Battle of Le Grand Fayt
1914 CE.
Shown on the map at 50.114°, 3.803°.
The Rearguard Affair of Le Grand Fayt was a rearguard action fought at Grand-Fayt by the British Expeditionary Force's 2nd Division, during the Great Retreat on the Western Front in 1914. The German 2nd Army commander General Karl von Bülow had ordered a rapid pursuit after the battles of 21–24 August against the French Fifth Army and the Expeditionary Force (EF). The 1st and 2nd armies were sent to the south-west to gain the left flank of the Allied line. The X Reserve Corps encountered "especially obstinate" resistance at Marbaix and Le Grand-Fayt. On the morning of the 26 August 1914, the 2nd Connaught Rangers under Lieutenant-Colonel A. W. Abercrombie covering the retreat of the British 5th Infantry Brigade from Petit Landrecies. Unknown to Abercrombie, by late morning the retreat had already taken place but the orders had not reached the Connaught Rangers. Hearing the sound of rifle fire coming from near-by Marbaix, Abercrombie set off with two platoons of infantry in the direction Marbaix only to come under heavy artillery and machine-gun fire.
Text from the Wikipedia article Rearguard Affair of Le Grand Fayt, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.