5th Divisions are now disorganised bands, 'incapable of offering resistance.
'Conditions are such that the British Army no longer exists.
' It wasn't true.
They were just tired.
We marched and marched, day after day, with very little food.
I'd eaten my emergency rations.
Of course I shouldn't have done.
We had a tin of bully beef I'd eaten that as well.
We were all very hungry.
We did get a cup of tea occasionally, or a canteen of tea.
We marched through a forest which was very cold and damp.
We were marching during the day through a very big forest.
Sometimes cold, more often far too hot, exhausted soldiers made their tour of France.
35 miles to the Somme and into Picardy, long, white roads, dead straight between the poplar trees, dust rising off the cobbles.
I've seen infantry with their feet bleeding, with their boots off and putties wrapped round them.
I've seen men sobbing, asking our officers, "Why can't we fight? Why won't you let us fight?" There was a despondent tide of humanity laden soldiers beside burdened refugees, sharing the same wretchedness, treading the same long road, which trudged wearily southwards.
'We came across two young girls.
They were helping each other along.
'They could hardly drag one foot before the other.
'A little bit further, 'I saw one poor old chap with a long white beard sat in a wheelbarrow 'and another old chap with a beard wheeling him along, 'a little girl by the side, weeping.
' Further along, there were thousands, not hundreds, taking to the woods at the side of the road.
We saw them with what they had their scanty possessions taking refuge in the wood for the night.
These woods were just silhouetted in the background by the flames of the burning villages and hamlets, which had been destroyed.
They were just homeless and hopeless.
The hopelessness of it all began to communicate to everyone, even the indomitable commander of the Allied armies General Joffre.
It was a very strange thing to see a single man exercising his will over a million men, with the fate of his country in the balance having to satisfy the political requirements of his own government and the British government, having to face a catastrophic situation and never getting rattled.
Appearances and reality were beginning to drift apart.
One appearance did match the reality.
Everyone looked tired and everyone WAS tired.
Order out of disorder, hope out of darkness, reverse out of triumph.
These were the realities that had to be plucked out of appearances.
South-west now, to Amiens and towns that had never dreamt of war, marched von Kluck's 1st Army.
If they were not checked, Joffre's new 6th Army would be smashed before it formed.
Could they be checked? It seemed that they might.
As they marched south-west, a gap split them from their neighbours.
The Germans exposed their flank.
It all depended on General Lanrezac.
What followed was the Battle of Guise.
August 29th the French columns wove westward through early mists and across the River Oise.
Their objective: St Quentin and the left flank of the German 1st Army.
At first, everything went well slowly but well.
Towards noon, the picture suddenly changed.
Von Bulow's 2nd Army took the French in flank as it came south, crossing the Oise at the ancient town of Guise.
It was an ugly crisis, but Lanrezac rose to the occasion.
He switched his reserves, still marching west, into the northern fight.
"Throw the Germans back across the Oise," he ordered.
The reserve commander, General Franchet d'Esperey, one of the most dynamic French officers, was just the man to do it.
On horseback, Franchet d'Esperey led his red-trousered infantry with colours flying, bands playing, into the attack.
It was the last of the old-time pageants of war.
And it succeeded.
They did throw the Germans back across the Oise.
The Battle of St Quentin came to nothing.
But the Battle of Guise was a valuable success.
The straining Schlieffen plan broke down at last.
General von Bulow, in alarm, called to von Kluck for help.
Von Kluck, halting his march to the south-west, turned inwards towards Paris, whose streets were sad and empty.
The city of pleasure silent now and scared.
The government had gone to the distant safety of Bordeaux.
Many citizens had also fled.
General Joseph Gallieni was in sole command.
Before he left, the Minister of War had told Gallieni to defend Paris "a outrance".
"Do you understand, Minister, "the significance of the words 'a outrance'?" asked Gallieni.
"They mean destruction, ruins, dynamiting bridges in the city.
" "A outrance," the Minister repeated.
Gallieni issued a proclamation.
'Army of Paris, Citizens of Paris, 'The Government of the Republic 'has left Paris to give new impulse to the national defence.
'I have received a mandate to defend Paris against the invader.
'This mandate I shall carry out to the end.
' The French people were learning fast what war meant.
Everyone was learning.
A special Sunday-afternoon edition of the London Times with a dispatch from Amiens confirmed what the observant had guessed from hints and suggestions.
'The nation should know certain things.
'Since Monday morning last, 'the German advance has been one of incredible rapidity.
'British forces fought a terrible fight the Action of Mons.
'The broken army fought desperately with many stands, 'forced backward by the sheer numbers 'of an enemy prepared to lose three or four men for each British soldier.
'Our losses are great.
I have seen the broken bits of many regiments.
'Some have lost nearly all their officers.
'The British Expeditionary Force has suffered terrible losses 'and requires immediate and immense reinforcement.
' Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, circulated an official correction to the Times' alarming dispatch.
'There has in effect been a four-day battle 'on the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th August.
'During this period, 'British troops, in conformity with the movement of the French armies, 'were checking the German advance and withdrawing to new lines of defence.
' In the Commons, the Prime Minister, Mr Asquith, also made a statement.
'It is impossible too highly to commend the patriotic reticence 'of the press as a whole up to the present moment.
'The publication in the Times would appear to be a regrettable exception.
'I trust it will not recur.
' The British public was not ready for too much truth.
In victorious Germany, some signs contradicted the boasting press.
A British-born German princess wrote on September 2nd: 'Today I went to the Grunewald to see the arrival of trains of wounded, 'hoping to see some English and help them, but it was a false report.
'They were transport trains 'carrying troops from the Western Front to Russia.
'There was a tremendous reception, 'but the troops looked too weary to respond 'very different to those of a short time ago.
' In St Petersburg also, bad news was making its first impact.
'I passed groups of people engrossed in discussion.
'A large group was gathered by the bulletin board of the Novoya Vremya.
'I'd never seen so many people there.
'An event of great importance must have occurred at the Front.
'A voice said, "Disaster! Even generals are being killed.
'"Why is the government deceiving us with news of victories?" 'Another voice added, "It's the same mess as during the war with Japan.
"' A chill struck at the hearts of the Allied nations.
A great weight seemed to press down on them all.
Whatever might be happening in the German war machine, whatever mistakes the Supreme Command might be making, the German advance seemed inexorable, invincible.
Yet all was not well with the mood of the German soldiers.
They were becoming weary beyond words.
Weariness breeds bitterness.
We marched on and on and on.
We never dared to take off our boots, because our feet were so swollen that we didn't think it would be possible to put them on again.
Andin a small village the Mayor came and asked our company commanders not to allow us to cut off the hands of the children.
These were atrocity stories which we heard about the German Army.
At first, we laughed about it.
But when we heard other propaganda against the German Army, we became angry.
'Our men are done up.
'The men stagger forward, their faces coated with dust, 'their uniforms in rags.
'They look like living scarecrows.
'They march with eyes closed, 'singing in chorus so they shall not fall asleep on the march.
'The certainty of victory 'and triumphal entry into Paris keeps them going.
'The delirium of victory sustains our men.
'In order that their bodies may be as intoxicated as their souls, 'they drink to excess, but this drunkenness keeps them going.
' The British Expeditionary Force crossed the forest of Compiegne, pausing to fight a rearguard action at Villers-Cotterets.
It was shortly after we passed a place called Villers-Cotterets that the nearness of Paris began to penetrate our tiredness.
And we noticed the kilometre stones at the side of the road.
Gradually, we were getting nearer and nearer to Paris 25, 24, 23.
We couldn't believe it was happening to us.
Every step nearer to Paris, as witnessed by these kilometre stones, was another blow on the head which increased our depression.
And we mentally felt that should we reach zero Paris itself as far as we were concerned, we'd have lost the War.
Day by day, the switch of divisions from right to left was going on.
Day by day, the picture changed imperceptibly but decisively.
As the troop trains rumbled across France to the decisive point, as the last pitiful batches of refugees made their escapes, and as the kilometre posts dragged slowly past the exhausted soldiers, General Joffre awaited his opportunity.
Hour by hour, news came in from airmen, cavalry, from secret agents, commanders.
Much of it was bad enough to frighten a lesser man to death.
But one thing was certain.
The German right wing, General von Kluck's mighty 1st Army, was not after all going to encircle the Allied left.
If it held its direction, it would march across the defences of Paris, where Gallieni waited like an eagle.
As it did so, its own flank would be exposed the most dangerous mistake in war.
Joffre did not fail to perceive this.
I actually saw him on the afternoon that he decided on the Battle of the Marne.
I'd never seen Very few people have ever seen anybody with such a burden placed on his shoulders.
With nobody to help, just weighing the pros and cons of this movement and that movement, what orders to issue.
It lasted quite a long time, perhaps a couple of hours.
And then he got up.
His decision was taken.
The orders went out that night.
The pendulum was coming briefly to rest.
For an indefinable moment of time, the soldiers paused under the gilding leaves of early autumn around their campfires.
The men of the warring nations drew a little breath.
The moment of decision was at hand.