by Janet Grischy

Created on: June 25, 2010

The story lifts the heart. A tiny British force stands outnumbered and outgunned, surrounded by the enemy at the beginning of World War One.  Mysterious supernatural forces, judging by their speech bowmen from England’s ancient armies, come to their aid. The British prevail, and the Germans in their tens of thousands are driven from the field.

In the story, told largely in the first person and first printed  in the Evening News on September 29, 1914, a soldier tells how the English were almost defeated when a line of shining beings appeared between the opposing  armies and drove back the foe.

Ammunition had run low, and the relentless gray lines of the enemy advanced upon the British force. They joked and teased each other to keep their spirits up, but they knew they were dead men. One of the soldiers happened to think of a motto he’d seen in a restaurant, and happened to quote it aloud as he fired, “Adsit Anglis Sanctus Geogius.” It meant, he believed, “Saint George come and help us Englishmen.” St. George is the patron saint of England, who slew the pagan dragon.

All at once, the beleaguered soldiers felt around them the stirring of a great army, and seemed to hear its bowmen call to one another, and call on St. George. The Germans fell like split kindling and the English carried the day.

The legend

The story grew. More and more witnesses soon claimed to have been there and to have seen the shining bowmen. Some even claimed to have called upon St. George themselves.

The bowmen became angels before much time passed. Was that because Anglis, one of the words that called the bowmen, sounded to readers and listeners like angels? Was it because the supernatural beings gathered between the armies were shining? If there are angels, they certainly shine.

Some said, and some still say, that the whole story was British propaganda, meant to raise morale on the home front, after early defeats in a hard-fought war. Others said it was all true, that they knew someone who knew someone who had been there, and that it was a sign of God’s favor. One man said it was all a story.

The origin

Arthur Machen was Welsh, a professional writer and a mystic. As the story grew and spread, he tried to make it plain that he himself had begun it. That as far as he knew, there were no angels, or bowmen either, at Mons.

He was a man who believed in angels though. The story had come to him in church, he said, or a more glorious one had.

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