urban legends ✓

the angel of mons ☹

According to an article by British author Arthur Machen, angels allegedly helped the British army from being utterly annihilated by numerically superior German forces in Mons, Belgium during the opening days of World War I. Just as the German soldiers were about to step in for the kill, they were suddenly confronted by angels in the form of English archers who blocked their path and pointed their arrows or fired at them. This ghostly apparition forced the Germans to retreat and allowed the English enough time to regroup.

While Machen himself stated that it was all fiction, the story gradually became accepted as fact among the British soldiers and public. For them it was proof that God was on the British side. Anyone who disbelieved in the angels' existence was deemed a traitor or a defeatist. Skeptics however, were quick to dismiss the whole incident as nothing more than mass hysteria—both the German and British armies expected a quick victory only to be caught up in an exhausting war of attrition.