August 16, 1914
Liège’s remaining two forts finally surrendered—Fort Flemalle after a three-hour bombardment by the 21-centimeter mortars and Fort Hollogne with no bombardment at all. Resistance was ended. The road to central Belgium was open. The mass of the German 21-centimeter siege mortars had opened fire on August 12. By August 16, after five days of bombardment, all eleven remaining forts had been reduced. In total, First Battalion FAR 9 had fired fifteen hundred shells at Liège, and Second Battalion fired 1,007. Short Marine Cannon Battery 3 (42-centimeter) fired seventy shells and participated in the destruction of only two forts.
Imperial HQ remained in Berlin during the period of mobilization and concentration, then departed for the “front”—Koblenz, eight hundred kilometers southwest at the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel. The German General HQ train pulled into Koblenz station the next morning.
Reports about the British continued to be contradictory. They were said to be landing at Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, and Zebrugge. First Army thought that the BEF was going to march on Brussels to join the Belgians and considered its most important task to be routing the Belgians as soon as possible, before they were able to join their Allied reinforcements. It was further assumed that if the French and British did not arrive soon, the Belgians would retreat toward Antwerp. First Army therefore understood that it had to engage the Belgians in battle as quickly as possible. In Antwerp, they would be an unacceptable threat to the invasion’s right flank. A decision was reached correspondingly to move on August 17 onto the line Kermpt–St. Trond, with the intent of fixing the Belgian Army in place by an attack. There was a fear that the German army might run into the British as well as the Belgians but certainly not the French—not yet! Time and space, as always in operations and definitely in 1914, were critical factors.
Today’s picture is an absolutely amazing document. Found inside of an old red donkey, you can see it has been written on in pencil. This contains all of the radio calls that were in existence for the units associated with German armies 1-4. Also for HKK1 and HKK2. This was the actual form that the headquarters would use to record conversations that came over the radio or the telephone. Not very big. Some readers assume that when some patrol of some unit sees the enemy or something to report, that the entire world knows about it instantly. So an internal patrol of the 17th division is somehow assumed to be known throughout all the German armies. I don’t know if modern wargames had anything to do with this thought but it is something to ponder. How does a patrol get the word back all the way to division? Then how does the division communicate with the Army corps? Then how does the Army Corp. communicated with the Army? How fast is this process? What percentage of reports actually gets up to the correct headquarters? This shows that it was not often by radio.