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was eventful. All along the route they found aged French reservists in bright red trousers asking them all sorts of questions as they guarded stations. One happy trooper of the Ninth managed to fall out of the train. Food and water could only be obtained by adventurous souls willing to struggle from wagon to wagon on floorboards laid between the two. Algernon Lamb’s regiment had horses falling over during the journey. There was no method of communication with the driver so one brave NCO had to crawl bravely along the tops of the wagons to get the train stopped.
    As these OEs converged on the border between Belgium and France none of the Allies, in these opening days of war, were actually in tune with what their brothers in arms were driving at. The Belgians wanted, understandably, to save their country from oblivion, whilst the French hierarchy imagined them helping to attack their common frontier with Germany. The British had haplessly headed for their original destination at Maubeuge, no matter how foolhardy it seemed to Kitchener in London who seemed to be the only relevant person who had realised that the Germans might swing down a massive force in their faces. When they arrived, to the disappointment of the French, the great offensive to avenge the Franco–Prussian War and take back Alsace and Lorraine was not at the top of their agenda. All of this confusion reigned before the enemy was even factored into the equation.
    But the Germans were not superior when it came to the execution of war at this point. On the far right of their line and destined to meet the BEF was the First Army, commanded by Alexander von Kluck. The very definition of a Prussian officer, if he didn’t like the orders he received he just ignored them. He was an abrasive personality and a very difficult man to deal with, but he needed this sort of temperament. His men had a monumental task on their hands: to swing down and obliterate the left flank of the allied forces to open up the war for the rest of the German armies. Unfortunately, though, he and von Bülow, commanding the Second Army on his left, hated each other, which was hardly helpful when cohesion and communication were imperative during an offensive. The German High Command had to intervene frequently to settle the verbal sniping between them.
    To the south, at the River Sambre, which flows through southern Belgium and a corner of northern France near Charleroi, General Lanrezac was in dire straits at the head of France’s Fifth Army. A sharp, practical leader he was also bad tempered and sarcastic with a penchant for foul language. He alone noticed that the heaviest weight of the German offensive was going to charge right into him. Von Kluck and von Bülow had more than half a million men between them. To his right, the Battle of the Frontiers was already raging, disastrously for the French. The situation to Lanrezac’s left was no better. The Belgians were no longer there. Their tiny army was saved from pointless annihilation by King Albert, who saw what was coming and dropped out of the line and fell back, taking his soldiers with him. But at what cost? With nothing there envelopment was a haunting but very real possibility for Lanrezac. The British hadn’t yet arrived and King Albert’s men were being replaced by poor French Territorials. Still, in the face of this insanity, with German armies bearing down on him, his superiors wanted him to attack. The situation was dramatic but frighteningly clear. If he and the British, when they arrived, did not hold their ground and at least stall the impetus of the German advance, all could be lost. The remaining French forces could be encircled and destroyed; the roads to Paris would lay open. The little BEF would be overrun and Britain itself left helpless to an enormous invasion force. The war could be over in a matter of weeks and Europe at the mercy of the Central Powers.
    Cavalry patrols had erroneously told