Slow Horses and Fast Women

[jacksdad]

but imagine that as a war winning machine!

you drive your septic tank across no mans land, assuming you do not get stuck, and let the Germans have it all

the war would be over by christmas

[George Armstrong Custer]

Come, come Roger - that is a totally crap idea. I would even go so far as to say it stinks....

[jacksdad]

I should strongy suggest, that if Haig really thought that they were, septic tanks he would had ordered a batch of 50 and sent them straight over the Lloyd George's residence for him to test drive them.

[George Armstrong Custer]

You may have a point there - Lloyd George certainly produced enough verbal diarrhoea to fill them....

[jacksdad]

well surely they could send a few pre filled before he got in

[centurion]

"

then also found a poem

Not a poem but a music hall song sung by performer and audience with great gusto

[IanA]

Opps Alan

Back to the Battle of Britain again...

[squirrel]

Glad to see this thread back to a more "even keel" so to speak. Back to Haig..........

I may be mistaken, but was he not a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford?

Had to be a pretty sociable sort of chap to be considered for membership as well as having a few more Soveriegns to spend on the entertainments than the average chap.

[keithmroberts]

Tony

According to J Mordaunt Crook he had many activities during his time at Oxford

"Hunting in the Bicester country; polo in Port Meadow; claret at the Octagon: port at the Phoenix; lunching with the Vampires; dining with the Bullingdon; pulling strings at Vincent's on the other side of the High -Haig floated smoothly into the smarter sporting set."

I had better source my quotation.

Keith

Brasenose, the Biography of a College, J Mordaunt-Crook OUP 2008

Edited - to correct typos and capitalisation K

[truthergw]

Was Haig disdainful of the more frivolous activities of the Mess because he saw them as prejudicial to the professionalism of the Officer ? Did he admire the efforts of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who remarked, IIRC, that too many British officers were fine chaps to enjoy a drink with, but useless when it came to the science of command ? Perhaps Haig's induction coincided with the maximum impact of Wolseley's reforms, and this must have influenced him.

He was good at Polo, and this surely entailed social activities. He was wary of the saucy behaviour of some officers' wives.

I'm trying hard to like him - too hard, perhaps. But he wouldn't have given a toss, would he ?

Phil (PJA)

Haig and other officers disapproved of displays of bad manners in the mess because it demeaned them in the eyes of the mess waiters. I.e. the " not in front of the children or servants" syndrome. It is more than possible that Haig, like others, thought that if he or other officers were going to send thousands of men into action with all that that entailed, then the least he could do was maintain a bit of dignity in his day to day life style. I know that watching drunken subalterns playing stupid games on the parade ground at 2AM did nothing to make me respect them or their judgement. Polo required good horsemanship and teamwork. An ideal game for cavalry officers. As was tent pegging. Officers' wives were legendary in their capabilities of ruining a junior officer's career. Only the very stupid or dedicated womanizers like Sir John and Repington ignored the standard advice to steer clear. I don't think Haig was a likeable man and I suspect he would have been taken aback at the idea that he ought to be. He was punctilious in his observances of the courtesies and expected others to be likewise. I think that only his family would ever have been allowed behind the facade because that is the way things were done. A stiff upper lip was what men were expected to display to the world at large and to do otherwise was bad manners because it caused embarrassment all round. He would have wondered why you wanted to like him and, being an East Coast Scot, raised as a child a bare twenty or so miles from where I hale from, he might have wondered what was in it for you.

[phil andrade]

He did, however, write to his wife in the middle of April, 1917, saying that he was pleased to learn - from her - that those who served under him had an affection for him. He expressed reciprocal feelings for them, and lamented the fate of so many.

There are tantalising glimpses of tender feelings. I wonder if he ever - in private - lost his composure. I think of the story of Wellington crying at Badajoz, and of Grant weeping in his tent at the Wilderness, and try and imagine Haig being similarly overwhelmed. If Wellington - a notoriously aloof personage - and Grant - who was also undemonstrative - cried, then how did Haig cope ?

Phil (PJA)

[keithmroberts]

I have raised the question in the Book review area, but we don't have any reviews yet of "The Chief" . Will it add to my understanding or not?

Keith

[George Armstrong Custer]

I laid a half-written review aside before heading off abroad for most of last month, Keith, and must attend to completing it - perhaps over this weekend, as I'm pretty much tied to the house after an op on my knee last week. In the meantime I'd be interested to see the reactions of any forum members who have read the book. We currently have two links to reviews of 'The Chief' on the Haig Facebook Page, one from The Telegraph and one from the Waterstones site - which for convenience I give below:

Telegraph Review

Waterstones Review (click the 'read all reviews' link on the page this takes you to)

George

[truthergw]

I have raised the question in the Book review area, but we don't have any reviews yet of "The Chief" . Will it add to my understanding or not?

Keith

Hard to say, Keith, I suppose that would depend on what you have already read. I found the book annoying. It annoyed me with it's strange insistence on continually finding something to criticise. As if Sheffield was somehow trying to keep a foot in every imaginable camp. For a newcomer to the field, it has a lot of good information. I suspect that for the Haig Grognards of either camp, it will fall between two stools or perhaps end up perched on both of them, not quite daring to come down on one side or the other.

[truthergw]

He did, however, write to his wife in the middle of April, 1917, saying that he was pleased to learn - from her - that those who served under him had an affection for him. He expressed reciprocal feelings for them, and lamented the fate of so many.

There are tantalising glimpses of tender feelings. I wonder if he ever - in private - lost his composure. I think of the story of Wellington crying at Badajoz, and of Grant weeping in his tent at the Wilderness, and try and imagine Haig being similarly overwhelmed. If Wellington - a notoriously aloof personage - and Grant - who was also undemonstrative - cried, then how did Haig cope ?

Phil (PJA)

The chances of Haig crying are vanishingly small. He might have had a tear in his eye at the funeral of a family member but that would have been choked back as best he knew. There is nothing particular to Haig in this. It was how most men behaved at the time and for at least another generation. The English may consider themselves cold and aloof but most lowland Scots think of them as excessively effusive. I well remember the embarrassment with which I and my group of fellow Dundonians witnessed a full grown man on Reading station, actually kiss his schoolboy son. We were off to London for the first time and were aghast at this decadence. That was in mid Fifties and my father thought I and my pals were a right bunch of softies. I suggest that you read the books written by the people who knew him instead of trying to imagine him crying. Haig was a man and a career soldier. He had taken part in cavalry charge against the Dervishes. Set up guns and machine guns so as best to kill them. He had fought against the Boers and served in India. What kept him going is also revealed in the books. Apart from his belief that he was fighting for the right, his religious belief. Scots, Calvinist, Presbyterian belief. He attended Sunday service and had the minister to dine. It's all in the books. Read them instead of weaving fantasies.

[phil andrade]

Wellington wept; Haig did not. Is this because the Iron Duke was a more uninhibited man in emotional terms than Haig ? Perhaps it reflects the different experience of battlefield command in the age of black powder warfare. Haig was spared the direct immersion in the human debris of the battle; Wellington was not.

One thing that Montgomery discerned as a shortcoming in the generalship of the Great War was the failure to clear the field of the dead. No doubt the circumstances of 1914-1918 conspired against this, but I can't help but wonder whether Haig countenanced this problem as he might have done.

For a man who recoiled from visiting the hospital, the prospect of thousands of unburied dead remaining on the field for several months - even years - was bound to be more than distressing.

I am anxious not to do injustice here. Haig had front line experience. But nothing like Wellington's exposure to the aftermath of Badajoz. : at least, that's what I suppose. Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

Phil (PJA)

[George Armstrong Custer]

For a man who recoiled from visiting the hospital, the prospect of thousands of unburied dead remaining on the field for several months - even years - was bound to be more than distressing. [.....] Please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

I assume that you are basing this belief upon the quote from Haig's son, Dawyck, given by Alex in post #68. It needs to be borne in mind that Dawyck, whom I knew, was only nine years old when his father died in January 1928. Although he went on to read about and study his father's career up until his own death in 2009, Dawyck was not an historian, and any references to matters of which he could not have had personal knowledge need to be checked and evaluated against other sources in the normal way. As far as his actual memories of what Haig was like as a father are concerned, however (as given, for example, in the other part of the quote given by Alex), I accept Dawyck's recollections entirely - after all, assuming they knew him, who does not remember for the whole of their life what sort of parent their father was? But Dawyck's mention of his 'belief' that his father refrained from visiting casualty clearing stations because it was too distressing is one of those occasions where he is mistaken, as is easily demonstrated by contradictory contemporary evidence - all of which is, once again, easily accessible in published sources. For example, over the first three days of the Somme Haig visited two Casualty Clearing Stations and a Main Dressing Station. From his Diaries:

2 July 1916: "[.....] I also visited two Casualty Clearing Stations at Montigny, one under Major Thomas, the other under Colonel Macpherson. They were very pleased at my visit. The wounded were in wonderful spirits. I saw Sir William Herringham with his coat off, setting a fine example, by washing and attending to slightly wounded cases. I thanked him. I believe he is consulting physician to Bart's Hospital, London. Everything seemed going on well. The A.G. reported today that the total casualties are estimated at over 40,000 to date. This cannot be considered severe in view of the numbers engaged, and the length of front attacked. [....]" [The AG's early estimate was, of course, subsequently revised upwards considerably].

4 July 1916: "[.....] I next visited HQ XV Corps at Heilly, calling at a Main Dressing Station en route. [.....]"

As Haig's responsibilities as C-in-C increased over the following two years his opportunity to visit such installations naturally declined. However his close friend Colonel Eugene 'Micky' Ryan, Chief Medical Officer at GHQ, ensured Haig was kept informed of these aspects, as this example from Haig's Diary on the first day of Third Ypres illustrates:

31 July 1917: "I sent Alan Fletcher [ADC] and Colonel Ryan round the Casualty Clearing Stations. They report many slight cases, mainly shell fire. Wounded very cheery indeed. Some 6,000 wounded have been treated in the ten hours up to 6pm."

For those who disparage as unlikely Haig's references to the 'cheery' wounded, either from his own visits to CCSs, or from reports filed by the likes of Ryan, I would point out the repeated references to the remarkable efforts to put a cheerful face on made by many of the wounded which are given in many of the accounts by the women who nursed them.

Haig also received first hand information on the scenes in CCSs from his Chaplain, the Rev George Duncan. In the Duncan Papers in the archives of the University of St Andrews are letters to Duncan from Haig's ADC, Alan Fletcher, through which Haig gives Duncan notice of impending actions so that he can arrange transport to be at forward CCSs. From personal visits, then, and eyewitness-based reports from close associates such as Ryan and Duncan, Haig was well up to speed as to the situation and care of casualties - and, of course, the often horrific nature of their wounds. I have already quoted in an earlier post Haig's March 1917 reflections on the old Somme battlefield on "all those fine fellows, who either have given their lives for their country, or have been maimed in its service. Later on I hope we may have a Prime Minister and a Government who will do them justice." For the remainder of his life following the end of the war Haig was of course prominent in the struggle to get the nation's political leadership to do right by the disabled and unemployed ex-servicemen and their families. Nor did he ever shy away from personal contact with the maimed former soldiers, as this example of many such filmed occasions demonstrates:

Haig Hospital Visit

As an addenda, Micky Ryan, who became one of Haig's close friends for the remainder of his life - and who would warn Haig to no avail shortly before his fatal heart attack that his diseased heart required a curtailment of his efforts around the country on behalf of ex-servicemen - was one of the few who deigned to tell Haig in no uncertain terms what to do for his own good. Ryan delivered Haig's only son, and there's an amusingly revealing moment related by John Charteris of Haig dropping the mask of command when Ryan told him of having safely delivered his son and heir, Dawyck:

"Haig's mind had been torn between his eagerness for an heir and his concern for Lady Haig's health, and when his doctor allayed his fears, bringing the good news that the son and heir he had so much desired was born, the barrier behind which Haig concealed his emotions for once broke down. Impulsively he embraced the doctor, kissing him on each cheek. "Like a damned foreigner!" as the doctor added, in recounting the incident."

George

[George Armstrong Custer]

Anyway, what's more surprising though is why he would have stated this when the book he is prefacing clearly proves other wise.

It's probably not as surprising as you might think, Alex. When the 34-year-old Dawyck wrote the Preface to the Blake edition of his father's Papers, 24 years had elapsed since the latter's death. During that period Dawyck had completed school, gone to university, joined the army at the outbreak of the Second World War, been a POW before repatriation in 1945, and taken up art studies and begun the process of establishing himself as an artist in the post-war period. He didn't seriously begin his own study of his father's command in the Great War until later years. As I've said, he was not, nor pretended to be, an historian in his own right, though he did make himself incredibly well informed on many aspects of his father's role in the Great War, being consulted by almost every Haig biographer. In this particular instance, he clearly overlooks the evidence - some of which, as you note, is in Blake's edition of the Diaries. But then he was writing as his father's son, not the expert historical interpreter, which of course was Blake's role. Perhaps Blake ought to have picked up on it, but in any case Dawyck makes the observation as something he is led to believe was the case rather than as something for which he has irrefutable evidence.

George, that was a great story! Was that unearthed in your research over the years or could it be found in any of his biographies, etc?

Just seen this addition. I'm not sure what bit you're referring to, but if you mean the episode of Haig with Micky Ryan at Dawyck's birth, then yes, you can find it in Charteris' 1929 biography Field Marshal Earl Haig, p. 313.

George

[phil andrade]

George,

Thanks for the link.

Clearly Haig was fully engaged with the predicament of his wounded.

Did he ever make any allusion to the horrible state of affiairs regarding the unrecovered and unburied dead ?

The sight of the Passchendaele battlefield shocked the Germans when they took possession of it in April, 1918. There were thousands of unburied corpses there. Ludendorff made much of this in his memoirs. If Haig did fail to address this, I would be intrigued as to the reason why.

Phil (PJA)

[truthergw]

I have chatted to men who served at Passchendaele and their description of the battlefield was usually accompanied with " you had to be there. You could never imagine it". The winter of 17/18 would effectively hide many of the bodies left on the field. Only as the ground started to dry out in late spring would they become apparent and by then, the British army was fighting for its life. Many of the battlefields of the Great War were only cleared after long delay. Loos was one where highlanders lay in windrows until their tartans faded. Verdun was another.

[phil andrade]

How close did Haig get to that hideous Golgotha like, charnel house apect of those battlefields ?

I can't get it out of my head that he "got off lightly" in that respect.

I'm almost scared to post this.

Phil (PJA)

[truthergw]

Haig would be well aware of the conditions on the ground. That was part of his job and affect his plans. I should not imagine he went forward of Divisional HQ at any time and was probably more likely to be found at Corps or Army HQ. I doubt if going on a sightseeing trip of the battlefield would have helped him in any way and would have been a nightmare for his staff and aides trying to look after him and keep in contact with GHQ. Whether it is true or not, I do not know but there is a story of a French general during the Battles of the Frontiers saying, " Casualties? What business do I have with casualties!" Instead of us going off into a fit of the vapours at this, it might repay to contemplate the thought processes of this general at the time and try to estimate what his priorities might have been, during a battle.

[George Armstrong Custer]

How close did Haig get to that hideous Golgotha like, charnel house apect of those battlefields ?

I can't get it out of my head that he "got off lightly" in that respect.

I'm starting to worry about your preoccupations, Phil, I really am. What would it take for you to think Haig didn't 'get off lightly'? An account of him being sprayed with blood from a nicked carotid artery as he walks past an emergency tracheotomy during his visits to Casualty Clearing Stations on 2 July 1916? Or lowering himself into a trench which had recently been taken by handgrenade bombing in order to experience walking over the shattered dead? To what purpose? It might be worth your looking back at Sidney Rogerson's comments, given in post #11, on those who sought to portray the war through a prism of unremitting horror.

As to Haig going forward and seeing a battlefield before it was cleared, my chum Bryn Hammond notes such an occasion on 22 November 1917, when Haig personally reconnoitred Flesquires Ridge within 48 hours of the vicious firefight in that location between field guns, tanks and infantry. As Bryn points out, Haig was on the scene at the same time as the first British troops, including Major Edward Carter of the Tank Corps, took the opportunity to examine the battlefield. The accounts of this are to be found not only in Bryn Hammond's Cambrai 1917: The Myth of the First Great Tank Battle, but in Haig's diary entry for 22 November 1917 as published in both the Blake and the Sheffield & Bourne editions. In other words, as has been pointed out on this thread already, the information is out there if people take the trouble to read it.

To summarise in condensed form the example of 22 November 1917: Haig sets out in a staff car mid morning. He travels to Trescault, HQ of Harper's 51 Division. Haig notes of Harper that "His leading troops are now in Fontaine-notre-Dame. I thought the Divisional HQ were very far back!" Haig then moves on, and along the road comes across General Mullens and Staff of the 1st Cavalry Division. Abandoning his staff car, Haig borrows the horse of Bertie Fisher, Mullens' GSO1, and with Mullens and Richard Butler, deputy CGS GHQ, sets off on an impromptu recce of the scene of the Flesquires fight - "I rode with Butler and Mullens to a point overlooking Ribecourt from which I got a good view of Flesquires, Bois du Neuf etc. [....] On the ridge about Flesquires were a dozen or more Tanks which were knocked out by artillery fire. It seems that the Tanks topped the ridge and began to descend the ridge into the village (which is on the north side of the ridge) then came under direct artillery fire. An eyewitness stated that on the appearance of the first Tank all the personnel of a German battery (which was in a kind of a chalk pit) fled. One officer however was able to collect a few men and with them worked a gun and from his concealed position knocked out Tank after Tank to a number of 8 or 9. The officer was then killed. This incident shows the importance of infantry operating with Tanks at times acting as skirmishers to clear away hostile guns and reconnoitre. This holding up of the 51st Division at Flesquires on the 20th had far reaching consequences, because our cavalry were also held up and failed in consequence to get through. I saw Braithwaite [GOC 62nd Division] [....] I thought Braithwaite should have been closer up with his division. The head of it is now close to Bourlon Wood." Haig then moves on to Ytres, where he sees Oliver Nugent, commanding 36th Ulster Division - "Today had been hard fighting at Moeuvres. He [Nugent] thought that Enemy had no infantry on their front only machine gun companies. Several of these machine gunners fought like fanatics and instead of surrendering when surrounded blew out their brains." Haig then moves on to IV Corps HQ at Villers au Flos, finding that its commander, Charles Woolcombe, is 'out walking.' Haig tells IV Corps' BGGS Hugo de Pree that "I thought Divisional Commanders should be closer up so as to take a grip of the battle. He said they themselves were going to have Corps Report Centre closer up tomorrow. [.....]"

In other words, then, in this single example, we have Haig up surveying the scene of an intensely fought action less than 48 hours after it was fought, and at the same time as the first British troops are exploring the scene of the fight. The ground he surveyed through his field glasses will certainly have been littered with bodies, some of them horrifically damaged. His priorities, however, are to note the ground and listen to eyewitness accounts of the course of the fight, to evaluate the consequences in terms of all-arms combat, and to point out - on no less than three separate occasions - that divisional level staffs need to be further forward. In the context of this thread, we can take it from this account that Haig knew what the aftermath of a battle involving tanks, artillery and infantry looked like before it was cleared. If this is 'getting off lighly' then what other action ought he to have prioritised as C-in-C in order to fully partake of a 'Golgotha, charnel-house like' experience? And to what purpose?

George

[phil andrade]

Wellington and Grant fought their battles, by necessity, in the narrow compass of a black powder arena. They were, I believe, so closely involved that each of them, at one time or another, was spattered with the blood, guts and brains of their soldiers. Both of them had been overcome by emotion after particularly intense fighting.

Was Haig ever in a situation that was comparable ? When his staff was wiped out by a direct hit at Hooge, he kept composure but was seen to go very white. He kept his nerve well, though, and deployed troops effectively under terrific pressure. His famous ride up the Menin Road sounds more like a nineteenth century episode than an incident of modern war.

Forgive my harping on this theme, George....perhaps it says more about me than about the reality of Haig's command. The account you post about his foray onto the battlefield on November 22 1917 is appreciated.

Phil (PJA)

[barry-ashton]

Phil

"Got of lightly" as compared to who? Are there any WW1 officers of comparable rank from any of the armies involved with which you think Haig compares unfavourably?

Barry