Angels of Mons The Angels of Mons is a popular legend about a group of angel s who supposedly protected members of the British army in the Battle of Mons at the outset of World War I . History . On August 22 – 23 , 1914 , the first major engagement of the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War occurred at the Battle of Mons . Advancing German forces were thrown back by heavily outnumbered British troops , who suffered heavy casualties and , being outflanked , were forced into rapid retreat the next day . The retreat and the battle were rapidly perceived by the British public as being a key moment in the war . Despite the censorship going on in Britain at the time , this battle was the first indication the British public had that defeating Germany would not be as easy as some had thought . Considering the numbers of German troops involved in the battle , the British ability to hold them off for as long as they did seemed remarkable , and army recruitment shot up in the weeks that followed . Arthur Machen and " The Bowmen " . 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 . Machen , who had already written a number of factual articles on the conflict for the paper , set his story at the time of the retreat from the Battle of Mons in August 1914 . The story described phantom bowmen from the Battle of Agincourt summoned by a soldier calling on St . George , destroying a German host . Machen ' s story was not , however , labelled as fiction and the same edition of the " Evening News " ran a story by a different author under the heading " Our Short Story " . Additionally , Machen ' s story was written from a first - hand perspective and was a kind of false document , a technique Machen knew well . The unintended result was that Machen had a number of requests to provide evidence for his sources for the story soon after its publication , from readers who thought it was true , to which he responded that it was completely imaginary , as he had no desire to create a hoax . A month or two later Machen received requests from the editors of parish magazine s to reprint the story , which were granted . A priest , the editor of one of these magazines , subsequently wrote to Machen asking if he would allow the story to be reprinted in pamphlet form , and if he would write a short preface giving sources for the story . Machen replied that they were welcome to reprint but he could not give any sources for the story since he had none . The priest replied that Machen must be mistaken , that the " facts " of the story must be true , and that Machen had just elaborated on a true account . As Machen later said : Around that time variations of the story began to appear , told as authentic histories , including an account that told how the corpses of German soldiers had been found on the battlefield with arrow wounds . In " The Bowmen " Machen ' s soldier saw " a long line of shapes , with a shining about them . " A Mr . A . P . Sinnett , writing in the " Occult Review " , stated that " those who could see said they saw ' a row of shining beings ' between the two armies . " This led Machen to suggest that the bowmen of his story had become the Angels of Mons . This last point was challenged by Harold Begbie in his book : " On the Side of the Angels : A Reply to Arthur Machen " , London 1915 . Angels . On 24 April 1915 , an account was published in the British " Spiritualist " magazine telling of visions of a supernatural force that miraculously intervened to help the British at the decisive moment of the battle . This rapidly resulted in a flurry of similar accounts and the spread of wild rumours . Descriptions of this force varied from it being medieval longbow archers alongside St . George to a strange luminous cloud , though eventually the most popular version came to be angelic warriors . Similar tales of such battlefield visions occurred in medieval and ancient warfare . Atrocity reports like the Rape of Belgium and that of the Crucified Soldier paved the way for a belief that the Christian God would intervene directly against such an evil enemy . However , there are strong similarities between many of these accounts of visions and Machen ' s story published six months earlier . In May 1915 a full - blown controversy was erupting , with the angels being used as proof of the action of divine providence on the side of the Allies in sermon s across Britain , and then spreading into newspaper reports published widely across the world . Machen , bemused by all this , attempted to end the rumours by republishing the story in August in book form , with a long preface stating the rumours were false and originated in his story . It became a bestseller , and resulted in a vast series of other publications claiming to provide evidence of the Angels ' existence . Machen tried to set the record straight , but any attempt to lessen the impact of such an inspiring story was seen as bordering on treason by some . These new publications included popular songs and artists ' renderings of the angels . There were more reports of angels and apparitions from the front including Joan of Arc . Kevin McClure ' s study describes two types of accounts circulating , some more clearly based on Machen , others with different details . In a time of intense media interest all these reports allegedly confirming sightings of supernatural activity were second - hand and some of them were hoax es created by soldiers who were not even at Mons . A careful investigation by the Society for Psychical Research in 1915 said of the first - hand testimony , " We have received none at all , and of testimony at second - hand we have none that would justify us in assuming the occurrence of any supernormal phenomenon " . The SPR went on to say the stories relating to battlefield " visions " which circulated during the spring and summer of 1915 , " prove on investigation to be founded on mere rumour , and cannot be traced to any authoritative source . ” Given that the Society for Psychical Research believed in the existence of supernatural forces , the conclusions of this report are highly significant . The sudden spread of the rumours in the spring of 1915 , six months after the events and Machen ' s story was published , is also puzzling . The stories published then often attribute their sources to anonymous British officers . The latest and most detailed examination of the Mons story by David Clarke suggests these men may have been part of a covert attempt by military intelligence to spread morale - boosting propaganda and disinformation . As it was a time of allied problems with the " Lusitania " sinking , Zeppelin attacks and failure to achieve a breakthrough on the Western Front , the timing would make military sense . Some of the stories conveniently claimed that sources could not be revealed for security reasons . 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 . According to the conclusion of the most detailed study of the event it seems that Machen ' s story provided the genesis for the vast majority of the tales . The stories themselves certainly boosted morale on the home front , as popular enthusiasm was dying down in 1915 and they demonstrate the importance of religion in wartime . Postwar developments . After the war the story continued to be frequently repeated but no evidence to support the claim that the Angels existed was ever given by those who were there . The best evidence provided was in Brigadier - General John Charteris ' memoirs " At G . H . Q . " , published in 1931 , which said the story of the Angels of Mons was a popular rumour amongst the troops in September 1914 ; this was the earliest any account said the rumour was in circulation . However it appears from examination of his original letters he wrote those entries after the war and falsified the dates . Given his association with pieces of allied propaganda like the story of the “ German Corpse - Rendering Works ” ( " Kadaververwertungsanstalt " ) this might indicate Charteris had been behind an attempt to use the Angels for propaganda purposes . Machen was associated with the story for the rest of his life and grew sick of the connection , as he regarded “ The Bowmen ” as a poor piece of work . He made little money from the story then or later . The sudden revival of interest in appearances of angels from the 1980s onwards , especially in the United States , not only amongst Christians , but those interested in the New Age , has caused uncritical accounts of the story of the angels who saved the British army to be regularly published in books and magazines . Similarly , the story is also often used by sceptic s as a good example of how believers in the supernatural can become convinced of fantastic things by slender evidence . References to the story can be found in World War I set novels and films like " " . The Friends of Arthur Machen frequently publish articles on developments in the case . William Doidge hoax . In 2001 , an article in " The Sunday Times " claimed that a diary , film and photographic evidence proving the existence of the Angels of Mons from a World War I soldier named William Doidge had been found . The article discussed a long involved story in which Doidge was involved with an American GI and an angel seen years later in Woodchester Mansion . It was claimed Marlon Brando and Tony Kaye were going to spend £350 , 000 to buy the evidence to make a film . Other papers like " Variety " and the " Los Angeles Times " and television programmes soon followed up the story and a website connected to the mystery became very popular . The footage was supposedly found in a trunk in an antique shop by Danny Sullivan in Monmouth , close to Machen ' s birthplace of Caerleon . In 2002 in a BBC Radio documentary " The Making of an Urban Myth " Sullivan admitted the story was a complete hoax to drum up interest in Woodchester Mansion ; the footage and soldier never existed .