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Having retreated from Mons two days earlier, Le Cateau and Mons being 24.8 mi (39.9 km) apart, the British II Corps (General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien) was exhausted.The corps had become separated from the rest of the BEF because of the unexpected retreat by Sir Douglas Haig, the commander of I Corps, who had fought a rearguard action at Landrecies on 25 August.
The Battle of Mons was the first major action of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the First World War. It was a subsidiary action of the Battle of the Frontiers, in which the Allies clashed with Germany on the French borders. At Mons, the British Army attempted to hold the line of the Mons–Condé Canal against the advancing German 1st ...
The Battle of Mons was a subsidiary action of the ... Of the 40,000 Entente troops fighting at Le Cateau, ... Military Operations France and Belgium, 1914: Mons, ...
The term British Expeditionary Force is often used to refer only to the forces present in France prior to the end of the First Battle of Ypres on 22 November 1914. By the end of 1914—after the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne and Ypres—the existent BEF had been almost exhausted, although it helped stop the German advance. [3]
He commanded II Corps at the Battle of Mons, the first major action fought by the BEF, and the Battle of Le Cateau, where he fought a vigorous and successful defensive action contrary to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief Sir John French, with whom he had had a personality clash dating back some years.
After the British and German armies first encountered each other at the Battle of Mons on 23 August 1914, the outnumbered British Expeditionary Force had begun to fall back in front of a stronger German army. The two clashed again at the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August, after which the British again withdrew towards the river Marne. The ...
However, it has also been argued that the vigorous defensive action at Le Cateau relieved the pressure and allowed the troops to re-organise and make a fighting withdrawal. [6] On the morning of 26 August, while the Battle of Le Cateau was in progress, Sir John had a hostile meeting with Joffre and Lanrezac at St Quentin.
A la gloire de Dieu et en souvenir durable des 3888 officiers et soldats dont les tombes ne sont pas connues appartenant au Corps Expéditionnaire Britannique qui, mobilisé le 5 Août 1914, débarqua en France en Août 1914 et combattit à Mons, au Cateau, sur la Marne, sur l'Aisne, jusqu'en Octobre 1914. The memorial's English inscription says: