Le Cateau - one day in August
Episode description
In this episode, we visit the battlefield of Le Cateau. In August 1914 Horace Smith-Dorrien's II Corps stood and fought when they had been ordered to retreat. This disobedience delayed the Germans and has been described by one military historian as being "the battle that saved the BEF".
Sir John French later used Smith-Dorrien's insubordination as a tool to dismiss him. What happened that day? We look at the battle itself and then take a journey around the battlefield to visit some of the cemeteries and memorials commemorating the dead. Our journey takes in the most famous tree on the battlefield, the grave of arguably the most famous war poet of the Great War, and finishes at the poignant vista of the Suffolk Memorial.
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