Slow Horses and Fast Women

[phil andrade]

Well, that's all he was willing to say to me, salesie.

He loved discussing military history with me, and he was especially inspired by tales of Waterloo.

He borrowed my books about Wellington, and enjoyed talking about Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.

But every book about the Great War that I offered him was returned without being read. He would "not go there."

I tried to engage him in conversation about his experiences, but met with a stubborn silence, although he did nod his head when I asked himm if he had ever encountered Haig.. I know next to nothing about his tour of duty.

I suppose he spent a lot of time conducting funeral services.

That's why I remember with clarity that episode when he looked at me intently, and spoke in a very sotto voce way "...the prevalence of syphilis and gonnoreah among the men was appalling."

He was a teetotaller, born in 1887/8, in Treorchy, son of a publican. He spoke Welsh as his first language, and was ordained in 1913. He was an ascetic man.

He admired Lloyd George fervently, and named his two daughters Mair and Megan, in tribute. Ironic, considering DLG's priaptic reputation.

I suppose I'd better research the Army Chaplain's List and find out more. His surname was Jones, which isn't going to help !

Phil (PJA)

[Bernard_Lewis]

Good thread this!

Excuse my ignorance, George but am I right in thinking you're writing a book on DH then?

Bernard

[Steven Broomfield]

Excuse my ignorance, George but am I right in thinking you're writing a book on DH then?

Bernard

DH ... TE ... Josie .... one of the Lawrences anyway.

[truthergw]

The incidence of VD was significantly higher in 1914-15 than it was to be in 1916-17, expressed in terms of numbers per thousand of the BEF's ration strength who contracted the disease. The decrease coincides with Haig's assumption of command.

Is it fanciful to see a connection here ?

Armies have been profoundly influenced by the imprint of a commander's personality. Montgomery liked to promulgate this. Lee certainly imbued his warriors with a special quality, with religious matters assuming prominence.

I had never thought of Haig in this way, but now I'm wondering whether he exerted a much stronger influence on the conduct of his officers and men than I had imagined.

Phil (PJA)

Phil, have you ever heard of the ' post hoc, propter hoc' fallacy? Very roughly, " After this, therefore because of this". I would be fascinated to read any shred of evidence for your ' connection'.

[Bernard_Lewis]

DH ... TE ... Josie .... one of the Lawrences anyway.

Its Sid I'm really interested in. I can hear it now - 'Moonlight Serenade'...

Bernard

[phil andrade]

How heartbreaking that Rugby was ! I'm only half Welsh, and I found it excruciating.

I wonder what Haig would have said about that referee's decision to send off the Captain, and about the tackle itself.

He was none too flattering in his commentary about the French, was he ?

When I started this thread, I hadn't received Sheffield's new book.. Now that I'm well into it , it's turning out to be better than I had expected : far from the formulaic cocktail of Terraine and Simkins that I had feared.

Almost as if to address the theme of my thread, there is this statement on page 57 :

Haig's private life was as blameless as Johnnie French's was colourful.

But apparently he was not the dry lunch bore that some have imagined - or insisted - that he was.

His personality was strong enough to permeate and influence the performance of I Corps, which was oustanding at Ypres. As to how far it impinged on the BEF as a whole - after he took command of it - is moot. I was tilting at windmills by suggesting a connection between Haig's assumption of command and the drop in VD rates, but I note that he was keenly aware of the physical fitness - or otherwise - of the troops. His pre-occupation with his own health was obvious, and this was surely amplified by the death of his II Corps counterpart, Grierson, from heart failure (?) just as the BEF was deploying for battle. He himself suffered a brief but intense bout of illness at Landrecies, and he alluded to the lack of condition among the reservists, who were not up to the terrible rigours of the Retreat ( a point made by Zuber, in his book The Mons Myth).

And now wife insists that I walk to Waitrose to help with shopping.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

Phil, you are thrashing about like a swimmer trying desperately to attract the attentions of a Great White shark.

Mick,

On this forum, you don't have to thrash around much to attract the sharks !

Phil (PJA)

[Chris_Baker]

The incidence of VD was significantly higher in 1914-15 than it was to be in 1916-17, expressed in terms of numbers per thousand of the BEF's ration strength who contracted the disease. The decrease coincides with Haig's assumption of command.

It also coincides with the killing off of many pre-war regulars who had seen service in Egypt and India. Having now viewed a very great many papers of such men, it is rare to find one who did not get a VD at some point. On the contrary, it's pretty rare to find one who served only on the Western Front who did.

[phil andrade]

Excellent comment, Chris : thanks.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

Roughly one in every thirty five British and Dominion soldiers who served on the WF were treated for VD. All things considered, that's a smaller number than one might expect, especially bearing in mind the prevalence of infection in pre war British society.

I feel certain that Haig would have been interested in measures to prevent infection, whether through abstinence or through prophylactics. He made himself busy with matters of health and hygiene, and, according to Sheffield's account, was keen to visit facilities such as bath houses etc. that catered for soldiers' well being, as well as CCSs nearer the front line.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

Bingo !

From Sheffield's book, pages 147-8 :

Although it ran counter to Haig's personal moral code, he reluctantly endorsed the use of licensed brothels by his troops; it was " a matter which concerns vitally the health and fighting efficiency of soldiers.." This was the lesser evil; venereal disease hospitalised a division's worth of soldiers every day, and at least the prostitutes in a brothel could be regularly medically examined.

A division's worth of soldiers every day ? That's something to think about.

Presumably he means that on any given day there was the equivalent of a division being treated for VD.

Another thing that I remember reading about was the decision to stop soldiers "standing treat" in their drinking bouts. I understand that this alluded to the practice of buying each other rounds, which inevitably increased the amount of booze that the men were knocking back. I would like to know whether this applied just to pubs in the UK, or if it extended to estaminets near the Front.

And, more pertinently to the thread, whether it emanated from Haig, or from political powers. Lloyd George had a lot to say about the impact of alcohol consumption on munitions production, and I believe he caused consternation by insisting that the strength of beer be significanlty reduced.

Phil (PJA)

[George Armstrong Custer]

Good thread this!

Excuse my ignorance, George but am I right in thinking you're writing a book on DH then?

Bernard

Bernard, yes - though I still have an enormous amount of source material to work through at this stage. Publication is projected for December 2015, the centenary of Haig's appointment as C-in-C.

For those interested I've put a link on the Haig FB page to another review of Gary Sheffield's recently published 'The Chief' - of particular interest as the reviewer is Walter Reid, who himself produced a biography of Haig in 2006: Reid Review

George

[George Armstrong Custer]

We've also now posted 'The Herald' newspaper's review of the Sheffield Haig biography on the Haig FB page: Herald Review. The reviewer manages to be highly pejorative towards both Haig and Sheffield's book. The tired old calumnies and misconceptions about Haig and the Great War itself which the reviewer, Hugh MacDonald, regurgitates in his examination of a work of military history are perhaps best explained by the lack of any relevant expertise on his CV:

Hugh MacDonald is chief sportswriter of The Herald. He was captain of the St Joseph’s Primary School, Clarkston, team of 1967 whose achievements were cruelly overlooked because of the success of a side from the East End in the same year. He has watched Celtic from the late 1950s onwards, having been taken to a game by his grandfather before he even started school – Hugh, that is, not his grandfather. His Celtic idols were Jimmy Johnstone and Bobby Murdoch. Still are. He has contributed to Celtic Minded.

Hugh MacDonald wrote ‘Dance to the Music of Time’, ‘Dreams and Songs to Sing’, ‘The Fall of La Grande Inter’ (with Pat Woods), ‘The Johnstone Mysteries’, ‘Bobby Murdoch and the Battle of Britain’, ‘Fantasy Football’, and several mini-features in the Statistics chapter. He also interviewed Artur Boruc and Aiden McGeady and co-wrote the Dixie Deans interview.

George

[Steven Broomfield]

Straightforward answer, George.

Pop along to Parkhead and start writing match reports.

[George Armstrong Custer]

Indeed, Steve - it's evidently where Mr MacDonald learned the art of putting the boot in.....

[phil andrade]

From Sheffield, page 191 :

Churchill, out of office but not without influence, had a critical paper , " Variants of the Offensive", circulated to the Cabinet in early August....." Winston's head is gone from taking drugs," Haig retorted.

That caught my eye ! Imagine Haig turning to Churchill and confronting him with " What are you on ?" .

I wonder what drugs Haig had in mind.

This is where an anti Haig partisan would suggest that perhaps Duggie should have taken some too.

Phil (PJA)

[truthergw]

Haig was an old soldier with service in Egypt, Sudan, India, South Africa, the garrison town of Aldershot and even in Edinburgh. Does anyone really believe he was not fully aware of how soldiers passed some of their free time? If he was in doubt, he could have turned to his CIGS, Wullie Robertson. He had risen through the ranks from trooper while serving in the many of the same countries. Sheffield has no idea whether Haig was reluctant to authorise brothels or not. He is simply indulging in baseless speculation. This penchant for reading Haig's mind reached its apogee in Harris.

There were plenty of drugs available at the time and no regulation but I must say I have never read of any speculation that Churchill was a drug user. He was certainly fond of a tipple. The consensus on Churchill from before the war and through it was that he was extremely erratic with occasional brilliant ideas. Haig may simply have been expressing exasperation at some new inspiration of Churchill's.

[George Armstrong Custer]

There is no suggestion in the Haig diary entry, upon which this specultion is based, that Churchill was indulging in illicit or recreational drug use. Far more likely is that Haig was aware that Churchill was being treated for some ailment at the time which involved taking medication. When Haig had his handwritten diary typed up he clarified what he meant by amending "I also expect that Winston's head is gone from taking drugs" to "I also expect that Winston's judgement is impaired from taking drugs." It seems to me that this makes it even more likely that Haig is referring to drugs taken for medicinal purposes. Given that Churchill's is one of the most documented lives in British history, it ought not to be too onerous a task, for someone who thinks it is important enough, to discover whether he was indeed taking medication for some ailment at this period.

For what it's worth, I agree with Tom regarding the dearth of evidence that Haig endorsed brothels only reluctantly. Sheffield quotes a line from a memorandum to the War Office in which Haig says that the provision of brothels was "a matter which concerns vitally the health and fighting efficiency of soldiers". From this Sheffield extrapolates that Haig was hereby endorsing brothels 'reluctantly'. Yet, and leaving aside the fact that the quote carries no such implication in its wording, the document is dated 4 June 1918, by which time approved brothels on the Western Front were a long established fact and the war had only five months left to run.

George

[salesie]

I would suggest that no one in any position of authority within the British establishment would want to be seen in public as anything but reluctant vis-a-vis their authorisation of brothels. Even Haig's memorandum snippet, provided by George, is open to some interpretation even though Haig would expect such a memorandum to be highly classified.

Imagine the outcry even in this day and age from wives and girlfriends at home if it was found that the British Army willingly provided authorised brothels for the men when overseas - in 1914-18 the outcry would have been far worse; indeed, I would suggest that the political fall-out back then would have been of nuclear proportions. This was (is) Britain, and some Victorian values (no matter how hypocritical) were (are) deeply entrenched in the national psyche. In my opinion, the greatest surprise would be if Haig was seen to be anything but reluctant in such matters.

Cheers-salesie.

[George Armstrong Custer]

Imagine the outcry even in this day and age from wives and girlfriends at home if it was found that the British Army willingly provided authorised brothels for the men when overseas - in 1914-18 the outcry would have been far worse;

We need to be cautious I think, Salesie, about the difference between the idea of the British Army providing authorised brothels and the reality that, for health reasons, they adopted a practice of licencing approved brothels for use by British troops. There would, indeed, have been an outcry - then and now - if the British Army set itself up as a provider of such services - quite apart from leaving the Army open to charges of living off immoral earnings! Haig was, above all, a pragmatist. The utility of the medical advice which he received from, amongst others, his friend Mickey Ryan, was what counted - as the line quoted from his June 1918 memorandum indicates. As Tom has alluded to, no soldier with Haig's experience would be unaware of the need to factor in the inevitable sexual needs of an army, and the role which allowing an outlet for such needs played in terms of morale and good order and discipline. The army's interest was to try, as far as possible, to ensure that such activity took place in disease-free establishments.

The fact that, unlike Johnnie French, for instance, Haig was discreet about his own sex life ought not to lead to supposition that he was a 44-year-old virgin when he married in 1905. There is, for instance, the suggestive note from his 7th Hussars friend John Beresford, which was found tucked inside Haig's diary for 1888: "Sly rascal, I knew you could not keep off the females and I am glad you got the other two..." There is, too, the tradition in the Haig family that before his marriage he had a sexual liaison with the rather promiscuous Daisy, Countess of Warwick. Walter Reid first disclosed this in print, and on the basis of an interview with Haig's son Dawyck, in his 2006 Haig biography. Although this was challenged by Gary Mead in his subsequent biography in 2007, based on a less forthright interview with Dawyck Haig, the latter, together with Douglas Scott one of Haig's grandsons, confirmed to me that Reid had related the tradition correctly. Late in life, the loquacious (nick-named 'Babbling Brooke') Daisy could not resist dropping hints about her closeness to Haig (amongst others) in her memoirs. This was, of course, the era of the Edwardian country house party, where the done thing was not to speak of or enquire over breakfast as to who had spent the night in whose bedroom. It was a code ideally suited to Haig's private nature.

Nor, indeed, was Haig unaware of what the interior of a brothel behind the lines on the Western Front looked like. Having evidently become aware of rumours circulating about the episode, Haig's widow attempted to put a positive spin on it by confronting it in a rather too determinedly light-hearted way in her memoir of her late husband by emphasising his supposed complete innocence of where he was. The idea that soldiers of the experience of Haig and his ADC Christopher Heseltine would not know a brothel when they were in a well known one is less than convincing, though his wife can surely be forgiven for wishing to make it appear that way (and Haig's grandson, the late Douglas Scott, suggested that this is possibly also the explanation as to why odd pages have been carefully removed from Haig's bachelor-years diaries). More telling, perhaps, is her picking up on her husband for making no mention of his visit to the house of ill repute in his diary. In her account, Lady Haig is relating the events of her visit to the Western Front with her husband and her war-widowed sister in the Spring of 1919, shortly before Haig stepped down as C-in-C:

"The next day, 29th March, we drove through Doullens, Talmus and Villers-Bocage to Amiens. In Doullens we passed Le Bon Air house, the notorious house where Douglas lunched one day without knowing of its ill-repute. A stupid story about this place had reached me. Douglas, as a rule always lunched in the open out of a luncheon basket that I had given him at the outbreak of the war. He found it saved a lot of time and he much preferred it. One wet day, however, he had been forced to take his lunch indoors and had been guided by Major Heseltine, his ADC, to a harmless-looking farmhouse. Here a charming lady in charge had insisted on adding to the luncheon brought by them an appetising omlette and other delicacies. I had been told that the lady, to give Douglas and his ADC a pleasant surprise, had then introduced them to some lovely young females effectively grouped in a beautiful mirrored room and scantily dressed in veils of coloured tulle. But whether the introductions had been successfully accomplished had been left to my imagination. I had no doubt of what my husband's actions would be under such circumstances, but the story was too good not to chaff him about it when writing to him. I pointed out that no mention of this happening had been noted by him in his diary! In his reply he told me that there had been no young females and that the house was then occupied only by the lady who had supplied the omlette and who was quite middle-aged.* She had taken Douglas and his ADC over the premises and some photographs in the rooms showed that the house must have had a past history, but he added that I had evidently not heard the best part of the story, which was that two of his army commanders and their ADC's, noticing his car outside had joined him, being quite ignorant of the disrepute of the house." **

* Well, he would say that, wouldn't he!

** Hmmm. Strange he never thought to tell her this innocently hilarious tale in the daily letters he wrote to her until after she wrote wanting to know about the rumours that had reached her ears. And the idea that two army commanders and their ADC's would be as innocent of such places as Haig and Heseltine are purported to be is beggaring belief. No, I don't think Haig visited a French knocking shop to have services rendered, but neither do I believe that he and Heseltine didn't know the nature of the establishment they went into to lunch. As to whether they were introduced to a bevy of scantily clad girls, or simply an omlette-serving middle-aged Madame, this must remain open to speculation. But there's no doubt that Haig had seen the interior of at least one such establishment as C-in-C during the Great War, and does not seem to have reacted with moral indignation.

George

[PMHart]

So to sum up Haig was a sex God?

Admiring Pete

[George Armstrong Custer]

Let's put it this way, mon ami mate. After marrying at the age of 44, Haig fathered four children - two of whom were conceived in his mid 50's whilst he bore the stress of supreme command of the BEF during the Great War. In other words, it was clearly not just his upper lip which Haig managed to keep stiff during the dark days of 1917/18. Not bad going, you might say, for a man of his age and with his burden of responsibilities. The idea that there had been no outlet for such heterosexual libido prior to his marriage strikes me as ludicrously naive.

George

[dundeesown]

( it was clearly not just his upper lip which Haig managed to keep stiff during the dark days of 1917/18. )

George I Love it.

Gary.

[salesie]

Don't get me wrong, George, I fully accept that Haig was almost certainly "a man of the world" - my point is that, then and now, any C-in-C of any British Force would be extremely careful to be seen to have only reluctantly acquiesced to such matters, just in case said matters became public knowledge. Equally, any C-in-C would recognise the benefits of "licensed" premises, but pragmatism, in this instance, is surely two sides of the same coin - when putting pen to paper then the pragmatist would be careful to avoid anything that did not allow differing interpretations (ambiguity would be the order of the day).

Consequently, given the nucleonic political fall-out that may just have stemmed from this, my flabber would indeed be gasted if Haig had not attempted to be seen to be giving such things anything but his reluctant assent - which means that any modern research conclusions, drawn solely from documentary evidence, would almost certainly reflect such a reluctance. But, in my opinion, any such conclusion would tell us that the person drawing it was either lacking in "worldly wisdom" or following their own agenda in trying to make Haig look like a prude.

Cheers-salesie.

[George Armstrong Custer]

Nothing much I'd argue with you there about, old chum. Apart from that 'nucleonic' - I do wish you'd stop going on these bloody creative writing courses!

George