British marines arrive in Antwerp

On 3 October 1914 the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, arrived in besieged Antwerp, and during the night of 3–4 October the first British reinforcements reached the city. This was the Royal Marine Brigade, made up of men of the Royal Marines. Its arrival was meant to convince the Belgians that it was worth defending the fortress for a few more days.

The Belgians prepare to evacuate

At the beginning of October the situation in Antwerp was critical. German siege mortars had destroyed several forts of the outer ring, and the Belgian divisions on the south-eastern sector had fallen back behind the river Nete. On 2 October the Belgian supreme defence council decided that the government and the diplomatic corps should leave the city the following day. London was informed of the planned evacuation.

The news caused alarm there. The loss of Antwerp and the destruction of the Belgian army would open the way for the Germans to the Channel coast. Late in the evening of 2 October Churchill, who was just on his way to Dunkirk, met the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey. They agreed that Churchill would go to Antwerp and judge on the spot whether the fortress could still be held.

Churchill in the fortress

Churchill arrived in Antwerp during the day on 3 October. According to eyewitnesses he immediately toured the defence lines, heedless of the shelling. In talks with King Albert I and Prime Minister Charles de Broqueville he argued that help was on the way, and persuaded the Belgians to halt the evacuation. He promised to send British sailors and, in the longer term, regular divisions from Britain.

Marines on the Nete

The first of the promised units was General Archibald Paris’s Royal Marine Brigade, which had been stationed at Dunkirk since the second half of September. Some of the same battalions had already landed at Ostend in August. Depending on the source, the brigade numbered between about 1,800 and 2,200 men. It was brought up by rail, and according to the British website The Long, Long Trail the first units reached the outskirts of Antwerp at about one o’clock in the morning on 4 October.

That same day the marines, some of them carried in requisitioned London buses, took up positions in trenches on the northern edge of Lier, on the Nete, alongside the Belgians. They were not well prepared for this kind of fighting. According to The Long, Long Trail about 700 men of the brigade had had only basic training, and some of them did not even have weapons.

The help proved insufficient. During the night of 5–6 October the Germans forced the Nete, and the defenders had to fall back towards the inner ring of forts. The Royal Marine Brigade, reinforced on 6 October by two naval brigades, became part of the Royal Naval Division and fought in Antwerp until the city was evacuated.