Belgian Army - History - Great War
Before the Great War the general impression was that not much was to be expected from the Belgian army. The German military party did not rate the resisting power of Belgium very high, their plans and the means of their execution prove that. The majority of the Belgians did not expect much of the army, and that is not very surprising when one considers the opposition to a large armament. A large party was in favor of having only a large enough force to police the frontier in case neighboring nations were at war, as had been easily done in 1870.
King Leopold II was anxious to have the army recognized, and on the very day of his death, signed the bill relating to its renovation. Among those who had resolved to save their country whether it would be saved or not, was Baron de Brogueville, the present Minister of War. Against general indifference, the repugnance of the people for barracks and military duties, and the strong resistance of the politicians, he finally succeeded in getting the law passed.
Some time before the war, the Belgian army was in a sad condition. Officially, the active army was supposed to be composed of 100,000 men. In time of peace, the strength was 42,500 men, or about 1/180 of the population of the country.
In reality, the actual number of men with the colors was much less. Frequently, it was less than half what it was supposed to be. For financial and other reasons, furloughs were almost obligatory. Companies frequently went to drill with 15 or 20 men.
The men were ill-instructed because the repeated furloughs interrupted their training, sometimes absorbing as much as a third of all their service. Moreover, interior discipline was extremely lax, on account of the intervention of the civil and religious authorities.
The officers, although well educated, brought varying degrees of devotion to their profeSsion. Some had come in for the social position, the not very large but assured salary, certainty of retirement, gold braid, in short, a thousand considerations completely foreign to the true vocation of the soldier. They came into the army as into any other public service, into an army which ran no risk of going to war. They had little to worry about, took no responsibility, and drew their pay. They were in a minority as compared to their more zealous colleagues, but they brought, none the less, an element of scepticism and indifference to circles in which enthusiasm and ardor should be the keynote.
Until 1910 selection of individuals for conscription was determined by lottery. The law also provided loopholes for those not wishing to serve. A lottery number was regarded as "good" if it resulted in an exemption, "bad" if it led to selection. Poor individuals with bad numbers served long tours of duty with little or no compensation. Wealthy individuals with bad numbers were often able to arrange for a paid substitute to serve in their place. Insurance companies wrote policies covering bad luck at the lottery.
The inequities of the selective service system also caused political and social unrest. The system was widely recognized as unsatisfactory, and 17 laws were written attempting to correct it between 1830 and 1910. Finally, in 1913, universal compulsory service was adopted and the lottery abandoned.
The new military law went into effect eight months before the declaration of war. It seemed a particularly unfavorable moment for the invaded country. However, its campaign began with a real prodigy: its general mobilization was executed with a rapidity that surprised the world. Decreed at 8 o’clock in the evening of 31 July it was completely finished on the 4th of August: in less than four days.
They comprised about 120,000 trained men. During the few days when it was possible, nearly 45,000 volunteers presented themselves; a little less than half could be accepted. The 120,000 soldiers of the standing army came from 15 classes; they were then almost all men from 20 to 36 years of age. The first eight classes, the youngest, were assigned to the mobile army, and the seven older classes to the fortress troops.
The mobile army was divided into six divisions and a cavalry division. A division comprised three mixed brigades, a regiment of artillery, a regiment of cavalry, a battalion of engineers, a telegraph section, a transport unit, and a group of “gendarmerie.” Each mixed brigade was made up of two regiments of infantry, of three battalions, of four companies, of from 150 to 175 men.
The German "Schlieffen Plan" deliberately violated Belgian neutrality in August 1914, the beginning of World War I. The plan was designed to preclude a two-front war in the east and the west by striking at the heart of France along the Franco-German frontier. German troops were to sweep through Luxembourg and Belgium into northern France, envelop Paris, and force the retreating French army into the Moselle River valley, where it would be defeated. The key to the plan was rapid progress through Belgium. The Belgian armed forces provided limited opposition to the advancing German troops but nevertheless were able to threaten the lengthening German supply lines. This threat influenced the German decision to avoid directly attacking Paris and to slow the advance across Belgium.
The Belgian Army refused to surrender and established defensive trenches in western Flanders in September 1914. The four-day battle of the Marne turned the tide of the war from imminent German victory to a four-year stalemate on the western front. The Belgian military effort was an example of how seemingly hopeless defensive operations can be crucial for victory in a larger strategic context.
The part played by the Belgian army in the Great War was considerable. It may be said that its action at the beginning modified the whole aspect of the war and, very probably, its final issue. Thanks to the resistance of the Belgian troops, first on the Meuse, then on the Gette and the Néthe, and finally on the Yser, the German strategic plan could not be carried out. The armed intervention of Belgium was the grain of sand that threw out the whole careful mechanism. The forts of Liege and Namur immobilized the enormous wave for twenty days. The Belgian army had in front of it something like 500,000 men during these 20 days, and the Germans lost 50,000 men.
Flanders proved a gruesome graveyard for all the combatants. The Germans left 350,000 dead upon that battle field, while the Allies lost fully 150,000. To the Allied forces the British contributed 50,000, or more than half of their Expeditionary Forces; the French, 75,000; and the Belgians, 25,000. The whole area of Flanders was a shambles. Rivers and lakes were choked with human bodies. Thousands of corpses lay unburied on hillsides and plains. The whole region was a hideous mass of ruins. Hundreds of towns and thousands of villages were reduced to ashes.
After the fall of Liege and Namur, the plucky Belgian army had retreated before the German hordes to the strongly fortified city of Antwerp, one of the largest and richest of all the ports in the world, with a population of 350,000. The Belgian court and King Albert's government had also retired within the Antwerp lines. Here the army of 120,000, commanded by Gen. Moranville, awaited the seige that was sure to begin.
Gen Moranville marched a single corps south. The new German army, now numbering 200,000, went in pursuit of the Belgian corps, numbering 50,000, which had meanwhile taken Aerschot and Louvain. A four days' battle was fought, September 13-17, on the line of the Malines-Louvain railroad, resulting in the retirement of the Belgians to Antwerp. The Belgian army, however, had attained its object; which was to compel the recall of the German reinforcements, and the consequent relief of the pressure on the British and French armies at Mons and Charleroi.
Winston Churchill, First Lord of the British Admiralty, requested that the Belgian army postpone its evacuation of Antwerp till further reinforcements arrived. Against his better judgment, King Albert agreed. When first he had appealed for British aid, some days before, King Albert had expected that an army of 50,000 would be sent to the succour of Belgium, and no doubt the British would have been glad to have sent that number could they have done so. Lord Churchill could only spare 6000 men in Antwerp's grave crisis.
The evacuation of the Belgian army was so long delayed that only two-thirds of the forces were able to escape toward Ostend and Ghent. Full 30,000 Belgian and British soldiers were driven into Holland, where they were interned for the remainder of the war. For this blunder, Churchill was relieved from office and given a colonel's commission in the British army.
The effects of the German invasion and subsequent occupation were devastating, with 46,000 dead, in excess of 150,000 severely wounded, and the economy systematically dismantled to support the German war effort. Nearly all heavy industry was destroyed, the infrastructure was thrown into total collapse, and economic losses were estimated to exceed 7 billion Belgian Francs (BF), representing approximately 16 percent of the country's wealth.
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