The Angel of Mons: A World War I Legend

Jerred Metz takes us back to the war that opened the deadliest century in human history. A battalion of angels, mystical intercessors, and a cast of engaging humans ranges from British machine gunners to Winston Churchill, Arthur Conan Doyle, and W.B. Yeats. The Angel of Mons is a meditative and transcendent journey into a war we can never learn too much about, or from. Kevin Coyne, author of Marching Home This is the starting point for Metz’s wide-ranging, original book: St. George, the Angel of Mons, appears out of an unfurling cloud over the Mons-Conté canal, saving Lt. Dease’s Vickers machine-gun crew. The saint attacks the Germans and saves the BEF from annihilation. A few days, later Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s and W.B. Yeats’ experiences confirm this to be so. Historical characters rub shoulders with men and women of the author's creation.Steeped in the Edwardian Age’s beliefs about the psychic phenomena and spiritualism, the novel shows that success in the battle is more than a matter of well-sited machine guns and resolute crews; in The Angel of Mons St. George determines the fate of the “Golden Arrows of God,” and the British Expeditionary Force. Antony Bird author of Gentlemen, We will Stand and Fight: Le Cateau 1914.Long after the war is over, and the facts of it have been recorded in histories, one of the most widely known events will be the appearance of St. George and angel-warriors fighting in defense of the British during the retreat from Mons. The papers are full of it and testimony pours in from all sides. Harold Bigbie “On the Side of the Angels” 1915.That was the Battle of Mons. As the opening British engagement of what was to become the Great War, it became endowed in retrospect with every quality of greatness and was given a place in the British pantheon equal to the battles of Hastings and Agincourt. Legends like that of the Angels of Mons settled upon it.Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August