Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.

In 1914 the British army was retreating from the Germans near the city of Mons, Belgium. WWI was beginning to blaze, and the soldiers apparently thought if they could just find a place to make a stand they might be able to change their fortunes. That place wasn’t found – but more Germans were.

It appeared all was lost until – according to legend – the heavens opened and some sort of apparition swooped in to aid the side of good.

This is the story of the Angels of Mons.

The first encounter British troops had with the Germans in WWI was on terms not so favourable to the first-mentioned army. The pre-Nazi army had a vast amount of numbers on their side – enough that French and Belgian forces had already been forced to retreat.

As the story goes the British forces would have loved nothing more than to join the other two friendly armies in a mad dash to anywhere else. Their problem though, was that the Germans had already pretty much caught them. They weren’t surrounded, but a fight would have ended poorly, as would a retreat with the enemy right on their backs.

According to this English legend, the plight of the crown did not go unnoticed by the heavens themselves. Angels appeared to keep the Germans in place while the British booked it without looking back.

The Angels of Mons legend has several different version. Here is one, as told on Paranormal Suite 101:

“It would appear that the BEF was doomed, when suddenly a strange apparition appeared in the sky between the British and German troops: a group of angels! Several reports of that day’s events describe three angels wearing long robes, illuminated by a bright light. The one in the middle was the largest and had a pair of wings.”

Other versions of the story depict the heavenly back-up as being being little more than a gigantic glowing cloud plume, or ghostly bowmen accompanying someone called St George. Yet another version we’ve only heard has it the Godly-aid was in the form of a single angel – with a wing span that took up nearly the whole horizon.

What the story seems to boil down to is this – the vastly outnumbered British forces were able to hold off the Germans – miraculously, according to some. Clearly this could only happen if God was on their side. This seems to be what gave the legend its roots – that plus a decent author. According to Wikipedia:

“On 29 September 1914, Welsh author Arthur Machen published a short story entitled “The Bowmen” in the London newspaper, the Evening News, inspired by accounts that he had read of the fighting at Mons and an idea he had had soon after the battle.

“At the time Machen was a journalist on the paper and although he was a well known author of supernatural stories there was no indication that his story was fiction when it was originally published in the Evening Standard; it was written from a first hand perspective and it was a kind of false document, a technique Machen knew well. The story described phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt summoned by a soldier calling on Saint George, destroying a German host.”

That link up there takes you to the actual short story. True or not, the Mons Angels were printed all over the newspapers of the day. They were even used in religious sermons to prove the plight of the Brits had the full backing of the Almighty. This is clearly convenient for a country at war.

To wrap things up – here’s another interesting bit from Wikipedia. It involves actual witnesses (notice that’s plural) to the whole thing:

“The only real evidence of visions from actual named serving soldiers provided 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. Furthermore these visions did not intervene to attack or deter German forces, a crucial element in Machen’s story and in the later tales of Angels. Since during the retreat many troops were exhausted and had not slept properly for days such visions may have been hallucinations.”