Current Information:

Born-Hackney

Beaurevoir Communal Cemetery, France

The Great Retreat

After the opening battles of the war at Mons on 23rd August, 1914 and Le Cateau on 26th August, the British Army (BEF), in conjunction with the French Army, began a retreat that took them all the way back to the River Marne, 200 miles to the south. With the Germans in hot pursuit they were forced to fight a series of rear guard actions as they fell back in extremely hot weather. The Great Retreat, as it became known, came to an end on 5th September, 1914 when the allied forces attacked along the River Marne and drove the Germans back to the River Aisne.

One of the units involved in this was the 2nd Essex battalion of 12 Brigade, 4th Division which had seen action during the Battle of Le Cateau and by 2nd September, 1914, the day on which George Prince died from wounds, they had reached Dammartin-en-Goele, some miles further south from where he is buried.