Launcelot Kiggell

Sir Launcelot Kiggell
Lieutenant-General Kiggell, pictured here in 1915 during the First World War.
Born	(1862-10-02)2 October 1862 County Limerick, Ireland
Died	23 February 1954(1954-02-23) (aged 91) Felixstowe, Suffolk, England
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service / branch	British Army
Years of service	1882–1920
Rank	Lieutenant-General
Unit	Royal Warwickshire Regiment
Commands	Staff College, Camberley
Battles / wars	Second Boer War World War I
Awards	Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George

Lieutenant-General Sir Launcelot Edward Kiggell, KCB, KCMG (2 October 1862 – 23 February 1954) was an Irish-born British Army officer who was Chief of the General Staff (CGS) for the British Armies in France under Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig from late 1915 to 1918.

Early life and military career

Kiggell was born in County Limerick on 2 October 1862, son of Launcelot John Kiggell (1829–1911), a justice of the peace and major in the Cork Light Militia. He attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment of the British Army as a lieutenant on 10 May 1882.

He was adjutant of the 2nd battalion of his regiment from 1886–90 and was promoted captain on 3 April 1889. He attended the Staff College, Camberley from 1893 until December 1894. He was then an instructor at the RMC, Sandhurst from 1895 to 1897. From 1897 to 1899 he was deputy assistant adjutant-general (DAAG) at South-Eastern District, and he was promoted to major on 6 April 1898.

He served in South Africa throughout the Second Boer War. From late 1899 he served on the staff of General Sir Redvers Buller, then spent six months on the staff at HQ at Pretoria. He was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel on 29 November 1900. He then served as assistant adjutant-general (AAG) for Harrissmith District, then held the same post in Natal after the end of the war. He was mentioned in dispatches for his services during the war. After the war had ended, he returned to the United Kingdom in August 1902.

From 1904 to 1907 he was DAAG at the Staff College. In 1905 he presented a paper to the Aldershot Military Society, which was criticised for excessive emphasis on the lessons of the Napoleonic and Franco-Prussian Wars rather than the more recent Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars. He wrote a revised edition of Edward Hamley's Operations of War. He wanted to change the name of Staff College to the "War School" and to train commanders rather than just staff officers, a view which he shared with Henry Rawlinson, William Robertson and Douglas Haig, all of whom he would encounter during World War I.

He was a general staff officer (GSO1) at Horse Guards (army headquarters) from 1907 to 1909. He was awarded a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1908. He was then brigadier general in charge of administration at Scottish Command from March to October 1909. He was then director of staff duties at the War Office from 1909 to 1913, in succession to Haig, of whom he was something of a protégé. He was considered as a successor for Henry Wilson as commandant of the Staff College in 1910, but the post went to Robertson; instead he succeeded Robertson as commandant in 1913. J. F. C. Fuller, a student at the Staff College at the time, saw Kiggell as "a highly educated soldier, but a doctrinaire … he possessed knowledge, but little vision … a dyspeptic, gloomy and doleful man".

First World War

He served in the First World War as director of military training at the War Office from 1914, as director of home defence at the War Office from later that year until 1915. He served briefly as deputy chief of the imperial general staff (DCIGS) at the end of 1915.

When Sir Douglas Haig was promoted to commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in December 1915, Kiggell was appointed chief of the general staff of the BEF. Richard Butler, Haig's preferred choice, was considered too junior for the role. Kiggell would hold this position until early 1918. Kiggell was awarded the KCB in 1916. On 1 January 1917, he was promoted to substantive lieutenant general. Sir Henry Wilson, liaising with French Grand Quartier General early in 1917, claimed that Kiggell "hated the French".

Nigel Cave exonerates Kiggell from some of the questionable decisions which are sometimes attributed to him. Kiggell's stress on high-morale infantry attacks cannot be blamed for the catastrophe which befell Henry Rawlinson's Fourth Army on the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, as an infantry advance in straight lines was only one of the formations suggested in Rawlinson's Fourth Army Tactical Notes and modern research has shown that it was not widely adopted. By contrast, the decision to prolong the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as Third Ypres) into the wet weather of November 1917 (to capture the high ground of Passchendaele Ridge) and to postpone the initially more successful Cambrai offensive from 20 September until November, were ultimately taken by Haig rather than by Kiggell. Nigel Cave writes that Haig was highly critical of what he perceived as unsatisfactory performance, even in such senior generals as Rawlinson (in 1915) and the Second Army commander, Sir Herbert Plumer (in 1916), and that it is therefore unlikely that he would have retained Kiggell's services had he not been up to the job. Cave writes that Kiggell was "a solid effective administrator" and "basically sound and capable" but that "it is questionable whether he should have been allowed to carry on for so long". He is quoted, on seeing a flooded trench, as saying "Why wasn't I told it was like this".

Along with a number of other senior officers at the BEF's general headquarters (GHQ) in the winter of 1917–18, including Butler and John Charteris, Kiggell was removed from his position, as a result of political pressure from Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and replaced by Herbert Lawrence. He was a scapegoat following the failure of Allied forces to achieve a decisive result at Passchendaele and the German counterattack which retook almost all the British gains at Cambrai. However, he had not taken the leave which he was due, and two doctors testified that he was genuinely suffering from nervous exhaustion.

Later life

Kiggell was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in January 1918. He was Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey from 1918 until 1920, in which year he retired from the Army.

Kiggell worked on the Official History of the Great War from 1920 to 1923, but had to give up the task on health grounds. In 1924 he was appointed to write the volume of the Official History covering January 1918 to 21 March 1918, the period up until and including the first day of German Michael Offensive. As the blame for this near-debacle was politically controversial, it was planned to produce this volume quickly, like the volume on Gallipoli. British Army record-keeping had broken down during the chaotic days of the German breakthrough, so Kiggell was deemed an ideal person to interview officers who had served at the time, but in 1926 he was dismissed as he had made little progress, and what he had written was deemed “colourless”. As Aspinall-Oglander was busy writing the Gallipoli volume, Edmonds took over writing the volume himself; which in the event was not published until 1935 as he was busy with the Somme volume.

Kiggell had married Eleanor Rose Field, daughter of a colonel, on 10 March 1888. They had three sons, born in 1890, 1894 and 1903. His wife died in 1948.

Kiggell died, after a thirty-year retirement, at Felixstowe on 23 February 1954. His estate was valued for probate at £2,286 1s 3d (just over £56,000 at 2016 prices).

Bibliography

• Jeffery, Keith (2006). Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820358-2.
• Matthew, Colin (2004). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 32. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198614111., essay on Kiggell written by Nigel Cave.
• Wells, N. J. (2011). Official Histories of the Great War 1914–1918. Uckfield: Naval & Military Press. ISBN 978-1-84574-906-4.

• Zabecki, David T. (2008). Chief of Staff: Napoleonic wars to World War I. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1591149903.