Haig’s Army

Mr Gladstone famously declared that he had spent the rest of his life ‘unlearning’ the prejudices of his youth. I know the feeling. The prejudices of my youth regarding the Great War were the commonplace ones: the war had no purpose to justify the suffering it unleashed; its conduct was criminally mismanaged, especially by the British high command; its outcome was disastrous. These views emanated from within my own family, especially from my formidable grandmother Louisa Sheldon, but they gained legitimacy from their currency among educated people. As a child the only educated people I knew were teachers. All my history teachers, and fine teachers they were, articulated the traditional view. If any questioned this, and I certainly did not, there was always the ‘ultimate deterrent’, Mr A.J.P. Taylor. Taylor had a beguiling influence on my generation of schoolboy historians. He was what would now be called ‘cool’. He was witty, irreverent, compelling. (And, of course, wrong.) I was an ‘early reader’. I have loved books all my life. I have never understood the view, commonly expressed by my father’s friends but not by my father, that ‘you can learn nowt from books’. I was anxious to learn about the Great War, so I read everything available. Fortunately, everything available in my local library included John Terraine’s Douglas Haig, the Educated Soldier. I cannot remember exactly when I read this book, except that it was before the broadcast of the TV series The Great War, though I can remember the exact moment of taking it from the shelf. I rushed home to read it, secure in the belief that here was more ‘evidence’ to support my family’s world view. Reading it was a shock and one that went much beyond my understanding of the Great War. There is a sense in which the book made me a historian. It also sowed the first seeds of doubt about A.J.P. Taylor. Someone, my history master I think, showed me Taylor’s review of the book, in which he described it as a ‘whitewash’. ‘Oh no it isn’t,’ I thought. ‘I’ve read it.’ If Terraine’s study was an eye-opener, so was the TV series, or rather everyone else’s response to it. I seemed to be the only person who watched the programmes who was listening to the script. The script was thoroughly revisionist, but this seemed to have no effect whatsoever on established views, which were re-inforced by the haunting music, sad pictures, poems and eye-witness testimony. By the time I went to university I was a convinced revisionist. My university friends typically thought that my views on the war were the product of eccentricity or a deliberately provocative pose. It caused a mild sensation when I dramatically walked out of the film Oh What a Lovely War. But it took my first visit to the battlefields of the Western Front, in September 1972, to complete my journey along the road to Damascus.

By the time of this visit I was extremely well read on the war. I thought of myself as a bit of an expert. I made the trip to the battlefields with a friend, who had been inspired to go by his reading of Martin Middlebrook’s The First Day of the Somme. My friend’s role was to drive. Mine was to be the tour guide. I expected to instruct, not to learn much myself. My first sight of the Somme battlefield disabused me of my expertise. By then we had already ‘done’ the Salient, the dreary battlefields of 1915 and Vimy Ridge without the penny having dropped. Shortly after crossing a rather insignificant little stream, which turned out – to my amazement – to be the River Ancre, ever in my mind’s eye like the Severn at Bridgnorth, we stopped the car. I got out of the passenger seat and stretched. It was a mild, dull, dry day. It was incredibly quiet, a landscape devoid of people and animals, no movement, no wind, no rustle of vegetation, not even any birdsong. You could see for miles. What I could see rolling away from me was the Somme battlefield of 1916. And then it hit me – with all the terrific weight of the perfectly bloody obvious. The British were fighting uphill. This had simply never occurred to me before or, if it had, the significance was wasted. It was wasted no more. ‘Fight going down,’ wrote Sun Tsu, ‘not climbing up.’ The Somme is not a mountainous landscape. The hills are neither towering nor are they steep. But he who holds them dominates the battlefield. This became more and more obvious during the two days we spent there. Only then did I fully understand what a difficult war it was to win. The challenge for the BEF, the greatest challenge faced by any British army, was to dislodge and defeat a numerous, courageous, well trained, well disciplined, well armed, tactically adept army – the best in the world in 1916 – holding a ‘defence system some four miles deep … protected by massive wire entanglements and covered by the flanking fire of machine guns and a wall of fire from artillery and mortars of all calibres sited in depth’ on the high ground. I came away from this visit with a renewed respect for the men who had mounted this challenge and for their commander-in-chief.

During the last few years my professional analysis of the Great War has focused on the general officers of the British Expeditionary Force, of whom there were - at the last count - 1,257. This number is interesting in itself. It represents roughly ten per cent of the total officer strength on the active list at the outbreak of war. Their number shows how vast and complicated an institution the BEF was, with a need not only for commanders of combat formations - armies, corps, divisions and brigades - but also for staff officers, gunners, sappers, logisticians and signallers. The war offered not only an enormous professional challenge to regular officers (who provided most of the generals) but also a tremendous professional opportunity. Not all of them rose to the opportunity and there was a high turnover in consequence. ‘Get on or get out’ was the motif of general officer promotion from 1916 onwards. This expansion in the number of generals is indicative of the experience of the BEF as a whole. Its expansion was not only huge but also rapid. The speed of the expansion, however, was achieved at a price. That price was a massive de-skilling of the army at all levels. This was nowhere more apparent than at the opening of the Somme campaign. It was Haig’s first battle as C-in-C and Rawlinson’s first battle as an Army commander. Wherever you looked men were ‘acting up’ in commands and staff positions for which their pre-war and wartime experience had done little to prepare them. The situation was no better among the attacking infantry, many of whom had never fired their weapons in anger and who were barely trained at all by pre-war standards. No one understood these realities better than Haig himself. In a perfect world the BEF would not have undertaken major offensive operations against the German army in 1916. The expanded army’s principal architect, Lord Kitchener, envisaged its offensive deployment only in 1917, by when he expected the combined effects of the French and Russian armies to have rendered the German military machine ready for defeat. In 1916, however, it was the French army that was ready for defeat. The British government showed no willingness to risk the consequences of France being knocked out of the war. This was inimical to Britain’s national interests. The BEF would have to take the war to the enemy. The BEF’s real training would be ‘on the job’, chaotic, brutal and costly.

The de-skilling of the army has become central to my understanding of the war. This may seem banal but it is pure sophistication in comparison with the other insight that I can offer you: the Great War did not last very long. At least credit me with a degree of revisionism. After all, the war is generally thought to have been a long one, once it was not over by Christmas 1914. But, in fact, it lasted only 52 months. Haig did not become C-in-C until the 17th month. Fighting by the BEF on the scale of the French and German armies did not begin until the 24th month. And the BEF did not become the most important Allied army in the field until the 35th month. During the past year I have been doing some serious reading on the Second World War. This has been very instructive. There is a splendid ‘sharp end’ account of the war by a Canadian gunner called George Blackburn. He was a September 1939 volunteer. His unit, 4th Canadian Field Artillery, first went into action in Normandy in July 1944. By the time it deployed, 4th Canadian Field Artillery was the product of 58 months’ increasingly realistic and effective training, a period six months longer than the entire First World War! ‘It’s hard to imagine any difficulty arising from terrain or weather, or any problem of a technical or mechanical nature connected with guns, vehicles, wireless sets, or other equipment, that hasn’t been confronted and overcome on countless occasions during training schemes,’ wrote Blackburn. ‘In many respects the Regiment could be compared to a reliable well-oiled machine, that has benefited from the most up-to-date modifications and been run-in long enough to have all the bugs worked out of it. It was not always thus. The stories of foul-ups, large and small, reaching back through the years are legion, and all ranks should be grateful they were not committed to battle in those first couple of years of inadequate equipment and training, but allowed to accumulate the superior training and equipment they now possess.’ The BEF enjoyed no such luxuries. They were in contact with the main forces of the main enemy from day one. This is one of the major differences between the experience of the British army in the two world wars and one that superficial comparisons between the ‘hopelessness’ of British military leadership in the First World War and its ‘excellence’ in the Second inevitably ignores.

So, the British army began the war from a position of weakness. So, the army Haig inherited in December 1915 was big but hopelessly inadequate in equipment, training and understanding. So, the exigencies of coalition warfare meant that the weak army he inherited had to take up the burden of offensive war before it could be made strong. So, the BEF had to learn to fight while fighting a formidable enemy entrenched on the high ground. So what? My argument so far sounds awfully like a series of excuses for failure. But Haig did not fail: he succeeded. When he took command of the BEF his task was clear. He had expressed it famously in his diary, nine months earlier, when he wrote ‘We cannot hope to win this war until we defeat the German army’. His job was to defeat the German army. Thirty-five months after he became commander-in-chief a German delegation crossed no man’s land under the protection of a white flag and asked for an armistice. It is amazing to me how often this seems to have been forgotten. (Major-General Julian Thompson told me of a fellow guest at a dinner party who once asked him to explain British defeat in the First World War.) It is, of course, the human costs of the British and Allied victory that have obscured the outcome. It was Winston Churchill who described the Great War as a ‘victory bought so dear as to be indistinguishable from defeat’. He was wrong. This is a point of view that only victors are free to indulge. ‘No difference between victors and vanquished,’ wrote the Labour politician Hugh Dalton, a veteran of the war. ‘A foolish fable. The Germans didn’t believe it after 1918. We shouldn’t have believed it if they had won. We shan’t believe [it] if they win next time.’

In order to defeat the German army the BEF had to improve and improve rapidly. It did this. But there is no sense of evolution in most popular and press accounts of the war, much less of dynamic change. Alan Taylor’s verdict that the British army learned nothing during the war except how to repeat its mistakes on an ever bigger scale must stand as one his most fatuous (though there is plenty of competition). The BEF in the autumn of 1918 is almost unrecognisable from the army of 1914, even of 1916. I realised this quite early on in my life. I claim no credit for the realisation. It was an accident of birth. I am from North Staffordshire. Part of my interest in the war was local. This interest was stimulated by an article in the Staffordshire Evening Sentinel in October 1965, fiftieth anniversary of the 137th (Staffordshire) Brigade’s fateful attack on the Hohenzollern Redoubt, at the fag end of the battle of Loos. 13 October 1915 was the Staffordshire Brigade’s worst day in the war (it was unique among formations that attacked on 1 July 1916 in not having its worst casualties on that day). The attack on the Hohenzollern redoubt was not only costly but also ineffective, achieving – in the words of the British official historian – nothing more than a ‘tragic waste of infantry’. The achievements of the brigade, and its parent division, the 46th (North Midland), were equally barren (and almost equally costly) at Gommecourt on 1 July. The division’s performance, even its manhood, was unfavourably compared with that of the 56th (London) Division on its right flank. This was pretty depressing stuff for a local patriot. Fortunately, I read on. The third great date in the history of the Staffordshire Brigade was very different. On 29 September 1918 it spearheaded 46th Division’s breaking of the Hindenburg Line at Bellenglise, one of the greatest achievements of the war, described by Foch as ‘the blow from which there could be no [German] recovery’. No one who has studied Bellenglise could doubt that the army had transformed itself. Fourth Army’s operational planning, based on the set-piece battle, limited objectives, and effective all-arms co-operation showed that General Rawlinson had learned from the bitter experience of 1916. Walter Braithwaite, remembered if at all as the despised butt of the ANZACs for his role as Ian Hamilton’s chief of staff at Gallipoli, showed himself to be an outstanding corps commander. The GOC 46th Division, the 40-year old Gerry Boyd, had risen from the ranks of the pre-war Regular army. He looked more like a Derby winner than a donkey. The GOC 137th Brigade, John Campbell, had won the VC on the Somme in 1916, hardly a ‘chateau general’. Other heroes began to emerge: Bill Coltman, a stretcher-bearer in the 6th North Staffords, most decorated British OR of the war, winner of the VC, DCM and bar, MM and bar; Captain Humphrey Charlton, Lance-Corporal Openshaw and Lance-Corporal Smith, who captured the vital bridge at Riqueval; and the unsung genius who decided to ‘borrow’ lifebelts from the channel ferries to assist the infantry in their crossing of the St Quentin Canal. This was an army that knew what it was doing, from top to bottom.

Few serious historians of the war now dispute that the BEF improved dramatically over the course of Haig’s command. Curiously, this has had no effect on the low esteem in which Haig is generally held. As I have observed elsewhere, Haig is still regarded as responsible for the disasters of 1916 and 1917 but given no credit for the victories of 1918. This is worse than unfair. It is stupid. In 1914 the British soldier walked into battle, armed only with a rifle and bayonet, ‘protected’ only by a felt cap and covered only by the shrapnel-firing guns of the Royal Field Artillery. In 1918 he was trucked into battle, part of the most mechanised army in the world. He wore a steel helmet and carried a respirator against gas attack. His arrival there was proceeded by an artillery barrage of crushing density, and supported by ground attack aircraft and (sometimes) tanks. Sophisticated signals deception helped keep the enemy off balance. The artillery fired virtually unlimited quantities of high quality high explosive with instant percussion fuses, skilfully mixed with gas and smoke. The guns no longer targeted the enemy’s front line soldiers but his command and control system. Leading-edge technologies of flash spotting and sound ranging, co-ordinated by corps level counter-battery staff offices (established at the end of the Somme), made the British artillery a devastating weapon of war. The ability of the soldier to survive and prevail on the battlefield was transformed by the massively augmented firepower of automatic weapons, light trench mortars and rifle grenades. Flexible platoon-based tactics, requiring maximum independence and initiative, the sort of independence and initiative displayed by Charlton, Openshaw and Smith at Riqueval, co-ordinated this firepower in the most effective way. An important part of this transformation was outside Haig’s control, outside the control of any soldier. It required the mass mobilisation of British industry, a mobilisation that did not become truly and fully effective until 1917 at the earliest, arguably not until 1918 under the leadership of the most underestimated Minister of Munitions of the war, Winston Churchill. But do Haig’s legion of critics expect us to believe that the transformation of the BEF’s operational practice had nothing to do with him, that it took place in spite of him or without his knowledge or approval? Haig was a formidable man. His finger was firmly on the pulse of his army. He was a superb administrator. He encouraged initiative and promoted talent. He loved new technologies, taking a personal interest in the tank and the trench mortar. (My graduate student Rob Thompson once described Haig as a ‘gadget freak’. Try this on anyone who thinks that Haig did not understand ‘technology’!) He was the Royal Flying Corps’ greatest supporter during the war. He remained calm and authoritative amid the worst crises. He never lost the power of decision or the support of his closest subordinates, to whom he was always ‘The Chief’. The BEF was too large and complex an organisation for its triumphs and disasters to be the responsibility of any one man. The army’s evolution was a messy business, bottom up as well as top down. Doubtless, Haig could have done more to ensure that the learning process went more smoothly or more quickly but a 35-month turn around while in contact with the main forces of the enemy seems pretty impressive to me. The army Haig inherited was Kitchener’s army, a wonderfully impressive, though flawed, piece of improvisation. But the army that won the war was Haig’s army, a flawed but wonderfully impressive piece of pragmatism and professionalism.

I do not come from the ‘officer class’. My instinctive sympathies are with the ordinary soldier, the ‘British working man in uniform’. The ordinary soldier is allowed only one place in the collective British memory of the war, that of passive victim. This denies him all moral stature and demeans his memory and all that he achieved. It is usual to regard the ordinary soldier and his commander-in-chief as belonging to different worlds. But they were part of the same army and the same achievement. Neither has been given the proper respect and recognition. I salute them both.

A STATUE FOR EARL HAIG

Dan Todman

Field Marshal Earl Haig died at the end of January 1928. Shortly after his death, it was decided to raise a memorial in the centre of London to commemorate his service to his country and her Empire. However, it was not until just before Armistice Day 1937 that the statue of Haig in Whitehall was unveiled. The construction of such a large piece of statuary was, of course, a time consuming project, particularly given its location on one of London’s busier roads, and the economic climate at the time, which made large-scale expenditure without comprehensive planning unlikely. Yet nine and a half years still seems a long time to have passed between the decision to commemorate Haig and the statue being erected. In the context of modern popular myths about British command in the First World War, the lay reader might naturally assume that any monument to him was delayed by controversies about his abilities as a general or a man. In fact, as the huge crowds which had gathered to mourn his death in London and Edinburgh demonstrated, Haig was held in considerable esteem by his contemporaries, as much for his post-war work on behalf of ex-serviceman as for his wartime leadership. There was no debate about whether a memorial should be raised to him. What was harder to agree on was what that should be. An examination of the process by which the statue was eventually erected provides fascinating examples of the competition and negotiation which surrounded the raising of memorials to the First World War, and the way in which those in authority could override the arguments put forward by those associated with the dead.

The Commons’ decision to vote money for Haig’s statue was the occasion for discussion about how he should be memorialized. The Labour Party was strongly in favour of better welfare provisions for veterans, perhaps linked directly to Haig’s name, in line with his work for ex-servicemen in the years since 1918. The Conservatives, in government, preferred a traditional statue. This might form a site which could act as a shrine for those who had served under Haig or benefited from his subsequent works. It had the additional benefit of being practical and affordable: it would be much cheaper than a change in welfare provisions. In the vote that followed the government won a clear victory. In voting quickly for public money to be spent on a memorial to Haig, the Conservatives followed a precedent which had been established with the building of statues to Lords Roberts and Kitchener. Soon after their deaths in 1915 and 1916, Parliament had approved expenditure on their memorialisation.

Deciding on the precise location for the statue was a matter for further debate. It was apparent that interested public opinion, as represented for Ministry of Works officials by the British Legion, wanted the statue to be associated with the Cenotaph. Yet this had to be reconciled with the available space, and Westminster City Council’s urgently expressed fears of traffic congestion or accidents. These concerns led to the selection of the location opposite the Scottish Office building on Whitehall, within sight of the Cenotaph, where the statue still stands. This decision was approved by the Cabinet on 5 November 1928.

With a location and type of memorial selected, it remained to find a sculptor. The Office of Works selected three experienced war memorial artists to compete for the honour of representing Earl Haig: Charles Jagger, William Reid Dick and Gilbert Ledward. A crucial factor in the selection was that all were themselves ex-servicemen. Jagger, although keen to participate, had at this point too many outstanding commissions to compete. Instead, at the suggestion of the Earl of Crawford, a member of the Commission which had selected the site for the statue, the Office turned to Alfred Hardiman, another ex-service memorial sculptor. Reid Dick in turn withdrew in December 1928, and was replaced with Hugh Macmillan. The three sculptors submitted their plans to a panel made up from members of the Royal Fine Art Commission, the National Gallery and the Ministry of Works. The panel’s choice, announced in the summer of 1929, was Alfred Hardiman. Hardiman had studied in Rome from 1920 to 1922, and his developing style had been heavily influenced by Roman, early fifth century Greek, and Etruscan statuary. His portfolio was eventually to include not only the Haig statue, but also statuary for the extension to County Hall in Westminster and a much admired set of monumental lions for the entrance to Norwich’s municipal buildings. Although his work has not subsequently been judged inspirational or worthy of extensive emulation, he has been acknowledged as a skilful worker with bronze on the largest scale. He himself was keen to take on the commission and to provide a worthy representation of Haig, as he was to write later that year: ‘I am in every way anxious to express the finest and best of Lord Haig in the national interest, and to embrace in my design those essentials of his bearing and character which are now generally recognised…’

Hardiman’s statue was selected because of its noble scale and stature, but also because it was felt to be distinctive: it was a fitting attempt to create a work of art representing Haig’s spirit and standing. Although the figure of Haig was largely realistic, its pose was somewhat artificial and stiff. Haig’s horse, however, was highly stylised: it was here that Hardiman’s Roman and Etruscan influences were most clear. Its stature is that of the shire horse, rather than the poised cavalry mount Haig might have preferred, and its head bears more resemblance to a chess-piece than any equine model. However, this was a deliberate reference back to previous representations of successful war leaders in antiquity. Later, attempting to defend Hardiman’s model, the Office of Works made frequent reference to classical and renaissance statues – of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, Colleoni in Venice and Gattamelata in Padua – as equine models: certainly it could be argued that Hardiman’s statue makes more references to archaic forms of warfare and representation than it does to more modern trends. If the statue of Haig at Clifton, using his map and in field dress, is Haig the Modern General, planning his battle, Hardiman’s statue is Haig the Victorious, parading his martial might. It was this effort to produce a statue of lasting grandeur which appealed to the Office: ‘…this national memorial has to be considered from the point of view of handing down to later generations who knew not Lord Haig a noble representation of a great figure…’. To fulfil this purpose, an absolutely realistic depiction of Haig and his mount was less important than the statue’s ability to impress subsequent generations on aesthetic grounds. In addition, Hardiman’s was a practical design, which would be structurally sound and relatively easy to erect and maintain.

In the summer of 1929, Hardiman had produced only a small model of his proposed statue, but it immediately met objections from Haig’s widow, relatives, former comrades and the King. The root of all their objections was that the statuette was not realistic enough in its depiction of Haig himself, or his horse, or both. Although some of these problems were to be addressed in the following years, others dragged on unresolved. These criticisms, and the processes of negotiation which followed each one, were a factor in delaying the construction and erection of the statue.

In particular, Lady Haig was vociferous in her opposition to Hardiman’s work. Her original preference, frequently restated, was for a donation towards Haig Memorial homes for disabled ex-servicemen. If there was too be a statue of her husband, she was understandably eager that it should be an accurate depiction. Her principal objection to Hardiman’s first statuette was that its face was too stern: as a result, she seems to have taken strongly against the artist. Instead, she had made a model representing her own preference: this seems to have been for a dismounted statue, which would also be closer to the Cenotaph and perhaps saluting it. In meetings with Office of Works officials and subsequent correspondence, she buttressed her criticisms by claiming that they represented not only her own point of view, but that of the entire ex-service community. Lady Haig was certainly able to enlist the support of some of Haig’s former subordinates, who in any case objected strongly to the horse which the statuette was riding, which was particularly repellent to those brought up in a tradition of horsed cavalry, and who had seen Haig’s fine horsemanship. However, the degree to which Lady Haig in fact represented the opinion of ex-servicemen can be questioned. Even if she enjoyed the wholehearted support of the British Legion, most veterans were not members of that organisation: in fact, it must be suggested that most Legionaries, and former soldiers more generally, were more concerned that Haig should be memorialized than in the precise aesthetic merits of such any statue.

Such objections caused considerable anxiety to the Office of Works, which was convinced of the value of Hardiman’s statue, but which recognised the strength of emotion involved and the risks which would be posed if public opinion could be mobilised. The First Commissioner of Works, George Lansbury, wrote in August 1929 that: ‘Unfortunately we are dealing with real feeling, perhaps some prejudice and much ignorance.’ Sir Lionel Earle, Permanent Secretary of the Office of Works, told Lansbury that he was: ‘…absolutely terrified of the Government being forced, by the “Daily Mail”, by ignorant soldiers and other people on arty matters, to get a purely photographic statue of Haig, where London will be saddled with another uninteresting monument,...’

Whilst attempting to involve those with an interest in the representation of Haig, the Office of Works stood its ground, eventually asking Hardiman to go on to make a second, more detailed model, which he produced in the latter half of 1930. In producing this model, along with a full-scale study of Haig’s head, Hardiman compromised his initial, more stylised vision by creating a more realistic figure for Haig himself, working from photographs of the Field Marshal. This depiction of Haig in this second model was much more acceptable both to his widow and his comrades in arms. Debate now centred on the horse, for the reasons identified above: it was unrealistic not only in dimensions but in its stance.

At this point the Office of Works seems to have wavered slightly in its resolve, going so far as to investigate the legal implications of rejecting all Hardiman’s models and starting from scratch. The conclusion was that although Hardiman had no binding contract, he would have a strong case for compensation for his loss of earnings and possibly damage to his reputation. Any further moves down this line were forestalled by the action of the First Commissioner. On 4 February 1931, Lansbury was questioned about the statue in parliament. Although the statue itself was not debated, Lansbury was asked to consider rejecting Hardiman, allowing a free vote on the choice of statue, copying the statue of Haig by George Wade which by then stood in front of Edinburgh Castle, or choosing a new, dismounted statue. The Office of Works briefing paper suggested, in best civil service style, that a non-committal answer should be given, stating that the work was under consideration. Instead, Lansbury announced publicly that he backed Hardiman and his work. Thus committed, there was little room for future Commissioners of Works to back down, and Hardiman began work on the statue itself, building a larger studio, at considerable expense, to accommodate the massive form now beginning to take shape.

A new First Commissioner of Works, William Ormsby Gore, was appointed when the government changed after the election of 1931. The first point with which he had to deal with was the Office of Work’s realisation that, although in dress uniform, the statue had no hat or helmet. Ormsby Gore asked Lord Hailsham, the Secretary of State for War, to make enquiries within the army to find out if this was an important issue. Hailsham replied that the absent hat did not matter, but that the representation of Haig’s horse certainly did. He expressed himself in the strongest terms: ‘I can assure you that there is a very real feeling of indignation in the mind of every soldier against the insult to Lord Haig of representing him mounted on this abortion. They would have him standing with his back to a wall on which the Order of the Day of 1918 should be inscribed.’ This literal interpretation of Haig’s most famous order of the day not only arrived too late in the process to be considered, but of course went against all the aesthetic concerns which had been the basis for the Office of Works’ judgements. Although the statue’s head was not covered, Hardiman was eager to correct the other minor errors in the accoutrements of a Field Marshal which were pointed out at this stage.

Since 1931, Lady Haig had felt that she had been isolated from the process of development of the statue, and complained that she had not been consulted. As the statue came closer to completion, the Office of Works made efforts to involve and appease her. Ironically, given her claims to embody ex-service opinion, Lady Haig seems to have come closest to approving of the representation of her husband on the occasion when a more junior official was able to involve her in a community based on wartime experience:

Lady Haig had travelled back all night from Belgium, where she had been conducting a party of about 500 British Legion People over the Battlefields. She was accordingly extremely tired. Most of the time had been spent around Thiepval, Arras and Ypres, at all of which places I fought during the war, so that, before we left her hotel to go to the studio, we had had established a certain community of interest and sympathy.

However, the Office of Works was not able to convince her to change her mind for long, and she soon returned to her former, critical stance. Similarly, although at the time of a visit to Hardiman’s studio Generals Braithwaite, Lawrence, Birch and Elles all seemed willing to accept the horse from a structural viewpoint, and had approved of the figure of Haig, they later allowed themselves to be portrayed as utterly opposed to the statue. To prepare for what they expected might be a landslide of negative publicity if these views became widely known, the Office made efforts to enlist the support of the British Legion, persuading it to publish a positive article on the statue in its Journal before the statue was unveiled.

The debate over the representation of Haig and his horse was between officials of the Office of Works, resolved that London should have an impressive and striking monument that would be structurally sound and stand the test of time, and Haig’s associates, marshalled by his widow, who wanted a realistic representation of Haig as they had known him. The Office was willing to attempt to involve these associates, in an effort to deflect criticism and publicity. However, such involvement was only tolerable provided it did not directly oppose the Office’s plans. Increasingly, officials and Commissioners became exasperated with what they perceived as philistinism, however powerful the emotions behind it were. Although some lengths were gone to in an effort to reconcile Lady Haig and others to Hardiman’s statue, these efforts were based on gaining acceptance for an existing statue rather than acceding to demands for wholesale changes in design. The Office of Works saw a project for the monumental good of the nation: Haig’s friends and relatives believed they were being excluded from the memorialization of the man they had known best.

It seems to be possible to locate the Office of Works’ determination within a broader narrative of its efforts at growth and establishment of power in the years after the First World War, which there has not been space to detail here. This is a recurrent theme in the memoirs of the Permanent Secretary for most of the period, Sir Lionel Earle. The First Commissioner from 1929 to 1931, George Lansbury, seems to have involved himself in the Office’s determination: he certainly enjoyed a good working relationship with Earle. Lansbury’s statement of support for Hardiman in 1931 seems to have set the Office of Works on a course of construction which was not to be altered. There was a certain irony in this: Lansbury was a confirmed pacifist and popular socialist who would almost certainly have preferred, in 1928, to allocate money to projects other than the statue of a general. His time as Commissioner was marked by the building of facilities for public use, such as the lido in Hyde Park. However, his identification with the Office of Works aims and motivations meant that he accepted, by 1931, its definition of the public good as including monuments of lasting aesthetic value.

The debate about representing Haig after his death is in some ways reminiscent of that surrounding the creation and form of the Imperial War Graves Commission cemeteries. The view of the Commission and the Government was that bodies should not be repatriated, but buried in the area they fell, each marked with an identical white rectangular headstone. This view met considerable opposition. Although both sides claimed to represent the interests of the bereaved, it seems clear that in fact the majority of parents and widows would have liked their relatives’ bodies returned to them, if possible. If not, they wanted to commemorate them in a distinctive way – albeit perhaps with the government’s financial assistance – by giving them their own gravestone. The steadfast refusal with which these desires were met caused a good deal of distress, and the bereaved were left to come to terms with a solution imposed on them from above. For all the lip-service that was paid to the need to respect the wishes of the bereaved, in fact they made up a relatively small and disparate group, with little real political power. If elements of this group attempted to oppose the official line, there would be only one winner.

Jay Winter has used the term ‘fictive kinships’ to describe the emotionally close knit communities – of the injured, of ex-servicemen, of the bereaved – which could come together as a result of the traumatic impact of modern war. But there was a risk when attempts were made to mobilise or imply the support of such groups; as when Lady Haig claimed to speak for the ex-service community in her objections to her husband’s statue. If determined officials chose to question the strength of the implied relationship then its ‘fictive’ nature became all too apparent. Other concerns – financial and political expediency, aesthetic judgements, the creation of a sound, lasting monument – won out over the isolated interests of those immediately concerned with Haig as an individual.

The statue was unveiled by the Duke of Gloucester on November 10 1937 in a major ceremony involving about two thousand troops and an equivalent number of ex-servicemen, including a party of 30 Victoria Cross winners. The following day, after laying his wreath at the Cenotaph, the King walked up Whitehall to inspect the statue, and laid another wreath at its feet. This action took place despite considerable bureaucratic resistance from the Home Office, who were concerned at any threat to the split second timing of the Armistice Day ceremonies. It was suggested that any change to the established pattern would be upsetting to the ordinary people attending the Cenotaph: ‘The ritual of Armistice Day has been crystallised into a religious ceremony, and the British public have become hysterical about it. Even a small change in the ceremony, particularly when it is made at the first Armistice Day of a new reign, is sure to excite some critics.’ In response to these official objections, the King’s secretary wrote that: ‘The King does feel that the ex-Servicemen, if not the whole country, will rightly expect him to take some notice of the memorial to their great War Leader, especially at that particular time.’ In the event, dramatic events at the Cenotaph, where a man protesting about international rearmament broke the silence, meant that little attention was paid to this addition to the ceremony.

The storm of criticism which the Office of Works had feared failed to arrive. Newspapers described the history of the statue’s design and construction, and its controversies, and there were a small number of letters protesting about the figure of the horse. However, most writers acknowledged the difficulties which faced any sculptor trying to create such a memorial, and in the majority of coverage any note of criticism was overcome by descriptions of ex-servicemen’s devotion to Haig and his memory. As the Times put it: ‘to this day the survivors of the war accept his memory, above that of any other, as representative of all that they fought for, and their comrades died for, in those years. This is his glory on Armistice Day.’ Most of those involved in previous criticisms to the Office of Works seem to have been satisfied enough with the statue’s depiction of Haig, leaving aside his horse, that they did not wish to raise objections which might have tainted the veneration of Haig attendant on the statue’s unveiling. Indeed, faced with the reality of a statue constructed and erected, any protests must have seemed increasingly forlorn. More particularly, Lady Haig had been taken up with her efforts to write and publish her own biography of her husband, The Man I Knew. This was in response to the ‘official’ biography, written by Duff Cooper, which she felt had slandered Haig. The reasons for this are unclear, but The Man I Knew may well have taken up time which might otherwise have been spent opposing the statue. Illness prevented Lady Haig from attending the statue’s unveiling, and she died two years later.

Considering the statue’s unveiling, the Times suggested two points which might serve as a conclusion to this article.

The long delay has been caused by a controversy of which the general course is sufficiently familiar, and concerning which it is now sufficient to say that it has at least proved two things – that there is an active public resolution that HAIG should be worthily commemorated and that Mr A.F. HARDIMAN’S work possesses those qualities of vigour and distinction which always divide the opinion of the critics.

Contemporaries believed that Haig’s symbolic participation in the commemoration of the war dead was appropriate and proper. Whatever the details of representation, however curious the mixture of styles resulting from Hardiman’s compromises, the statue embodies that belief: for that reason it should be valued by those who seek to commemorate Lord Haig.

Dan Todman is a Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He is currently completing his thesis on Representations of the First World War in British popular culture 1918-1998. In 2003 the Journal of Military History will publish his article “Sans peur et sans reproche”: the retirement, death and mourning of Sir Douglas Haig 1918-1928. In the same year Spellmount will publish Command and Control on the Western Front, which he has co-edited with Gary Sheffield, and to which he contributed a chapter on the wartime development of GHQ.

Memories of Earl Haig

Ruth De Pree

These memories of her uncle, Field Marshal Earl Haig were written by Ruth De Pree. Her father was the second child of John Haig of Cameron Bridge and Douglas Haig the eighth and youngest child. She married Colonel Cecil George De Pree, the son of George Charles De Pree (Royal Bengal Artillery and Surveyor General of India) and Mary Elizabeth Haig, elder sister of Douglas.

They bought Beech Hill at Haddington, East Lothian, in 1918 after their previous house, in Edinburgh (Saughton Hall) was burnt down. On the night of 22nd October 1944 a Mosquito aircraft of No 132 Operational Training Unit got in difficulties and crashed into the house killing Ruth, her brother Lt Col John Haig DSO, her grandson David and his nannie. Cecil De Pree died, broken hearted in 1946.

The original typescript was rescued from the Beech Hill fire and is now very fragile. Mrs Andrea De Pree re-typed the document in 2001, which has made publication possible. and the Editor would like to record his thanks for her work. It has been necessary to shorten the document in order to fit the space available in Records. As far as possible the omissions have been confined to repetitions and passages which do not relate to Douglas Haig himself. Minor corrections of spelling and punctuation have been made in the interest of clarity. It is hoped that these alterations do not detract from the charm and interest of these very personal insights into the Field Marshal’s family and public lives.

The Editor is grateful to Mr Peter De Pree ,as copyright holder, for his permission to publish his grandmother’s memories.

I cannot remember the first time I saw my Uncle Douglas but it must have been when I was a few weeks old in a house in Chester Street, Edinburgh, which my Grandfather (his father) had taken for the winter months. Before we were able to realise for ourselves that he was something special, my father by his great admiration for him must have started that pride which we all had for him. His relations believed in him and his future and quoted all his sayings. Douglas says "Pate do (sic) fois gras is very wholesome if you do not eat the truffles". I was at Schwalbach with his sister Henriette Jameson and she kept on saying while climbing a very steep hill "Douglas says this is an easy gradient and again, "Douglas says very few women know when a kettle is actively boiling". I told him once that Lord Errol had praised a certain officer. "The value of praise depends on who the giver is," he replied. He was very careful of his health and in spite of military books and fighting Malborough's battles on the morning room table with dummy soldiers and maps, he always managed to come a ride with us. Once my father and his sister Henrietta, were watching a big review at Aldershot and as my uncle rode past the carriage where they sat, my father prophetically remarked "I see the Field Marshal's baton in Douglas's hand".

I remember him showing me how to guide a horse -- "by the sway of your body and pressure of your legs on his sides". I always thought he looked his best riding. He sent my father a polo pony called Janie, which was given to me and I always rode. In those days he was very quiet and silent, and did not suffer fools gladly, and that wonderful nature which became so remarkable after the war had not then developed outwardly. He appeared cold and distant to those he did not care for and would make ejaculations such as "Ah, "Ah", "hm", "no doubt" and "very likely". We used to dance after dinner to an organ in the Hall. He was a poor performer, although my sister took him in hand and taught him the old fashioned waltz, which he learned laboriously with many trampings on my sister's satin shoes. He was colour blind. One night I had on a green dress, and when I asked him the colour of it he said it was yellow. Next night I tried him with another colour, but he was not pleased. He never ragged with us as our other uncles did.

When I was 8 years old, we took a villa for the winter at Pau. My uncle came out to see us there, and to our great relief asked our governess Madam Apiez to give him some French lessons, making us free to run about as we liked. Though he talked French well, his accent was a little of the "eng, bong, pong" type.... "En bon point". My father took him to Bainier de Louchon in the Pyrenees, and they returned with an Arab mare and Bournous capes. I have a vivid recollection of their galloping down the avenue with their capes flying voluminously round their necks like a canopy over the horses backs.

In Aberdeenshire where the heather seems richer and the honey tastes stronger and really of heather we spent many happy days on a moor called the Cabrach which my father rented. My grandfather first took it in 1847, then my father, Hugh Veitch Haig had it. During my father's tenancy all his relations and friends journeyed up there every year including his children. One day they came back early from shooting - "Douglas has been told to report himself at the War Office" said my father, so his clothes were quickly packed and thrown into a trap and we watched him getting up to drive 30 miles to Gartly station to catch an evening train to London. From the Lodge we watched the dog cart turn the corner, up the steep incline, on the Rhynie road taking him to the Sudan Campaign. My father had many interesting letters about that campaign, especially from the battle of Omdurman. "The pomp and circumstance of glorious war" demands comfort, and his sister Henrietta Jameson sent him many rich parcels from Fortnum and Mason during this and other wars.

To recall my uncle's features is easy in my mind's eye, but to describe him on paper, and to let others know what he looked like is difficult. Had I seen him less I believe I could express him more in words. The familiarity of him seems to hold my pen and prevent a description of him. He was always well turned out and wore well-cut clothes, and shoes. His collars made his neck look rather short. His ears were well formed and flat against his head, and expressed character. - grey-blue eyes and dark eyelashes, strong straight white teeth, and square determined jaw. His forehead and temples sloped backwards, his nose was very straight, and his hair light brown; square fingers, energetic looking hands. The nails never grew beyond the pads of the finger tips, he was always nice looking, but became more so as he grew older, and ultimately the inner man was expressed outwardly.

General Sir Leslie Rundel, whom I met and spent a summer afternoon with, sitting on a stone wall at Nunraw, said, speaking of my Uncle "It is not his achievement in winning the war, nor sticking it out, that I admire him for, - it is the goodness that looks out of his eyes". "Yes, I quite agree with you," I replied, "and (what) I notice particularly about him since the war is his tolerance". He told me that the Field Marshal and he had been staying at Blytheswood for some ceremony in Glasgow and that contrary to his usual reticence he expressed openly his opinion of the French, in anything but measured terms. One of the house party, I forget which, went to the Reporters and asked them to cut this invective out, as Lord Haig was not feeling quite himself that day, and to delete all reference to the French.

He told me he thought Haldane was a great patriot. He never liked Lord Roseberry. When he was looking about for a site for new Barracks near Edinburgh he said that Lord Roseberry refused to let him have land at Dalmeny. Long ago when King Edward had him to stay at Windsor and Lord Roseberry was one of the Party, when the latter had gone to bed at which the King seemed relieved he and my Uncle had a long talk into the night. "You must be polite" remarked His Majesty, "to the Politicians for you will have to meet them someday, Douglas". This was prophetic for during the Great War King George said to my Uncle "You must be more polite to Lloyd George, it is for your good". "I cannot, Sir", was the reply.

He was ever kind to his friends and brought Capt. Roper, from the 7th Hussars to stay with us at Ramornie. He was suffering, poor man, from softening of the brain, and his family would not look after him. He did not get any better, and died not long after he went home. When he heard my brother Oliver was playing polo at Cambridge he said to me "Impress upon Oliver the necessity of hard work". He had his goal in front of him always and knew nothing was achieved without effort, and it was through this deep plough of plodding that the ridge of success raised itself in the field of appointments, ending in that of the command of the British armies in France.

One year he went to the German manoeuvres, and he wrote and told me that the Kaiser had drunk his health at dinner.

He spent what we called a frozen out fox-hunters winter with us. The frost lasted six weeks. We had some good curling. I happened to be skipping the ladies rink next to him and he, having finished his game, came over and directed mine. One of the women in my team lost patience and called out to him "Skip yer ain side, Captain Haig", this being equivalent to "Mind your own business".

In 1902 he became Colonel of the 17th Lancers and they were quartered at Piershill Barracks, and as we had a house in Regent Terrace then we saw a lot of him. He often came to tea with me and liked to see for himself that the kettle was actively boiling. He would tell me of his work and how he made a tactical scheme to instruct several of the young officers. I remember Captain Alan Fletcher, Capt Ronald Carden, Capt Bertie Fisher, and Major Skeffington were some of those chosen to ride with him from Edinburgh into the Borders. He called it “Our little tactical tour”. Captain Carden called it “Our tactless tourists' tour”. That expressed the spirit of the army at the time. We cannot be bothered with instruction, we will fight when we have to, but on no account give us military training.

I asked him one day if he had heard that Captain Tommy Thomson was engaged to be married. He said “Tell him from me that's all he is fit for.” He himself did not marry till he was well over 40. He did not approve of young soldiers being married.

He started the Polo Team of the 17th and they played on Murrayfield Polo Ground. I used to go there with Uncle Douglas and watch the game. Sometimes we drove on the top of a tram. I knew the 17th well and especially the members of the Polo team and their ponies. My Uncle played "back", Ronald Carden No. 1, Bertie Fisher 3, Major Tilney 4. They as a Regiment had never been distinguished as first class polo players until Douglas Haig got their team going, and by his coaching, example, and personality, and horsemanship, soon turned them into a first class team. I think it was in 1903 or 1904 that they won the inter-regimental polo match at Hurlingham. Though their opponents The Blues, were better mounted and had faster ponies than the 17th. One of the spectators told me it was all Douglas, his riding, and his example of being in the right spot at the right moment that gave the cup to the 17th.

King Edward held a court at Holyrood (1903). The Guards were His Majesty's escort as far as Cameron Toll, at the outskirts of the town. There they gave way to the 17th who, encircling the carriage, trotted beside him as far as Dalkeith where he was staying. As Uncle Douglas rode along with the escort His Majesty spoke to him about Craigmillar Castle, and my Uncle told him that his Ancestress , Mary Queen of Scots, stayed there and found it very healthy. Then he was shown Little France where Mary of Guise kept a little army. The old plane tree was pointed out to him which Mary, Queen of Scots planted, and the King said to my Uncle "There should be a tablet put up to say so. King Edward saw a great future for Douglas Haig. One night he was staying at Windsor, and the King said to him "I want you to sit next to the politicians tonight, Douglas, you will have to meet them in the future".

During the time Douglas Haig was Colonel of the 17th. he did not stay in the Barracks, but just outside in a dreary looking street opposite. I think it is called Piershill Place or Terrace. My Uncle was not concerned with the affairs of the heart, nor interested in the fair sex. His martial goal was more to him than his matrimonial, but when he did get married a kinder or more thoughtful husband could not be. His engagement happened when he was invited to stay for Ascot week at Windsor. The first night at dinner he sat opposite one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, Dorothy Vivian. Thursday evening came and he asked her to get up early next morning, as he had something to say to her. He proposed at an early hour on Friday morning on the terrace at Windsor Castle, and she accepted him. He then went off to have a game of golf with his nephew, now Major General Hugo de Pree, at Sunningdale. As he played a mounted messenger came from the King, to summon him back to Windsor. Miss Vivian had meantime gone to tell the Queen that General Haig had proposed to her. The Queen was in her bath so Doris had to call the news that General Haig had proposed to her loudly through the door. The Queen got out of her bath quickly and congratulated the Maid of Honour, and told her she would have to send and get Douglas back to recieve the King's consent, so the game of golf was stopped and my Uncle sent for his knee breeches and valet. The King gave his consent and said to Doris "I am losing my best girl". That night in the drawing room the Queen shook her fan at Doris.

My Uncle had been given the appointment of Inspector General of Cavalry in India and said he had to get married in three weeks. The Bride's mother was told of this and said "My daughter cannot possibly be ready in three weeks". Then General Haig replied "It will be then or not at all". On a friend remarking one day to my Uncle "You got engaged very quickly. You met the lady on Monday and proposed on Friday". Douglas replied "I have made up my mind on more than one occasion, on far more important subjects, with even greater rapidity".

As the time drew near for the wedding, my bother-in-law Hugo, now Major General Hugo de Pree was asked by his Uncle to be his best man, and it was arranged that the other Maid of Honour, Miss Hart Dyke, whose marriage was also imminent, that both couples should be married at the Chapel Royal, Buckingham Palace, together. Hugo de Pree told me in a letter that Canon Edgar Shepherd married the two couples simultaneously, going over the marriage service in compartments, repeating one part to one pair, and then saying over the same thing to the second pair. He remarked that the brides were singularly composed ladies.

After the ceremony the King and Queen gave a lunch to the wedding party, Doris sitting next to the King. The King cut the cake, and drank the health of both couples in the kindest possible manner. Sir William Hartdyke flitted about attending to everybody.

When my Uncle and his wife drove off, the Queen flung a white satin slipper after them. They stopped the car and Doris got out and picked it up and kept it. I went over to St Marnock's, County Dublin to stay with my mother-in-law, a sister of Douglas Haig, and it was there that I first met Doris, for she and her husband were spending the second part of their honeymoon there. They seemed calmly happy and undemonstatively affectionate. She showed me all the presents she had received from the Royal Family, and the pretty pearl and diamond tiara that the King and Queen had given her.

At St Marnock's, Malahide, Ireland I went over to see him on his Honeymoon. He was rather a stiff bridegroom and given to no outward show of affection. His sister Henriette Jameson was also of the party and also very jealous that he had got married and was no longer under her loving fostering care. At signs and murmurs from her such as "Do look at the love-birds" he became annoyed and remarked "Hold your tongue Henrietta." On another occasion she said one day to me "Do you know, Ruth, some great good will happen to that "laddie" for his goodness to his mother." I have heard his sisters say that when a very small boy he crept into his mother's darkened room where she lay in pain, and held her hand on her bed - and never spoke but lay silent in the dark beside her. He was particularly kind to anyone ill. He always made (a point?) of coming to see me if he was in the neighbourhood, - and always wrote me a kind letter to hope I was better.

He never cared for Ireland or the Irish, and he said the way they fought during the rebellion, was cowardly. His patriotism was one of his most marked characteristics, and his great love for Scotland. It would not have taken an observant listener long to realise from his speech, and especially the strong use he made of the letter "R" that he came from "ower the border".

He was born in Charlotte Square in the capitol of Scotland. He went out to India, as he had said, six weeks after his wedding, and then time passed on and on, and we were engulfed in the War, the greatest staggering war of all time, and very, very slowly, we rose and conquered, and after the years of stress we found victory. Douglas Haig never forgot the men that fought under him, and he spent the remainder of his years after the War in giving his time and energy to their welfare.

He used to say during the War "If I can beat the French and the politicians, I will win the War". What he is blamed for now will redound to his credit and the British Empire will realise that it won the War. Many lives, many histories, will be written about Douglas Haig, great men will describe the whole course of the War, but these trivial fond records will be lost and the little events, intimate detail, that can help the ’future historian“ ’to know the present, will be put on record as far as I am able to do so.

There was no revelry by night in Belgium's capital before the first clash of arms in Belgium in August 1914. The Army manoevres had just finished. My Uncle was staying in Government House, Aldershot. General Grierson went to visit him. One Sunday coming back from an Episcopalian church service, General Grierson remarked "That is not the kind of service Douglas likes -- the sort of thing he cares for is more like this “Oh Lord come doon and help us, come doon and help us in oor need, and if ye dinna come doon and help us ye'll hear mair aboot it”. Yes, it is true he liked everything Scotch. When directing Secret, his valet, the way to our house in Palmerston Place he told him "You go past that dissenting edifice" meaning St Mary's Cathedral.

The first night he and Doris dined with us after the War he drank her health at dinner, giving her credit for never repeating one word of War news at any time, during all the years of the War, knowing as she did, everything beforehand, and everything that had happened at the Front. After dinner he talked to me and unburdened his heart regarding our Allies, the French. "They put grit into my machinery every time they could" he said. Then at the Conferences before the Battles when our Allies wished to stop the War, he would say to the French Generals "Ayez de Courage, you damned scoundrels". That evening when he arrived he gave me a copy of the last map used at General Headquarters in the War - "To Ruth, from her Uncle Douglas, December 1918". I will never forget how well he looked the day he was installed as a Knight of the Thistle. I had a very good seat in the front pew of the Moray Aisle in St Giles. He looked splendid in his robes, and I can see him with his eyes towards where I sat. Behind him came Lord Haldane with bent shoulders, taciturn, then the Duke of Roxburgh limping. Then all the other Knights passed, but the bent shoulders and big features of Lord Haldane lived most in my mind. I said to the F.M. afterwards, "Did you see me in St Giles today?" "No, I did not see you, but I felt you were somewhere about" and I was quite satisfied with his answer.

But to return to 1914-1918, I used to send him twice a week some finnan haddies and he would tell me when the weather became too warm for their journey to France. My Uncle wrote regularly and answered all my letters to him except once when his secretary Mr Sasoon replied. "Please do not let Mr Sasoon write to me" I said. I never got any more letters from that Gentleman. In one letter my Uncle remarked "Kitchener lunched here today, and he will dine in London. He is having a very bad time with the politicians". In another letter he sent me a picture of the old mill where his headquarters were at the time. I was proud to receive these letters, only "Special Messenger" and "King's Messenger" written across them.

He describes His Majesty's visit to the Front and his fall from the horse which my Uncle had lent him, and he said it had been trained to all sorts of strange sounds and noises, but the Flying Corps took off their helmets and waved them below the horse's nose. This made it rear up and fall backwards with His Majesty. "His temperature today is normal, and he returns home quite a hero".

When he became Commander-in-Chief I wrote and said that all he required now was Bemersyde and a son. "You have made the name of Haig illustrious - hitherto it has been celebrated merely by reproducing its species and keeping Thomas the Rhymer's prophesy true!". So he replied: "There has been no celebrated man in the family, and the quicker it dies out the better". There seems to be no likelihood of this happening for 547 cousins subscribed to a silver cup they gave him after the War on the instigation of Margaret Stewart.

Once during the War, I sent the C. in C. a list of Franco-Scottish words dating back to Scotland's friendship with France, called the Old Alliance. Some of the words were Ashet, Dour, Grosset, Bursary, Doul, Coup, Pouch, Soiree, Giget. "Old Clemencoo, as he called Clemenceau, came to dine, and I read him the list of words you sent me, and he thought me wonderous wise". In another letter he remarks, "There is a young man called Charteris come on my staff here. He was educated at Merchiston, nothing like a good Scotch education.....Roland Haig has lately been here to see me, he wants to get more fighting and nearer to it. I told him he would have enough of it before the War was over".

To try and realise what these years of war must have been to the C. in C. is beyond my power. How uncomplaining he was. The anxiety, the long drawn out tension, the uncertainty of its end, his treatment by the politicians of Westminster, and the wavering of the French help would have worn out any other constitution. Some great unseen consolation must have come to him. That look in his eyes after the War spoke of this. There was a calm glory about him, an indescribable completeness. If my pen could tell what my mind knows of him the world would be enriched with a picture of a great and good man.

Once the King of Spain arrived at G.H.Q and after lunch one day he said “Douglas, will you tell me the real story, how Foch was made Generalissimo”. So my Uncle told him, and said “I just sent a wire to Lloyd George asking him to put Foch at the head of the Armies”. “I knew it, I knew it,” said the King of Spain, putting his arm through my Uncle's, “for I had heard so many stories about it, and different versions, That I am glad to hear the truth from your lips”. Another time other sorts of guests arrived, in the shape of two lord provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow. “We call them the Brothers Mac,” he said to me in a letter, “and we think the Glasgow one the most amusing of the two”

His brother, Captain John Haig told me that one day he was with Douglas at G.H.Q and a French liaison officer came in gesticulating excitedly and exclaiming “Oh the enemy has broken through. Toutes est perdu”. Douglas went on calmly writing, and just looked up and said, “Ne parlez pas Galls”.

After our house got burned down at Saughton, he wrote to me a charming letter trying to console me. When we came to live at Beechhill, he wrote again expostulating with me that I had too many men working, such as painters, carpenters, and electricians... "They should be out here," he said. I replied that he need not mind for they nearly all were unfit for service. One had a broken foot, another had one eye, one had a stiff knee, another took epileptic fits, so I hope he was pacified. In another letter he wrote very annoyed that Lloyd George had sent valuable regiments to other fronts, instead of concentrating all force and strength before our greatest enemy, "Those dastardly Germans have begun to use poison gas," he said one day.

(Describing how Field Marshal was welcomed at Buckingham Palace by the King on 19th December 1918). The Clubs all along St James's Street were crowded mostly with women eagerly watching for the coming of the Field Marshal and his Generals. The relations of the Generals and the Field Marshal stood in the Court of Buckingham Palace. We walked about and talked to our friends until in the distance the sound of cheering was heard, and very soon it developed into a roar, and with waving and shouting my Uncle and the victorious Generals drove past us. My Uncle saw his relations and waved and smiled to us, then he drove on to be greeted by the King.

These men by their victory had given the King security and lustre to his throne and made him more beloved by his people than he had ever been. The Field Marshal and his Generals had driven past Malborough House where the carriages stopped. Queen Alexandria came out on the street to welcome my Uncle, and he got out of the carriage to greet the Queen, and his wife, who stood beside her with his two elder daughters, Xandra and Doria.

’The Armistice was over and the F.M. told me that if the soldiers had been allowed to make the peace it would have been a quicker and a more lasting peace. Before the War he used to tell us that Germany was going to fight us and then he described the Army Council and told me where we would be placed if it was not for Lord Haldane. He said Lord Haldane was a patriot. Afterwards, he called him England's greatest Minister of War. Everyone now knows how my Uncle visited the lonely forsaken man at his house on the night after the banquet given to the Generals after the Armistice. Long ago I remember him saying "Lord Kitchener is not a great soldier, he is a good organiser". He told me thought the Crown Prince Ruprecht of Bavaria was a very good soldier.

The first time I saw him to speak to after the War was at the Grand Hotel, St Andrews, where he had come to receive the freedom of that town. He and Doris came into the Hall of the Hotel - I was at the top of the steps looking down on them. He had been staying at Ramornie with my brother. As he drove round the corner of the road near Strathtyram an escort of aeroplanes circled over him, and then flew over him in the formation of a gaggle of geese. In the evening he was greatly amused watching the student and townspeople all dressed up in fancy dress, some with blackened faces, and one of them shouted to my Uncle words of welcome. "That's fine" said my Uncle, "you're a grand chap". Before this he had received Cupar and Dundee's freedom. The Fifers were exceedingly proud of their hero and they felt he belonged to them. One man, knowing him by sight, shouted, "That's him, roar noo". The Porter at Markinch said "Hae ye seen the Maurshall?"

I took my daughters Phoebe and Goda to St Andrews for both the freedom and installation as Lord Rector ceremonies. The second time we stayed at Russacks Hotel while my Uncles Douglas and B. Haig lived at the Grand Hotel. During his long speech of the installation ceremony he got to look very white and wearied. One man took exception to the word "English" and the F.M. replied "British, right you are".

That evening, both my Uncles came to dine at my Hotel with me. The F.M. remarked during dinner "What an awful smell there is. What is it? Do you mean to say that neither of you smell it? Where are your noses?". He called the waitress. "Waitress, what is that dreadful smell?" "There is a piece of gorgonzola cheese on the shelf above your head, my Lord". He was delighted that he was the only one who had smelt it, and laughed at me and his brother for a long time. He thought the expression "De ye no fin'd the smell o't?" a good one. After dinner as we walked from the Hotel on our way to the Hotel where they were staying, a lady and her little girl were waiting to see him pass. The lady said “Excuse me Lord Haig, but my little girl is very anxious to see you and she won't go to bed till she has”. He shook hands with the child and said “You should be in your bed, you'll never grow to be a big, strong woman if you don't go to bed early. I have two little girls at home and they will be in bed long before this. Take my advice and go to bed early”.

One day I bethought me that the Field Marshal would like to see Earl's Hall (near Leuchars). I rang up a friend who knew the owners and they very kindly told me I might bring my Uncle over to see the place. We were shown all over the ancient castle by its owner, Mr Mackenzie. It had been done up by the late Sir Robert Lorrimer in the period, very bare, with hardly any furniture. I was very anxious for the F.M. to see it as I thought it might help him with ideas for Bemersyde which he was about to start work on. Even Queen Elizabeth was lent beds and seats by the neighbouring gentry when she went to stay at Windsor, so a Scotch house of that time would not be over-burdened with furniture (1558 - 1603). He thought Earl's Hall looked most unhomely and bare and would have nothing to do with it, nor the idea of the period. At tea I remarked all Celts should be exterminated. The F.M. nodded, a sympathetic nod of agreement with my remark, then suddenly I realised our host was a pure Celt, but luckily our hostess was stone deaf.“

In reference to this subject of Celt, I would like to record that the historic kilted regiments held no warm place in his heart, but he thought one of the finest regiments of the war was the K.O.S.Bs. He was interested when I told him that a Covenanter called Cameron, who came from Falkland raised the Cameronians.

Before he got Bemersyde from the Nation and the King's and Queen Alexandria's households, he lived for a short time at Kingston on Thames. (After dinner there one day)… Doris fell asleep beside the fire after the repast, and the F.M. told me about the War, and we spoke of his different polo ponies that I knew and the first one of his I rode as a child. He then went to a cupboard and pulled out a box and showed me his patent of Nobility and the Seals attached to it, meantime telling me the following story “One day I was told Winston Churchill and F.E. Smith, who is now Lord Chancellor, had arrived at General Headquarters. I discovered that neither of these Gentlemen had a permit, and so I turned them out of France neck and crop. They went home and abused me to Lord George, but what I was going to tell you was that as I knelt before the King to receive my Earldom the Lord Chancellor who was standing over me with the Great Seal whispered in my ear so that the King could not hear, ‘I am now in a place that even you cannot turn me out of’”.

"In writing to me at the end of the War in regard to the Freedoms of the Cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, my Uncle felt very strongly that Glasgow had offered him its Freedom before his native town of Edinburgh, and when it was suggested that the Naval heroes, Beattie and Jellicoe, should receive the honour with the F.M. he was very disgusted and said if the town of Edinburgh wishes to give me its Freedom it can honour the Army by asking my Generals to accept the Freedom with me. “Tell your friend the Town Clerk, I cannot accept the Freedom along with the Navy.”

When he came to tea with us in Edinburgh we always gave him Mackie's brown loaf. He thought Mackie the best baker, and every time he was passing along Princes Street he invariably walked into the shop and bought a loaf of brown bread to take back to his lodgings in Drumsheugh Gardens where he was staying while Bemersyde was being done up.

While he was staying in the Roxburghe Hotel I took him and Doris to a Picture House in Princes Street. He had never been in one before. He watched with the greatest interest but complained that he had no time to read the descriptive remarks between the scenes describing the story, and I had to tell him what it was all about. After sitting in the dark for some time, he turned to me and asked “Are you having a good sleep”, knowing full well that I was wide awake. He enjoyed himself so much that next day he went to another picture House and they stayed so late and kept Lord and Lady Glenconner waiting a long time for tea.

At this time he was wandering all over Great Britain receiving Freedoms with the usual casket. He made many speeches and became more eloquent as time went on. Just a little touch of poetry, just a little bit of glowing temperament and his rhythm would have been more dramatic. His calm cool nature withheld all this from him.

In his devotion to the soldiers who had fought with him and the great strain of his work for them he lost care of himself and shortened his life. His incessant writing kept him indoors when the fresh air would have been much better for him. He was a most kind and loving father, and went to the nursery every night to tuck in his children and say goodnight to them. He and Doris came to stay at Beechhill, Haddington, with us on the 18th October 1923, for the first time. His only remaining brother, my uncle John Haig, was here too. They made up a game of golf with my husband, either at Muirfield or Luffness or Gullane. He never cared for North Berwick Links. He liked St Andrews better than any other. Bemersyde was being done up at this time and put in order by his directions. He said he did not want an Architect who would want all his own way. John and I suggested Sir Robert Lorimer.

One day he proposed that we should all motor over to Bemersyde from here. I had never been there from this direction so could not show the way. My Uncle took us there by the map and it was interesting to watch him explaining the route as if he was directing the troops. It being a Sunday there were no workmen there so he explained all his improvements in peace. He asked my opinion of his arrangement of the house. I told him I did not think a laundry, or laundry maids were a good thing. “I like your criticism, except that about the Laundry” he said. I want my clothes washed in my own home. Later on it was amusing to hear that he had to stop the Laundry and he sent his clothes to be washed outside. The F.M. pulled all the creepers off Bemersyde House. "You can get creepers any day, but you can't get old stone" he remarked. After having inspected everything we drove home again. I remember making a quotation from Othello in the motor "I have done the State some service, and they know it". He replied "I don't think they do". Yet I think they did. I know the people of Edinburgh were very appreciative of him. "I feel that they understand," he said "especially more as time goes on, what one has been able to do". I was glad to hear him say this.

We used to see him from time to time, and when I happened to be in a shop I used to send him peppermint balls or bull's eyes, creme de menthe, or any small thing that might amuse him, as a jest. During the War we spent a few weeks bathing at Coldingham, and I sent him Berwick Cockles from there. He liked them so much and received them so often that the makers had "as supplied to F.M. Sir Douglas Haig" on the tins. When he wrote to thank me he said "Well do I remember when I used to exchange me pennies at the Post Office in Coldingham for Berwick Cockles". We found many memories of his early childhood there. One woman in Eyemouth told me that when a vigourous spring cleaning was being undertaken at The Mount she used to look after wee Douglas and dried his feet after wading, and put on his wee sockies again. She said he was a good wee boy. His mother was a bonnie woman. "The sheep trimmed downs" below The Mount are very sweet, and the German Ocean comes into the curved beach, sometimes thundering o'er the rocks, sometimes whispering, whispering perhaps of the little boy who paddled in its waves, the little boy who grew up and sailed over the sea and was steadfast and never flinched and was kind to the soldiers who had sailed away too. “

On 5th May 1925 he came to see us again this time with his daughter Doria, and again on 1st June 1925. This last visit he paid by himself. He was so simple and easy to amuse, and he seemed pleased with everything. One day I took him to see some heirlooms of the Duke of Wellington at Coulstoun, possessions of Mrs Baird. He talked to her of her brother, Gen. Sir Charles Ferguson who commanded a Corps in the War and afterwards became Governor General of New Zealand. That evening we played draughts with my daughter Cecilie. She said he was so sweet and babyish. He won after a struggle in which she pretended to lose. Next night we played a card game called Pelmanism which is from start to finish a trial of memory. He could not do it at all, and turning to me he explained “You and I do not care for this game, and do not play it well because we are not interested in it”. He was not really fond of cards, but played Bridge as a bon digestive after dinner.

Next afternoon I took him to see Lennoxlove, Lady Hersey and Major Baird showed him their treasures. The Little Museum, large collection of china, heirlooms of La Belle Stuart, the furniture, each a museum piece, Raeburn's picture of General Sir David Baird. When we got home we went for a short walk. He told me about the first check and the retreat from (word missing, presumably Mons) General French telephoned him to come and help. He could not talk a word of French and was at a loss as to what to do. So my Uncle left his Corps to direct Gen French's operations in the retreat. General French had got himself into a bad state and like a good Christian, but bad General, did not let his right hand know what his left hand was doing. I was told many more interesting incidents in the retreat, but as I do not remember them accurately, I will not record them.

There was one thing that the F.M. disliked doing very much and that was to telephone. After his visit to us he was due in France to unveil a Memorial and so he asked me to telephone to General Hunter Weston and make arrangements for the ceremony of unveiling, which I did. When I came back to the drawing room where he was correcting some proofs he said “I don't think I ever told you about Gen. Hunter Weston at the front. One day in the unit which he was commanding there appeared a very drunk corporal and an officer hearing that General Hunter Weston was coming laid the Corporal on a bench and covered him up with a military coat. Great quietness reigned and in marched the General. He stopped dead, saluted, and exclaimed, “Salute the glorious dead”.

It was always his custom to give the dog something to eat at breakfast.

Like the rest of his family he liked a horse for itself also for the fact that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man. He always believed the cavalry would remain a useful unit of the army and he did not approve of mounted troops being done away with.

He died on Sunday 28th January 1928, and on the Wednesday before, my husband was his last guest at Bemersyde where he was staying for a shoot. The F.M. was very well indeed running up and down hills with his gun, ragging with his daughter Doria, and throwing herself against him on a sofa. He drank port and ate a good shooting lunch. On the Friday of that week he went to Edinburgh and shopped in Princes Street. Several of the shopkeepers told me they had served him while others said they saw him, and watched him walk briskly along. He went to see his friend Mr Girdwood. Before the dark came on someone saw him standing on an island on Princes Street looking up and down and wrote a poem called "His Last Look" which I read in the Scotsman.

Monday morning came. I was on the point of leaving the breakfast room and the telephone rang. I was beside it. The Butler took the message "It is to say M'm that Douglas died suddenly last night". In the afternoon we drove to Edinburgh and saw a big poster with "Death of Lord Haig" on it! On Friday he walked along that very Street, Monday written up in that Street on placards "Death of Lord Haig".

In London he had the funeral of a King, more pomp, more people than a King, bigger, greater, sadder than Wellington's. All nations came to mourn with Britain. In State he lay. In State he passed along the Street. In State he went out of London back to Scotland. He arrived at midnight, welcomed by 70,000 of his countrymen. An artillery gun carriage bore him up the Mound with vivid moonbeams showing the way to St Giles. It was a striking scene the silence of awe and of the night, with only the tread of the horses and soldiers, and the moonlight helped them up.

They lifted him and again he lay in State with soldiers and reversed arms each at a corner of the bier - Scotland forever. He was back in Scotland. “I want to live in Scotland and the east coast of Scotland for the few remaining years I have left after the War. I want my children brought up in Scotland, the Scotch are the best and most patriotic people”, that is what he wrote to me from France. Great crowds gathered inside and outside St Giles and a policeman with a West Highland accent remarked to our gardener who had gone in to see the crowd "Is all that homage or curiosity?". The Union Jack was over the coffin. The King's poppy factory wreath was in front of it

I noticed when they were carrying the King's wreath out of the Church it had to be turned sideways as it was too wide for the breadth of the aisle. His eldest brother's widow, Emily Haig of Broomfield limped across the Church to lay a poppy bunch on the coffin. They lifted him carefully up and bore him to the waiting gun carriage. The little gun carriage with its burden looked so small in the big streets with the big crowds.

From the Waverley station he went to St Boswells, where we motored and watched the last stage of this prolonged and great funeral. We stopped below St Boswells railway bridge and saw the farm cart taking up the tail of its three mile journey to Dryburgh. The Union Jack was over the coffin. One hirpling old man kept gallantly on, but had to fall out of the way, and he seemed sad about it.

The crowds were so great and came between us and the farm cart that when we reached the Abbey we were very far behind in the procession, and I had to run and take short cuts through the field to be in time for the committal service at the graveside. No place had been reserved for his relations. It seemed the whole of the South of Scotland had flocked to pay their last respects to him, we had nowhere to stand and so we climbed a broken pillar and saw him laid quietly in the earth where the snowdrops and aconites had come to pay their last tribute. My brother Oliver led Doris through the Abbey. She stood, a mourning figure, with a daughter on each side. The Last Post sounded.

Near him lies another great Scotsman. The earth must heave with pride. The pen, the sword, which is mightier? Who can say? Imperishable, unchangeable, hallowed.

"It is not the achievement in winning the war or sticking it that I admire him for - it is the goodness that looks out of his eyes".

Signed by Ruth De Pree, Beech Hill, Haddington. 24th March 1931.

Brian Bond

The Unquiet Western Front: Britain’s Role in Literature and History

Cambridge University Press, 2002; 128pp; ISBN 0-521-80995-9; £17.50

In over four decades as a scholar, writer and teacher, Professor Brian Bond has made a massive contribution to the wider acceptance of military history and war studies as worthy academic disciplines. His own impeccable scholarly standards serve as a model for new generations of students and postgraduates while his seminars at King’s College London and the Institute of Historical Research have provided a forum for debate and enquiry which has, in turn, done much to shape current interpretations of the major conflicts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of today’s leading British and Commonwealth historians of the First World War, for example, have, at one time or another, subjected their theories and research findings to the intense but fair scrutiny of colleagues under Brian Bond’s shrewd but even-handed chairmanship. In this sense, he has been an important catalyst in the process which has improved, broadened and sharpened our understanding of the Great War.

In The Unquiet Western Front – the published version of his four Lees Knowles lectures at Cambridge in 2000 – Professor Bond presents us with a magisterial survey of the historiography of Britain’s effort and sacrifice in France and Flanders between 1914 and 1918. He charts clearly and concisely how the immense military achievement of British and Dominion forces on the Western Front has, since 1918, become distorted, obscured and diminished by literary myths, radical social and political trends, popular misconceptions, superficial or wrongly-directed teaching in schools and, above all, by the pernicious obsession of the media with the negative aspects of the conflict. For those of us who, like Brian Bond himself, have laboured long and hard to change this situation for the better, some of the author’s conclusions may therefore be somewhat depressing although, at the very least, this book is invaluable in redefining the scale of the task and in precisely identifying the `enemies’ of objectivity. In addition, on a more upbeat note, Professor Bond points to the positive developments which offer `reasons for guarded optimism’ about our future ability to study the First World War simply as history, `without polemic intent or apologies’, even if his personal hopes and expectations in this regard have not yet been realised and the gap between serious historical studies and popular misconceptions remains, in his eyes, largely unbridged.

The essence of Brian Bond’s views, and those of a growing group of revisionist scholars, on the more positive aspects of the British experience on the Western Front, is stated early in the first chapter. The 1914-1918 conflict, he reminds us, was, for Britain, ‘a necessary and successful war, and an outstanding achievement for a democratic nation in arms’. The Liberal government, Professor Bond writes, did not blunder heedlessly into war but took a conscious decision to block potential German domination over Europe. The small Regular army of 1914, he states:

‘was transformed, with remarkable success, first into a predominantly citizens’ volunteer body and then into the mass conscript force of 1917-18. The learning process was unavoidably painful and costly, but the British Army’s performance compared well with that of both allies and opponents. In such a hectic expansion there were bound to be some `duds’ in higher command and staff appointments, but it would be difficult to name many `butchers and bunglers’ in the latter part of the war: popular notions about this are based on ignorance’.

Nevertheless, the strength of these arguments, Bond contends, has not been sufficient to prevent the genuine achievements of Douglas Haig and the BEF becoming eclipsed by literary and other myths. He describes how, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the `anti-war’ influence of the leading war poets, the memoirs of some individual soldiers, subalterns and statesmen, the critical writings of J.F.C.Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart, the book and the film of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, and the perceived (rather than actual) intentions of R.C.Sherriff’s play Journey’s End, all combined to establish such myths firmly in the minds of the public. In the 1960s and subsequent decades, the myths have been revived and even inflated by the play and film of Oh What a Lovely War and, more recently, by Blackadder Goes Forth –despite the brave attempts of John Terraine, Correlli Barnett and others in the BBC’s Great War series, and by Helen Bettinson in her 1996 Timewatch programme on Haig, to present a fairer and more objective picture. In the final few pages of Chapter Four, the author offers us more encouragement by outlining the work of various scholars who, since the early 1980s, have at last `got to grips with the First World War as history’ and who, he hopes, `will dispel some of the ignorance and combat the myths’ discussed elsewhere in the book.

The Unquiet Western Front is a brilliant overview of a still controversial subject and is full of stimulating insights and wise judgements which reinforce Brian Bond’s already considerable stature as one of Britain’s principal military historians. It ought to be made compulsory reading in schools, for both teachers and GCSE students, as well as for editors, journalists, television producers and all working in the media. Even though one knows that, sadly, this will never happen, at least the book – unlike all too many academic publications – is priced at a level that may help it to gain the wider readership it undoubtedly merits.

Professor Peter Simkins Haig Fellow 2000.

Peter Simkins is honorary Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham and was Senior Historian at the Imperial War Museum until his retirement. In 2002 he published a two-part history of the Western Front in Osprey’s Essential History series and with Gary Sheffield and John Lee he is preparing a major study of Haig’s Army.

Nigel Hamilton

The Full Monty: Volume I, Montgomery of Alamein 1887-1942

Penguin, 2002 902pp; ISBN: 0-521-80995-9; £8.99

In the 1980s, Nigel Hamilton published a three volume official biography of Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. Now he has produced The Full Monty, the first volume of a new life of Montgomery. As the title perhaps indicates, this is Monty with added sex. Hamilton's argument is that Montgomery’s repressed homosexuality was the key to his character. ‘Outing’ a national hero of course ensured considerable publicity for the book (although to my mind, Hamilton provides no conclusive evidence of Montgomery’s homosexuality). What caused far less fuss was Hamilton’s frontal assault on the reputation of Douglas Haig, a man who in his time was just as much a national hero as Montgomery.

Hamilton’s charges are those that have been levelled at Haig ever since the days of Liddell Hart and Lloyd George. Haig was a cavalryman (and therefore stupid, with obsolete military ideas such as looking for a cavalry breakthrough on the Somme). He had no imagination. He learned nothing from the battles of 1915. He was inhuman. However, the virulence of Hamilton’s attacks on Haig is truly remarkable. Haig is not merely described as a ‘Butcher’ (p.74), but accused of ‘mass homicide’ (p.70); indeed, he was ‘the greatest serial murderer in British twentieth-century history’ (p.93). These criticisms have been trotted out, and rebutted, many times. Yet Hamilton’s accusations are among the extreme I have ever read, even by the intemperate standards of the ‘lions led by donkeys’ school of writers on the First World War.

It is worth examining Hamilton’s sources. Hamilton has relied on de Groot’s unsympathetic biography of Haig. This is a patchy book, much better on Haig’s pre-war career (which de Groot studied for his doctorate) than on the war. He has also used Laffin’s dire British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One, the very title of which speaks volumes about its lack of objectivity. Hamilton has also been influenced by Denis Winter’s Haig’s Command. This is a bizarre, conspiracy-ridden book, and a number of reputable scholars have shredded its credibility as a work of scholarship.

Now, Hamilton is clearly aware of the existence of revisionist history, but he simply dismisses it. Bond and Cave’s collection of essays on Haig is labelled in an unoriginal pun as ‘Haigiography’, its contributors (which included this reviewer) apparently influenced by ‘the power of British patriotism and loyalty’ (p.91). This is unjust to historians (some of whom are not even especially pro-Haig) who base their conclusions on painstaking research in primary sources and rigorous scholarship. Hamilton is thus out of step with much recent scholarship on Haig, the BEF and the Western Front, and The Full Monty is the poorer for it.

Early on in The Full Monty, Hamilton claims that Montgomery’s reputation had been assailed by writers who disliked Monty, and this distorted their judgement. It seems that the same can be said of Nigel Hamilton’s view of Haig. The result is a sadly one dimensional view of the BEF and its Commander-in-Chief. It is not just Haig’s BEF that Hamilton thinks little of. His interpretation of Mons is that the performance of the Old Contemptibles was ‘pathetic’ (p.128). Well, this is good knockabout stuff, but I for one would want to see a good deal more rigorous analysis before accepting this particular piece of revisionism. In Hamilton’s eyes, it seems, that the BEF can do next to nothing right. This is unfair to Haig and the men he commanded. It is also unconvincing.

That is not to say that there is not a case to answer. The BEF and its commanders did make mistakes; mistakes that had bloody consequences. Naturally, since Douglas Haig had more responsibility than anyone else, (a fact that remains unexplored in this book) his mistakes had had graver consequences. But pace Hamilton’s strident denunciations of Haig, the problem cannot be simply placed at the door of one individual. In a full examination of the problem, I would expect to see serious discussion of the tactical problems produced by the temporary ascendancy of the defensive; the Revolution in Military Affairs based on airpower and indirect artillery fire; the challenge of turning a small professional army designed for colonial policing into a mass citizen army conducting large scale high intensity warfare; and the problems of being a junior partner in a coalition. I would also expect to see some recognition of the BEF’s achievement, in mastering the new style of warfare, and of Douglas Haig’s role in this feat. Hamilton is almost entirely silent on these key issues.

Hamilton makes the laudable point that negotiating a compromise peace was ‘the only humane course’. He is correct, but of course the facts were that Germany were not interested in such a peace until almost the end of the war. Berlin was pursuing an aggressive and expansionist policy, and it was only military defeat (inflicted in large part by Haig’s BEF) that led the German leadership to grasp at the straw of compromise peace. The Full Monty is noticeably reticent when it comes to setting the full context for Haig’s command. Neither does it give proper acknowledgement to the achievement of the British nation-in-arms for its role in the defeat of Imperial Germany in 1918. It goes without saying that Hamilton does not give Douglas Haig the credit he deserves for his part in the Allied victory.

It is possible to recognise the achievements of both Montgomery and Haig, and the irony is that the two men were very similar commanders. Both pursued strategies of attrition, and much of Monty’s success at Alamein can be attributed to returning to the tried and tested methods of 1918 – centralised command, massed artillery – after Eighth Army’s unsuccessful attempts at conducting manoeuvre warfare. In fairness, Hamilton does recognise the debt that Montgomery owed to his experience as a junior staff officer under Plumer in 1917. Monty shared with Haig the willingness to sacrifice lives to achieve objectives. This basic ruthlessness is an essential component of the mental make-up of any successful commander.

A major difference between the two men is that Montgomery was scarred like the rest of his generation by the experience of the Western Front, and would generally only sacrifice men if he believed that the objective was truly worth it. Thus under Monty’s command there were fewer episodes like the struggle for the Butte de Warlencourt in 1916, although as the prolonged fight for Hill 112 in Normandy demonstrates that Montgomery’s forces were not immune from this syndrome. Haig’s major fault as a battlefield commander was a lack of ‘grip’ over his subordinates. If anything, Monty went to the opposite extreme. It is impossible to produce a fair comparison of the two men as generals. Montgomery was an extremely skilful general, probably the better of the two men as an operational commander. However, Haig had a far greater burden of responsibility as both theatre commander and de facto Army Group commander. In some key areas, for example, handling his coalition partners, Haig was more successful than Montgomery. And in terms of scale of operations, Montgomery’s tenure of command at Eighth Army and 21 Army Group were simply not in the same league as Haig’s responsibility for five Armies. This is not to denigrate the achievement of either man – just to point out that to equate the two is to compare apples with bananas rather than apples with apples.

As a coda, I would add that Hamilton’s belief that ‘the revolutionary ingredient in Montgomery’s leadership’ was ‘homosocial’ (sic) is unconvincing. Fierce devotion to their men was commonplace among officers in the Edwardian army and the BEF in which Monty spent his formative years. His generation did not hesitate to use the word ‘love’ to speak of their feelings for their men, and many used the language of parenthood or even marriage to describe their relationship with their platoon, company or battalion. The strength of the officer-soldier bond was one of the key factors that maintained the morale of the BEF through the grim attritional battles on the Western Front. In the case of some individuals, there may have been some homosocial (to use Hamilton’s term) motives, but such suggestions in the 1970s brought angry denials from heterosexual Great War veterans such as the late Charles Carrington. Montgomery’s devotion to his men was thus shared by the vast bulk of his contemporaries. Research into this area, by myself and others, had been available in published form since the late 1960s.

Montgomery’s real achievement lay in recognising that Haig’s late Victorian approach to leadership, while apt for the Great War generation, was no longer appropriate for their more cynical successors (although some Second World War commanders such as Lord Gort clung to it). General B.L. Montgomery’s re-branding of himself as ‘Monty’, a brash, modern, media-friendly leader, more like a politician electioneering than an old style-commander, was a brilliant stroke. However, he was not the only general to use this approach. More-or-less simultaneously Bill Slim was also rebuilding the morale of a battered Army, and using very similar techniques in the process; although, as far as I am aware, no one has suggested that Slim was ‘homosocial’.

Dr Gary Sheffield Haig Fellow 2002

Dr Gary Sheffield is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London and Land Warfare Historian on the Higher Command and Staff Course at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham. His most recent books is Forgotten Victory: The First World War – Myths and Realities which was published in paperback by Review in 2002. He has just completed a Timewatch documentary for the BBC that examines the beginnings of trench warfare in 1914. With Dr John Bourne of the University of Birmingham, he is editing a new edition of Field Marshal Lord Haig’s letters and diaries from the First World War, which will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2004.

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