Our Loss Very Heavy

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 11, 31 August 1914, Page 5

Our Loss Very Heavy

“ALL THAT WAS LEFT OF 20,000.” ENEMY EVER ON THE HEELS OF THE ALLIES. (Received 9.0 a.m.) London, August 30. The Times correspondent at Amiens says that the British action at Mons on the twenty-third was terrible. A whole division was flung into the light after a long march and without time to entrench. French supports were expected on the immediate right but they did not arrive. Further eastwards, in the angle between the Sambre and the Meuse, the French retired after a day-long fight. Namur fell, and General Joffrc was compelled to withdraw bis whole lino. The Gormans did not give the retreating army a moment’s rest. The pursuit was relentless and unresting, being assisted by aeroplanes, a Zeppelin and armed motors. The cavalry looked like arrows from a bow, and harassed the retiring columns. The British retired through Baval on the line Valenciennes to Maubenge, and then through Lequesney, where a desperate fight occurred. Falling back southwards continually, the army fought desperately with many stands, forced ever back by the massed numbers of the enemy, who was prepared to lose three out of four men for every British life. In scattered units, with the enemy ever on their heels, the fourth division, all that was left of twenty thousand troops, streamed southwards. Our losses were very heavy.

“REGIMENTS BROKEN TO BITS.”

“NO THROWING UP OF THE SPONGE.”

(Received 9.20 a.m.) London, August SO. The correspondent continues: “I have seen broken bits of many regiments but no failure of discipline, no panic, no throwing up of the sponge. No commissariat is able to cope with such a ease. The men were battered by marching, but were steady and cheerful. Every division was in action. Some lost nearly all their officers. The regiments were broken to bits, but fragments kept together, though they no longer knew what had become of the other parts.”