Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

Douglas, 1st Earl Haig,
Allegiance	British Army
Service/branch	Cavalry
Years of service	1884-1920
Rank	Field-Marshal (1917)
Battles/wars	Mahdist War, Second Boer War, First World War
Awards	CB (1901) KCVO (1909) KCIE (1911) KCB (1913) GCB (1915) GCVO (1916) KT (1917) OM (1919)

Field-Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE, ADC (June 19, 1861 – January 29, 1928) was a British soldier and senior commander (Field Marshal) during World War I. He commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) during the Battle of the Somme and the 3rd Battle of Ypres. His tenure as commander of the BEF made Haig one of the most controversial military commanders in British history.

Early life

Haig was born in Edinburgh, the son of John Haig, who was head of the family's successful Haig & Haig whisky distillery. Haig attended Clifton College and unusually for a British officer at that time attended University, studying at Brasenose College, Oxford 1880-1883. He left without a degree, which was not unusual for "gentleman" undergraduates and perhaps also as he would otherwise have been too old to enroll for officer training in the Royal Military College in Sandhurst in 1883, from which he graduated the following year.

He was then granted a special nomination to the British Military Staff College, despite being colour-blind. He was commissioned into the 7th (Queen's Own) Hussars the following year and promoted to lieutenant shortly afterwards.

Career

Haig first saw overseas service in India, in 1887, where he was appointed as the regiment's adjutant in 1888, giving Haig his first administrative experience.

He saw his first active service in Kitchener's Omdurman Campaign in 1898, where he was attached to the cavalry forces of the Egyptian Army, acting as Chief of Staff to brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Robert George Broadwood.

He served in the Boer War in further administrative positions with the cavalry, acting first as the Deputy Assistant Adjutant General in 1899. Haig was employed briefly as Chief Staff Officer to Major-General John French during the Colesburg operations, then as Assistant Adjutant General of the Cavalry Division. He was mentioned in despatches four times. His service in South Africa gained him prominence and the attention of French and Kitchener, both of whom would have important roles in World War I.

In 1901, he became the commanding officer of the 17th Lancers, which he commanded until 1903. He was appointed Aide-de-Camp to King Edward VII in 1902, remaining in this position until 1904. After leaving the 17th Lancers, Haig returned to India after Lord Kitchener was appointed Commander-in-Chief, India, and became Inspector-General of Cavalry. Having been a captain until the age of thirty-eight, five years later in 1904 he became the youngest major-general in the British Army at that time.

The following year, Haig married Hon. Dorothy Vivian, a daughter of Hugh Vivian, 3rd Baron Vivian; they would have four children - Alexandra (born 1907), Victoria (born 1908), George (born 1918), and Irene (born 1919).

Haig returned to England in 1906 as the Director of Military Training on the General Staff at the War Office]. During this time, Haig assisted Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane in his reforms of the British Army, which was intended to prepare the army for a future European war. He took up the post of Director of Staff Duties in the War Office in 1907. A second return to India came in 1909, when he was appointed as Chief of the Indian General Staff. He was appointed GOC Aldershot from 1912 to 1914 and Aide-de-Camp to King George V in 1914.

In the Army Manoeuvres of 1912 he was decisively beaten by Sir James Grierson despite having the odds in his favour.

World War I

Upon the outbreak of war in August 1914, Haig helped organise the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Field-Marshal John French. As planned, Haig's Aldershot command was formed into I Corps, giving him command of half of the BEF.

Tensions quickly arose between Haig and French. Haig and Lord Kitchener, who was now Secretary of State for War, clashed with French over the positioning of the BEF. French argued to the war council that it should be positioned in Belgium, where he had confidence in the country's many fortresses, while Haig and Kitchener proposed that the BEF would be better positioned to counter-attack in Amiens, stating that the BEF would have to abandon its positions in Belgium once the poorly-equipped Belgian Army collapsed, forcing the BEF into retreat with the loss of much of its supplies. During a royal inspection of Aldershot, Haig told King George V that he had "grave doubts" about French military competence.

Map of the Western Front in 1914.

The BEF landed in France on 14 August and advanced into Belgium, where John French intended to meet General Lanrezac's French Fifth Army at Charleroi. During the advance the BEF experienced their first encounter with the Germans at Mons on 23 August. The Germans were bloodied in the battle but the BEF began a withdrawal after Lanzerac ordered his army into retreat exposing the BEF's right flank.

The retreats of I and II Corps had to be conducted separately because of the Mormal Forrest. Both corps were supposed to meet at Le Cateau but I Corps under Haig got no further than Landrecies, leaving a large gap between the two corps. Haig's reactions to his corps' skirmish with German forces at Landrecies led to him sending an exaggerated report to John French, causing French to panic. The following day 26 August, Horace Smith-Dorrien's II Corps had to make a stand at Le Cateau unsupported by Haig. This battle further delayed Germany's advance. The French commander Joseph Joffre had ordered his forces to retreat to the Marne on 25 August, compelling the BEF to undertake a lengthy and arduous withdrawal to conform to the French movements. John French's faltering belief in the competence of his Allies caused further indecision and led to him deciding to pull the BEF out of the war by withdrawing south of the Seine. Lord Kitchener intervened on 1 September, making a visit to dissuade French and order him to continue cooperation with Joffre's forces. The stand to defend Paris began on 5 September, in the Battle of the Marne. The BEF weren't able to participate in the battle until 9 September. The battle ended the following day; the German advance was defeated, prompting them to initiate a withdrawal to the Aisne that signified the abandonment of the Schlieffen Plan.

Stretcher bearers recovering wounded during the Battle of Thiepval Ridge, September 1916.

Following defensive successes at Battle of Mons and Ypres (1st Battle of Ypres), Haig was promoted to full General and in December 1914 the I Corps was transformed into the British First Army of which Haig received command.

In December 1915, Haig replaced French as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, with French returning to Britain. Haig had been intriguing for the removal of French as commander of the BEF and had told King George V that French was "a source of great weakness to the army and no one had confidence in him any more". He directed several British campaigns, including the British offensive at the Somme, in which the forces under his command sustained over 300,000 casualties taking little ground but inflicting casualties on the German army it could not afford and the campaign at Passchendaele (3rd Battle of Ypres). Haig's tactics in these battles are still considered controversial by many, including the then Prime Minister Lloyd George, arguing that he incurred unnecessarily large casualties for little tactical gain. (When he asked the Canadian Corps commander Arthur Currie to capture Passchendaele Ridge during the final month of the battle, Currie flatly replied "It's suicidal. I will not waste 16,000 good soldiers on such a hopeless objective".); the casualties were almost exactly in line with Currie's prediction. On 1 January 1917, Haig was made a field marshal. The king (George V) wrote him a handwritten note ending: "I hope you will look upon this as a New Year's gift from myself and the country".

In 1918, following the final German assault, Haig's forces had much success prior to the German collapse and the end of the war. The French, American and Belgian armies combined captured 196,700 prisoners-of-war and 3,775 German guns between July 18 and the end of the war. Haig's forces, with a smaller army than the French, captured 188,700 prisoners and 2,840 guns. The military historian, Gary Sheffield, called this 'by far the greatest military victory in British history'.

Haig had frequent disagreements and strained relations with both his Prime Minister and his French counterparts, particularly Robert Nivelle and Ferdinand Foch. He also had a rivalry of sorts with General Edmund Allenby dating back to their service in the Boer War, and was instrumental in having him transferred to the Middle East.

Later life

Field-Marshal Haig unveiling the National War Memorial in St. John's, Newfoundland. (Memorial Day 1 July, 1924)

Haig's grave (right) next to his wife's, with the standard military headstone used in World War I.

After the war, Haig was created 1st Earl Haig (with a subsidiary viscountcy and a subsidiary barony) and received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament and a grant of £100,000 (1919).

From July 1919 to January 1921, he was Commander-in-Chief of the Home Forces in Great Britain

He devoted the rest of his life to the welfare of ex-servicemen, travelling throughout the British Empire to promote their interests. He was instrumental in setting up the Haig Fund for the financial assistance of ex-servicemen and the Haig Homes charity to ensure they were properly housed; both continue to provide help many years after they were created. He was involved in the creation of the Royal British Legion, which he was president of until his death and was chairman of the United Services Fund from 1921 until his death.

He maintained ties with the British Army after his retirement; he was honorary colonel of the 17th/21st Lancers (having been honorary colonel of the 17th Lancers from 1912), Royal Horse Guards, The London Scottish and the King's Own Scottish Borderers. He was also Lord Rector and, eventually, Lord Chancellor of the University of St Andrews.

Ranks

• Lieutenant (February 1885)
• Captain (1891)
• Major (1899)
• Lieutenant-Colonel (1901)
• Colonel (1903)
• Major-General (1904)
• Lieutenant-General (1910)
• General (November 1914)
• Field-Marshal (1 January 1917)

Haig's funeral

Haig died, aged 66, on 29 January 1928 and was given a state funeral on 3 February. "Great crowds lined the streets ... come to do honour to the chief who had sent thousands to the last sacrifice when duty called for it, but whom his war-worn soldiers loved as their truest advocate and friend." The gun-carriage that carried the Unknown Warrior to his grave and, in active service, had borne the gun that fired the first British shot in World War I took the field-marshal's body from St Columba's Church, Pont Street, London, where it had been lying in state, to Westminster Abbey. Three royal princes followed the gun-carrriage and the pall-bearers included two Marshals of France (Foch and Pétain). The cortege was accompanied by five guards of honour at the slow march, with reversed arms and muffled drums: two officers and fifty other ranks from each branch of the British armed forces (Royal Navy, the Irish Guards, and the Royal Air Force); 50 men of the 1st French Army Corps; and 16 men from the Belgian Regiment of Grenadiers. After the service at the Abbey, the procession re-formed to escort the body to Waterloo Station for the journey to Edinburgh where it laid in state for three days at St Giles Cathedral. He was buried at Dryburgh Abbey in the Scottish borders, his grave marked by a simple standard Commonwealth War Graves Commission white headstone.

Controversy

After the war Haig was often criticised for issuing orders which led to excessive casualties of British troops under his command, particularly on the Western Front, earning him the nickname "Butcher of the Somme". Haig's critics include many younger officers who served in the First World War, making the criticism that they "fail[ed] to understand" the actual combat conditions of the war ring hollow - Haig himself never actually visited the main front though in his dispatches he described the appalling conditions of the Somme accurately. The military historian Basil Liddell Hart, who served as an officer in nearly all of the British Western Front offensives during the war, accuses Haig of ignoring reality in his 1918 offensive.

Some regard Haig as an inept commander who exhibited callous disregard for the lives of his soldiers, repeatedly ordering tens of thousands of them to supposedly useless deaths during battles such as Passchendaele. Although, to judge from the press comment which greeted the eightieth anniversary of the Armistice, this view held wide sway in popular discourse until our day. Writers who make such blanket charges may be those of a populist bent, eg. John Laffin ("British Butchers and Bunglers of World War One") and John Mosier ("The Myth of the Great War"). Others like Norman Stone offer the disparaging but lasting portrait of Haig as the greatest Scottish general ever, since he had succeeded in killing the highest numbers of English soldiers at any front in history.

Paul Fussell, in "The Great War and Modern Memory," writes that "although one doesn't want to be too hard on Haig ... who has been well calumniated already ... it must be said that it now appears was that one thing the war was testing was the usefulness of the earnest Scottish character in a situation demanding the military equivalent of wit and invention. Haig had none. He was stubborn, self-righteous, inflexible, intolerant -- especially of the French -- and quite humourless ... Indeed, one powerful legacy of Haig's performance is the conviction among the imaginative and intelligent today of the unredeemable defectiveness of all civil and military leaders. Haig could be said to have established the paradigm."

Others gave him much praise. General of the Armies of the United States John Pershing remarked that Haig was "the man who won the war". Brian Bond, in his 2002 book The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History, says: "Perhaps, however, it is a mark of a civilized, liberal society that it hugs and cherishes its defeats, dwells obsessively on the worst combat conditions and on casualties and cannot forgive Field Marshal Haig for being victorious."

The most ardent of Haig's defenders was the military historian John Terraine, who published a biography of Haig (The Educated Soldier) in 1963, in which he claimed Haig was a "Great Captain" of the calibre of the Duke of Marlborough or the Duke of Wellington. Terraine, taking his cue from Haig's own "Final Despatch" of 1918, also argued that Haig pursued the only possible strategy given the situation the armies were in; that of attrition which wore down the German army and delivered the coup de grâce of 1918. Gary Sheffield has claimed that although Terraine's arguments about Haig have been much attacked over forty years, Terraine's thesis "has yet to be demolished".

Haig's defenders also argue that the British and Dominion forces under his command were adaptive users of new tactics and weapons during the war and that some of Haig's critics - who remain obsessed with the tank and the machine gun - fail to understand that throughout World War I, battles were dominated by artillery and the struggle to coordinate infantry and artillery attacks. His critics would respond that Haig failed to appreciate even the critical science of artillery or supporting arms, and that he was "unimaginative". The results of the battles of 1915 and 1916 - Loos and the early stages of the Somme - do indicate some truth to this criticism - that even the most basic support of infantry was typically lacking, either in volume or method of deployment. But there is some debate as to whether this is Haig's fault entirely, or whether he is blamed for the mistakes of his subordinates. Scholars such as Tim Travers (The Killing Ground; "How the War was Won") make detailed critiques of the British forces' speed of adapting new technology and techniques of warfare.

A more balanced view of Haig has been recently proffered by Australian historian Les Carlyon - that while Haig was slow to adapt to the correct use of artillery in sufficient quantities to support infantry attacks, and was generally sceptical that the science of such doctrine had much place in military theory, he was fully supportive of excellent corps and field commanders such as Herbert Plumer, Arthur Currie and John Monash, who seem to best grasp and exercise these concepts especially later in the war. Carlyon also points out that while Haig did indeed possess forward thinking, it was always for the cavalry breakthrough, and that while he cannot be condemned for this, there is a case to answer for his support of more dubious commanders such as Ian Hamilton, Aylmer Hunter-Weston, and Hubert Gough.

Along with John Terraine and Gary Sheffield, historians such as Richard Holmes, and Gordon Corrigan are sympathetic towards Haig, Gordon Corrigan in particular arguing that if Haig had really been the blinkered uncaring incompetent of popular legend then he would not have delivered victory. They point out that he faced enormous problems, notably the inexperienced New Armies, the lack of effective battlefield communication (radios then being too large for the battlefield but telephone wires impossible to lay under artillery barrage, so that senior generals had little choice but to command from chateaux miles behind the front lines), the lack of a decisive arm, the application of new technology and political interference.

Historians favourable to Haig also argue, as did British generals such as Sir William Robertson and Haig at the time, that the Western Front (where a defeat for either side would have exposed either Paris or the Ruhr to occupation) was the decisive theatre of war, where the Germans deployed roughly two-thirds of their army - between 150 and 200 divisions - in well-developed positions, and argue that Lloyd George's schemes to engage the Germans on other fronts such as Palestine and Italy did little to bring Germany nearer defeat. Additionally, in the second half of the war the forces under Haig's command took over the main burden of the Allied offensive on the Western Front.

Modern historians also make the point that mass warfare between Western Armies in World War I (and indeed World War II, in which the most serious land fighting was done by the Soviets rather than the Western Allies) invariably led to huge casualties and that if there was an easy, cheap way to break the trench stalemate, no-one else found it on either side. The only occasion during WWII when Britain took a leading role in breaking the Axis armies in a major area of operations was the breakout from Normandy, which was roughly half the length and involved roughly half as many divisions as the Somme in 1916; on a unit-for-unit basis casualty rates in Normandy were proportionately higher than the battles of World War One.

Haig in popular culture

Haig's tactics were a running joke on the 1989 BBC comedy series Blackadder Goes Forth, where Stephen Fry's role as General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, nicknamed 'Insanity' Melchett, with his vast moustache and callous disregard for the lives of his men is a popular caricature of British leadership, with elements of Haig and Lord Kitchener, although his personality is most like that of Sir Edmund 'The Bull' Allenby, without the latter's ability. Field Marshal Haig, played by Geoffrey Palmer, makes an appearance in the final episode, shown setting up toy soldiers on a battle map and then pushing them over, before sweeping them up with a dustpan and brush and throwing them in the bin. In the series, he is portrayed as a complete idiot. His battle plans include 'climbing out of the trench and walking very slowly towards the enemy'. Despite using this plan, Haig cannot understand why the men always seem depressed.

Haig was also played by Sir John Mills in Richard Attenborough's 1969 film, Oh! What a Lovely War, in which he is portrayed as being indifferent to the fate of the troops under his command, his goal being to wear the Germans down even at the cost of enormous losses and to prevail since the Allies will have the last 10,000 men left.

Haig was one of the chief inspirations for the character of Herbert Curzon in C.S. Forester's novel The General, a sharp satire of the mentality of old-school British officers in the Great War.

Further reading

• Arthur, Sir George Lord Haig (London: William Heinemann, 1928)
• Bond, Brian and Cave, Nigel (eds) Haig – A Reappraisal 70 Years On (1999)
• Bone, Muirhead The Western Front: Drawings by Muirhead Bone. Intro. by Gen. Sir Douglas Haig. Text by C.E. Montague. NY: Doran/Doubleday. 1917
• Carlyon, Les The Great War (Sydney: Pan MacMillan, 2005)
• Charteris, Brigadier-General John. Field-Marshal Earl Haig. (London: Cassell, 1929)
• Charteris, Brigadier-General John. Haig. (London: Duckworth, 1933)
• Cooper, A. Duff. Haig. Macmillan. 1935 / (2 v., London: Faber, 1935)
• Davidson, Major-General Sir John Haig, Master of the Field (London: Peter Nevill, 1953)
• De Groot, Gerard The Pre-War Life and Military Career of Douglas Haig Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1983
• De Groot, Gerard Douglas Haig 1861–1928 (Larkfield, Maidstone: Unwin Hyman, 1988)
• Dewar, G.A.B. & Boraston, J.H. Sir Douglas Haig’s Command (1929)
• Dixon, Dr. Norman F. On the Psychology of Military Incompetence Jonathan Cape Ltd 1976 / Pimlico 1994
• Duncan, Rev G S Douglas Haig as I Knew Him (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966)
• Haig, Countess The Man I Knew (Edinburgh & London: The Moray Press, 1936)
• Haig, F-M Sir Douglas Sir Douglas Haig's Despatches (December 1915-April 1919). Ed. by Lt.-Col. J.H. Boraston, OBE, Private Secretary to Earl Haig. Dent. 1919
• Keegan, John. The First World War. Pimlico. 1999. ISBN 0-7126-6645-1
• Marshall-Cornwall, General Sir James Haig as Military Commander (London: Batsford, 1973)
• Protheroe, Ernest Earl Haig (London: Hutchinson, nd)
• Reid, Walter. Architect of Victory: Douglas Haig (Birlinn Ltd, Edinburgh, 2006.) ISBN 10: 1 84158 517 3
• Secrett, Sergeant T Twenty-Five Years with Earl Haig (London: Jarrods, 1929)
• Sheffield, Gary, Forgotten Victory. The First World War: Myths and Realities (Headline Review, 2002), p. 263
• Sixsmith, E.K.G. Douglas Haig (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976)
• Norman Stone World War One: A Short History (London: Allen Lane, 2007)
• Terraine, John. Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier. (London: Hutchinson, 1963) ISBN 0-304-35319-1
• Travers, Tim The Killing Ground: The British Army, The Western Front and The Emergence of Modern War 1900-1918 (Allen & Unwin 1987)
• Warner, Philip Field-Marshal Earl Haig (London: Bodley Head, 1991; Cassell, 2001)
• Winter, Denis Haig’s Command (London: Viking, 1991)

External links

• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. (Accessed 30 March, 2006.)
• National Portrait Gallery (31 portraits)
• Tim Travers’s Haig: A Deist Being
• Bob Bushaway Haig and the Cavalry Journal of the Centre for First World War Studies
• Haig