Bowmen and other Legends of the War, The

The Bowmen and other Legends of the War

Arthur Machen

Is it fake-news?

A First World War fake-news story?

The Angels of Mons seem to have been conjured up from Arthur Machen’s trench warfare short-story The Bowmen. In his introduction to this collection of four short stories Machen wonders how his fictional work could have become such a fantastical and widely believed legend…

This affair of The Bowmen has been such an odd one from first to last, so many queer complications have entered into it, there have been so many and so divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and speculation concerning it, that I honestly do not know where to begin. I propose, then, to solve the difficulty by apologising for beginning at all.