August 23, 1914
Marwitz could have approached via Tournai–Denain to the English flank. However, a counterorder arrived from Bülow that ordered the cavalry to move in a northwestern direction instead of to the southwest. The reason was an unproved false report of air reconnaissance that allegedly saw strong English cavalry west of the River Schelde near Courtrai. The HKK obeyed, but Colonel General von Kluck was infuriated. In the early morning hours of August 23, at 0200 hours, a message of the Cavalry Division Garnier arrived: “Up to the River Schelde everything free, English troops at Maubeuge.” Kluck therefore messaged to Marwitz: “Intervention from Denain required to cut off the enemy from retreating.” Marwitz certainly felt this was the correct option but he had to answer that he had another order from a higher authority. Kluck saw the danger. The cavalry forces that were to be used to envelop the BEF and the French left flank were going the wrong way. First Army could not do it themselves because Second Army Corps was in an echelon right formation too far away from the Mons battlefield.
Kluck cabled back immediately: “Not agreed. English northwest of Maubeuge. First Army is attacking.” Shortly afterwards, again: “Right wing Condé! Intervention in direction Valenciennes is necessary.” Marwitz’s position was extraordinary. Should he follow the orders of the higher authority or the urgent pleadings of Kluck? He struggled and did the first. Then Kluck addressed the Supreme Army Command directly. Pleading that HKK 2 be moved in the direction of Denain, HKK 2 wanted to move to Coutrai. Then finally Moltke gave in—much too late—in a characteristic way: “His Majesty orders that the Higher Cavalry Command [HKK 2] is to be assigned to the command of First Army.” “The outcome of the campaign 1914 was not decided at the River Marne, as believed in former times, but on 23rd and 24th of August.”
Poseck’s statement about the Courtrai incident provides the final punctuation: “Without the waste of time of Courtrai the approach of the Higher Cavalry Command 2 would have resulted in the complete elimination of the enemy.”
In the morning, First Army HQ moved toSoignes, where a message from HKK 2 arrived. The message reported that since August22 from Tournai east to Lille, large formations of troops had unloaded from trains.Who? How many? What nationality? The hitherto unresolved question as to whether and where the British would deploy now became even more difficult for First Army. If the army continued its advance in the present manner, and the British appeared from the direction of Lille, the right flank of the army was in danger. The flank was secured against British troops arriving from Lille by the echeloned Second Army Corps and Fourth Reserve Army Corps. But the planned encircling of the left English wing, the operational focus of the Schlieffen-Moltke prewar grand design, could be called into question.Was there only British cavalry around Mons?Not knowing if the British were all in the east or the west, the Third, Fourth, and Ninth Army Corps were held in place temporarily at 0930 hours. After First Army received intelligence from Third Hussar Regiment that thirty thousand British troops had marched up into the area of Mons and HKK 2 reported that Tournai was now free of enemy troops and that a French brigade had fallen back onto Lille, the army resumed its forward movement. Ninth Army Corps was the first to get into action around noon. Third Army Corps followed suit at 1315 hours and covered the nine kilometers it needed to close in on the BEF. Fourth Corps was very late in concentrating for the attack.
About mid-day on the twenty-third, First Army received radio traffic from the OHL directing that it employ Third and Fourth Reserve Corps as a covering force facing Antwerp until Ninth Reserve Corps arrived from Germany. In addition, First Army was ordered to strongly occupy Brussels until further notice. First Army, which was trying to minimize the occupation of Brussels, was required to turn troops around to form a garrison of one brigade. The Belgian Army in Antwerp was certainly causing operational diversions to the objective of the invasion. The brigade stayed there and, on September 5, at the start of the battle of the Ourcq when Fourth Reserve Corps was engaged in heavy fighting, the Brussels brigade had not yet rejoined it.
By the end of August 23, the northern and eastern fronts of Namur were defenseless, with five of the nine forts in ruins. The Namur garrison withdrew at midnight to the southwest and eventually rejoined the Belgian field army at Antwerp; the last fort was surrendered on August 25. The fortress city of Namur had been a continual force drain for both First and Second Army. With the fall of the city, forces that had been diverted to this task were now released to their parent organizations. But then one of the heavily debated decisions occurred about the German forces around Namur. Moltke, on August 24, made the fatal decision to send the two army corps that Bülow freed up after the capture of Namur to the east front. This decision has historically been considered a total misjudging of the situation.
Unfortunately, HKK 2 was even now subjected to a series of changes in its chain of command. They constantly flip-flopped between First and Second Army. By August 22, HKK 2 had all three divisions back together but was pointed to the northwest by Second Army. On the twenty-third, they were feeding horses along the River Schelde west of Rennaix. Although these were exactly the forces that should have been enveloping the British left flank—the envelopment Kluck was trying to accomplish—all three divisions were in a tight mass far away from the canal. Neither Second Army nor the Supreme Army Command expected the British to come into action in the near future.
Field Marshal Sir John French had about 125,000 men under his command at Mons: four divisions of eighteen thousand, a cavalry division of ten thousand, an extra cavalry brigade, four aircraft squadrons, plus rear area troops. This was a force too formidable to overlook. Its locating and placing had become the cavalry’s premier task. But “order– counterorder–disorder” took its toll on the Germans. An extended quote from Kuhl addressed the command and control of cavalry organizations and demonstrated how daunting the logistical ramifications of a HQ change could be to a cavalry division:
The Commander of Second Army had temporarily placed the Second Cavalry Division of HKK 2 under the command of First Army, but had later on reunited all three divisions of the HKK 2 under his own command. On August 23, the entire HKK 2 was attached to First Army. On several occasions, these changes of assignment caused difficulties in the employment of the cavalry, resulting in unnecessary marches and overexertion. From this, the lesson may be drawn that the orders for the employment of the independent cavalry must be prepared with utmost care. If the cavalry has once been started in the wrong direction, it will often be impossible to remedy the mistake for several days. Thus, when HKK 2, after having been started by the commander of Second Army from Ath on its march on Courtrai, was subsequently attached to First Army, it became necessary to demand of it on August 24 a countermarch toward Denain in order to give it the desired direction.
The dairy notes of the Chief of Staff of HKK 2, Major Hoffmann von Waldau, commented when the change of direction was ordered: “Shifting in direction Courtrai. First Army wants us for combat in Valenciennes. Would be the right thing. Second Army insists on approach to River Schelde–Courtrai. . . . At night, subordination to First Army that commands to engage near Valenciennes via Denain. This joke we could have obtained considerably cheaper.“
The First General Staff Officer of Ninth Cavalry Division is still more drastic in his diary: “So the twenty-third of August ended unfortunately with pointless wandering till nightfall.”
Meanwhile, a battle was fought at Mons.