The Bowmen who Became the Angels of Mons

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1932, Page 23

The Bowmen who Became the Angels of Mons

The Angels of lions. . . Even today "mention of the heavenly host, whose flaming swords held back the grey armies of Germany, brings a hush upo: any assembly of men, says Mr. K. K. Macaulay in an article in the "Sunday Graphic." Even to-day them are thousands who believe in the angels, which, it is-; said, saved the British. Army from utter annihilation in.the, retreat, as sincerely as they.believe, the miracles of Judea. "'.•-•

The story, doubtless, will go down iv the history of the British people as long as any records of the Great War remain. But it is a beautiful.and wonflerful_-■ myth. Mr. Jlacaulay says be has met the man who .gave it birth. The nation aqknovrlegerl, recently, a measure of its debt to that man for his contribution to literature by: granting him: a civil- pension of £100 a year: He is Arthur Machen, for over thirty years a London journalist, and in his quiet, cottage in old Amersham he told the story. ■ ;

The story began on that dreadful Sunday in.;.. August, 1914, when the newspapers: were full of the terriblo dotails^;of ...tlte. Mbns. retreat, following the: .battle: fri . which 5000 British soldiers; lost their lives. It is significant to/;-remember- that tho German losses were more than double.

■;,^'r-'JMachen -tpld' the narrative as follows: -'.'-All that morning in -church 1 could not forget the details of that retreat. I seemed to see a furnace, of torment and death and agony and terror seven times heated and in the midst of the burning was the British. Army. Tn the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and forever glorious—so f saw our mea with a shining about them.

"In the following September I wrote ■a short -story called 'The Bowmen.' It was pure fantasy, a story in which St., George arose to save England on the'field of battle in her hour of need. "The soldiers m the trenches saw before them-—so I wrote—a long line of shapes with a shining about them. They were ;like wen who drew the bow, and their, clouds of arrows went singing

and tingling through the air toward the German hosts which molted away. No wounds were afterwards found on the bodies of the Gorman dead/1

'■'I did not consider that 'The Bowmen' was by any means the best thing I had ever written. In fact, I didn't think much of- it as a piece of craftsmanship at all. Imagine my complete amazement, therefore, six nionths iuter when the first whisperings began to get about that . the .story was gospel truth. It became* believed as authentic, -history.

, /'The clergy began to preach, semions about the story in the churches,, tho newspapers and magazines took it up with avidity,, and gradually, different variations began to creep in until the bowmen of England became the Angels of Mons.' 'Hundreds of letters came pouring in to nie. I was hard put to it explaining emphatically that the original story was pure, undiluted fiction. Nobody believed, me. They said it mur. be true. ..'.-..

"The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that.people wanted the story to bo true. The horrors of war, the long casualty lists, the ; grief-stricken homes, made people turr somewhere for comfort, 'We are in the right over this war,' they said to themselves. 'We are on the side of the angels, Heaven defend us .in our hour of peril.' "One cannot deny the tremendous moral effect the story of the Angels of Mods had upon the nation. It went all round the world and was echoed in overy country. It'gave the mothers and the sweethearts and the wives great silace to think, that their men were protected by supernatural guidance on the fields of death. li: it brought com-fort-to them lam glad, but no one has ever yet come forward to say at first hand they ever saw an augel at Mohs.

"Stories got about that thousands upon thousands of .Germans were found dead in Flanders, pierced through and through with arrows, but no one has yet- come forward who fiver saw the corpses. All I could ever make of it was that someone (unknown) met a nurse (unnamed) who attended a soldier (anonymous)"'who had seen the angels. That is not evidence."