The first great field battle of World War I took place at Mons in Belgium, where a victorious German army, driving hard after the outgeneraled and defeated Allies, came up with Britain's "contemptible little" professional army (80,000 men). General von Kluck threw 250,000 men against-them. But the Old Contemptibles stood their ground until their ranks were shot through & through.
TIME Correspondent Jack Belden cabled the following account of the Battle of Mons (continued from World War I), as it was fought last week with victorious Americans driving hard after an outgeneraled and defeated German Army:
The German general sat on the iron ladder inside the sugar refinery and stared at his black polished boots. From behind the stilled forms of the factory machinery a score of German officers peered questioningly at him but he gave no sign. There was no motion around him save the wisps of smoke that curled up around his bowed head as he puffed pensively on a fat Manila cigar.
Outside the refinery the dead peopled the fields in attitudes of grotesque helplessness. The wounded lay amid the still burning wreckage of smashed German motor columns; they were so many that there was no way to evacuate them. On the roads the prisoners marched eight abreast in a column a mile long and a Belgian woman danced up & down with her finger across her throat screeching "Kaput Hitler!"
The Home Stretch. It was the end of the trail for the German commander. He and other generals with remnants of five divisions had tried to dash out of Belgium into Germany to get behind the West Wall. But they had failed. Within 48 hours one U.S. armored and one U.S. infantry division had trapped and virtually destroyed them. Nearly 25,000 prisoners had been taken and two or three thousand killed.
The battle of Mons will rank as one of the most decisive actions in our campaign in Europe, for it was here that the German rear guard was smashed. Regardless of its importance, however, it will rank as one of the most curious battles of the war—curious in that neither the German nor American commands, both marching north on parallel roads, expected a battle of such magnitude.
Rain of Death. The two forces collided on the morning of Sept. 3, southwest of Mons. Fighter planes operating with the advance armor early discovered nearly 1500 enemy vehicles heading eastward toward the American lines, and immediately attacked them. Jammed on the roads in double and triple columns, the Germans still pressed eastward, for to them that was the way to safety and Germany.
By 9 a.m. two enemy columns began converging on Mons, striking the tail of our advanced armored unit in that city. The armor was soon cut off and encircled and the commander asked the infantry, which was following for mopping-up, to hurry to his aid.