Introduction

The generals of the First World War, particularly those of the British army, have had a bad press, the collective popular memory of the war in Britain being one of ‘lions led by donkeys’, in which a ‘lost generation’ was needlessly sacrificed by the incompetence of the high command. It is a view of long standing. The war correspondent Philip Gibbs recalled in 1920 that he thought at one point of Sir Henry Rawlinson, commander of Fourth Army, in its headquarters château at Querrieu ‘scheming out the battles and ordering up new masses of troops to the great assault over the bodies of their dead’. It was inevitable, therefore, in his view that the troops ‘should be savage in their irony when they pass a peaceful house where their death is being planned, and green-eyed when they see an Army general taking a stroll in buttercup fields, with a jaunty young ADC slashing the flowers with his cane and telling the latest joke from London to his laughing chief’. J.F.C. Fuller was wont to remark that the GCB customarily awarded to higher commanders stood for ‘Great Cretin Brotherhood’. Another manifestation was the index of the last volume of David Lloyd George’s War Memoirs, published in 1936, the subheadings under ‘military mind’ including ‘narrowness of’, ‘does not seem to understand arithmetic’ and ‘regards thinking as a form of mutiny’. In the text itself, in reflecting finally on the experience of war and the perceived detachment of generals from the front, Lloyd George wrote that the ‘distance between the châteaux and dugouts was as great as that from the fixed stars to the caverns of the earth’.¹

Alan Clark’s indictment of Haig in 1961 by way of conclusion to his study of the campaigns of 1915, The Donkeys, maintained that the army’s heroism and devotion was such that after three years of his custodianship ‘they could still . .. be brought to final victory’. One Oxford don had remarked to the future Professor Sir Llewellyn Woodward in 1919 that the army had been run by ‘pass men’. Woodward’s own judgement in the 1960s was that the army was in the hands of a ‘custom-bound clique which would never have been permitted to take over the management of any other important department of state or of a great business’. In their differing ways, the play and subsequent film Oh What a Lovely War in the 1960s and the immensely successful television comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth in 1989 reinforced the traditional image for new generations. Indeed, in November 1998 the Daily Express suggested the removal of Haig’s statue from Whitehall, asking rhetorically, ‘Why do we let this man cast a shadow over our war dead?’² Few rushed to defend the reputation of the generals, the most notable exception being John Terraine, who was denounced by one commentator for ‘fantastic philistinism’ for suggesting that ‘generals who presided over the demolition of a whole British generation were something more respectable than idiots’.³

Even as accomplished a military historian as Sir John Keegan has not been immune to the trend. He acknowledged on one occasion that British military leadership in the Great War was generally more ‘conscious, principled, [and] exemplary’ than before or since. He presumably meant junior leadership for, on another occasion, he also referred to ‘that hideously unattractive group, the British generals of the First World War whose diaries reveal hearts as flintlike as the textures of their faces’.⁴ Subsequently, Keegan wrote of Great War generals that the ‘impassive expressions that stare back at us from contemporary photographs do not speak of consciences or feelings troubled by the slaughter over which those men presided’. However, in writing of the comfortable nature of ‘château generalship’, he was nonetheless at pains to stress the problems of communication and control. As Keegan expressed it, ‘Generals were like men without eyes, without ears and without voices, unable to watch the operations they set in progress, unable to hear reports of their development and unable to speak to those whom they had originally given orders once action was joined.‘⁵ Others with far less understanding of the character of war on the Western Front have been far more critical. The lingering traditions of the ‘lions and donkeys’ school are especially apparent in such a ‘popular’ title as the lamentable British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One.⁶

In 1914, of course, the army was a small imperial constabulary in which only three serving soldiers had commanded the army’s only permanent peacetime corps at Aldershot, namely Sir John French, Sir Douglas Haig and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien. The lack of command experience in terms of handling large formations was recognized within the army, as was the lack of a fully trained staff. In all, there were just 12,738 regular officers in August 1914, of whom 908 had graduated from the staff colleges at Camberley or Quetta. Staff training was defective in many ways and a continental-style General Staff had emerged in practice in only 1906, though theoretically established two years earlier. In any case, staffs served commanders in the emergent British model, rather than the staff being the real centre of authority as in the German case, so that, for example, the artillery and engineering advisers were just that and without executive authority.⁷ Moreover, the army was rigidly hierarchical and had suffered from the variety of petty vendettas and clashes of personality perhaps inevitable in a relatively small institution. Many of these would continue to influence the conduct of operations during the war itself, though it has been argued that the army reflected wider Edwardian society in this regard and that the ‘system’ within which individuals interacted was more significant than the individuals themselves.⁸

Significant reforms had been instituted in the aftermath of the South African War (1899–1902), in organizational and tactical terms.⁹ The army, however, was still in transition at the moment that the Great War began and, like their continental counterparts, British soldiers were compelled to come to terms with new managerial and technical problems in the midst of war. In the British case, adaptation was also required in the midst of a massive wartime expansion which, in terms of officers alone, saw the granting of 229,316 wartime commissions. Indeed, an army expanded from six to seventy-five infantry divisions required approximately as many officers in staff appointments by 1918–about 12,000–as in the entire regular officer corps four years earlier. It is popularly assumed that the army failed the challenge, the consequences of the disjointedness between rapid expansion and coming to grips with the strategic and tactical implications of mass modern industrialized warfare being a maladroit management of operations reflected in high casualties and stalemate.

Whatever the popular perception, however, the image of the wartime British army has been transformed by recent scholarship. It is now generally accepted among historians that the army’s ‘learning curve’, though lengthy and painful, resulted in the emergence of a ‘modern army’ by 1917–18.¹⁰ It remains a matter of debate how far the transformation of the army at the operational level emerged as a result of initiatives from below or from above in the form of Haig and his General Headquarters (GHQ).¹¹ In many respects the nature of this particular debate has seen the perspective from which operations are viewed driven increasingly down the chain of command to corps and, especially, to divisional level.¹²

Indeed, one recent examination of the command experience of Henry Rawlinson has concluded that he was effectively a spectator on the Somme in 1916 through the communication difficulties, and a spectator again during the ‘Hundred Days’ campaign in 1918 through the relentless decentralization process concomitant with advances in technology and the re-emergence of semi-mobile warfare. Quite why subordinate commanders were suddenly capable of exercising flexibility and initiative in the summer of 1918 when they had failed to do so as recently as March and April is explained variously as a consequence of the necessity to improvise ad hoc formations during the chaos of the spring retreat, of the sheer weight of Allied material superiority by the summer, and of the Germans being their own worst enemy. One further suggestion is that tactical initiatives emerged because ‘a new breed of young, experienced, determined commanders ... conspicuous not only for the traditional virtues of personal courage and a high sense of duty but also for ruthlessness and aggression, took advantage of the opportunities for rapid promotion’. Certainly, much of the tactical innovation derived from the efforts of junior officers and battalion commanders though training had immeasurably improved by 1917–18.¹³ If the level of army command was increasingly irrelevant then, of course, it follows that Haig himself can also be seen as a peripheral figure in terms of direct influence over events after 1917 but this, too, is a matter of debate.¹⁴

Once centre-stage in the critique of British generalship, Haig’s army commanders are now a neglected component in the debate on the learning curve characterized in one recent study as the ‘forgotten men of the twentieth century’.¹⁵ Accordingly, they remain very much under the shadow of the ‘lions led by donkeys’ theme. In part, this is because a number of these key figures are actually still relatively unknown or their roles not well understood. Edmund Allenby, Hubert Gough and Herbert Plumer have been the subjects of popular biographies, as has Horace Smith-Dorrien, who commanded an army alongside Haig in 1914–15. The most recent biographies of Smith-Dorrien and Gough, however, date from the 1970s, with those of Allenby and Plumer dating from the early 1990s. Only Henry Rawlinson has been the subject of a recent academic monograph, though Allenby’s role in the Middle East has been examined in a similar academic context.¹⁶ Henry Horne and Charles Monro are almost entirely unknown, with no modern biographies, and Julian Byng and William Birdwood known primarily for their performance at corps level with the Canadians and Australians respectively. Birdwood also lacks a modern biography, though Byng was the subject of an adequate biography by a Canadian in the 1980s.¹⁷

In war some men rise to the challenge of command, some are remiss in their duties, and others become scapegoats for the calamities of war. The keen operational senses required to win battles or wars are not an inherent ability in all commanders. It has been suggested that those who usually succeeded best in army command during the war were of the ‘demanding tyrant school’, a category that might include both Allenby and Gough. They were equally abrasive in their ways, though, significantly, as Matthew Hughes points out (Chapter 1), Allenby’s notorious temper improved markedly once he was in Palestine. As Gary Sheffield and Helen McCartney note (Chapter 4), Gough was certainly a ‘hands on’ commander whose style was not always appreciated by his subordinates, though there were some wide variations in attitudes towards him and this has been apparent in subsequent assessments.¹⁸

In fact, neither Allenby nor Gough was that successful in France and Flanders, though Horne was effective since his insistence on efficiency–he was involved in ‘degumming’ several of his subordinates–was tempered by the recognition, as Simon Robbins comments (Chapter 5), that he drove himself just as hard as his subordinates. Indeed, it has been said of Horne that he was the one British general ‘in whose face it is possible to read the personal cost of command’.¹⁹ Nonetheless, Horne was always ready to back those subordinates whom he trusted. Though he was within what might be termed the ‘hands off’ school, Rawlinson (Chapter 8), as examined by Ian Beckett, displayed little overt compassion towards his men by contrast to others and was seemingly prepared to sacrifice his subordinates to his own ambition.

By contrast to the drivers and thrusters, the more ‘kindly’ Byng and Plumer both arguably achieved more, not least through their attention to detail, a virtue shared, as John Lee explains, with Birdwood (Chapter 2). Significantly, perhaps, Gough’s chief of staff, Neill Malcolm, accused Plumer on one occasion of having a system of command that ‘merely appears to be to tell the corps to carry on’, though this was prior to the appointment of Charles ‘Tim’ Harington as Plumer’s chief of staff.²⁰ In fact, as Peter Simkins indicates (Chapter 7), while very loyal and helpful to his subordinates, Plumer was nevertheless a strict disciplinarian, perfectly capable of delivering strong reprimands. Moreover, of course, Plumer and the unassuming and likeable Byng were not immune to failings. For every Vimy or Messines, there was a counterpoint. Nikolas Gardner notes (Chapter 3) the dangers arising from the lack of consistency achieved among Byng’s subordinates in face of the German spring offensive in 1918. Indeed, Byng did not respond well to unexpected crises. Similarly, Plumer’s legendary meticulousness did not result in any fewer casualties in the closing stages of Passchendaele than Gough’s methods in the opening stages, and he acquiesced willingly in continuing operations of diminishing returns. As Steven Corvi shows, Smith-Dorrien, usually a proactive commander (Chapter 9), was also markedly compassionate towards the men who fought under him. It can be noted, in addition, that, whatever the command style, most army commanders were increasingly seen at the front visiting commanders and units as the war continued, Allenby, Byng, Gough, Horne, Plumer and Rawlinson all being active in this regard.²¹

To a large extent, the disparities in command styles reflected that in the understanding of the nature of command itself, perhaps best expressed by Haig’s chief of staff in I Corps, Brigadier General John Gough VC, as hitting the ‘happy mean’ between control and guidance: ‘In other words, superior commanders should command in the true sense of the word. The practical difficulty, however, is that some commanders are so anxious to leave subordinates a free hand that they forget their own duty of control and guidance while others go to the opposite extreme and interfere with the methods of their subordinates.’²² The inconsistency of Haig in this regard–all too apparent in the planning of both the Somme and Third Ypres offensives–has been well remarked, but it was a general problem at all levels throughout the army. In addition, it has been argued that while Haig himself remained torn between control and guidance in operational planning, the general assumption on the part of its officers that GHQ should not interfere reduced its Operational Section to impotence until the summer of 1918: structural, personal and social factors all made GHQ less intellectually flexible than other parts of the army. Indeed, GHQ only began to become effective once Herbert Lawrence became Haig’s chief of staff in January 1918, together with other significant personnel changes.²³ Essentially, inconsistency was a product of a lack of a well-articulated doctrine. Field Service Regulations, which had been issued while Haig was director of staff duties between 1907 and 1909, implied decentralization but did not define it clearly, and it has been argued that, since it assumed a well trained staff, the massive expansion of the BEF led to its progressive abandonment when new formations were not entirely trusted. Moreover, the functions of neither corps nor armies were absolutely clear in 1914. Sir John French delayed the introduction of an army level of command in 1914 as he believed that it would impose an unacceptable additional level of command between corps commanders and himself, and he preferred adding more divisions to corps. Even when two armies were created, French saw them primarily as administrative structures. By contrast, Haig did not regard an army headquarters as a mere post office, emphasizing in December 1914 that his corps commanders should not deal directly with GHQ on operational matters.²⁴

It is clear that, by 1917–18, able younger men were moving into divisional and brigade command but there was a relatively small pool of ability for an army which had expanded so substantially: over 1,200 men held the rank of brigadier general or above on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, overwhelmingly drawn from regular officers. In passing, it can be noted that 78 were killed or died of wounds or died on active service, with a further 146 wounded or captured.²⁵ Less is known as yet about corps commanders, an appointment held by 43 men during the war on the Western Front, but it would appear that the apex of their authority came in 1916, more initiative being conceded to divisions by 1918. ²⁶ Undoubtedly, some made an impact at that level, such as Walter Congreve, Herbert Watts, Beauvoir de Lisle, the Earl of Cavan–an advocate of the ‘hands off’ with respect to his divisional commanders–Claud Jacob, and Ivor Maxse, as well as Birdwood and Byng. Maxse, however, was not as successful at corps level as he had been at divisional level and Congreve was also removed in May 1918.²⁷

Overall, despite the popular impression that all general officers were cavalrymen, most were infantrymen, though, of the army commanders, four of the nine who commanded at that level were cavalrymen, namely Allenby, Birdwood, Byng and Gough. Haig, of course, was also a cavalryman, as was his predecessor, French. While there has been some attention paid to the ‘degumming’ of general officers, much is still unknown about the process of selecting replacements. Haig, however, does not appear to have favoured other cavalrymen for rapid promotion, with the exception of Gough, and while cavalrymen were arguably over-represented at army level, infantrymen dominated corps and divisional commands. ²⁸ In his magnificently malicious way, James Edmonds maintained that Horne ‘owed his rise entirely to agreeing with GHQ every time’, but it is clear that Haig valued Horne, whom he also saw as a technical expert with respect to artillery, as a safe pair of hands. Haig also protected Byng after the disappointments of Cambrai in November 1917. Rawlinson was also largely dependent upon Haig for his preferment, but the relationship waxed and waned, not least in how far Rawlinson was ready to resist or acquiesce in Haig’s operational directions. Rawlinson was also by far the most given to intrigue among the army commanders. Relations with Allenby were especially problematic, though Allenby displayed a ‘silent loyalty’ and generally followed Haig’s direction even when he believed the decisions fundamentally flawed; however, for a while at least, Allenby resisted Haig’s suggestions with regard to the artillery plan at Arras in May 1917. Byng, too, was a loyal subordinate, while Monro, with whom Haig had a somewhat ambivalent relationship, as John Bourne notes (Chapter 6), remarked that he would never question the decisions of a superior or refuse any appointment offered, however much he disliked it.

As a fellow army commander with Haig, Smith-Dorrien, of course, was in a rather different category, but was cordially disliked by both French and Haig, both of whom saw him as something of a rival. Plumer, too, was considered for ‘degumming’ by Haig in early 1916, conceivably as he was also emerging as a potential alternative, and it was Gough rather than Plumer whom Haig chose to undertake the main offensive in Flanders in the summer of 1917. In the event, Haig came to appreciate Plumer’s qualities more and more. Other than Allenby, Birdwood appears to have been the one among his army commanders whom Haig most disliked, probably through Birdwood’s connections to Kitchener. Birdwood himself was no great admirer of Haig but ‘largely unwilling to stand up to his superiors’.²⁹

The pattern that emerges is one of very different relationships between Haig and individual army commanders, yet a generally acquiescent group within the context of Haig’s alternating detachment from and interference in those areas of operational planning that should have been the province of his subordinates. GHQ was apt to refer to the army commanders as the ‘wicked barons’, but it has been argued that the latter were collectively ‘simply afraid of Haig and were not prepared to question him’.³⁰ Gough later suggested that there were too few conferences. The assumption that army commanders’ conferences were an ineffective forum largely rests on Gough’s testimony, though Allenby also found them frustrating affairs. Certainly, they were increasingly less frequent but there were many individual meetings between Haig and his army commanders, suggesting GHQ was less psychologically isolated than sometimes inferred. Nonetheless, Haig and his GHQ staff always brought their own lunch to conferences with army commanders, thus limiting the opportunities for informal discussion. ³¹

It has been argued effectively that there was as much a learning curve in higher command relationships within the army as elsewhere, though the process was clearly assisted by the diminishing sphere of real influence on the part of both Haig and his immediate subordinates as the nature of warfare changed in 1918. In terms of the relationship between GHQ and army commanders, the decisive shift in power may have largely resulted from the efforts of Herbert Lawrence.³² Nonetheless, it is instructive to assess how far individual army commanders themselves appreciated the changes taking place and this is a major focus of this volume. Smith-Dorrien had thought about his profession, had instituted tactical reforms while commanding at Aldershot before the war, and displayed an especially keen tactical sense on the battlefield itself in 1914. He clearly recognized the increased impact of artillery, but his effective removal from the scene in May 1915 prevents any realistic means of assessing how far he might have influenced future developments within the BEF. Byng also saw the value of artillery as well as mechanization and was open to new ideas, but was not himself an innovator, while Birdwood rarely became involved in detailed planning. As already suggested, Allenby and Gough did not really meet the challenges, though Gough performed magnificently in the dark days of March 1918, only to be removed as a scapegoat for the wider debacle, and might have risen well to the challenges of more mobile warfare later that year. Monro had so little opportunity to achieve anything on the Western Front that it is difficult to form a definitive view of his ability or potential.

Horne was certainly innovative, not least in artillery methods, though at one point on the Somme as a corps commander he suggested he did not understand the efficacy of the creeping barrage. However, it was Rawlinson who evolved the most viable operational alternative to prevailing practice through his advocacy of what became known as ‘bite and hold’. Unfortunately, however, as Rawlinson himself acknowledged, limited offensives held out little prospect of strategic success in the short or medium term. Moreover, his inconsistency extended to his commitment to his own operational concepts. Gough accepted some aspects of ‘bite and hold’ in terms of adopting a precise timetable but realized that opportunities had been lost when subordinate commanders were not sufficiently far forward to recognize them as such. His instincts, however, ran ahead of the technology available, not least in terms of communications.³³ It was Plumer who developed ‘bite and hold’ techniques to their greatest extent. However, as Peter Simkins demonstrates, the conditions in Flanders in 1917 were not really conducive to their success, and the technology and the circumstances in which that technology could really make a difference were not available until the closing months of the war.

In the case of Byng and Birdwood, attention in terms of planning shifts to their staffs, and generally the army commanders cannot be seen in isolation from their immediate circle of advisers. Consequently, therefore, it is apparent from the contributions to this volume that the role of the chief of staff in particular was immensely important. Initially, the lack of trained staff officers meant that commanders often acted in effect as their own chiefs of staff, busying themselves with responsibilities properly those of others. Rawlinson was certainly guilty of this in 1914 and it was also said of Birdwood in 1916. The situation increasingly improved, however, as staff became more experienced. At corps level, Birdwood had the Australian, Brudenell White. At army level, Horne had Hastings Anderson, Rawlinson had Archie Montgomery, Plumer had Tim Harington and Byng had John Vaughan. Neill Malcolm was more controversial as Gough’s chief of staff. George Forestier-Walker was not notably efficient as Smith-Dorrien’s chief of staff and Plumer did not appreciate the efforts of Jocelyn Percy, who replaced Harington in 1918. Moreover, just as there was a coolness between Smith-Dorrien and Haig so, too, was there between Forestier-Walker and Haig’s then chief of staff, John Gough, in 1914, to the detriment of co-operation between I and II Corps in that opening campaign of the war.³⁴

It has been remarked that ‘few groups in British history have been the subject of such vilification as the Western Front generals of the Great War’. ³⁵ In offering these essays on the army commanders among that group, the authors have been requested to examine in their own way the individual’s personality, command experience, relationship with Haig and with his own subordinates, how the war changed (or not) his pre-war expectations, and how far the individual adapted to those technological and other elements of modern battle which were to determine a partial solution to the problem of war on the Western Front. In addition, each concludes with a case study of a particularly significant action for each individual, namely Le Cateau (Smith-Dorrien), Fromelles (Monro), the Somme (Rawlinson), the Ancre (Gough), Arras (Allenby), Passchendaele (Plumer), Cambrai (Byng), the Hundred Days (Birdwood) and the Crossing of the Canal du Nord (Horne). Together these essays provide a new and comprehensive portrait of a highly significant group of individuals too often neglected in the current debate on the ‘learning curve’.

IFWB

SJC

Notes

1

Philip Gibbs, Realities of War (London: 1920), p. 42; David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1936), VI, pp. 3421, 3497.

2

Alan Clark, The Donkeys (London: Hutchinson, 1961), p. 186; Sir Llewellyn Woodward, Great Britain and the War of 1914–1918 (London: Methuen, 1972 edn), pp. xix–xx; Brian Bond, The Unquiet Western Front: Britain’s Role in Literature and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 51–89; Ian F.W. Beckett, The Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Longman/Pearson, 2001), pp. 462–5; Gary Sheffield, ‘Oh What a Futile War! Representations of the Western Front in Modern British Media and Popular Culture’, in Ian Stewart and Susan Carruthers, eds, War, Culture and the Media (London: Flicks, 1996), pp. 54–74.

3

John Terraine, ‘British Military Leadership in the First World War’, in Peter Liddle, ed., Home Fires and Foreign Fields (London: Brassey’s, 1985), pp. 39–51; Terraine, ‘The Generals’, Stand To!, 7 (1983), pp. 4–7; Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1980), p. 36; B. Page, ‘The Gunner’s Story’, New Statesman, 24 August 1979.

4

John Keegan, The Face of Battle (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), p. 277; Keegan, ‘Whole Stunt Napoo’, New Statesman, 17 November 1978.

5

John Keegan, The First World War (London: Pimlico, 1988), pp. 337–9, 347.

6

John Laffin, British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1988).

7

Ian F.W. Beckett, ‘Hubert Gough, Neill Malcolm and Command on the Western Front’, in Brian Bond, ed., ‘Look to Your Front’: Studies in the First World War (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1999), pp. 1–12.

8

Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 27.

9

Ian F.W. Beckett, ‘The South African War and the Late Victorian Army’, in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey, eds, The Boer War: Army, Nation and Empire (Canberra: Army History Unit, 2000), pp. 31–44.

10

Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities (London: Headline, 2001), pp. 258–63; Sheffield, ‘The Indispensable Factor: the Performance of British Troops in 1918’, in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey, eds, 1918: Defining Victory (Canberra: Army History Unit, 1999), pp. 72–95; Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916–18 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 192–200; Jonathan Bailey, The First World War and the Birth of the Modern Style of Warfare (Camberley: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, 1996), pp. 13–21.

11

Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 85–100; Travers, How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 32–49.

12

See, for example, John Bourne, ‘Major General W.C.G. Heneker: A Divisional Commander of the Great War’, in Matthew Hughes and Mathew Seligmann, eds, Leadership in Conflict, 1914–18 (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2000), pp. 54–67; John Lee, ‘The SHLM Project: Assessing the Battle Performance of British Divisions’, in Paddy Griffith, ed., British Fighting Methods in the Great War (London: Frank Cass, 1996), pp. 175–81; Peter Simkins, ‘Co-stars or Supporting Cast? British Divisions in the Hundred Days, 1918’, in ibid., pp. 50–69.

13

Quoting John Bourne, ‘British Generals in the First World War’, in Gary Sheffield, ed., Leadership and Command (London: Brassey’s, 1997), pp. 93–116; also Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 394–8; Travers, How the War Was Won, pp. 149, 175–82; Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front, 1914–18: Defeat into Victory (London: Frank Cass, 2005), pp. 83–114.

14

John Bourne, ‘Haig and the Historians’, in Brian Bond and Nigel Cave, eds, Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1999), pp. 1–11; Keith Simpson, ‘The Reputation of Sir Douglas Haig’, in Brian Bond, ed., The First World War and British Military History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), pp. 141–62.

15

Robbins, British Generalship, p. 2.

16

A.J. Smithers, The Man Who Disobeyed: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and His Enemies (London: Leo Cooper, 1970); Anthony Farrar-Hockley, Goughie: The Life of General Sir Hubert Gough (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1975); Lawrence James, Imperial Warrior: The Life and Times of Field Marshal Viscount Allenby (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993); Geoffrey Powell, Plumer: The Soldier’s General (London: Leo Cooper, 1990); Prior and Wilson, Command; Matthew Hughes, Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917–19 (London: Frank Cass, 1999).

17

Jeffrey Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General (London: Leo Cooper, 1983).

18

Beckett, ‘Gough, Malcolm and Command’, pp. 1–12; Gary Sheffield, ‘The Australians at Pozières, 1916’, in David French and Brian Holden Reid, eds, The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2002), pp. 112–26; idem, ‘An Army Commander on the Somme: Hubert Gough’, in Gary Sheffield and Dan Todman, eds, Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army’s Experiences, 1914–18 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2005), pp. 71–96; Jonathan Walker, The Blood Tub: General Gough and the Battle of Bullecourt, 1917 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1998), passim; Andy Wiest, ‘Haig, Gough and Passchendaele’, in Sheffield, Leadership and Command, pp. 7–92; Robbins, British Generalship, pp. 32–3.

19

Bourne, ‘British Generals’, p. 109.

20

Beckett, ‘Gough, Malcolm and Command’, p. 8.

21

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Passchendaele: The Untold Story (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 138–9, 159–61, 164, 200; Robbins, British Generalship, p. 79.

22

Ian F.W. Beckett, Johnnie Gough VC (London: Tom Donovan, 1989), pp. 148–9.

23

Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 85–97, 101–18; idem, ‘A Particular Style of Command: Haig and GHQ,