The Effect
The date is August 23rd, 1914. In the fields and canals around the Belgian town of Mons, the professional but vastly outnumbered British Expeditionary Force (or BEF) is engaged in its first major battle of the Great War. For two days, they have held their ground against the overwhelming might of the advancing German army, but the line is breaking. A desperate, fighting retreat is ordered. The British soldiers are exhausted, demoralised, and facing annihilation.
As the BEF falls back under relentless enemy pressure, with German cavalry closing in for the kill, something extraordinary is said to have happened. In the chaos of the retreat, amidst the smoke and the deafening roar of artillery, soldiers looked to the sky and saw a scene that defied all logic. Accounts of the phenomenon varied, but the core of the experience was the same: the soldiers were not alone.
Some reported seeing a strange, luminous cloud form between their retreating lines and the advancing Germans. From this cloud, spectral figures emerged – a host of phantom bowmen, drawing their longbows as if they had marched straight from the medieval battlefield of Agincourt. They were led, some said, by a shining figure on a white horse, resembling St. George, the patron saint of England. These celestial warriors loosed their arrows, and the German advance inexplicably faltered.
Other accounts described not an army, but a single, towering angel, sometimes with vast, golden wings, who stood protectively in the path of the German forces. Faced with this supernatural guardian, the enemy cavalry horses panicked, reared up, and refused to charge, their riders unable to control them. This miraculous pause, this moment of divine intervention, was just long enough for the battered British forces to escape the closing trap and continue their retreat, saving the army from destruction.
The story of the “Angel of Mons” spread like wildfire, first through the ranks and then back to a Britain desperate for a sign of hope in the dark, early days of the war. It became a national sensation, a symbol of divine favour. But what really happened on that chaotic battlefield? Was it a genuine miracle, a collective hallucination brought on by the trauma and exhaustion of battle, or was something else at play altogether?
The Method
The powerful and inspiring legend of the Angel of Mons has a surprising and well-documented origin, one that lies not in the trenches of Belgium, but on the pages of a London newspaper. The “method” behind this miracle was not divine intervention, but the power of fiction and the profound human need for hope.
On September 29th, 1914, just over a month after the Battle of Mons, a Welsh author and mystic named Arthur Machen published a short story in London’s Evening News. The story was titled “The Bowmen.” In it, Arthur wrote a fictional account of a British soldier at Mons who, in a moment of desperation, invokes St. George. In response, a “long line of shapes, with a shining about them” appears, phantom bowmen from the victory at Agincourt centuries before, who draw their spectral bows and annihilate the advancing Germans with a volley of unseen arrows.
Machen intended his story as a piece of patriotic fiction, a contribution to the war effort to boost morale. He had no idea it would be taken as fact. But the public, reeling from casualty lists and hungry for a miracle, seized upon it. The story was reprinted in parish magazines and other publications, often without the context that it was fiction. It was read from pulpits as if it were a genuine report from the front.
The legend quickly took on a life of its own. People began writing to Machen, asking for his sources and insisting the story was true. Despite Machen repeatedly and publicly stating that he had invented the entire narrative, the myth proved more powerful than the truth. As the story spread through word of mouth, it evolved. The bowmen of Agincourt were gradually transformed into the more familiar and religiously comforting image of angels.
So what of the soldiers who claimed to have seen the vision? It’s crucial to note that almost all verifiable “firsthand” accounts of the Angel of Mons only began to appear after Machen’s story had been widely circulated and become a national phenomenon. Psychologists suggest this is a classic example of how myths are built. Traumatised soldiers, having survived a hellish retreat, would later hear or read the story of the angels. Their own confused memories of strange flares, mist, or unusual cloud formations on the battlefield could then be retroactively reinterpreted through the lens of this inspiring legend. The story gave a name and a holy shape to their inexplicable survival, and a fictional tale became their remembered truth.
© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.
