The Angels of Mons are supposedly a group of angels who protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I. All evidence suggests that the story is fictitious, developed through a combination of a patriotic short story by Arthur Machen, rumours and urban legend, some actual visions seen after the battle and also possibly deliberately seeded propaganda. A Gothic angel in ivory, c1250, Louvre An angel is a supernatural being found in many religions. ... Combatants United Kingdom German Empire Commanders Sir John French Alexander von Kluck Strength 4 divisions 8 divisions Casualties 1,600 5,000 (estimate) The Battle of Mons (Dutch name for Mons is Bergen) was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I. // Following the surrender... “The Great War ” redirects here. ... // Fiction (from the Latin fingere, to form, create) is the genre of imaginative prose literature, including novels and short stories. ... Arthur Machen (March 3, 1863 – December 15th, 1947) was a leading Welsh-born author of the 1890s. ... An urban legend or urban myth is similar to a modern folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them. ...

On August 22-23 1914, the first major engagement of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War occurred at the Battle of Mons. Advancing German forces were thrown back by heavily outnumbered British troops, who also suffering casualties and being outflanked were forced into rapid retreat the next day. August 22 is the 234th day of the year (235th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was the British army sent to France and Belgium in World War I and British Forces in Europe from 1939–1940 during World War II. The BEF was established by Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane following the Second Boer War in case the... Combatants United Kingdom German Empire Commanders Sir John French Alexander von Kluck Strength 4 divisions 8 divisions Casualties 1,600 5,000 (estimate) The Battle of Mons (Dutch name for Mons is Bergen) was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force in World War I. // Following the surrender...

On April 24, 1915, an account was published in the British Spiritualist magazine telling of visions of a supernatural force that miraculously intervened to help the British at the decisive moment of the battle. This rapidly resulted in a flurry of similar accounts and the spread of wild rumours. Descriptions of this force varied from it being medieval longbow men alongside Saint George, to a strange luminous cloud, though eventually the most popular version came to be angelic warriors. Similar tales of such battlefield visions occurred in medieval and ancient warfare. However there are strong similarities between many of these accounts and Arthur Machen's short story The Bowmen first published six months earlier on September 29, 1914 in the London newspaper, the Evening News. Machen was a journalist on the paper and although he was a well known author of supernatural stories there was no indication that Machen's story was fiction when it was originally published, and as it was written from a first hand perspective it was a kind of false document, a technique Machen knew well. The story described bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt summoned by a soldier calling on Saint George, destroying a German host. The unintended result was that Machen had a number of requests to provide evidence for his sources quite soon after publication, to which he responded it was completely imaginary, as he had no desire to create a hoax. April 24 is the 114th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (115th in leap years). ... 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar). ... Spiritualism is a religion in which contact with the spirits of the dead through a medium is central. ... In religion, visions comprise inspirational renderings, generally of a future state and/or of a mythical being, and are believed (by followers of the religion) to come from a deity, directly or indirectly via prophets, and serve to inspire or prod believers as part of a revelation or an epiphany. ... Look up Supernatural in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A miracle, derived from the old Latin word miraculum meaning something wonderful, is a striking interposition of divine intervention by a god in the universe by which the ordinary course and operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. ... Lemonwood, purpleheart and hickory longbow, 45 lbf draw force. ... Saint-George is a municipality with 695 inhabitants (as of 2003) in the district of Aubonne in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. ... A Gothic angel in ivory, c1250, Louvre An angel is a supernatural being found in many religions. ... Arthur Machen (March 3, 1863 – December 15th, 1947) was a leading Welsh-born author of the 1890s. ... September 29 is the 272nd day of the year (273rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Horror fiction is, broadly, fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the reader. ... A false document is a form of verisimilitude that attempts to create in the reader (viewer, audience, etc. ... Combatants Kingdom of England Kingdom of France Commanders Henry V of England Charles dAlbret Strength About 6,000 (but see Modern re-assessment). ... A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. ...

It was not until May 1915 that a full blown controversy was erupting with the angels being used of proof of the action of divine providence on the side of the Allies in sermons across Britain. Machen, bemused by all this attempted to end the rumours by republishing the story in August in book form with a long preface stating the rumours were false and originated in his story. It became a bestseller and merely resulted in a vast series of other publications claiming to provide evidence proving the Angels existence. These publications included popular songs and artists renderings of the angels. Kevin McClure's study describes two types of stories circulating, some more clearly based on Machen, others with different details. However all these reports confirming sightings of supernatural activity were at best second-hand and some of them even quoted soldiers who were not at Mons. A careful investigation by the Society for Psychical Research in 1915 said of the firsthand testimony, "we have received none at all, and of testimony at second-hand we have none that would justify us in assuming the occurrence of any supernormal phenomenon." The SPR went on to say the stories relating to battlefield "visions" which circulated during the spring and summer of 1915, "prove on investigation to be founded on mere rumour, and cannot be traced to any authoritative source." 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar). ... In theology, Divine Providence, or simply Providence, is the sovereignty, superintendence, or agency of God over events in peoples lives and throughout history. ... For other senses of this word, see evidence (disambiguation). ... The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was founded in 1882 by three dons of Trinity College, Cambridge, Edmund Gurney, Frederic William Henry Myers, and Henry Sidgwick, because of their interest in spiritualism. ...

The sudden spread of the rumours in the spring of 1915 six months after the events happened is also puzzling. The stories published then often attribute their information to mysterious anonymous British officers. The latest and most detailed examination of the Mons story by David Clarke suggests these men may have been part of a covert attempt by military intelligence to spread morale-boosting propaganda. Soviet Propaganda Poster during the Great Patriotic War. ...

The only real evidence of visions from actual serving soldiers occurring during the debate stated that they saw visions of phantom cavalrymen, not angels or bowmen, and this occurred during the retreat rather than at the Battle itself. Since during the retreat many troops were exhausted and had not slept properly for days such visions may have been hallucinations. A hallucination is a false sensory perception in the absence of an external stimulus, as distinct from an illusion, which is a misperception of an external stimulus. ...

It seems then that Machen's story provided the genesis for the vast majority of tales of Angels at the time. The stories of angels themselves certainly boosted morale on the home front as popular enthusiasm was dying down in 1915. They also serve as testimony to the rapid spread of rumour and myth during wartime and bear comparison to the modern craze for UFO sightings. This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... An unidentified flying object, or UFO, is any real or apparent flying object which cannot be identified by the observer and which remains unidentified after investigation. ...

External links

• Arthur Machen, The Bowmen, (also includes his Introduction with his theories of explanation)
• David Clarke, Rumours of angels: a legend of the First World War – detailed study
• Kevin Maclure, Visions of Bowmen and Angels
• The case of the Elusive Angels of Mons
• Nigel Watson - Angel of Lies (Magonia article)