⦠The object of the Germans responsible for these scientific âvisionsâ was to create superstitious terror in the Allied ranks.
According to Herzenwirth, the plan backfired, and was successfully exploited by the British for their own benefit. However, the very next day the Daily News published a corrective report, explaining that its Berlin correspondent had been informed by official German sources that there was no record of the mysterious colonel, whose story was now dismissed as a hoax. Curiously, the projection idea would be resurrected by British propaganda agencies in March 1940, who in the midst of the static Phoney War, gave consideration to âa suggestion for an apparatus to project images or cloudsâ over the German lines by means of an unspecified âmagic lanternâ apparatus.
The idea was not pursued. However, further evidence of the remarkable staying power of this particular myth came in March 2001, when it was announced that actor Marlon Brando had paid £350,000 for spectral footage of angels shot by William Doidge at Woodchester Park in the Cotswolds during the Second World War. Doidge, a veteran of the BEF and the Retreat from Mons, was said to have been obsessed with the angels legend of 1914, believing they could lead him to his lost Belgian sweetheart. Like Machenâs original story published by the Evening News , the film promised excellent entertainment, but was later revealed as a hoax.
The legend of the Comrade in White is another battlefield myth from the first year of the war which was clearly promulgated to underline the moral and religious rectitude of the Allied cause. As we have seen, the legend of the Bowmen at Mons lay dormant for six months after its initial publication 1914, only to return with more pronounced angelic and religious overtones in April 1915. To those who chose to accept such evidence at face value, further proof that God was on the side of the Allies, rather than Germany, came in the form of the Comrade in White, or white helper, first encountered on the battlefields of the Western Front at more or less the same time.
The first account was given in Bladud , described as the Bath Society Paper, in June 1915. According to Dr R.F. Horton, a well-known Congregational minister from Manchester, and a devout believer in the Angel of Mons:
Now and again a wounded man on the field is conscious of a comrade in white coming with help and even delivering him. One of our men who had heard of this story again and again, and has put it down to hysterical excitement, had an experience. His division had advanced and was not adequately protected by the artillery. It was cut to pieces, and he himself fell. He tried to hide in a hollow of the ground, and as he lay helpless, not daring to lift his head under the hail of fire, he saw One in White coming to him. For a moment he thought it must be a hospital attendant or a stretcher bearer, but no, it could not be; the bullets were flying all around. The White-robed came near and bent over him. The man lost consciousness for a moment, and when he came round he seemed to be out of danger.
The White-robed still stood by him, and the man, looking at his hand, said, âYou are wounded in your hand.â There was a wound in the palm. He answered, âYes, that is an old wound that has opened again lately.â The soldier says that in spite of the peril and his wounds he felt a joy he had never experienced in his life before.
A similar account, In the Trenches , yet again from an unknown soldier in an unidentified sector, was printed in Life and Work magazine in June 1915, from which the following extracts are drawn:
George Casey told me all he knew ⦠After many a hot engagement a man in white had been seen bending over the wounded. Snipers sniped at him. Shells fell all around. Nothing had power to touch him. He was either heroic beyond all heroes, or he was something greater still. This mysterious
According to Herzenwirth, the plan backfired, and was successfully exploited by the British for their own benefit. However, the very next day the Daily News published a corrective report, explaining that its Berlin correspondent had been informed by official German sources that there was no record of the mysterious colonel, whose story was now dismissed as a hoax. Curiously, the projection idea would be resurrected by British propaganda agencies in March 1940, who in the midst of the static Phoney War, gave consideration to âa suggestion for an apparatus to project images or cloudsâ over the German lines by means of an unspecified âmagic lanternâ apparatus.
The idea was not pursued. However, further evidence of the remarkable staying power of this particular myth came in March 2001, when it was announced that actor Marlon Brando had paid £350,000 for spectral footage of angels shot by William Doidge at Woodchester Park in the Cotswolds during the Second World War. Doidge, a veteran of the BEF and the Retreat from Mons, was said to have been obsessed with the angels legend of 1914, believing they could lead him to his lost Belgian sweetheart. Like Machenâs original story published by the Evening News , the film promised excellent entertainment, but was later revealed as a hoax.
The legend of the Comrade in White is another battlefield myth from the first year of the war which was clearly promulgated to underline the moral and religious rectitude of the Allied cause. As we have seen, the legend of the Bowmen at Mons lay dormant for six months after its initial publication 1914, only to return with more pronounced angelic and religious overtones in April 1915. To those who chose to accept such evidence at face value, further proof that God was on the side of the Allies, rather than Germany, came in the form of the Comrade in White, or white helper, first encountered on the battlefields of the Western Front at more or less the same time.
The first account was given in Bladud , described as the Bath Society Paper, in June 1915. According to Dr R.F. Horton, a well-known Congregational minister from Manchester, and a devout believer in the Angel of Mons:
Now and again a wounded man on the field is conscious of a comrade in white coming with help and even delivering him. One of our men who had heard of this story again and again, and has put it down to hysterical excitement, had an experience. His division had advanced and was not adequately protected by the artillery. It was cut to pieces, and he himself fell. He tried to hide in a hollow of the ground, and as he lay helpless, not daring to lift his head under the hail of fire, he saw One in White coming to him. For a moment he thought it must be a hospital attendant or a stretcher bearer, but no, it could not be; the bullets were flying all around. The White-robed came near and bent over him. The man lost consciousness for a moment, and when he came round he seemed to be out of danger.
The White-robed still stood by him, and the man, looking at his hand, said, âYou are wounded in your hand.â There was a wound in the palm. He answered, âYes, that is an old wound that has opened again lately.â The soldier says that in spite of the peril and his wounds he felt a joy he had never experienced in his life before.
A similar account, In the Trenches , yet again from an unknown soldier in an unidentified sector, was printed in Life and Work magazine in June 1915, from which the following extracts are drawn:
George Casey told me all he knew ⦠After many a hot engagement a man in white had been seen bending over the wounded. Snipers sniped at him. Shells fell all around. Nothing had power to touch him. He was either heroic beyond all heroes, or he was something greater still. This mysterious
Similar Books
