The Hell Hound of No Man’s Land

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!

Image via Wikipedia

A Fact, Not a Fiction?

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. 

Captain Newhouse stated that certain facts had been brought to light, as a result of the recent death of Dr Gottlieb Hochmuller in a Berlin riot. Secret documents were found in his house, which proved the Hell Hound of Mons really existed. The creature had come out of maybe the most repulsive scientific experiment the world had ever known, as a giant hound with the brain of a human madman.

Indeed, Dr Hochmuller had roamed the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad because of his hatred of England. With the sanction of his government, Hochmuller removed the brain of this man and inserted it in a giant Siberian wolfhound. The dog lived, grew rapidly stronger and after careful training was released in No Man’s Land.

Image via Wikipedia

Only an Urban legend, and Nothing More?

Could there be any truth in this monstrous horror tale? The surgical procedure Captain Newhouse described, is quite impossible. And the story reminds us of other tales – what we would call now “urban legends” – of alleged atrocities committed by “the Hun”. Most of these World War One horror tales have been proven to be war propaganda and nothing more.

Theo Paijmans, who wrote for the Fortean Times an interesting article on The Hound of Mons, could find no traces of a Dr Gottlieb Hochmuller and his bizarre medical procedures that remind us of the very fictional experiments of Baron von Frankenstein. The sudden disappearance of the creature also has elements of the various legends concerning demon dogs and hounds from hell.

But, as Paijmans points out, perhaps a giant dog really did haunt the trenches, abandoned by his master, hungry prowling the battlefield. And maybe Agatha Christie had some good reason for choosing Belgium during World War One as the setting for one of her supernatural short stories, titled… The Hound of Death (1933).

Other Great War Articles:

A Poet of the Great War, Wilfred Owen

In Flanders Fields

Phantoms of the Great War