Angels at Mons

Found - a small thin 4 page pamphlet Angels at Mons printed in Felixstowe, England about 1920. Its price was ninepence for a 100 and it was almost certainly for distribution in churches. Ours was found in a missal.

There is much elsewhere about the angels that are said to have appeared on the WW1 battlefield at Mons. Arthur Machen's 1915 book The Bowmen and Other Legends of War really started the legend.

Historian A.J.P. Taylor was so impressed by the evidence then available that he felt confident referring to Mons, in his 1963 History of the First World War, as the only battle where “supernatural intervention was observed, more or less reliably, on the British side.”

The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural says of Machen's book: "During Machen's lifetime 'The Bowmen' was easily his most influential work of fiction, in ways he never predicted. First published in a 1914 Evening News after the Battle of Mons, it told how British troops, their retreat cut off by the Germans, were miraculously rescued by a ghostly St. George and his bowmen of Agincourt. Widely accepted as true or as a genuine legend, the incident is regularly referred to even today, in books of occult lore and oral histories of the Great War." Fortean Times has this great story of hoaxes and mayhem around the legend with a report on a Hollywood movie that was going to be made on the angels with Marlon Brando.

Angels at Mons

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Testimonies of men
who saw them.

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"Your young men shall see visions. ” Joel 2 : 28.
" I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath. " Acts 2 : 19.

  Mrs A. L. Cooke, 62 The Grove, Bedford, in " The Record " of Sept. 9th, writes :–

  " On a Sunday evening quite recently the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Bournemouth was preaching a sermon about Angels. Two officers present followed him into the vestry and told him how much interested they had been with his sermon for said they:–We were at the Battle of Mons and saw the Angels.”

  In another part of Bournemouth lives a maiden lady, who is an aunt to the officer who says that the Vision of Angels at Mons has changed his whole life, that he did not believe the Bible before
but this incident  has been the means of his conversion.

  The following appeared in " The Lynn News & County Press,” July 10th 1915 :–

•  " The Rev. Rowland Grant, Rector of Sandringham sees no reason for doubting the truth and accuracy of the story, having had it confirmed on the word of his brother-in-law, Captain Pryce-Jones. The statement, epitomised, is that during the Mons retirement " troops of angels " intervened to save the British left wing from the oncoming German host. One officer, not a religious man, stated that “ he saw a troop of Angels between us and the enemy.” Another officer said he saw the Angels, which the horses saw plainly enough.” He added that “ the German horses turned round and regularly stampeded. The men tugged at their bridles, while the poor ‘beasts tore away in every direction from our men.’   Owing it is asserted to this miraculous intervention, the British force reached a place of safety.

  Major General F. Marsh gives the following testimony :–

  " Mrs. S. A.–my daughter was told by an Army Chaplain.   I did not believe in any of the Visions of supernatural appearances of which all people were talking till I saw them myself.”

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WHY THE ANGELS APPEARED.

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THE FRONT LINE–THE INNER LINE.

Behind the roaring cannon, behind the flashing steel, The defenders of the inner line, steady and constant KNEEL, Some bent, or grey, some crippled, some three score year and ten, Just praying, ALWAYS PRAYING, for the front line fighting men.

Betty MacCarthey.

ANOTHER VERSION (From an entirely independent source).

  A hospital nurse who had been attending to a wounded British soldier, said to him the other day, " Do you believe in God ? ” He answered I do now, but I used not to. But since the battle of Mons my opinions have changed. Proceeding, he said, " We had a terrible time, and at last a company of us were hemmed into a large chalk pit. Suddenly I looked up, and encircling the top of the pit was a ring of shining Angels. As the cavalry rushed up, the horses saw them, and there was a general stampede. Our lives were saved, and the Germans were put to confusion "

  Seven soldiers, including officers, saw the Angels. The soldiers gave their names and addresses, and the nurse wrote and had the story authenticated, one officer writing “ Its all perfectly true. "

  We feel that in that hour somebody must have been praying hard for those men.

  "The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and delivereth them." Psa. 34: 7.