The Germans were masters of northern France, but the Belgians still held out. In Brussels on August 17 their premier, Count de Broqueville, had reported to King Albert that the enemy, outnumbering his forces four or five to one, were attacking across the Gette River, fifteen miles away. Liège had fallen; Namur was doomed. During the night of August 18 the king, executing a skillful disengagement maneuver, withdrew his five divisions from Brussels and the Gette and retreated into the great port of Antwerp, Belgium’s strongest fortress. They reached there, intact, two days later. The disappointed Kluck reported to Oberste Heeresleitung, the kaiser’s headquarters, that Albert’s army had “managed to escape our grasp.” He was forced to leave two corps—60,000 men, badly needed on the Marne—to invest Antwerp. Even so, on August 25 the Belgians sortied and fell on the rear of Kluck’s army, driving it back on Louvain. Shots were fired, and Kluck’s men shouted: “Die Engländer sind da!” “Die Franzosen sind da!” General von Luttwitz, the military governor of Brussels, summoned the American minister and told him that Louvain civilians had either fired on the Reich’s troops or signaled the attackers. “And now of course,” he explained, “we have to destroy the city.” It was burned to the ground as an example for those who felt tempted to defy German might.22
Zeppelins bombed Antwerp, but until the second month of the war the fortified city faced no serious threat. On September 5, however, de Broqueville warned the British Foreign Office that the enemy troops besieging the port were being heavily reinforced. He asked for weightier artillery, aircraft, and antiaircraft guns. Four days later the kaiser ordered the capture of the city whatever the cost, and on September 28, 420-millimeter Krupp howitzers began pounding the outworks with 2,000-pound shells. The question of Antwerp’s value to the Allies now arose. Was its defense vital? The cabinet was indecisive. In 1911 Fisher, then in full possession of his faculties, had written that in the event of war between Germany and an Anglo-French alliance, the “overwhelming superiority” of the British navy, not Britain’s army, would “keep the German Army out of Paris…. It is Antwerp we shall seize,” he concluded, “and not go fooling on the Vosges frontier.” But provisioning Antwerp was a logistical nightmare. The port’s link with the North Sea was the Scheldt River, which belonged to the Netherlands, and the frightened Dutch, determined to remain neutral, were turning back all incoming ships except those bearing food and medicine. With Antwerp’s sea approach barred, the only other route open was a thin, exposed, fifty-mile-long land corridor. Kitchener, replying to the September 5 note, said he had no munitions to spare and even doubted the port was in danger. “I expect they will hang on to Antwerp,” he wrote. On the second day of the war Churchill had vetoed sending an expeditionary force there on the ground that while he could guarantee a safe passage across the Strait of Dover, he couldn’t protect troop transports taking the longer route across the North Sea to the Scheldt, then still open.23
Winston had not yet grasped the connection between Antwerp’s resistance and holding the Channel ports—Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne—but he was alert to the necessity of denying the ports to Kluck. So was Joffre. Early in September the constable had asked that British infantry be landed at Dunkirk, to make a demonstration on the Germans’ right flank. Churchill’s naval fliers were already based there, and Kitchener asked him to supervise the landing party. His departure was kept secret; even the cabinet wasn’t told. Asquith wrote Venetia on September 9: “Winston is just off to Dunkirk… he will be back by lunch tomorrow. Don’t say anything of this, as he doesn’t want the colleagues to know.” He commanded a detachment of marines and the Oxfordshire Hussars, his reserve regiment, of which Sunny was colonel in chief. The episode reflects little credit on Churchill. He requisitioned several naval vehicles and eight three-ton trucks to provide Sunny and his officers with all the comforts of their Blenheim maneuvers. “Probably no other regiment,” wrote Adrian Keith-Falconer in The Oxfordshire Hussars in the Great War, “went to France accompanied by such a fleet of motor transport solely for its own personal use.” Winston’s orders were: “Select your point and hit hard.” His men were joyously received by villagers, but their feint left no impression on the enemy; Kluck wasn’t even aware of their existence. The Tommies called them the “Dunkirk Circus.” And Churchill, with his incorrigible love of panoply, lent the ineffective foray a touch of opéra bouffe by appearing in the full-dress regalia of an Elder Brother of Trinity House. A French officer asked him what uniform he wore. “Je suis un Frère Aîné de la Trinité,” he replied. “Mon dieu!” gasped the Frenchman. “La Trinité!”24
The moth could not resist the flame. Less than a week later Winston was back in France, driving from Calais to British GHQ in Fère-en-Tardenois with the Duke of Westminster. To avoid being swept up by Kluck’s advance, they had to take a wide detour, traversing the entire British front. Near Soissons, Churchill had a long talk on a haystack with a major general, Sir Henry Rawlinson. Winston wrote afterward: “I saw the big black German shells, ‘the coal boxes’ and ‘Jack Johnsons’ as they were then called, bursting in Paissy village…. When darkness fell I saw the horizon lighted with the quick flashing of the cannonade. Such scenes were afterwards to become commonplace: but their first aspect was thrilling.” Four days later he returned to Dunkirk, kibitzing at air-raid briefings. He had scarcely returned to London when he alerted the light cruiser Adventure to take him over again. The cabinet was beginning to mutter about his absences. Clementine warned him: “Now please don’t think me tiresome; but I want you to tell the PM of your projected visit to Sir John French. It would be very bad manners if you do not & he will be displeased and hurt…. Of course you will consult K. Otherwise the journey will savour of a week-end escapade & not a mission. You would be surprised & incensed if K slipped off to see Jellicoe on his own.” He took her advice, and K of K, more tolerant than his colleagues, replied: “No objection—I hope you will counteract any wild talk.” Nevertheless, Churchill was trifling with fate. Having made so many unnecessary appearances at the front, he would be hard pressed later to defend trips which were essential.25
By now he saw the strategic significance of Antwerp. Grey had sent identical notes to the Admiralty and the War Office: “Time presses for the Belgians. I am afraid we can do very little if anything, but if we can do nothing the Belgians may surrender Antwerp very soon.” Kitchener was as yet unalarmed. Churchill, however, drew up a list of equipment he could dispatch at once and ended: “WE MUST HOLD ANTWERP.” Even though the Germans were retreating from the Marne to the Aisne, the release of their two corps, still tied down by the entrenched camp at Antwerp, would permit Kluck to dash to the Channel ports and seize them before English troops were dug in. By September 29 Winston had converted Kitchener. The war secretary was ready to send men and field guns. “We had a long Cabinet this morning,” Asquith wrote his beloved the following afternoon. “The Belgians are rather out of ‘morale,’ & are alarmed at the bombardment of Antwerp…. They are sending their archives & treasure over here, & talk of moving the seat of Government to Ostend. Kitchener has given them some good advice… to entrench themselves with barbed wire &c in the intervening spaces, & challenge the Germans to come on.”26
The following morning de Broqueville described his situation as “very grave”; only Allied troops could “save Antwerp from falling.” Asquith sent Venetia a note: “The fall of Antwerp would be a great moral blow to the Allies, for it would leave the whole of Belgium at the mercy of the Germans. The French telegraph that they are willing to send a division (of 15,000 to 20,000) & put it under a British general…. We resolved at the Cabinet to-day that, if the French cooperation is satisfactory, we would divert our 7th Division (of the finest troops) wh was just going to join Sir J. French.” The next day, Friday, October 2, he wrote her: “The news from Antwerp this morning is far from good & gives me some anxiety. The Germans battered down 2 of the forts, and what is worse got in between them & drove a lot of Belgians out of their entrenchments.” He was
pessimistic: “It is a very difficult situation—particularly as our officer reports that it is the morale of the Belgian commanders rather than of the men wh shows signs of collapse.” He wanted to boost their spirits. “But it is no good to lure them with false hopes.” With that, he left for Cardiff to make a speech at a recruiting rally. Thus he was absent when the crisis came.27
The Belgian government, despairing, had resolved to pack up and leave for Ostend Saturday morning. They predicted that their troops in Antwerp would hold out for another five or six days, but the British ambassador there, Sir Francis Villiers, thought it “unlikely that when the Court and Government are gone resistance will be much prolonged.” Antwerp was the only Allied fortress left between Kluck and the Channel. If the enemy reached Calais, Kitchener thought, an invasion of England would be feasible. That evening he and Grey conferred at Kitchener’s house in Carlton Gardens, between Pall Mall and St. James’s Park. With the prime minister away, they needed the opinion of another senior minister, so they decided to consult Churchill. He was aboard a train, bound for Dover. On their orders, the engineer reversed direction, and from Victoria Station a waiting car drove Winston to Carlton Gardens. After listening to their analysis he recommended sending the Admiralty’s marine brigade to the city. Then he volunteered to go to the beleaguered city himself and report to them by telephone and telegraph. They agreed, and shortly after midnight he was off again. Grey wired Sir Francis: “First Lord of the Admiralty will be at Antwerp between 9 and 10 tomorrow. He is fully acquainted with our views, and it is hoped he may have the honour of an audience with the King before a final decision as to the departure of the Government is taken.” Sir Francis wired back that the evacuation had already begun, but de Broqueville would summon an emergency cabinet meeting now to reconsider that decision. As a result of the meeting, all Belgian troops were ordered to remain at their posts. In London that morning Asquith, returning to the fait accompli, wrote Venetia that he was “anxiously awaiting Winston’s report. I don’t know how fluent he is in French, but if he was able to do himself justice in a foreign tongue, the Belges will have listened to a discourse the like of which they have never heard before. I cannot but think that he will stiffen them up to the sticking point.”28
Churchill’s car, roaring up to Antwerp’s hôtel de ville in a cloud of dust, reminded one observer “for all the world of a scene in a melodrama where the hero dashes up bare-headed on a foam-flecked horse, and saves the heroine, or the old homestead, or the family fortune, as the case may be.” In undress uniform—no epaulets, no cocked hat—he conferred with de Broqueville and assured him that, in addition to the two thousand seasoned marines who would arrive that evening, he was sending for his two naval brigades, two million rounds of ammunition, and five days’ rations. Albert and the Belgian premier, much moved, promised to defend the city for at least ten more days provided the Allies launched a major relief operation within seventy-two hours. Winston cabled Kitchener and Grey: “I must impress on you the necessity of making these worn and weary men throw their souls into it, or the whole thing will go with a run.” Sunday morning he toured the city’s outer forts in a Rolls-Royce. Henry Stevens, the naval rating who drove him, later recalled that although he was out of earshot most of the time, he could see that “Mr Churchill was energetic and imperative. He discussed the situation with his own Staff and some of the Belgian officers, emphasising his points with his walking stick…. His actions were emphatic. He appeared on occasions to criticise the siting and construction of the trenches…. Mr Churchill dominated the proceedings and the impression formed that he was by no means satisfied with the position generally. He put forward his ideas forcefully, waving his stick and thumping the ground with it…. At one line of trenches he found the line very thinly held and asked where ‘the bloody men were.’ He certainly was not mollified when he was told that was all that were available at that point.” Winston was in fact deeply disappointed. Back at the hôtel de ville he telegraphed Kitchener that the defenders were “weary and disheartened,” that because many of the outworks had been flooded to thwart the Germans, only shallow trenches could be scooped out of the waterlogged earth, furnishing little shelter “to their worn out and in many cases inexperienced troops.”29
The marines landed and were greeted by ecstatic Belgian citizens. Kitchener cabled that the cabinet approved of the immediate dispatch of the naval brigades. He had formed these units, first called “Churchill’s pets” and then “Churchill’s innocent victims,” just before the war. They were green and largely untrained. The officers lacked revolver ammunition. Many of the men had neither fired rifles nor dug trenches. Among their officers were Asquith’s son Arthur (“Oc”) and the young poet Rupert Brooke, whom Eddie Marsh had introduced to Winston in quieter days. Churchill had been unwise to ask for them and his colleagues had been unwise to agree, but it was a heady moment; the prime minister wrote Venetia: “I have a telegram from Oc sent off from Dover pier on Sunday evening: ‘Embarking to-night: love.’ I suppose most of the territorials & recruits would envy him, being sent off after 3 days to the front! I am sure he will do well, but it is a hazardous adventure.” It was also an uncomfortable one. Brooke, who had assumed that after crossing the Channel they would spend a month “quietly training,” wrote home that they bivouacked their first night under shellfire in the deserted garden of a château and were awakened at 2:00 A.M. “So up we got—frozen and sleepy—and toiled off through the night. By dawn we got into trenches—very good ones—and relieved Belgians.”30
By sheer force of will, Churchill had taken charge of Antwerp’s defense. He was rounding up men, searching for weapons and ammunition, directing troops, siting guns, and telegraphing the Admiralty for high explosive shells, shell fuses, fire-control balloons, steel rope, entrenching tools, field telephone sets, and “30 Maxim guns on tripod mountings, with establishment of proportionate ammunition.” Excited, aroused, even elated, he sent Asquith a remarkable wire early Monday, suggesting that he quit the cabinet and lead troops: “If it is thought by HM Government that I can be of service here, I am willing to resign my office and undertake command of relieving and defensive forces assigned to Antwerp in conjunction with Belgian Army, provided that I am given necessary military rank and authority, and full powers of a commander of a detached force in the field.”31
The prime minister was astounded. At the end of a letter to King George, in which he reported that “Mr Churchill has been in Antwerp since Saturday afternoon & has successfully dissuaded the King & his Ministers from retiring to Ostend,” he noted that he had “this morning received from Mr Churchill a patriotic offer to resign his office & take command of the forces at Antwerp,” but, while appreciating the first lord’s “zeal and skill,” he had replied that “his services could not be dispensed with at home.” To Venetia, Asquith was more frank. He thought the proposition “a real bit of tragi-comedy.” His response to Winston had been “a most decided negative.” When he read it to the cabinet, “it was received with a Homeric laugh.” Kitchener, the only soldier in the cabinet, did not join in the laughter. He thought the idea sound and was prepared to commission Winston a lieutenant general.32
Asquith wouldn’t hear of it. The command would go to General Rawlinson, now in Dunkirk. Rawlinson was having difficulty getting through, however, and Winston telegraphed Kitchener: “In view of the situation and the developing German attack, it is my duty to remain here and continue my direction of affairs unless relieved by some person of consequence.” The British marines went into action that Monday afternoon and threw back an enemy attack. Early in the evening Churchill inspected their lines. They were, he told Kitchener, “cheerful and well dug in.” Gino Calza Bedolo, war correspondent for the Giornale d’ Italia, was visiting a position near Lier, southeast of Antwerp, when he saw a striking figure standing in the midst of a group of officers. “He was still young,” Bedolo told the London Lyceum Club several weeks later, “and was enveloped in a cloak, and on his head w
ore a yachtsman’s cap. He was tranquilly smoking a large cigar and looking at the progress of the battle under a rain of shrapnel, which I can only call fearful. It was Mr Churchill, who had come to view the situation himself. It must be confessed that it is not easy to find in the whole of Europe a Minister who would be capable of smoking peacefully under that shellfire. He smiled, and looked quite satisfied.”33
Churchill at Antwerp, October 1914
That night Rawlinson couldn’t get closer than Bruges, fifty-one miles away. The Belgians and the Royal Marines were exhausted. Churchill’s only reserves were the six thousand inexperienced men in the naval brigades. He didn’t want to use them now, and was determined not to expose them to the ferocity of the enemy’s storm troops, so he assigned them to a defensive position between the front and the city. At 1:00 A.M. he wired London: “All well. I have met Ministers in Council, who resolved to fight it out here, whatever happens.” In the early hours of Tuesday, October 6, the weary Belgians actually counterattacked, but were quickly beaten off. Asquith wrote that “under Winston’s stimulus the Belgians are making a resolute stand. I have just seen a telegram which shews that this morning both the Belgians & our Marines were pushed back. The inner forts (it says) are being held by our naval brigade [sic]—which shows that Oc & his companions have arrived & are already within range.” Rawlinson was “expected shortly.” Presumably the British “7th Division & Cavalry & the French Marines” were on their way. “It is to be hoped that they will arrive in time, but it is an anxious situation. Winston persists in remaining there, which leaves the Admiralty here without a head…. I think that Winston ought to return now that a capable General is arriving. He has done good service in the way of starching & ironing the Belges.”34