August 9, 1914
Einem succeeded in establishing telephonic communication with the city and sent the welcome news to the army commander that the German troops were safe. Five days after invading, Ninth Army Corps finally had used its telephone detachment to establish communications with the higher HQ. This was an inexplicable and unnecessary delay. Consolidation continued. Artillery as well as reservists was brought forward. Mobilization and mobilization training, as well as some shelling of the forts in the far north, continued. The Belgians could not confirm or deny rumors of large-scale German crossings of the River Meuse. Although mass crossings did not in fact occur, the Belgian SHQ was assuming twenty thousand German troops had allegedly crossed pontoon bridges established around Lixhe. The Belgians also identified two German cavalry divisions approaching St. Trond, which caused the Belgian cavalry division to fall back behind the Gette and screen the army’s left flank.
The BEF’s embarkation began on August 9 and was accomplished by August 17. On August 20, its concentration at Maubeuge was complete. The location of the enemy was a triangular quandary for the Germans. Based on cavalry and aviation reconnaissance, the Germans were aware that the Belgian field army was arrayed along the Gette River. It was assumed that the French left wing was somewhere around the Belgian city of Namur. This assumption was not validated by any direct observation. The third force, the BEF, was a complete and total mystery. The OHL believed the British would concentrate around Lille. This would place them outside of the great German enveloping movement. It would threaten the flank of that envelopment. It would be shorter than joining with the French and would keep the British separate from the French. The other possibilities included a concentration joining the French left flank somewhere around Maubeuge. There was always as well the possibility of a British landing further north on the Belgian coast, threatening the rear of the German army. The danger of this possibility would be increased if the BEF could join with the Belgian forces. Therefore, the Germans had to disperse the Belgian Army before the BEF could join them or before they could withdraw into Antwerp. As First Army had to guard against all three of these possibilities, they often found themselves required to deploy corps in an echelon fashion to cover all the possibilities.
German aviation elements reconnoitered Namur for the first time, showing the intermediate ground between the forts had been fortified and that the forts had armored turrets. The logistics of HKK 2 were so bad, it had to declare rest while artillery was repositioning around Liège.
In a bit of a backtrack to a very busy blog day; the suicide case of German Gen. Karl Ulrich von Bülow, the commanding general of Ninth Cavalry Division, is of interest t. He was the younger brother of Prince Bernhard von Bülow, Chancellor of Germany. The general was once military attaché in Vienna, where the German ambassador was then the enormously influential imperial intimate Philipp Graf zu Eulenburg, who was surrounded by homosexual rumors. As commander of Ninth Cavalry Division, Bülow presided over a retaliatory strike on the town of Lincé on August 5. He organized a court-martial, subsequently executing many Belgians and burning the town on August 6. On the next day, investigation found the entire incident that led to the retaliation could not be substantiated and was probably false. But the massacre and senseless devastation of Lincé were real. Bülow had let his most rabid officers have a free hand. He shot himself in the evening of August 7. Whatever Bülow’s motives and emotions, his suicide was another destabilizing factor in an HKK already overtaxed.