The Hell Hound of Mons

The French author Albert Dauzat told a fascinating legend that emerged from World War One in a book that was published two years after the Great War. Civilian skeptics laughed at the soldiers' tales of the murderous giant hound of No Man's Land, but to the soldiers it was a gruesome reality...

The most famous legend of the First World War is undoubtedly the story of the Angels of Mons. In August 1914, during the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force from the Belgian city of Mons, it seemed impossible to break through the German army that outnumbered the British soldiers twice. Arthur Machen, a writer of supernatural tales, published a "report" of an eye witness in a newspaper. He said Saint George was seen on the battlefield fighting of the Germans, together with a 15th century band of bowmen. It was a story he made up, but suddenly British soldiers found themselves indeed fighting side by side with angels!

In those dark days, Mons was also made famous by another, much darker legend. On a night in November, Captain Yeskes and four of his London Fusiliers went on a patrol in No Man's Land. Several days later their corpses were found, with teeth marks at the throats. And in the British trenches a weird, blood-curldling howl was heard... the howl of the Hell Hound of Mons.

Afterwards, on the battlefields of the Marne and the Somme, near Verdun and Ypres, patrols that ventured out in the darkness between the trenches, were found with the same telltale marks at their throats, while the howl continued to roam through No Man's Land. Sentries declared they saw a grey form flashing past the barbed wire. The giant Hound of Hell was running there, silently...

In August 1919, the Evening News of Oklahoma published a story of the Canadian veteran Captain F.J. Newhouse. The Terror of No Man's Land that was stalking among the corpses and dragged soldiers down to their death, was no apparition of a fear-crazed mind, he said. It was no phantom, no hallucination, no fiction... but a gruesome reality of the Great War.

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