Tommy (32 page)

This slowed but did not end the haemorrhage. Edward Ingorville-Williams fell on the Somme and Robert Broadwood in Flanders. Edward Feetham died during the German March offensive, and Louis Lipsett was killed, like so many of his soldiers, during the bloody fighting of the last Hundred Days. The Canadians and Australians each lost a major general, Malcolm Mercer and William Holmes respectively. If we add brigadier generals, then the total for general officers killed or died of wounds received on the Western Front is no less than fifty-eight. There is no accurate figure for the number of generals of all ranks wounded, though it is probably more than 300, and includes some spectacular examples like Tom Bridges (major in 1914 and temporary major general three years later), who lost a leg at Passchendaele while characteristically trudging through the mud when it was ‘raining old iron'.

Around 70 percent of soldiers killed on the Western Front were the victims of indirect fire, that is, of the fragments or blast effect of shells or trench mortar bombs. But in the case of generals killed in action, where the cause of death is known, thirty-four were killed by shellfire and twenty-two by small-arms fire. The generals who died were actually more likely to be killed by small-arms fire than the men they commanded, which says much about their proximity to the front. Thus, on 21 September 1917, Brigadier General Frank Maxwell, who had won his VC at Koorn Spruit in 1900, ‘whilst superintending consolidation, was killed by a sniper at 40 yards range. A born leader, he had always been regardless of personal safety, and was at the time sitting on the front of the parapet, watching wiring.'
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Major General Lipsett was hit in the face by a burst of machine-gun fire while walking in front of his line on 14 October 1918, and Brigadier General Lumsden was killed on 4 June 1918, probably by rifle fire and certainly in the front line.

Amongst all the British generals in the war no less than ten held the Victoria Cross, the nation's highest award for gallantry; 126 held the DSO, twenty with one bar denoting a second award, two with two bars and one with three. There were just three Military Crosses (scarcely surprising, as it was only available for junior officers and warrant officers and was not introduced till December 1914), one Albert Medal, and one Distinguished Conduct Medal won while serving in the ranks in South Africa. Much can be said about the generals of the First World War, but they were certainly not physical cowards.

Many generals came from military families and had relatives at the front. Walter Congreve lost his boy Billy on the Somme: Stanhope thought him ‘the best staff officer of any that I have met in France'. Congreve was at a conference when the bleak news arrived, but he declined to stand down, affirmed that ‘He was a good soldier,' and carried on. Herbert Lawrence lost both his sons on the Western Front. Allenby had departed to command in the Middle East by the time his only son Michael was killed, and the grief nearly broke even this iron man. The death of close friends and relatives sent rings of sorrow rippling into higher headquarters. ‘Poor Sandy Wingate was killed yesterday fighting his trench-mortar battery at one of the most dangerous parts of the line,' lamented Charteris from GHQ on 19 October 1915.

Generals were not just in danger from German shells and bullets but from their own superiors. Even the very senior were not safe from being ‘degummed' (from the French
dégommé,
unstuck), or, in reference to the town to which unsuccessful commanders were posted in the Boer War, ‘
Stellenbosched'.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was dismissed as commander of 2nd Army during Second Ypres, ostensibly because, in French's words, he had ‘failed to get a real “grasp”' of the situation, and his messages were all ‘wordy, “windy” and unintelligible'.
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In fact French's dislike of Smith-Dorrien went back before the war. French was a flamboyant cavalryman and Lothario, and Smith-Dorrien a strait-laced, happily-married infantryman. When Smith-Dorrien arrived in France in August 1914 to replace Lieutenant General Sir James Grierson who had died of a heart attack on his way to the concentration area, French was not pleased to see him. He had asked for Plumer instead, and was irritated to hear that Smith-Dorrien had been asked to correspond personally with the king. Although most historians regard Smith-Dorrien's decision to stand and fight at Le Cateau on 26 August that year as the right one, French, in private, thought that he had endangered the army by fighting instead of continuing the retreat.

French himself was replaced in December 1915, and Haig's leaking of papers on the handling of the reserves at Loos played its part in bringing him down. It is unlikely that Haig himself would have survived beyond the winter of 1917 had a suitable alternative been available. Lloyd George sent the South African premier Jan Smuts and the Secretary of the War Cabinet Maurice Hankey on a visit to see who might take over, but they reported that there was no obvious candidate. However, French, now commander in chief of home forces, was bitterly resentful of the role that Haig had played in his own downfall, and lost no opportunity to intrigue against him. When the Germans attacked in March 1918 there was the customary search for a scapegoat, and French, just back from a War Cabinet meeting, confided to his diary: ‘Expressed myself very strongly as to the necessity for an immediate investigation into the question of
adequate command
 … As regards the Chief Command I expressed the strong conviction that
Haig
should be replaced by
Plumer.'
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Not all Haig's critics took the view that the moment was ripe. General Sir Henry Wilson, Britain's senior representative on the Allied Supreme War Council, told Lloyd George that ‘the Government would not get anyone to fight a defensive battle better than Haig, and that the time to get rid of him was when the German attack was over.'
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In the event Haig dismissed Gough, whose 5th Army had been most heavily bruised by the attack. He is said to have admitted that somebody would have to go, and believed that the army could stand Sir Hubert's loss better than his own.

A serious tactical error, real or reported, could end a general's career, but he might survive it if he retained the confidence of his superiors. Lieutenant General Sir Edwin Alderson was an infantry officer of horsey disposition: he wrote
Pink and Scarlet, or Hunting as a School for Soldiering,
and he gave a wonderful series of Lionel Edwards paintings – ‘dedicated to the young soldier-sportsman, for whom he wrote' – to Sandhurst. After commanding 1st Canadian Division at Second Ypres he was promoted to command the newly-formed Canadian Corps, but was replaced in March 1916 after a setback at St-Eloi, on the southern edge of the Ypres salient. So much for the official version. In practice, though, Alderson had clashed with the ferociously energetic Sam Hughes, Canadian Minister of Militia. Hughes was a great advocate of the Canadian Ross rifle, whose virtues did not include handiness in trench warfare, and Alderson sensibly favoured the more practical Lee-Enfield. Alderson might have survived St-Eloi, but he was finished without the top cover which Hughes would not dream of providing.

Another example of the vital importance of ‘top cover' is the case of Major General Joseph Davies, who commanded 8th Division in Rawlinson's IV Corps in early 1915. Rawlinson blamed him for failure to exploit success at Neuve Chapelle, and agreed with Haig, then commanding 1st Army, that Davies should go home. But Davies had no intention of going quietly. He collected evidence which suggested that Rawlinson himself had been involved in the handling of 8th Division's reserves. Rawlinson very creditably forwarded the information to Haig, who had just told French that Davies should be replaced. Haig was furious, and French considered sacking Rawlinson instead. He seems to have been dissuaded from doing so by Haig, but Rawlinson was formally warned that further attempts to shift blame onto his subordinates would result in his immediate removal. Rawlinson knew that he had Haig to thank for his survival, a sense of inferiority which did not enhance his disposition to argue with Haig over the planning or execution of the Somme.

A general did not have to be wrong to be sacked, as the case of Smith-Dorrien shows. In 1916 Major General Sir Charles Barter commanded 47th London Division, part of Lieutenant General Sir William Pulteney's III Corps. Although Pulteney had been a corps commander since September 1914 his continued survival was a source of surprise to his subordinates, not least to his chief of staff Brigadier General Charles Bonham-Carter, who called him ‘the most completely ignorant general I served under during the war and that is saying a lot'. Barter's division had been allocated four tanks for its attack on High Wood on 15 September. Barter spoke to the tank officers, who suggested that they should skirt the wood and fire into it, but Pulteney thought that they were being ‘sticky' and ordered them straight in.

Although the attack on the wood was eventually successful, the division lost over 4,500 men during the battle. One tank was destroyed by shellfire but the others all became bogged in unsuitable ground, just as their crews had predicted. There was an added note of tragedy, because the crew of one tank, disorientated by the stumps and craters in the wood, machine-gunned some of its supporting infantry. The tank commander was so upset by this that some brother officers attributed his subsequent death to suicide. A few days later Barter was sent home ‘at an hour's notice'. He demanded an official inquiry, but never received one. However, the divisional association always invited him to its annual dinner as an honoured guest. Pulteney's corps was roughly handled in the German counterattack at Cambrai, though it was not until early 1918 that he was at last replaced. It is hard to see how he managed to survive for so long, though his old army connections probably helped: he was a Scots Guards officer, ‘Putty' to his many well-placed friends. It was also suggested that he was so incompetent that his corps staff was specially selected to make up for his many deficiencies, and this, paradoxically, may have contributed to his longevity.
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Yet another Somme wood cost a major general his job. Ivor Phillips was relieved of command of 38th Division after his 115th Brigade failed to attack Mametz Wood on 7 July. The division's war diary maintained that the undergrowth made the timescale laid down impossible, and, as we have seen, the Welshmen fought bravely, but the situation in the wood became chaotic. Wyn Griffith, sent up to replace a wounded staff captain, soon found that the brigade major had been hit too, and he was therefore a one-man brigade staff. He saw the brigade commander, already hit in the arm, in utter despair, unable to communicate with his division yet still under orders to press his attack, when a British barrage crashed down on his own troops. There was an artillery observer in a shell hole but, as another officer acidly pointed out, ‘he can't see twenty yards in front of him, and all his [telephone] lines are gone. He might as well be in Cardiff.' ‘This is the end of everything,' the brigadier told Griffith.

The brigadier, at fifty-seven very old for this sort of thing, was given immediate leave of absence and then relieved of his command on 28 August. He had already prophesied what would happen. ‘You mark my words,' he told Griffith, ‘they'll send me home for this. They want butchers, not brigadiers. They'll remember now what I told them, before we began, that the attack could not succeed unless the machine guns were masked. I shall be in England in a month.'
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Phillips was sacked too. He had not planned the difficult task of attacking the wood with much skill, and the fact that he was Lloyd George's protégé was, under the circumstances, more hindrance than help.

Brigadiers came and went easily: Sir James Edmonds claimed that Haig had told him that he had sacked over a hundred. Often the pretext, as it was with divisional commanders such as Phillips, was ‘stickiness', that is a reluctance to push attacks home. On 28 August 1916 Brigadier General Frederick Carleton wrote to tell his wife that he had been
Stellenbosched
from command of 98th Infantry Brigade. He was a dug-out who had returned to the army in 1914, commanding 1/4th King's Own from December 1915 to June 1916, when he was promoted. His divisional commander, Major General H. J. S. Landon, tersely reported on his dissatisfaction with the progress of the sector under his command and asked Home, the corps commander, to replace him. Pending Horne's formal action, added Landon, another brigadier had already been ordered to take over Carleton's sector. Carleton was shocked, depressed and ill: ‘I want no sympathy nor do I want to see anyone, for at the moment I am almost done to all the world.'

However, he prepared a length dossier in his own defence, and it is so useful in explaining the relationship between brigadiers and divisional headquarters that I quote it at length. His conflict with divisional headquarters began in July, not long after he had assumed command. On a date he fails to specify, but which must have been on or just after 14 July, he was with his brigade in the Somme village of Bécordel.