Battle of the Gete

The Battle of the Gete was the fighting between the Belgian Army and the advancing German forces on 18 and 19 August 1914 along the Gete river in central Belgium and on the roads of retreat to Antwerp. It was not a single great battle but a series of fierce rearguard actions covering the withdrawal of the Belgian field army. Thanks to them King Albert I managed to save the army from encirclement.

The line of the Gete

Belgian war plans provided for the field army to concentrate in the centre of the country, in front of the fortress of Antwerp, known as the national redoubt. After the Germans invaded on 4 August, the main forces took up positions behind the Gete, a small river flowing from south to north east of Brussels. In the front line, from around Tienen (French: Tirlemont) southwards towards Jodoigne, stood the 1st and 5th Divisions, with the 2nd and 6th Divisions behind them around Leuven and Wavre. They were joined by the remnants of the 3rd Division, which had defended Liège. A cavalry division operated on the northern wing.

On 12 August this same cavalry, supported by infantry, repulsed the German horsemen in the Battle of Halen, on the same river. It was a separate engagement, fought before the main German forces arrived, but it greatly raised Belgian morale.

On the Gete the Belgians waited for the arrival of the French and British, who were, however, concentrating much further south. Meanwhile, after the fall of the Liège forts, the German First Army under General Alexander von Kluck and the Second Army under General Karl von Bülow, by estimates more than half a million soldiers in all, set off across Belgium. The Belgian Army numbered about a hundred thousand men. Fighting in the open field threatened it with destruction.

18 August

On the morning of 18 August German infantry attacked the Belgian outposts on the Gete. At Budingen and Geetbets in the north squadrons of the Guides regiment held out, and south of them, around Tienen, the 1st Division. The heaviest fighting was done by its two mixed brigades at Sint-Margriete-Houtem (French: Hautem-Sainte-Marguerite) and Grimde. About 2,200 Belgian infantrymen, poorly trained and armed, faced the German 18th Infantry Division of IX Corps, several times more numerous and with far stronger artillery.

The Belgians held out all afternoon. The German artillery gradually silenced their few guns, and the infantry took one village after another. According to the Belgian official account, the Germans took Tienen and attacked the positions at Sint-Margriete-Houtem from the front and the flank, and the 2nd Brigade put up a stubborn resistance until late in the evening, which allowed the rest of the division to break away from the enemy. Some studies say the order to retreat was given as early as about 4.30 p.m. Losses were heavy. According to various sources the two Belgian brigades lost between about 1,200 and 1,600 men killed, wounded and taken prisoner. Several hundred of the fallen were buried in the military cemetery at Sint-Margriete-Houtem.

The King’s decision

Albert I, who commanded the army in person, judged that further defence of the Gete would mean encirclement. On 18 August he ordered a retreat to Antwerp. Sources differ on the hour of this decision: some point to the early afternoon, when the Germans were already close to the Belgian positions, others to the evening of that day. The decision meant giving up Brussels without a fight, but it preserved the army, the state’s only armed force.

The retreat

On 19 August the Belgian divisions marched north-west towards the Dyle river and on to Antwerp. The roads were choked with refugees. Rearguards covered the retreat, and the heaviest fighting took place at Aarschot, where a brigade of the 3rd Division held up the Germans for several hours before, attacked from three sides, it had to withdraw. After taking Aarschot the Germans shot more than a hundred inhabitants. On the same day they entered Leuven.

By 20 August the Belgian Army had taken refuge behind the ring of Antwerp’s forts. That day Kluck’s troops marched into Brussels.

Significance

The fighting on the Gete closed the period in which the Belgians tried to stop the Germans in the open field. The Belgian Army was defeated but kept its ability to fight. From Antwerp it threatened the flank and supply lines of the Germans marching on France, forcing them to leave considerable forces in Belgium. As early as 25 August Albert I launched the first major sortie from the fortress, described on the page Battle of Mechelen. Antwerp held out until October 1914.