General Lord Rawlinson: From Tragedy to Triumph 9781474246989, 9781474247016, 9781474247009

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General Lord Rawlinson

Bloomsbury Studies in Military History Series Editor: Jeremy Black Bloomsbury Studies in Military History offers up-to-date, scholarly accounts of war and military history. Unrestricted by period or geography, the series aims to provide free-standing works that are attuned to conceptual and historiographical developments in the field while being based on original scholarship. Published: The 56th Infantry Brigade and D-Day, Andrew Holborn The RAF’s French Foreign Legion, G.H. Bennett Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe, Brian Davies Reinventing Warfare 1914–1918, Anthony Saunders Fratricide in Battle, Charles Kirke The Army in British India, Kaushik Roy The 1711 Expedition to Quebec, Adam Lyons Britain, Germany and the Battle of the Atlantic, Dennis Haslop Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750, Kaushik Roy The Role of the Royal Navy in South America, Jon Wise Scotland and the British Army 1700–1750, Victoria Henshaw War and State-Building in Modern Afghanistan, edited by Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy Conflict and Soldiers’ Literature in Early Modern Europe, Paul Scannell Youth, Heroism and Naval Propaganda, Douglas Ronald William Howe and the American War of Independence, David Smith Postwar Japan as a Sea Power, Alessio Patalano The D-Day Landing on Gold Beach, Andrew Holborn Australian Soldiers in the Boer and Vietnam Wars, Effie Karageorgos The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919–22, G.H. Bennett Forthcoming: English Landed Society and the Great War, Edward Bujak Reassessing the British Way in Warfare, K.A.J. McLay Australasian Propaganda and the Vietnam War, Caroline Page

General Lord Rawlinson From Tragedy to Triumph Rodney Atwood

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Rodney Atwood, 2018 Rodney Atwood has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. ix–x constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: General Sir Henry Seymour Rawlinson, Bart, GCVO, KCB, KCMG. Painted at Headquarters, Fourth Army, 1918. (© War Archive/Alamy Stock Photo) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4742-4698-9 PB: 978-1-3501-5113-0 ePDF: 978-1-4742-4700-9 eBook: 978-1-4742-4699-6 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Military History Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents Figures Maps Acknowledgements Abbreviations

vi viii ix xi

Introduction

1

1 2 3 4 5

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

An Imperial Heritage Fighting in the Sudan The South African War In Pursuit of the Commandos Ready for Armageddon? The War Office, the Staff College and Aldershot Into Battle: 1914 Frustrated Endeavours: Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos 1915 The Battle of the Somme From the Somme to Amiens Victory An Uneasy and Turbulent Peace India Calm and the Army Reorganized Envoi

Notes Select Bibliography Index

19 33 55 73 91 107 133 161 183 201 221 235 241 297 306

Figures 3.1 Field Marshal Lord Roberts and staff. Rawlinson is at left, Colonel Eddie Stanley, later the Earl of Derby seated right. British staff work was found wanting in South Africa, although Rawlinson did his best to fill gaps 7.1 Battle of Loos: British Gas on 25 September, photographed probably by a British soldier. Rawlinson described ‘an enormous cloud of white smoke [which] floated slowly over the German lines’ 8.1 Haig and Rawlinson at Rawlinson’s Querrieu headquarters during the battle of the Somme. Despite tension caused by their differing approaches to attacking entrenched Germans, they forged an ‘effective working relationship’ (Professor William Philpott) 8.2 An Irish Brigade, part of 16th Division, returning for rest after the taking of Guillemont. Attacking this village provided an arduous test of Rawlinson’s generalship 8.3 Fourth Army infantry advancing during the battle for Morval. Rawlinson’s employment of artillery made the action of 25–26 September a striking success 8.4 German prisoners and wounded taken at Guillemont. Although here only a handful, the total of Germans captured during the Somme, 73,000, is a testimony to the effect of French and British attacks 9.1 Mark V tanks moving up before Amiens 9.2 Some of the masses of German prisoners captured at Amiens 10.1 Winston Churchill as Minister of Munitions. Churchill’s energy brought vast quantities of ammunition and other war materiel to the BEF. Later he lobbied for Rawlinson’s appointment as commander-in-chief of the Indian Army 10.2 The victorious men of the 137th Brigade mass on the St Quentin Canal banks, still wearing their lifejackets, being addressed by Brig. J.V. Campbell

46

125

145

150

155

158 178 182

187

193

Figures

11.1 The 2nd/5th Royal Gurkha Rifles in mountainous Waziristan in the 1920s. Building roads and a brigade base at Razmak was part of Rawlinson’s solution to bring peace to this turbulent area 13.1 Rawly’s last parade. The coffin with the body of General Lord Rawlinson is borne by gun carriage across Westminster Bridge to Waterloo Station for its final journey to Trent in Dorset

vii

213

239

Maps 2.1 3.1 6.1 7.1 7.2 8.1 8.2 9.1 9.2 10.1 10.2

Egypt and the Sudan Ladysmith and Surroundings The First Battle of Ypres Battle of Neuve Chapelle Battle of Loos Battle of the Somme Attack on 14 July 1916 Planned amphibious landing Battle of Amiens Approach to the Hindenburg Line Battle of the Selle

22 37 98 112 123 141 146 165 179 186 195

Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge permission for the use of documents: Mr Andrew Rawlinson for the papers of his ancestor at both the National Army Museum and Churchill College Cambridge, without which this book would have been impossible; Dr Jeremy Hogg for the papers of H.A. Gwynne at the Bodleian’s Western Manuscript Collections, Oxford; the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives for the use of the Montgomery-Massingberd, Kiggell, Robertson, Edmonds, Ian Hamilton and Liddell Hart papers; to the family of Sir William Robertson for the use of his papers; to the present Lord Methuen for the Methuen papers; to the trustees of the National Army Museum for the Roberts papers; to the Imperial War Museum for the Henry Wilson and Fourth Army papers; to the Hampshire Record Office for the Congreve diaries. I was extremely fortunate in receiving help and advice from Stephen Badsey, Ian Beckett, John Bourne, Paul Harris, Tony Heathcote, the late Keith Jeffery, Spencer Jones, Andrew Lambert, Nick May, Meighen McCrae, Chris Phillips, John Spencer, David Stevenson. Chapter 8 is appearing in somewhat different form as an article in the Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research. I am grateful to the editor, Dr Andrew Cormac, for encouraging and accepting my article. I have experienced almost uniform efficiency and courtesy from the staffs at the National Army Museum, Churchill College Archives, Liddell Hart Archives, the Imperial War Museum, Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Hampshire Record Office, the British Library, notably the India Office section (known as ‘APAC’); Bovington Tank Museum; and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. While the National Army Museum was closed for a major rebuilding, papers were made available at the London Metropolitan Archives, whose staff were similarly efficient and helpful. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission promptly answered my questions about the number of BEF dead during the Somme campaign. Benefits from membership of the Western Front Association have been numerous, including informative lectures by Peter Simkins and Gary Sheffield, among others, as well as trips to the Western Front. Similarly fruitful has been belonging to the Royal Artillery Historical Society with both lectures and trips;

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Acknowledgements

one of the latter with Peter Maclelland took me to a number of Rawlinson’s battles. Although not a Gunner, I have been made welcome by successive secretaries, Dick Clayton and the late Will Townend, and by Chairmen Brigadier Ken Lieutenant Colonels James Cook and Jon Cresswell, for whom the study of military history has a practical application. George Pelley sent me his daughter’s thesis about her great-great-uncle, Field Marshal Sir Archibald MontgomeryMassingberd, who as Archie Montgomery has a large part in Rawlinson’s story. Dave Martin of maninahat.com gave invaluable help with the maps. My daughter drew the first two maps. The others were adapted largely from public websites. My special thanks to Professor Jeremy Black for recommending my work, and to Beatriz Lopez, editor for Bloomsbury Academic. I would like to thank Vinita Irudayaraj, Project Manager, and the Integra editorial team for their work. My greatest debt is to Brian Bond, Peter Boyden, Simon Robbins and Keith Surridge who read my draft manuscript, Peter and Keith for the fourth time, and Brian and Simon for the first. They complemented each other admirably. As always, my debt to readers is immense. Their comments and corrections have been invaluable. For mistakes and faults in writing that remain, the responsibility is entirely mine.

Abbreviations Bobs =

Papers of Field Marshal Lord Roberts at the National Army Museum.

Command =

Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914–1918. Barnsley, Pen and Sword, 2004.

Gibbs =

Philip Gibbs, Realities of War. London, William Heinemann, 1920.

Haig Diaries =

Douglas Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918. Gary Sheffield and John Bourne ed. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.

Hamilton =

Papers of General Sir Ian Hamilton at the Liddell Hart Archives, King’s College, London.

‘HHW’

prefaces the papers of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson at the Imperial War Museum.

Jacobsen =

Mark Jacobsen (ed), Rawlinson in India. Publications of the Army Records Society vol. 19, Stroud, 2002.

JSAHR =

Journal for the Society of Army Historical Research.

Little Field Marshal =

Richard Holmes, The Little Field Marshal: A Life of Sir John French. London, Cassell, 2004, orig. publ. 1981.

Maurice =

Major General Sir Frederick Maurice, The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent. London, Cassell, 1928.

M-M =

Papers of Field Marshall Sir Archibald MontgomeryMassingberd at the Liddell Hart Archives.

OH =

Sir James Edmonds (ed), Official History of the Great War: Military Operations, France and Belgium 1914–1918 (14 volumes plus appendices and maps). London, Macmillan, 1922–1948. The year of the campaign and the number of the volume for that year follows ‘OH’.

xii

Abbreviations

ODNB =

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Rawly =

Papers of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent at the National Army Museum.

1914–1918 =

David Stevenson, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War. London, Allen Lane, 2004.

‘RWLN’

introduces citation from Rawlinson’s First World War diaries at the Churchill Archives, Churchill College, Cambridge.

TH =

L.S. Amery (ed.), The Times History of the War in South Africa. 7 vols. Sampson Low, Marston and Company Ltd, London, 1900–1909.

Introduction

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same (Rudyard Kipling)

Henry Rawlinson’s career spanned the later years of Queen Victoria’s reign, the Edwardian era that saw reforms of Britain’s army following the South African War, the Western Front campaigns of 1914–1918 and the crisis faced by the British Empire in the 1920s. Before 1914, he was a friend of two of late Victorian Britain’s great soldiers, Roberts and Kitchener; a leader of a successful mobile column in South Africa; a reforming Staff College commandant. In the First World War, like generals of all armies, he struggled to find the path to success in a conflict of unparalleled scope and destructiveness, but in 1918 he won a series of spectacular victories, employing the lessons of previous campaigns. In 1920 he inherited an Indian Army that urgently needed reform at a time when money was short and elected Indian politicians were being given a part in India’s British government. He carried out these reforms and began a process of Indianization, granting to Indians officers’ commissions in the Indian Army, basis of British power. He showed flexibility and astuteness in working with the King’s Viceroy and his Council and some of these politicians. At the time of his death, he was about to become professional head of the British Army as CIGS (Chief of the Imperial General Staff). His biography was last written in 1928, three years after his death, by another soldier, Major General Sir Frederick Maurice.1 Maurice made extensive use of papers now available at the National Army Museum, but also had access to Rawlinson’s contemporaries. His perspective in the year of Douglas Haig’s death was that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had won a mighty victory against the most professional army in Europe and that Britain held a great world empire, whose future demise was not readily seen. Today’s outlook is different. The Empire has gone. While military historians might share Maurice’s view of the BEF’s

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success, the public at large look on 1914–18 very differently. If anyone knows of Rawlinson, it is first and foremost to associate him with the Battle of the Somme. Rawlinson at the Somme has had a bad press. Martin Middlebrook’s The First Day on the Somme2 damned him for his confidence in a flawed artillery programme, his inflexible ‘Tactical Notes’ and his failing to use cavalry to follow up success in the southern sector. Middlebrook’s masterly interweaving of veterans’ reminiscences can still move us today, but it is another groundbreaking volume which provides the starting point for re-examining Rawlinson’s role on the Western Front. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson’s Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914–19183 is less a biography than an operational analysis of the BEF’s key battles, deeply researched and forcefully argued, and as much about Haig and the BEF’s learning experience as the Fourth Army’s commander. They accuse Rawlinson of failing to implement his understanding that artillery was the key to success, often because of Haig’s dominance. Unfortunately, the authors’ dislike of their subject means that they give insufficient weight to the challenges posed to British generals leading Britain’s first citizen army against the well-equipped and resourceful Germans. Worse than that for the biographer of Rawlinson the man, they tell us that he was ‘of no great interest’ and scorn the value of a biography covering his entire military career. For anyone who has read his papers – I come at him initially through my work on Lord Roberts – this is demonstrably untrue. He was a man of humour and buoyant personality, wide friendships, a loving although childless marriage, devotion to sport and vigorous outdoor activity, an interest in art, at which he showed talent as an amateur, a broad and intelligent outlook on the Empire which he served, nurtured initially by his father and his patrons, Roberts and Kitchener. He well understood, as Lord Curzon declared, that as long as Britain held India, she was the greatest power on earth. India’s loss would lead to her decline to a third-rate nation.4 He became a good friend of Winston Churchill, with whom he shared several interests. His relations with Douglas Haig were tempered by working in the stress of a terrible war with someone who had less insight into the nature of that war, although he was a stronger character. Nonetheless, by 1918 the two had forged a good working partnership. Fortunately, future historians will benefit from an edition of Rawlinson’s diaries by Gary Sheffield and John Bourne, similar to their invaluable Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918.5 This should provide a wide audience with the material for a better understanding of Rawlinson. In a shorter analysis, Peter Simkins has already described Rawlinson’s relations with Douglas Haig, based on careful reading of his diaries, and his good relations with Allied

Introduction

3

commanders, both French and American.6 Ian Beckett’s somewhat longer and critical account gives a first-rate bibliography.7 For the student of Rawlinson’s Indian command, the late Mark Jacobsen’s Rawlinson in India for the Army Records Society8 has provided a thorough selection of documents with informed introduction and commentary, sympathetic to its subject. The biographer of Rawlinson also has to cover, partly at least, the life of his Chief of Staff in the Fourth Army, Archie Montgomery (later Field Marshal Montgomery-Massingberd). The two are virtually one from early 1916 onwards, and when a biographer writes ‘Rawlinson’, he could mean ‘Rawlinson and Montgomery’. Rawlinson’s talents were undoubted, but he was known to contemporaries as a lucky general, and the greatest luck was having as his chief staff officer Montgomery, having got rid of two previous chiefs. Rawlinson was a tireless correspondent and keeper of diaries, the latter probably, as he said himself, so that one day he would write the story. It was to be Montgomery who did, at least of Fourth Army’s 1918 victories.9 Like most ambitious men, Rawlinson was not without enemies. The favour of Lord Roberts and his outgoing personality, like that of his friend Henry Wilson, rankled with those in different circles. Sir John French regarded them as ‘Lord R’s special Pets’. Ian Hamilton thought ‘the Rawly of pre-war days was so desperately keen that there is no doubt that he was apt to overlook the feelings and careers of others’.10 It was alleged that he had a propensity for intrigue, a reputation based largely on Liddell Hart’s record of a conversation with the gossipy ‘Archimedes’, Sir James Edmonds, historian of the Great War, and in Hubert Gough’s comment that Rawlinson was ‘clever but crooked’.11 Those who knew him thought, however, that on the single occasion when he tried to throw the blame unjustly on a subordinate, his nearly being ‘degummed’ had a sobering effect and changed his outlook. Indeed, Montgomery who joined him after that incident thought that the war brought out all that was best in his many-sided character.12 Death struck him down unexpectedly, when he seemed to be full of life. A staff officer with twenty years’ close acquaintance wrote: ‘It is hard to connect with death that tireless energy in work or sport; that brisk, cheery manner; those quick, searching questions; that attention to the views of subordinates, not unmixed with impatience of a slow moving or less direct mind; the whole alert, soldierly personality which went to make up the Chief whom we feared and respected, the Lord Rawly whom we loved.’13 This is the man whose life I attempt to describe in the following chapters. Maps 2.1 and 3.1 were drawn by my daughter. I traced Maps 6.1, 8.2, 9.1, 9.2 and ‘ManinaHat’ adapted and inserted names. Maps 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 9.2, 10.1 and 10.2 were adapted from public websites, some using original maps of the time.

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An Imperial Heritage

[My son Henry] has been for a year with the 60th Rifles at Peshawar and is a fine active young fellow, and as I hear a general favourite.1 (Sir Henry Rawlinson to Frederick Roberts, 27 March 1885) That Henry Rawlinson would be a soldier, serve in India and be a prop of the British Empire was almost a given from his antecedents. His father, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, was born in Oxfordshire on 11 April 1810 into a north Lancashire family. He entered the East India Company’s service and set out for India in 1827. He outdistanced all his contemporaries in the acquisition of Persian and Indian vernacular. He was a fine horseman, a bright officer and an exceptional linguist. From 1833 to 1839 with others he was engaged in reorganizing the Persian army. During this time he undertook tours in Susiana and Persian Kurdistan. For these explorations he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. On his return to India, he quickly became involved in the First Afghan War. He fought with distinction in 1842 in Kandahar, where he had become political agent for lower Afghanistan. Of the battle outside Kandahar on 12 January, General Sir William Nott in his official despatch wrote: ‘Major Rawlinson, political agent, with his accustomed zeal, was in the field, and gallantly led a small body of Persians and Afghan horse to the charge.’ Many years later, Rawlinson gave a simplified yet vivid description of the battle to his two young sons: Though I was there [in Kandahar] really in a political capacity, I had plenty to do in the way of fighting for the Afghans were constantly trying to kill us, and we were obliged to keep always on the watch, our horses ready for use, pistols under our pillows and everything in order, so that in a few minutes we could be under arms. One day, we rather suspected they were thinking of attacking us, so I went up early in the morning to the top of a high tower which adjoined my house …. There was a long range of hills about 4 or 5 miles off, and on these

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General Lord Rawlinson I could see the Afghans swarming like bees – there they were coming down the hills towards us, with spears, horses and guns evidently going to attack us. So, say I, Mr Afghans! Two can play at that game – away I went to General Nott – and told him that the Afghans are coming down upon us – let us all go out and drive them away. And thus came to pass the battle of Candahar.2

These operations marked the successful end of his military career. In 1843 he was appointed political agent of the East India Company in Turkish Arabia and later consul in Baghdad. Henry Rawlinson was interested in the history and antiquities as well as the languages of the East. In 1835, while assigned to the forces of the Shah of Iran, he began to study the rock carving and inscription left by Emperor Darius c. 500 BC on a cliff near Bisotun in western Iran (anglicized as ‘Behistun’). Rawlinson scaled the cliff and copied the cuneiform inscription in Old Persian. He returned to the site in 1843, and crossed a chasm using planks to copy Elamite inscriptions. He then found an enterprising local boy to climb up a crack in the cliff and suspend ropes across the third set of writing, the Babylonian, so that papier-mache casts of this could be taken. Rawlinson with other scholars, working either separately or in collaboration, deciphered these inscriptions leading to their being read completely. His account of the Bisotun inscriptions was published in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1846. As a member of the Society from 1847, he contributed many papers to its journals and addressed its meetings. He was director of the Society from 1862 until his death, and president from 1878 to 1881. He was also a long-time member and president of the Royal Geographical Society, and a contributor to its journal. He assisted his younger brother, Rev. George Rawlinson, in his translation of the History of Herodotus. George was later his brother’s biographer, and might through family affection have exaggerated Henry’s achievements.3 After promotion to the post of consul-general in 1851 in Baghdad, Henry worked with Sir Henry Layard in his Assyrian excavation. When he came home in 1856 he was made a KCB (Knight commander of the Bath). He entered politics as MP for Reigate, then Frome, and in 1858 became a member of the Council of India, newly created following the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. He resigned this position on being appointed minister to Persia with the rank of major general, but his uncompromising attitude towards Russia led to his resignation from this post the following year. On 2 September 1862, at the age of fifty-two, he married the twenty-nine-year-old Louisa Caroline Harcourt Seymour at St George’s Church, Hanover Square. She was the daughter of Henry Seymour of Knoyle, Wiltshire,

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and Trent, Dorset. The ceremony was performed by his brother George, by then Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford. After the marriage, Rawlinson continued his cuneiform studies, spending several hours each day at the British Museum, and also dined out five or six times a week, afterwards attending one or two evening parties and meeting all manner of eminent men. He and Louisa spent each summer and autumn in the country, often renting a house and letting out their London property. On 20 February 1864 their first son, Henry Seymour Rawlinson, was born at Louisa’s family home of Trent Manor in Dorset and named for his mother’s father. In the family, he was known as Harry or Sennacherib, after the Assyrian king who was the subject of Byron’s famous poem, ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’. The second son, Alfred, known as Toby, was born on 17 January 1867.4 Perhaps the additional costs of a family persuaded the father to leave Parliament – MPs were then unsalaried – and rejoin the India Council, increasing his salary to a substantial £1500 p.a. In 1869 the Rawlinsons moved to 21 Charles Street, with stables and coach houses in the adjacent Hay’s Mews.5 The younger Henry Rawlinson spent his early boyhood largely in Dorset, and was later to choose Trent as his territorial title on being raised to the peerage. His biographer Frederick Maurice tells us one of his unrealized ambitions was to be colonel of the Dorset Regiment. The young Rawlinson’s mother was an amateur artist of some distinction and developed his taste for sketching and sense of colour and beauty which we see in his watercolours and his diary observations.6 The family connection with soldiering is easy to follow, the father in the East India Company’s service, both his sons in the British Army. It seemed the father also passed on a sense of adventure, of which we shall see more, and a natural charm and cheerfulness. His sparkle passed to both boys. Of Henry the son, an army chaplain who met him once only in 1918 wrote of ‘this most charming and most courteous officer’.7 Father sought to give the boys a good education, although in a broader rather than academic sort. Henry attended Eton from Lent Half, 1878 to the end of Michaelmas Half, 1880 (at Eton each term is a ‘Half ’), that is, from January 1878 to December 1880. According to Edward Lyttelton who later became Headmaster, 1875 was the moment at Eton when ‘open barbarism gave place to something like decorum’. Flogging and bullying had been in decline, and by the 1870s the virtual anarchy of earlier decades had mostly disappeared.8 Classics and games were supreme. He was in the house of Francis Warre Cornish, whom the Dictionary of National Biography describes as ‘a singularly attractive man’. Small and frail, with a gentle voice and quiet manners, he was not the typical

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schoolmaster martinet. ‘Boys who wished to learn were inspired by his fine scholarship and his literary and historical knowledge … As a housemaster, he was inclined to leave his boys to govern themselves; but their attachment to him was shown by a strong esprit de corps.’ Rawlinson who was good at games appears to have been happy at Eton, but scarcely benefited from Cornish’s gifts, nor from a broadening of the curriculum introduced by Headmaster Hornby. Maurice describes him as a high-spirited, healthy boy, quick enough to stay out of trouble in the classroom without applying himself particularly. There is no record of prizes or of being in school teams, although he was known throughout his life as a sportsman.9 An army class was started to prepare boys for Sandhurst and Woolwich exams, now more competitive, really pure cramming. Even so some boys had to attend crammers afterwards to gain entry.10 Insight of his Etonian days is given from an Eton Chronicle account of May 1919. Following the Great War, eighteen Etonian generals returned to their old school headed by Rawlinson, Herbert Plumer, Julian Byng and Frederick Cavan, men who had won some of the greatest victories in British military history. The Captain of School welcomed them most heartily, and Plumer and Rawlinson replied on behalf of the guests. ‘A great army of Etonians’ had upheld the honour of their school, they said, nearly 6000 of all ranks and ages.11 Rawlinson spoke of the value of an Eton education, raising a laugh by saying it began ‘in that small room over there’ and pointing to the Third Form classroom. More laughter followed when he indicated Lower School and said some memories were painful. He had learnt the habit of playing the game and the art of discipline, the latter largely from his fag-master. He concluded, ‘So far as the classics were concerned I was a failure at Eton.’12 He entered the RMC, Sandhurst in February 1883. The interval between that and school is unrecorded in Eton records.13 When it was decided that he should enter the army through Sandhurst, his father, as recognition of his own distinguished service in India, obtained a Queen’s India Cadetship for the son, which meant that Henry had only to pass a qualifying and medical examination. Young Henry obtained nearly double the necessary qualifying marks and joined Sandhurst just before his nineteenth birthday.14 He does not appear to have distinguished himself there; his best marks were for riding. Maurice tells us that Rawlinson was intended for the Rifle Brigade, but as there were fifteen names ahead of him, he joined the 60th Rifles instead, his commission gazetted on 20 February 1884 and he was posted to the 4th Battalion at Ferozepore.15 The 60th were a smart regiment, much sought after by aspiring young officers. Based at home in Winchester, they were distinguished

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by their green uniforms, their bugle calls and Light Infantry marching step. Originally, they had carried Baker Rifles when the British infantry had muskets, but this distinction was lost in the nineteenth century as improved weapons became universal. It was not the prestige of his regiment, however, that launched the young Rawlinson on his career, but his father’s influence. In October 1834, the elder Rawlinson had been sent on a mission to northeast Iran and there encountered the Russian emissary Ivan Vitkevich, whose presence seemed to provide evidence of Russian intrigue and ambition in Central Asia.16 The elder Rawlinson remained a Russophobe, and in 1868 prompted by fears of Russian advance in central Asia, in ‘an able and elaborate memorandum’, pointed to these advances and the effect Russian proximity would have upon Afghanistan and India.17 In 1875 he published the outspoken England and Russia in the East, which had considerable influence on Disraeli’s Conservative government, especially when in the following year the English translation of Colonel M.A. Terentiev’s Anglophobic Russia and England in the Struggle for the Markets of Central Asia was published in Calcutta.18 It was not Rawlinson, but primarily Disraeli’s new viceroy, Second Viscount Lytton, also a champion of these views, who must take chief responsibility for the Second Afghan War. In this war Major General Sir Frederick Roberts, another ‘Forward School’ advocate, won a series of victories culminating in his 300-mile march from Kabul to Kandahar and victory outside the walls of the latter place. This achievement made Roberts’s reputation, advanced him to the command of the Madras Army and then to the head of the Indian Army. He and the older Rawlinson had been friends and allies in the ‘Forward School’, and a place on the Afghan War hero’s staff was keenly sought. In spring 1885 following the Pandjeh Incident in which Russian troops fired on Afghans at their northern border, there was fear of Anglo-Russian war. British and Indian troops might be mobilized. Sir Henry wrote asking Roberts to take his son on his staff ‘as ADC or extra ADC or anything just to enable him to see a little service’. He added: He recommended his son as ‘a fine active young fellow’ and ‘a general favourite’ after a year with his battalion in the frontier garrison at Peshawar.19 The scare passed, but Roberts invited the young officer as an extra ADC for the big camp of exercise near Delhi in the winter of 1885–86.20 Rawlinson liked the Robertses so much that he longed to extend his service with them. Fortunately, a vacancy occurred. From Peshawar he wrote in triumph to his parents on 10 April 1886: ‘News! News! News! Good news.’ Roberts had written asking him to come to Simla and ‘do a little A.D.C. work’ until his usual staff officer returned.21 On

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General Lord Rawlinson

the 16th he was comfortably installed at Snowden, ‘the Chief ’s house which … is most delightful, quite like an English country house’. He repeatedly told his parents how kind were the Robertses and how he was doing his utmost to make himself useful to them. ‘Lady Roberts is very nice and extremely kind in very way and in fact treats us [ADCs] all as if we were her many sons.’22 He had made good friends of the other young officers around Roberts, Ian Hamilton of the Gordon Highlanders, the Guardsman Reginald Pole-Carew and Neville Chamberlain, the inventor of snooker and writer of farces and pantomimes for the Snowden stage, on which Rawlinson with his fine baritone voice was a regular performer.23 His temporary attachment ended on 16 July; the previous day, he told his parents: ‘I’ve had a ripping time here and I feel that in the Robert’s [sic] I have most firm and valuable friends.’24 He was right, for Roberts wrote to him in August and confirmed in October that he wanted him to return as ADC with commensurate salary.25 Unexpectedly this was to give Rawlinson his first experience of war, albeit small scale. Following increasing tension with King Thibaw, the British invaded Burma in November 1885. The conventional war was quickly over: the Burmese surrendered unconditionally on 27 November and on the 29th the British occupied Mandalay and deported King Thibaw and Queen Supiyalat. On 1 January 1886 as a New Year’s present to the Queen, the Viceroy Dufferin annexed Burma. Unfortunately, the British disbanded the Burmese army without plans to employ the ex-soldiers, and these took to the jungle in a prolonged campaign of resistance and ‘banditry’ (the British called them dacoits). Victorian Britain’s longest war ensued.26 When Herbert Macpherson, the British commander, died of fever in October 1886 Roberts with his staff travelled to Rangoon to take command. This was primarily to reassure public opinion in Britain. On 10 November, as Roberts travelled on to Mandalay along the Irrawaddy, Rawlinson told his parents that he was well and happy ‘but they all say it is 50 to 1 against seeing a shot fired. The dacoits stick to the thick jungles and won’t come out except to attack a convoy with only two or three men in charge.’ The majority of the British and Indian force was scattered over the country ‘hunting out these scamps’ and ‘a skirmish in which one or two of our chaps get wounded, and half a dozen of the enemy killed, is reported almost daily in some district or another’.27 He added a sketch of the royal palace where he was staying, and sketched throughout his time in Burma. He thought Mandalay ‘a wonderful city’, the interesting houses nearly all raised on piles. To the light-hearted Rawlinson, war was a jolly business, the killing was on the other side, and he would be lucky to see action. This changed.

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Roberts gave him a fortnight’s leave in December when he was not needed for an inspection tour. He and another officer joined General Low’s force and were twice in action, skirmishing in thick bamboo jungle with the dacoits.28 The campaign was a ‘subalterns’ war’ employing units of 120 men and Mounted Infantry extensively. The hostile terrain forced the British to keep to narrow jungle paths, to advance in lengthy columns and to fight on very narrow fronts. The Burmese developed ‘hit and run’ tactics, firing on the columns and then vanishing after several volleys before flanking parties could be deployed. They built sophisticated and formidable wooden stockades as bases. Gradually the weight of the British, over 40,000 men, bore down their enemy.29 Rawlinson had scarcely a taste of the fighting, but it was his first, although as he recorded more time was spent hacking a way through the jungle and over trees felled in the path. Disease was the worst enemy, and of 200 men at Rawlinson’s base, 135 were sick at one time. On one expedition, Rawlinson, a friend and a party of soldiers set off at 5 am to ambush the hideout of Bo-shwe, a dacoit chief (‘Bo’ was the commonly used name for such). They in turn were ambushed by two Burmese. The two British officers quickly returned fire, followed by their men. Although the Burmese made off rapidly into the jungle, continued rapid shooting accounted for them both, one man ‘simply riddled with bullets’. Shortly they came upon Bo-shwe’s camp ‘which he had evidently left in a hurry as there were heaps of things there and bamboo platforms half built in several places’. They pursued up a steep hill which they could only climb by hanging onto the tails of their ponies and the trees. Suddenly they came under heavy fire. They advanced steadily in two parties on each flank and then charged, but the enemy escaped. Seven of their men were hit, one fatally, and a sergeant-major escaped injury when a corned beef tin in his knapsack stopped a bullet. An officer was hit in the foot. ‘Pte Fox R.B. shot was standing next to me and got it right through the heart poor chap’, wrote Rawlinson. The party used their heliograph to signal for medical assistance, and bamboo litters were improvised to take off the wounded. The following day, they made another attempt to run down Bo-shwe, and after a long march again came unexpectedly under fire. Rawlinson, a keen diarist, recorded the details. ‘Catching sight of the muzzle of a gun sticking out from behind a tree with two hands and a ramrod loading it I determined to wait till the owner put his head out for a parting shot at us. Sure enough round the tree there appeared a head and shoulders. Up went my Winchester and in answer to its crack he threw up his arms and dropped.’ The enemy ran into the jungle, and the call to retire was sounded. Of the enemy one man was shot dead,

12

General Lord Rawlinson

and Rawlinson appeared to have accounted for his, making a second. On the return to Low’s base, the general sent a message to Roberts giving a description of the two skirmishes. On Christmas Day, Rawlinson and others were entertained at Membo by officers of the 2nd Bengal Infantry: ‘They did us admirably. Goose, plum pudding, oysters and champagne all in abundance, but I am afraid I would have preferred it over the Yule-log at home.’ For Boxing Day entertainment, Rawlinson was asked to sing and ‘made a fool of myself ’ without accompaniment. Low’s report secured him a mention in despatches. In Burma he also made a lifelong friend. The pursuit of Bo-shwe had been conducted with a section of Rifle Brigade Mounted Infantry ‘under a very good chap named Wilson’. Henry Wilson, whose distinctively ugly face and long legs hanging down the sides of his diminutive pony marked him out, was to follow a parallel career in friendly rivalry with Rawlinson. In mid-January 1887, Rawlinson returned to Roberts at Mandalay. As well as carrying out secretarial work, he had a long talk with his Chief about his future. Roberts wanted Rawlinson to join him at Simla as a permanent ADC, an offer good enough that the latter was prepared to give up leave in England. He encouraged him to work for a place at Staff College and offered support in this endeavour. Rawlinson reflected how his experience in Burma and on Roberts’s staff together with ‘psc’ (‘passed staff college’) after his name would aid his career, equipping him for any staff job commensurate with his rank.30 Rawlinson did return home in March that year, and in April joined Roberts’s permanent staff. As well as his continuing friendship with Ian Hamilton, now Roberts’s military secretary, he built up close affection with the Roberts children, Aileen, Freddie and Edwina, then aged seventeen, fifteen and twelve, respectively. ‘The children are the greatest fun, and we have the most tremendous battles in the forest with fir-cones. Ambuscades, turning movement, and attacks in force on the most approved military principles.’ The girls were educated by their Governess, ‘Prydie’. Freddie was soon off to Eton. Rawlinson remained a high-spirited officer – a return to his old regiment at Peshawar was marked by a moonlit steeplechase across the cantonment in which he beat a friend by a length, getting through the ante-room door to reach the mess table (the winning post) first. As a gifted horseman he had taken to polo on his arrival in India, but was soon to become famous as a pig-sticker, chasing wild boar. By this time his younger brother Toby had reached India in the 17th Lancers. Their uncle, George Rawlinson, wrote that ‘while the elder was an adventurous hunter of the pig, the younger was, by general consent allowed to be the best polo player

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in India’.31 Toby got in debt, however, through gambling and had to be rescued by his brother, who settled his creditors to the tune of 4,000 rupees, doubtless with cash from home. Officers failing to settle their debts was a serious matter in India.32 With Roberts’s encouragement, Rawlinson began to study his profession. When Sir Charles Dilke, MP and writer on Imperial affairs, visited India, Rawlinson read all his articles on the British army. He agreed that the British officer should spend more time on education, but of a practical rather than theoretical nature. His bookshelves contained two rows of volumes, one of military writing beginning with General Sir Edward Hamley’s The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated which until 1894 was the sole text for the Staff College entrance examination33; the second on horses had Jorrocks (R.S. Surtees) in pride of place.34 He enjoyed the practical staff experience of Roberts preparing a paper on the defence of India on the North-West Frontier. The chief worry in mobilization was the shortage of transport animals, a continuing consequence of losses in the Second Afghan War. Rawlinson told his father there was insufficient transport to put a cavalry brigade and an infantry division into the field. This may have been an exaggeration.35 In July and August 1888, he was busy taking examinations, gaining honours in tactics and topography.36 He told his father that Dilke was right in most things in his articles on the British Army and the Empire. Here we see Roberts’s influence, for he and Dilke were allies in their plans for the defence of India and the North-West Frontier.37 By October, Rawlinson had ‘advanced a step higher in Sir Fred’s good graces’, given more important work. But in January 1889, with both parents’ health in doubt, he began to feel he should return to England. Roberts told him that if it was absolutely necessary, he could go, but it would be most inconvenient to spare him during the next six months. Rawlinson told his parents of his personal devotion to Roberts: ‘It is only on his account that I am here, for him and him alone I remain in India and I would do it for no one else in the world.’38 For his twenty-fifth birthday the Robertses gave him ‘a very nice silver basin and milk jug with gold enamel pattern all over it’.39 That year he did return, expecting to look after his seventy-eight-year-old father, but on 31 October his mother died unexpectedly, twenty-three years younger than her husband. Rawlinson decided to transfer to a home posting. On 9 January 1890, he told his patron, ‘Father has decided to keep me in England and not allow me to return this summer to Simla.’ He hoped his father would escape ‘this horrid epidemic of influenza’ and that the War Office could be persuaded to bring him back to his battalion

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General Lord Rawlinson

at Aldershot to work for the Staff College examination that June. He thanked Roberts for ‘the three happiest years of my life, spent on your staff ’, and much regretted not doing his work ‘as he should have done’.40 After a brief return in 1890 to enable Roberts to fill his place, he came back to England, initially on long leave. During this leave, he courted Meredith (‘Merrie’), daughter of Coleridge John Kennard. The courtship was not a long one, nor was the engagement, for their marriage was announced in the Morning Post and elsewhere in early August. The wedding was on 5 November 1890 at St Paul’s Church, Knightsbridge in smart Belgravia. It was a ‘Fashionable Marriage’, as the Dublin Daily Express reported. Three clergy were in attendance including the groom’s uncle, Rev Canon George Rawlinson, who Maurice tells us conducted the service. The groom was twenty-six, the bride thirty. Merrie’s father had been MP for Salisbury, his London residence was 39 Upper Grosvenor Street off Park Lane in Mayfair and in the marriage register he gave his profession as ‘Gentleman’.41 It was unfortunate that he was indisposed and unable to attend on the day of his daughter’s wedding, for the rest of his family was fully involved: Merrie’s uncle conducted the bride to the chancel, her mother gave her away, five cousins were bridesmaids and a nephew was a page. The Shah of Persia, remembering his former servant and ambassador, the groom’s father, sent ‘a magnificent coronet of diamonds as an offering to the bride’. The Robertses gave an engraved silver salver.42 The bride’s mother welcomed the newlyweds and guests to a reception at Upper Grosvenor Street, before Henry and Merrie departed for a honeymoon on the Isle of Wight.43 ‘And so began’, writes Rawlinson’s biographer, ‘a companionship which was to be of the happiest for thirty-five years’. It may have been of the happiest, and Rawlinson’s diary references and letters to his wife are affectionate, but it never interfered with his seizing the opportunity for foreign service. Merrie Rawlinson was not a dominating personality like Nora, Countess Roberts, who was accused of ‘petticoat government’ and ‘jobbery’, but she gave her husband quiet support and was immensely proud of his achievements. His diary shows that he was always delighted to return to the welcoming comfort of his home. At his death, she hoped there would be a state funeral at Westminster Abbey, and she defended his reputation, although not with the same singlemindedness as Doris Haig her husband’s.44 There were no children from the marriage. One thing the couple shared was an interest in art, as shown by their visits to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition and by his account of a visit to Italy in November and December 1894. At Milan they admired a good Raphael and ‘a few fair pictures’ by Leonardo. At Florence he was ‘perfectly enchanted’ by

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the Pitti Gallery. ‘It is worth coming hundreds of miles to see such pictures – I have never seen anything to approach it in the way of pictorial art.’ He was not ‘as floored’ with the Uffizi. His tastes were conventionally Victorian, putting Raphael’s sweet Madonnas first, and admiring Leonardo, Titian and Giorgione. At Rome there was so much so to see ‘that one hardly knows where to begin’. He especially admired the stadium of Septimius Severus on the Palatine. They went on to Naples, Sorrento which was ‘cleaner and not as smelly’, and Malta.45 The young couple settled down with his father at his home, 21, Charles Street. The elder Henry was much affected by his wife’s death; he ‘lost much of that prevailing cheerfulness, and even sparkle, which had previously been characteristic of him, and had rendered him so delightful an associate’. He ‘rarely indulged in laughter, and not much in light conversation’.46 Although declining, he still enjoyed ‘the interesting and varied society of statesmen, soldiers, scientists and explorers’. Their visits and society will have broadened the young Rawlinson’s mind and introduced him to men of intelligence and influence. He transferred to the Coldstream Guards to ensure that he would remain in London, unless there were a major war.47 In 1893, as a twenty-nine-year-old captain, he entered the Staff College at Camberley in the company of the future Lord Byng of Vimy, of Aylmer Haldane, Thomas Snow and Alexander Hamilton-Gordon, who would be corps commanders on the Western Front; of Hubert Hamilton, an invaluable member of Kitchener’s staff and the first BEF divisional commander killed in 1914; Launcelot Kiggell who would be Douglas Haig’s chief of staff 1916–1917; and Henry Wilson, his Burma acquaintance who became his closest friend. Although the three great commanders of the late Victorian army, Wolseley, Roberts and Kitchener, had not attended Staff College, there were signs that the future lay with officers with ‘psc’ after their name. Wolseley whose influence was strong at home (as Roberts’s was in India) favoured psc’s on his staff, and ten of thirty officers in his Ashanti Campaign (1873) and thirty-four in Egypt (1882) had been to Staff College. In the absence of anything resembling the German general staff, the ‘ring’ system was perhaps the best that heroic Victorian generals could manage, and Wolseley secured first class appointments for officers who had passed through Camberley. The Brain of an Army written by Spencer Wilkinson, military correspondent of The Morning Post, and the report of the Hartington Commission on War Office reform appeared on the same day in 1890 recommending fundamental changes along German lines.48 The commander-in-chief, the Duke of Cambridge, was opposed to anything resembling the German system. Taking the story further, in June 1895 he retired,

16

General Lord Rawlinson

however, and the South African War demonstrated fundamental shortcomings in British staff work and the need for psc’s. Rawlinson in attending Staff College was taking a wise step for his future career. Colonel Clery who was Staff College commandant when Rawlinson arrived was succeeded by a rather better administrator, Colonel Henry Hildyard, who raised the college’s standing and made the course more practical. Rawlinson’s good fortune was to be taught by Colonel G.F.R. Henderson, a gifted military historian whom Wolseley had recommended. Accounts of the college in the 1890s universally speak of Henderson with warm affection and admiration. He was a major influence on Rawlinson, but equally so for future field marshals like Allenby and Haig. Henderson identified Haig as the man ‘who will be C-in-C one of these days’.49 He was the biographer of ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, the brilliant Confederate general, and the Staff College course used examples of Jackson’s strategic daring as part of its material; but Henderson also covered the FrancoPrussian War of 1870–1 in his teaching. Rawlinson’s mother’s encouragement of his sketching proved an advantage: field sketching on the course was a trial to many students, but he was an adept, leaving time for the pursuit of sport.50 Staff College involved a busy social round of lunches, teas and dinners with fellow students and wives and plenty of leave. Work ceased in June during Ascot week; the College had a luncheon and tea tent at the racecourse. Future Commandant and CIGS, William Robertson claimed other benefits: ‘It can, however, and does, make good men better, broaden their views, strengthen their power of reasoning, improve their judgement, and in general lay the foundations of a useful military career. Further, the benefits of the course are by no means confined to the lectures … for in addition there is a smartening friction with others of their own standing with whom they may have to work later in life.’51 Lasting friendships were made. One Syndicate was formed of Rawlinson, Aylmer Haldane, Henry Wilson and Thomas Snow.52 Wilson and Rawlinson became the closest of friends, worked jointly on essays and ‘schemes’ and rode together. Wilson stayed at Rawlinson’s London house and they went to the theatre together. Henderson organized a tour of the Franco-German battlefields of 1870 for each course, and it was typical of Rawlinson and Wilson that they should make a more leisurely but more detailed tour, cycling on their own and also visiting Pommery and Greno’s champagne vaults.53 They saw more of the French and German armies, and Rawlinson was impressed with the latter: The Germans are miles ahead of the French in organization, equipment and training, and both are miles ahead of us. Our battalions are just as good as their battalions, but there we end. We live in watertight compartments, the infantry

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know nothing about the artillery, nor the artillery anything about the infantry, the cavalry nothing about either. In the big garrisons like Metz the troops are always working together, and their brigades and divisions are realities, not paper organizations like ours are. Wolesley is trying to shake things up, but we have a long way to go, particularly at home; India is better, but not good enough.

Wilson became an admirer of the French in the years after 1894, but Rawlinson was not entirely convinced.54 While at Staff College Rawlinson designed a pocket-book for field service, which was a practical and up-to-date development of Wolseley’s more famous pocket-book. His effort was so successful that it prompted the authorities to produce their own Field Service Pocket Book. Wilson proof-corrected his friend’s draft.55 Rawlinson and Wilson were a natural pair, quick-witted, outgoing, ambitious, keen on sport and on their profession. Their wives, Meredith ‘Merrie’ and Cecil ‘Cissie’ also formed a friendship. Neither had children. Rawlinson organized separate lectures for the two of them by the military writer and journalist, Lonsdale Hale.56 In November 1893, they took their exams. Perhaps the extra lectures had taxed even their enthusiasm, for Wilson recorded on the 28th that when he and ‘Rawly’ took the last examination paper they ‘being exceedingly indifferent have touched bottom or nearly so I fancy’. Despite this, when results were announced, all students passed out with the highest grade except John ‘Tavish’ Davidson, later Haig’s Director of Military Operations, and no one failed in any subject.57 Rawlinson was seen as a coming man and appointed to a brigade major’s post at Aldershot. In the later 1890s, war involving British forces appeared imminent in two places. In the Sudan, Kitchener and the group of officers he gathered round him hoped to avenge the death of General Charles Gordon at Khartoum at the hands of the Mahdists. There British imperial interests came into competition with the French near the headwaters of the Nile. In South Africa, tension increased between the Empire, represented by its authorities in the Cape and Natal and unofficially by the so-called Uitlanders, overwhelmingly British, mining gold on the Rand, and the Boers of the South African Republic (usually called the Transvaal) supported by the Orange Free State. Intelligent minds in the British Army had considered both Imperial defence and how war in South Africa might be fought. In April 1893, Lord Roberts back from India visited Rawlinson and was introduced to Wilson. Wilson had written a paper on the defence of India, and Roberts, much interested in the subject on which he had written at length, offered to read it. He was favourably impressed

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General Lord Rawlinson

and noted the author as a man worth watching. In early spring of 1897, Wilson and Major H.P. Northcott drew up a scheme ‘for knocking [Johannes] Kruger’s head off ’. Kruger was president of the Transvaal and the rugged opponent of the British in South Africa. The strategy Roberts would use in the coming war was, according to the historian and journalist Leo Amery of the Times, worked out with Wilson and with Captain Hugh Dawnay, also in the Intelligence Section.58 Rawlinson would also have an influence, albeit indirect, on Roberts getting to South Africa. By chance and good fortune, however, he would first be in the thick of the fighting along the Nile Valley and in the arid desert of the Sudan.

2

Fighting in the Sudan

I think that I shall get on all right with K[itchener]. I was told that he was a queer customer, but I have never failed to hit it off with anyone who means business, as he certainly does. (Henry Rawlinson, February 1898) On Tuesday, 26 February 1895, the elder Henry Rawlinson attended the weekly meeting of the India Council, but the next day he complained of a headache, and on Thursday took to his bed. On Friday his temperature rose rapidly, causing great loss of strength, which possibly marked the onset of influenza, as the country was in the grip of an epidemic. A further rise in his temperature followed at midday on Sunday, coupled with bronchial congestion of the right lung. He sank gradually until the early morning of Tuesday, 5 March, when he died. The Times, announcing his death ‘with much regret’, mourned the end of ‘the long and eventful career of one of our most brilliant Oriental scholars and most distinguished Anglo-Indian statesmen’.1 He was buried five days later at Brookwood in a downpour of incessant rain, with close family and India Office colleagues including Lord Roberts in attendance. At the same time a memorial service was held at St George’s, Hanover Square.2 Henry and ‘Toby’ had lost both their parents, yet their elders’ influence continued; in their mother’s case in her encouragement of the boys’ interests, most notably for Henry his love of art and his painting and sketching; and in father’s case, the introduction to men of learning and men of affairs which they gained at his London home. Most notable for the elder brother was entree to Lord Roberts’s ‘Indian ring’, which set him on his career and remained a lifelong influence possibly as important as that of his parents. The Times used the elder Rawlinson’s death as a hook for a masterly survey of Britain’s Central Asian policy and the continued threat from Russia, particularly in the remote Pamirs.3 The younger Henry Rawlinson had written to tell father in 1888 from Quetta, British frontier garrison near the Bolan Pass, that he would have been impressed to see it ‘after all the opposition there was to

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General Lord Rawlinson

your proposal that it should be occupied’. The defence of India would re-emerge as a major theme of the son’s last years. Rawlinson’s first serious fighting (Burma barely qualified as such) was not to be on the Indian frontier. On 2 January 1898 he was in Egypt where he had taken his wife to regain her health. She recovered. After bagging sixteen duck in an early morning shooting expedition, he was told that Major General Sir Herbert Kitchener, ‘Sirdar’ or commander of the Egyptian army led by British officers, wanted an extra man for his staff. Could Rawlinson go as DAAG (Deputy Assistant Adjutant General)? He had his service kit with him and was off like a shot, bidding farewell to Merrie, a fate she frequently suffered.4 Rawlinson’s having his kit was not simply chance. Every British officer worth his salt was eager for a billet with Kitchener, who kept most applicants at arm’s length and carefully selected his (usually unmarried) officers. A Rawlinson letter gives detail of the appointment: I was back [from shooting] at 6.45 p.m. to find a note to say that [General Sir Francis] Grenfell [commanding in Egypt] wanted to see me at once. I dashed over to his house, and he told me that he had wired to the Secretary of State to ask if he might appoint me as D.A.A.G. to Kitchener for the British troops who are going up the river. It was a complete surprise to me, as I had no idea that any job was going, and all I had done was to tell Grenfell that if there was any chance of active service I would resign my appointment at Aldershot. Kitchener had wired to ask for another staff officer, and, as Grenfell could not spare one of his own, he thought of me. Lord Lansdowne wired confirming the appointment, and I imagine from the row there was about it at the War Office afterwards, that he did this without consulting the Adjutant-General, otherwise I fancy I should not have been allowed to go. It is a great stroke of luck.5

Kitchener was waging war against the Mahdists (followers of Muhammad Ahmad, the ‘Mahdi’, the chosen one of Allah) or as the British called them ‘Dervishes’.6 This Sudanese revolt (1881–99) was inspired by both Islam and nationalist resistance to corrupt Egyptian rule. Although largely armed with primitive weapons, swords and spears, supported judiciously by firepower from captured weapons, the Ansar (‘helpers’), as Mahdist soldiers were known, were a formidable enemy in the desert. Their fearless and rapid assaults, using every fold of ground, proved more than a match for Egyptian troops, even when led by a British officer. Colonel William Hicks, formerly of the Bombay army, took service with the Egyptians, and led an army of 10,000 into the Kordofan; they were ambushed and annihilated near El Obeid.7 In under four years, the Mahdi acquired a tenuous mastery of almost all the Sudan, an area of nearly 1 million

Fighting in the Sudan

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square miles. He had killed or captured some 40,000 Egyptian troops, defied Britain, killed one of her national heroes (Charles Gordon) and forced her soldiers to withdraw.8 Kitchener, fluent Arabic speaker, had long served in the Middle East and found his natural home there. His chief motive was avenging the death of his hero Charles Gordon, who was killed when the Mahdists stormed Khartoum in January 1885. British national pride was dealt a double blow, for Garnet Wolseley’s relief expedition had narrowly failed in its rescue attempt and had to make a fighting retreat. Lord Salisbury’s coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Unionists, however, had political and imperial aims when they launched Kitchener against the dead Mahdi’s successor, the Khalifa, who consolidated Mahdist rule from June 1885. First, they answered an appeal by the Italian government whose army had been beaten at Adowa by the Ethiopians; the Ethiopians and the Mahdists might form an anti-British alliance. Secondly, they sought to protect British hegemony on the Nile from the French seeking a route to Adowa on the river’s upper reaches.9 Kitchener was tough, hard-working, brusque and dictatorial. He was an obsessive centralizer, holding details of the campaign in his head or on scruffy bits of paper in a chaotic office. Yet he had assembled a talented team in support: his brother Walter, Director of Transport, an expert on that vital beast of burden, the camel; Percy Girouard, a young engineer from Canada who drove forward the desert railway, ‘the deadliest weapon ever used against Mahdiism’;10 Archibald Hunter, with fifteen years’ service in Egypt and the Sudan, the Sirdar’s ‘sword arm’; Leslie Rundle, the Adjutant-General, veteran of the Gordon Relief Expedition; and perhaps most important, Reginald Wingate, Director of Military Intelligence, ‘mastermind of the campaign’ in the words of its Sudanese historian, Ismat Hasan Zulfo.11 Not only did Wingate’s network of spies bring vital intelligence of Mahdist moves, but they also provided evidence of Sudan misery under the Mahdist rule, of vast numbers killed by execution, rebellion, disease or hunger.12 For the campaign was, in the eyes of Europeans, not simply one of revenge and conquest, but also a civilizing mission in the footsteps of Gordon’s struggle against the slave trade.13 The Mahdi’s successor was his ablest advisor, the Khalifa Abdullahi, who unified and strengthened the Mahdist state and introduced universal conscription. The Khalifa led a nationalist revolt against colonialism and Egyptian corruption, but his regime, ‘more like a system of plunder than an administration’, was based on slavery and the ruthless suppression of rival tribes.14 Rawlinson spent three days in a bustle organizing his kit and ponies. On the evening of 7 January he and Merrie dined quietly together and he bade his wife ‘a

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General Lord Rawlinson

Map 2.1 Egypt and the Sudan.

tearful farewell at 8.45 – poor little darling she is much distressed’. Rawlinson left her in the care of a mutual friend. He travelled by boat and train, accompanying the 1/Lincolns, wiring to his wife en route. On the 14th he reached Wady Halfa and was introduced to Reginald Wingate, intelligence chief, and Slatin Pasha, former prisoner of the Mahdists. It was these two who had publicized the cruelty of the Mahdist regime. Wingate warned Rawlinson of the Sirdar’s methods:

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‘K is very sketchy in the way he fires off telegrams without letting one know sometimes and without keeping a copy.’ Kitchener was affable, welcoming his new staff officer. Rawlinson was soon hard at work sending telegrams for the movement of the British brigade and so busy his journal had to be neglected.15 His hard work paid off: ‘I get on well with the Sirdar and like him much – he is a strong, able, hard soldier, full of energy and resource but hard as steel.’16 Kitchener did not have a staff system as such; he used his men as and when their expertise was needed. That Rawlinson established himself in good favour is shown by Kitchener sending him back to Cairo when Merrie fell ill and urgently needed an operation. He kept Rawlinson’s place open until her health improved, and on 28 February wired: ‘Glad to hear your wife is better. You should come when you can get away safely.’ On 2 March Merrie’s condition was ‘eminently satisfactory’. She had rapidly recovered, and her husband returned to duty.17 The campaign was to establish Kitchener’s reputation as ‘the Sudan machine’, thanks largely to the journalism of G.W. Steevens: ‘You cannot imagine the Sirdar otherwise than as seeing the right thing to do and doing it.’18 Kitchener, however, concealed a highly strung temperament beneath a rigid exterior, ‘really a bundle of sensitive and highly-strung nerves kept under control 999 hours out of a 1000’, a shy man whose scowl was a piece of armour plate.19 Rawlinson’s career was to be as inextricably connected to this rising star of the late Victorian army, as it was to Roberts. Kitchener’s Sudanese War was a culmination of Britain’s nineteenth-century ‘small wars’, in which climate, disease and terrain were killers as dangerous as the enemy. The Sirdar took three campaigns to destroy Mahdism, although further pursuit was necessary before Wingate eventually ran down the Khalifa. In 1896, Hunter launched a successful attack on an enemy camp at Firket and the Anglo-Egyptian-Sudanese army occupied Dongola. The following year the desert railway was pushed forward, armoured gunboats constructed to advance up the Nile in the army’s support, and Abu Hamed and Berber taken. As Rawlinson arrived, the campaign neared its climax: the Mahdists were to be comprehensively defeated in the battles of Atbara and Omdurman. For this phase, Kitchener’s army was reinforced by a British brigade under Major General Sir William Gatacre. The Khalifa committed a serious error sending forward his favourite general Mahmud20 in February against Kitchener’s men, now strengthened and concentrated. Kitchener’s forward move frustrated Mahmud’s attempt to cut his line of communications: Mahmud’s chosen route was too circuitous, and desert water supplies too scarce. Mahmud fell back and his men dug into a fortified camp or zariba surrounded by thorn bushes and with

24

General Lord Rawlinson

their backs to the dry river bed of the Atbara. It was a bad choice.21 There was discord between the pugnacious Mahmud and one of his Sirdars, the wily Osman Digna, and between their Baggara and Beja warriors. Rawlinson’s telegram of 15 February made the assessment: ‘The Dervish force is large but they are mostly held together by fear.’22 Kitchener underwent one of his periods of indecision as to attacking: Gatacre was in favour, but the experienced Hunter against. When Hunter changed his mind, Kitchener was persuaded and fixed Good Friday, 8 April, as an auspicious date for a dawn attack following a night march. General Sir Garnet Wolseley had used similar tactics at Tel-el-Kebir in 1882. Kitchener’s staff dined together on 7 April under a beautiful moonlit sky. At 1.15 am on the 8th, his force of three brigades, British, Egyptian and Sudanese, moved off to cover the twelve miles to the enemy, halted just after 2 am to align their position, and at 2.27 saw a large fire to their right front where they expected Mahmud’s camp. Sudanese guides confirmed that it was the enemy position. Rawlinson took the bearing with his compass. At 3.45 there was a longer halt for the troops to close up. At 6 o’clock the guns were unlimbered and the men deployed. At 6.16 Rawlinson witnessed a display of the power of modern artillery: The first shell was fired into the dem [camp] and not a living creature was to be seen. They all scuttled in and lay low at the bottom of their trenches. The Bombardment was excellently carried out. Every part of the Zariba [thorn enclosure] was thoroughly searched and execution as we found afterwards was terrific. The Egyptian gunners fired steadily and well. There was no hurry, their shells went well, fuses except on a very few occasions were accurately set and burnt just right in the great majority of cases. The Zariba was several times set on fire but not withstanding the fresh wind that was blowing the fires all went out again ….The only sign of life which we could see was occasionally a wounded camel or donkey moving about between the trees.23

Gatacre had advanced his brigade too far to the left, and it had to be brought back before the assault could be launched. At 7.40 the artillery ceased fire and the advance was sounded. Despite the bombardment, Mahdists who lay deep in their trenches were able to bring a murderous fire against the attackers for the last twenty yards’ advance, especially on the left of the British brigade. With the cry ‘Remember Gordon’, the battalions marched forward in close order with fixed bayonets, to the sound of the Highlanders’ pipes, the English regiments’ drums and fifes, and the Sudanese bands. The thorn walls around the camp were quickly removed. For two minutes the opposing forces five yards apart exchanged fire, the outgunned Mahdists fighting with great courage from

Fighting in the Sudan

25

their maze of deep trenches and a central stockade. They were overwhelmed by superior firepower, Kitchener’s brigades entering and advancing through the camp. By 8.35 am, Rawlinson wrote, the British brigade had reached the far side, having completely cleared the camp in their advance. Victory secured, Kitchener went round his troops and congratulated them, and was heartily cheered. It was an extremely hot day, and Rawlinson described the sight of the conquered Zariba as the most repulsive he had ever seen. Over 1,300 corpses were counted within the trenches and there were fully another 1,500 within half a mile of the camp circumference. The Atbara’s dry river bed behind the camp was full of bodies, men and animals horribly disfigured by the artillery fire. There was a pervasive smell of burning flesh. ‘The two main features of the battle’, wrote Rawlinson, ‘were to my mind the excellence of the artillery bombardment and the steady discipline and courage displayed by all concerned in the assault on the Zariba.’24 The victory of the Atbara gave Kitchener’s men confidence and shook Mahdist morale. Mahmud’s army had been well-nigh annihilated: nearly 3,000 killed, thousands wounded and over 2,000 prisoners. Survivors trickling back to Omdurman gave a chilling account of British firepower. Before the next battle, some 6,000 of the Ansar deserted.25 One brigade of Egyptian soldiers carried the wounded back to their camp. At this point the failure of British Medical arrangements became obvious. ‘They could not compare with the Egyptian in any single item, material or personal,’ Rawlinson observed. The Egyptian dep[artmen]t is run by an excellent capable practical man of the name of Galway, whilst the British is under a weak theoretical silly old man named Macnamara. The comparison is odious and the Brit[ish] state of affairs would have been far worse if we had not had the PMO [Principal Medical Officer] up before the Sirdar and given him a real good dressing down. He never knows his own mind for 24 hours together.

On the morning of 9 April Rawlinson went round the hospital, and while finding eight tents pitched to cover the seriously wounded, saw that others were in the open. Egyptian soldiers were summoned to build a large shelter for them. Medical staff had left important equipment including X-ray machines behind, and fifty camels were sent back to recover it. Following the battle, Kitchener sent his army into summer quarters along the Nile. Rawlinson noted that the cases of enteric (typhoid) had gone steadily up, but in May it was a mild form and there were few deaths.26 Over the

26

General Lord Rawlinson

four-month wait, however, sickness increased, despite repeated orders stressing sanitation and hygiene. Captain John Spencer Ewart wrote: ‘Our stay … had cost more lives than the battle of the Atbara; it is ever so in war; the climate is the soldier’s most deadly enemy.’27 The vital military railway reached Fort Atbara on 3 July and remained there until after the capture of Khartoum. A second British infantry brigade, a cavalry regiment, the 21st Lancers, a brigade of field artillery, and other units including additional medical staff arrived in readiness for the seasonal rise in the Nile’s level in August. More reporters increased the host of those following the campaign, among them Winston Churchill who doubled as a 21st Lancers’ subaltern. Even Kitchener could not withstand the string-pulling of Churchill’s mother, the beautiful Lady Randolph, who gained the help of the Prime Minister and the Adjutant General Evelyn Wood. Many were seeking a Sudan posting, and Rawlinson had scarcely arrived in the Sudan when he argued the case of ‘Freddie’, Lord Roberts’s son. Freddie had been commissioned into the 60th Rifles, served as his father’s ADC and then on the North-West Frontier in 1892, in the Waziristan Expedition of 1894–5 and in the 1895 Chitral Expedition. He had been mentioned twice in despatches.28 In February, Rawlinson told Freddie’s father that there was nothing going on and ‘we could find nothing for [Freddie] to do’.29 In July he described his disappointment; it was impossible to fit him in, especially as royal pressure had compelled the Sirdar to take Prince Christian Victor. With the campaign approaching its climax, Lord Roberts wrote again to his former ADC. Rawlinson had ‘determined to have one more final go at the Sirdar and lay before him the fact that he had allowed [Major Stuart-] Wortley and Christian Victor to come out who did not really [soldier] whilst professional soldiers like Freddy were shut out’. Persistence paid off. On 8 August he wrote: ‘I don’t think that anything has given me greater pleasure than sending you off the telegram the other night asking for Freddy as A.D.C. to the Sirdar, for I know how pleased all of you would be.’30 Rawlinson’s persuasion and influence with Kitchener enabled him to render his old patron a favour. He had told Roberts, ‘I have myself been particularly fortunate in hitting it off with the Sirdar who is most kind to me and an excellent man of business.’31 Early in July, Kitchener massed his army, 8,200 British and 17,600 Egyptians and Sudanese, at Wad Hamed, 60 miles north of Omdurman. Despite the sickness, morale had been kept up by sport, hunting, fishing and route marches. On 24 August they began the advance up the Nile’s west bank in double line of brigades, the British closer to the river. Cavalry and horse artillery protected their front. Baggage columns brought up the rear. The artillery was overwhelming: forty guns

Fighting in the Sudan

27

and twenty Maxims under Colonel C.J. Long, and a further thirty-six guns and twenty-four Maxims on the ships, augmented by three new armoured gunboats. The army advanced through (in Major Ivor Maxse’s words) ‘200 miles of unhabited and wasted country’ where a year earlier Mahmud had butchered the Jaalin people and destroyed crops, burnt villages and smashed waterwheels. Those of the population who escaped massacre were enslaved at Omdurman, took refuge behind the British or fled up the Blue Nile. At Metemmeh, where in 1897 Mahmud had slaughtered thousands, the ‘whole place was strewn with skeletons of human beings and animals’.32 Rawlinson was part of a modern army, even if its close-order tactics were suited to a war against a ‘savage’ enemy rather than Europeans. Kitchener’s trained and largely battle-tested fighting men had rifled artillery, lyddite shells, machine guns, searchlights, magazine rifles and armoured steam gunboats.33 Facing such firepower, the Khalifa and his Amirs would have been wise to withdraw into the Kordofan wastes and repeat the tactics that destroyed Hicks’s army, or to heed the advice of the wily Osman Digna, who had escaped from the Atbara, and try to block the Shabluka Gorge. There Kitchener would have found it difficult to deploy his guns to maximum effect. Instead, after a violent disagreement at a pre-battle conference, the Khalifa abandoned plans for a night attack in favour of a morning assault. He planned an attack in two phases: the first to inflict losses or at least draw Kitchener from his fortified zariba, the second by the men of the Black and Green Standards, employing in support his Mulazimim who were armed with rifles and cannon. These last would, however, be poorly used. Abdullahi’s last battle had been thirteen years before, and he reckoned not with modern firepower.34 On 1 September, Kitchener sent his gunboats forward to shell Dervish positions. His advanced guard including Rawlinson caught first sight of the massed Mahdist host from the higher ground of Jebel Surgham between 1 and 1.30 pm.35 The sight we saw will live for ever I am certain in all our memories. We shall never see such another so long as any of us live. Our first attention was directed of course on the object we had come to see namely the bombardment [by the gunboats] … They were banging away hard. I saw several shells drop near the Mahdi’s tomb the most prominent object in the whole landscape and saw through my glasses that the top had been knocked off. I was watching this very interesting sight and speculating as to when the great white dome of the tomb would collapse when I became aware of huge lines of men drawn up in the open plain to the west of the city of Omdurman. This I guessed at once must be the Dervish army parading to march against us.

28

General Lord Rawlinson

Even 6 miles away, the Mahdist masses were impressive, in three dense lines covering a front of at least 3 miles. The British believed the Khalifa’s army to be over 50,000; the Sudanese historian Zulfo suggests it was 30,000–35,000.36 There would be no battle that day, but Rawlinson was sure the enemy had considered a night attack, when superior numbers would tell at close quarters. Kitchener and Wingate by sending forward agents of disinformation had convinced the Khalifa that the Anglo-Egyptians would themselves strike in the dark. The Mahdists stood to in case of attack, but made none themselves. Rawlinson was relieved. ‘I am very glad for all our sakes that they did not for had they attacked that night with the same vigour that they attacked the following morning some of them would certainly have got into the Zariba and when that happens at night one never quite knows how far it will go.’37 The dark hours were scarcely peaceful, with the steamers’ searchlights sweeping the desert constantly and ceaseless throbbing of drums from the vast enemy host. The British still expected a dawn attack, and were relieved when Kitchener roused his camp at 4 am, according to Rawlinson, to the sound of pipes and drums. Day grew light and no attack came. The army breakfasted and deployed for battle. Rawlinson rode out to where Captain Douglas Haig was withdrawing his cavalry steadily before the Mahdist approach. Haig’s confident bearing inspired steadiness in his men. He had already performed coolly and professionally leading cavalry at the Atbara. The Sudan campaign was his first time in battle. His patron the Adjutant General Evelyn Wood, had sent him to the Sudan, not just as an able officer, but also as a War Office spy, to report on Kitchener.38 It was the first time he and Rawlinson came into proximity.39 What drew the attention of both men, however, was the Mahdist advance. ‘It was a magnificent sight [wrote Rawlinson] these thousands of wild, brave, uneducated savages advancing to their destruction. On they came. Their line was perfect and by the time I got back to the Zariba they were within 1200 yards of our line.’ A murmur of admiration ran through British ranks as the enemy charged across the open ground. They came on heedless of those that fell and led by mounted Emirs. Almost none got within 400 yards; the greatest killing was at 800. On Kitchener’s right the Mulazimin came too close to the river and were devastated by the gunboats’ fire, nullifying any fire support they might give. Kitchener then ordered forward his British cavalry regiment, the 21st Lancers, to ‘make every effort to prevent the enemy re-entering Omdurman’. Instead, Osman Digna, employing a time-worn Dervish tactic of showing a small force to lure an attack onto superior numbers, had concealed 2,000 men in a ravine. The Lancers with Winston Churchill among them charged and ran into a bloody

Fighting in the Sudan

29

check, as Mahdists killed their horses and inflicted heavy losses – 22 dead, 50 wounded and over a hundred horses of a regiment just over 300 strong. Kitchener was furious as the regiment was now incapable of pursuit or scouting. ‘The game was not worth the candle,’ wrote Rawlinson, ‘for the infantry could have easily dealt with these Dervishes.’ Haig commented: ‘The Colonel sh[oul]d be strongly reprimanded for what he did, there was no object in his charging, while the casualties were enormous considering the numbers engaged … Result absolutely nil!’40 Three Victoria Crosses and the news correspondents’ glamorous accounts prevented Kitchener taking action against the CO, Colonel Martin. Next Kitchener ordered his infantry brigades to advance in echelon. A mistake by Gatacre commanding the British Division opened a gap between two brigades, leading to the battle’s third phase. Archibald Hunter, to fill the gap, ordered the brigade led by Hector Macdonald to come forward. Macdonald’s men were now faced by Ansar of both the Black and Green Standards. Once again Mahdist execution was faulty, the Black Standard’s attack being launched twenty minutes after Macdonald saw them, but half an hour before the Green Standard, with whom they were meant to execute simultaneous pincers. The attackers of both were shot down in droves.41 By 11.15 am the last Mahdist effort had been repulsed. Kitchener passed his binoculars to an ADC and remarked to Colonel Neville Chamberlain that the enemy had had ‘a good dusting’. Rawlinson observed both these engagements. ‘By 10.45 the day was won and Macdonalds Brigade had gained the honours of the day. No body of men could have been either better handled or have fought more valiantly they deserve the highest praise for it was a critical half hour.’ During the battle, he was mainly occupied in taking Kitchener’s orders to the British brigades. While doing this, his horse shot was under him. About 7.15 a.m. I was returning to the Sirdar, after seeing that the reserve ammunition for the British troops was in easy reach of the front line, and was cantering slowly along behind the Camerons, when I heard a crack, and Arrow, my best charger and a very good friend, dropped on his knees. Blood was pouring from his nose to such an extent as to ruin my coat and breaches. Luckily I met Blenkinsop [Captain L.J. Blenkinsop, afterwards director-General Army Veterinary Services.], our chief veterinary officer, got a horse from him, and left Arrow in his care; but I fear I shall never ride him again.

The last phase of the battle, mopping up and advancing into Omdurman, was messy and controversial. On the battlefield, dead and dying lay so thick in places that the ground was scarcely visible. As the Anglo-Egyptian Army advanced, there occurred the shooting of the Dervish wounded which has been held

30

General Lord Rawlinson

against Kitchener. The soldiers felt this was essential for their own protection. Major Horace Smith-Dorrien Commanding a Sudanese battalion wrote that ‘from previous experience, it was known that many would try to get a shot or spear-thrust in at us as we passed over them, whereas others not wounded at all, but wishing to die, would lie prone, ready to come with a fanatical rush and kill someone before they themselves were disposed of ’.42 At Omdurman, Kitchener lost 48 killed and 434 wounded. The Mahdist body count was 10,883, and wounded estimated at 16,000.43 Kitchener had had to run the campaign on the tightest of financial reins, and the medical services were overwhelmed. On the morning after the battle, Kitchener appointed a freed prisoner, Egyptian physician Hassan Effendi Zeki, as General Superintendent for the Dervish wounded. A hospital was set up. Some were treated there, and others carried home, since every able-bodied man in Omdurman had been recruited.44 In his journal Rawlinson recorded: As soon as our own wounded were properly provided for we organised a large hospital in Omdurman with such doctors as the town itself could produce and placed an Egyptian with ample dressing and antiseptics in charge. Here all the Dervish wounded that came in were looked after but of course we could do nothing for the thousands of wretches who were dying of thirst and starvation in the desert.45

Kitchener ensured that British and Egyptian wounded were laid in barges and towed by steamers to a hospital at Abadia. On 4 September, a moving service to commemorate Charles Gordon was held in the ruins of Gordon’s palace, with British and Egyptian flags fluttering above side by side. Kitchener as head of intelligence for Wolseley’s Desert Column had done his utmost to enable Wolseley to reach Khartoum in time. He revered Gordon’s memory. Gordon’s Christian faith, his fight against the slave trade, his lonely courage and death made him a Victorian beau-ideal. Wrote Rawlinson: I do not think there was a dry eye amongst the whole of the weather beaten soldiers there present. I do not know that except in family trouble I have ever felt more like bursting into tears and the Sirdar himself who is as a rule absolutely unmoved had great round tears on his cheeks. Such was the feeling of sorrow felt by the victors of a hard fought battle. Thus did we commemorate the death of a brave soldier on the spot where 13 years previously he had been basely murdered.

Kitchener and his followers had pledged themselves ‘to complete the work for which Gordon died thirteen years ago, and to free this land from brutality

Fighting in the Sudan

31

and tyranny’.46 Despite the terrible killing of the battle, Rawlinson like others at the service saw the Anglo-Egyptian re-conquest and subsequent rule of the Sudan under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium as a civilizing mission.47 Kitchener would seek government, press and royal support to establish the Gordon Memorial College at Khartoum to educate Sudanese boys from both north and south. Khartoum was rebuilt, the railway extended and the slave trade suppressed. Sir Henry Wellcome, founder of the Trust for the study of tropical illness, at his own expense met the cost of fully equipped laboratories at the Gordon Memorial College.48 Following the military triumph of Omdurman, Kitchener led a party up the Nile to confront the French explorer, Colonel Marchand, at Fashoda, and succeed diplomatically in avoiding a clash which might have led to war. Marchand with his 120 soldiers was vastly outnumbered, and had to accept terms.49 Thus Suez, the Nile and its hinterland – ‘the Clapham Junction of Imperial communications’ in John Darwin’s words – remained under British control.50 British advance of civilization coincided with vital strategic interests. Kitchener had to employ his diplomatic skills in another direction, towards Queen Victoria’s indignation that he had had the Mahdi’s tomb dynamited and the Mahdi’s bones thrown into the Nile. A story circulated that Kitchener wanted to make the skull into an inkstand. It has been too readily believed.51 Kitchener told the Queen he had to counter the superstitions of his Sudanese troops, who might have believed in the Mahdi. Freddie Roberts went up the Nile with Kitchener as an ADC. Rawlinson did not, but in the Sudan campaign of 1898 he encountered three men who, following Roberts, would aid his career: Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Douglas Haig and Winston Churchill. Unlike Haig, Rawlinson had not been sent as a War Office spy, but his own shrewd observations on the Sirdar reached a number of friends, including Roberts. Shortly after his arrival he wrote: I think I get on all right with K. but he is a curious and very strong character. I must say I both like and admire him but on some minor points he is as obstinate as any commissariat mule. But he is … a long and clear-headed man of business with a wonderful memory and great capacity. His extreme hardness of nature makes him unpopular but those under him in the E[gyptian] A[rmy] have come to realise what a thoroughly capable man he is.

Reports of the slipshod sketchy way in which the Egyptian Army managed their affairs were unjust. ‘I am certain that so far as their management goes they are very much maligned.’52

32

General Lord Rawlinson

After the victory of the Atbara, he praised Kitchener’s excellent ability, but thought him ‘as cussed obstinate as be d—d, hard as nails, and cares not a straw for anyone’.53 Nonetheless, he liked to work with Kitchener, and added that he was full of brains and if he can be induced to see that a certain amount of method and regularity are absolutely essential in a large army, he will be a big man one day, but out here he is an absolute autocrat. Does exactly what he pleases and, red tape, regulations, proper channels, records of telegrams or letters, he will not have at any price. He never keeps a copy of any telegram or letter that he writes and tries to prevent my doing so, but he never by any chance forgets what he has said nor what was his motive in saying it.54

Everything was carried in Kitchener’s head, and if anything happened to him, ‘the whole world would become chaos’. When the Sirdar returned triumphant to Britain on 27 October, Rawlinson and one ADC Lieutenant ‘Jimmy’ Watson accompanied him, as a mark of favour.55 Rawlinson had campaigned for nine months. His staff work had been successful, albeit in an over-centralized system. He had learnt about moving troops in adverse conditions, about the need for care in supply and medical provision. He was twice mentioned in dispatches. Being a staff officer under the eyes of the coming man did his career no harm. His equable temperament and efficiency enabled him to get on without clashing with the ‘absolute autocrat’. He had gauged Kitchener’s strengths and weaknesses. He would see these again in greater wars, in South Africa and in 1914–1916. Neither Kitchener nor any of his subordinates had yet deployed their men against a European enemy with modern weapons.

3

The South African War

Harry Rawlinson is in the thick of it, and must be enjoying himself – he stands high in everyone’s opinion. (Lt Gen Lord Methuen, November 1899) I like the work immensely and am delighted with my great good fortune in priding myself here at HQ serving under the dear little Chief. (Henry Rawlinson, March 1900)

Rawlinson like Roberts had a reputation as a lucky soldier. He had been on the spot in Egypt when Kitchener needed a DAAG. His service in South Africa began with an act of friendship. There was, however, considerable background to his opportune moment. With South African war threatening, Major H.P. Northcott, Henry Wilson and the War Office Intelligence Section had been planning for a conflict against the Boers. Tension between the British Empire and the Boer republics of the Transvaal (South African Republic) and the Orange Free State increased after the disastrous Jameson Raid of December 1895, which sowed a harvest of Boer mistrust. Transvaal President Johannes Kruger armed his state with German Mauser rifles, Krupp 75-mm field guns and French Creusot 135-mm ‘Long Toms’, assuming he faced a second round of the conflict which the Boers had won at Majuba. The mounted commandos of the Transvaal and Orange Free State made up ‘the largest modern army yet seen in South Africa; the burghers were masters of fieldcraft, shooting and mobile warfare’.1 Assuming that war was imminent, Rawlinson and Ian Hamilton desperately wanted Roberts in command and Kitchener as his second, and worked for these ends. Henry Wilson and Rawlinson agreed that the latter would urge Roberts by letter, knowing the War Office was dominated by the Wolseyites and an ‘Indian’ would have no chance for command. It was the day after Wilson and Northcote had lunched with Roberts and explained their plans.

34

General Lord Rawlinson

The late Victorian army was marked by the rivalry of Roberts and his followers from India with Garnet Wolseley and his ‘Africans’. They first served together in the Red River Expedition in Canada in 1870, but established their reputation in the Ashanti Expedition of 1873 as forward-looking soldiers led by ‘the very model of modern Major-General’.2 In 1895 Wolseley succeeded the Duke of Cambridge as commander-in-chief in London. Of his followers, Evelyn Wood gave up the post of quartermaster-general in 1897, succeeding Redvers Buller as adjutant general. Buller took command at Aldershot. Rawlinson outlined to Roberts these arrangements made in case of a war, but the appointment of the commander and staff had not been decided upon. He continued: Possibly you may have already approached Lord Lansdowne on the subject [of command]; if however you have not, I hope you won’t think it presumptuous on my part if I were to suggest that you should do so without delay. I understand, only on the authority of junior staff officers both at the War Office and the Intelligence department, that Wolseley himself would like to take command, but that the state of his health coupled with his position as C[ommander] in C[hief], render this impossible. As far as the War Office are concerned therefore it rests between [Redvers] Buller and [Evelyn] Wood … I am told that of the two the C[ommander] in [Chief] favours Wood – Now I do not know with whom the selection of a commander for so large an expedition rests … In any case I fancy Lord Lansdowne would have a voice in it and that Joseph Chamberlain would be able to support anyone [sic] of the candidates for command if he wished to do so.3

The end of the letter is missing, but it is certain Rawlinson urged Roberts to write putting his own credentials. Two days later Rawlinson wrote again, delighted that Roberts told him he would advance his case. The story from earlier letters to Lansdowne is that Roberts asked for a command the previous year, hoping he would not be thought too old to serve in either the Sudan or South Africa, and willing to come down in rank if neither campaign merited a field marshal.4 Roberts wrote on 25 April 1897, again pressing his case, but apparently to no avail.5 He did not write again until June 1899.6 By that time he had seen Buller, in command of the Army Corps at Aldershot and earmarked for South Africa if war broke out, in the summer manoeuvres of 1898, ‘making a fool of [himself] all day’.7 These were Buller’s words, quoted by the Under Secretary of State for War, at whose house Roberts was a guest to watch.8 Despite his friendship with Roberts, Lansdowne continued to assert that Buller was to be in command.9

The South African War

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Another step Rawlinson had taken was getting Roberts and Kitchener together. Perhaps urged by Ian Hamilton, he arranged for Kitchener to visit Roberts in Ireland where he was commander-in-chief, in summer, 1899. Roberts had already written to the Times to praise the Sirdar’s Sudan campaign. With Lord Cromer he had introduced Kitchener to the House of Lords on his elevation to the peerage. Now the two men hit it off, and agreed on a military partnership against the Boers if an opportunity presented itself.10 Years later, Hamilton told Sir George Arthur, Kitchener’s biographer: ‘In the sense in which mice help lions, [Rawlinson] and I had a hand in Lord K. coming out to South Africa with Lord Roberts ….if you care to ask General Sir Harry Rawlinson, he may agree that the time has arrived when our little plot might, without harm to anyone, be disclosed.’11 The British cabinet believed until the end of August 1899 that Kruger would back down, thus averting war. The soldiers feared that the politicians would land them in a conflict without adequate military preparation. Alfred Milner, British commissioner in South Africa, begged for more troops. In September, the cabinet agreed the dispatch of 10,000. Only the Transvaal government’s reply to British demands on 17 September brought home to ministers belated realization that war stared them in the face, and mobilization of Buller’s Army Corps at Aldershot went ahead.12 Boer timing was ideally suited to the season. As Rawlinson wrote later, ‘Oh why, oh why did we fight the Boer at this time of the year when the grass is plentiful all over the country? What a different story it would have been had we taken him on in May, when there is no grass and he can’t feed his ponies or cattle.’13 On 9 October the Transvaal issued a blunt ultimatum to the British, demanding the withdrawal of British troops on the Transvaal’s borders; reinforcements that had arrived after 1 June to leave South Africa; the halting of reinforcements on the high seas. The British had forty-eight hours to comply. The following day Kruger celebrated his 74th birthday and told the New York Herald that ‘the Republics are determined, if they must belong to England, that a price will have to be paid which will stagger humanity’. On 11 October President Steyn of the Orange Free State declared his support and the ultimatum expired. At dawn on 12 October, Boer commandos crossed the border into Natal singing the Volkslied, confident they would give the rooineks a thrashing.14 On his way to the Cape was Buller, a man whom members of the cabinet disliked.15 Roberts and Kitchener would have to wait. Rawlinson’s chance came more quickly. He had been shooting on the estate of his neighbour and relation by marriage,16 Lieutenant General Lord Methuen, at Corsham Court, when he received a telegram from Ian Hamilton. Hamilton was to sail for the Cape on 16

36

General Lord Rawlinson

September with General Sir George White and advanced troops, and had asked for Rawlinson as his assistant. Rawlinson travelled post haste to London, to find Hamilton was to be White’s chief of staff and had asked for his friend as DAAG on the headquarters staff. ‘It was through Johnny Hamilton entirely, I find, that I was fortunate enough to get this appointment for I did not know White personally.’ Hamilton had objected to the officer selected, but White did not want Rawlinson, a Guardsman. Another officer, however spoke on Rawlinson’s behalf and Hamilton prevailed. ‘I feel that I am extremely fortunate thus lighting on such a good appointment,’ wrote Rawlinson, ‘especially as I made no attempt whatever to work any interest in the matter.’17 On the voyage out, Rawlinson, the student of war, read Henderson’s Stonewall Jackson, which Roberts had given him, as well as books on South Africa.18 White’s party arrived at the Cape on 3 October. After consulting High Commissioner Milner and General Forestier Walker, commanding troops in the province, White proceeded post haste to Natal. He reached Durban on the 7th and found troops urgently dispatched from India disembarking. It was these, on the scene before the commandos crossed the frontier, which saved Natal.19 White decided after pleas from Natal Governor Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, and Major General Sir William Penn Symons, to leave Symons’s force of 4,000 at Glencoe for fear a withdrawal would lead to a Zulu rising and have a bad effect on Uitlander refugees from the Transvaal. This left the outnumbered British divided. Rawlinson would have preferred the Glencoe garrison back in Ladysmith. On 15 October, he travelled to Dundee, a coal-mining town adjacent to Glencoe, and visited Symons. He found him spoiling for a fight, and as the typical bright young officer made a critical appreciation: He seemed to me very over confident as to his ability to make his position secure against attack and was confident of meeting the Boers in the open and giving them a good licking. I pointed out to him that he would be enormously inferior in numbers and probably also in artillery and that if he wished to avoid being roughly handled he should at least have his stores and water supply in some defensible place.20

Symons’s confidence was typical. At the war’s outset, the British underestimated their enemy. At lunch at the Cape, Milner asked Ian Hamilton ‘Surely these mere farmers cannot stand for a moment against regular troops?’ Hamilton, beaten by the Boers at Majuba, replied that ‘this depended on locality and other conditions. In the open they were no use against cavalry and artillery, on their own Boer ground they were the most formidable foe in the world’.21

The South African War

Map 3.1 Ladysmith and Surroundings.

37

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General Lord Rawlinson

Symons did not heed Rawlinson’s advice. When the Boers appeared on the dominating 500-foot-high Talana Hill above Dundee on 20 October, he led his brigade to the attack. The battle was an augury of things to come. Boer guns, positioned in pits dug overnight, outranged the British. Rapid fire from Mauser rifles, like a summer whirlwind, raised a thick dust cloud from the ground, ricocheted off rocks and knocked men over as the British infantry struggled forward. The hill was taken, but at a cost of over 50 dead and 200 wounded, Symons fatally. Cavalry under Colonel Moller rode out to cut off the Boer retreat, were surrounded and captured.22 The next day at Elandslaagte outside Ladysmith, the British did better. Lieutenant General Sir John French commanded, but left the infantry attack to Ian Hamilton, who appreciated the power of modern rifles and used tactics developed on the North-West Frontier. His infantry attack in extended formation drove the Boers from their position among ridges and kopjes. The cavalry then charged, riding down the fleeing burghers with sabre and lance.23 A terrible wet night followed, but Rawlinson at the end of a field telephone in Ladysmith organized the sending out of the garrison’s hospital train with lanterns and medical assistance of every kind. By 9 pm the following evening all wounded including the Boers’ were at Ladysmith being attended to.24 Elandslaagte produced no lasting results. On reports that 10,000 Free Staters were advancing on Ladysmith, White and French withdrew thence. He instructed Brigadier Yule who had succeeded Symons to fall back on Ladysmith.25 Yule abandoned Dundee with its sick and wounded, and covered by darkness of the night of 22 October began his withdrawal. The Boers systematically looted Dundee, plundering and wrecking, their wives loading the spoil onto wagons.26 White successfully covered Yule’s retreat, but the rashness of Colonel Wilford of the Gloucesters, taking a company and the regimental Maxim Gun to close quarters with the Boers, cost Wilford his life and the British 114 killed and wounded.27 Short days earlier Rawlinson, busy drawing maps and schemes for Ladysmith’s defence, had written to Merrie: My own Darling, Things are looking rather fishy – We shall be invested and cut off before very long but we have a strong position and plenty of supplies however I may not be able to write or perhaps even to telegraph for some time to come …. We shall probably have to stand a siege of some fifty days which will be very tedious and as the enemy will be able to bring up big guns we shall have a lively time of it …. These are exciting times and I shall hope to come out of it a full colonel and a V.C. I place my faith in Him who looks after us all and for

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your sake Darling he will bring me out of it safe and sound … Now darling au revoir my very best love old girl and be sure I will come through this business without a scratch.28

White attempted to seize the initiative to prevent the Boers closing. He sent two brigades supported by artillery and mounted troops to attack Pepworth Hill where the Boers were entrenching. The attack miscarried. The Boers outflanked the British and moved swiftly to reinforce threatened points. White decided to disengage and withdraw to Ladysmith. The British were saved from major disaster only by the excellent work of the artillery batteries including naval guns which arrived and deployed rapidly. Rawlinson had suggested to White that he asked the Royal Navy at the Cape to send him a heavy gun detachment. These guns arrived on the morning of the action and silenced Boer artillery on Pepworth Hill.29 Greater misfortune struck a flanking force at Nicholson’s Nek, 4 miles beyond Pepworth. The Boers captured over 900 prisoners.30 Hamilton had taken command of a brigade and Rawlinson was attached as AAG to Major General Archibald Hunter, White’s chief of staff. Hunter and Rawlinson shepherded the tired and demoralised troops – ‘we got them back somehow’ – Rawlinson noting that Boer success was similar to Hamilton’s experience at Majuba: ‘The Boers surrounded and stalked our men.’31 In early November John French and his chief staff officer Douglas Haig left the town by train on Buller’s orders. To his wife, Lord Methuen wrote: ‘French tells me Harry [Rawlinson] is the one man he can praise in the Natal force, for he is always cheery, and poor fellow he needs all his brightness in company with White’s despondency and Hamilton’s vagaries, and Hunter’s want of life.’32 The comment is unjust to Hamilton and Hunter, whose fighting spirits were bulwarks of the garrison. The Boers soon cut the telegraph and railway lines. Historians have questioned why White did not send off his entire cavalry earlier. Wolseley in London thought he should have withdrawn his whole garrison of 14,000,33 but by staying put White tied up an equivalent Boer force, intent on penetrating Natal. Three sieges, Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking, cost the Boers the initiative and made it impossible for 40,000 men to burst into Cape Colony and Natal; had that happened, the war might have taken a different course.34 On 31 October Buller arrived at Cape Town heralding the Army Corps’ arrival. He telegraphed White to send him an ‘accurate description of your views of the situation’ and suggested that he ‘entrench and wait for events, if not at Ladysmith, then behind Tugela at Colenso?’ White replied that he had the greatest confidence in holding Ladysmith ‘for as long as necessary’. Buller

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replied: ‘I agree that you do best to remain at Ladysmith, though Colenso and line of Tugela River look tempting.’ It would be ‘at least three solid weeks’ before he could attempt to relieve him.35 Ladysmith was a tin-roofed township shaded by a few green trees, with two parallel streets and detached villas. Tactically, it was un pot de chambre surrounded by a cordon of hills 14 miles long in a 2-mile radius from the town. The hills were defended by stone sangars, fortified posts and artillery, linked by telephones. To the north, Colonel W.G. Knox, who had served at the siege of Plevna of 1877, built improved stone breastworks connected by a stone curtain wall, and converted scrub into three parallel lines of abattis.36 The most difficult sector to defend was Hamilton’s, ‘Caesar’s Camp’ and ‘Wagon Hill’ in the south, the key to the position a defence line on the inner edge held by the Manchesters with 500–800 clear yards of fire. In early December Hamilton and Rawlinson walked over the defences and carefully examined the position.37 The rocky and boulder-strewn ground made trenches impossible: breastworks and sangars had to be built of stone.38 Rawlinson’s warning to his wife of a fifty-day siege was optimistic. Ladysmith held out for 118 days. The day after the siege’s hundredth, the Boers signalled to the garrison, ‘101 not out’. The Manchesters signalled back, ‘Ladysmith still batting.’39 The garrison was fortunate in having Colonel Edward Ward in charge of supplies. He made remarkable efforts to supplement untempting rations of beef and bread, improvising ‘chevril’ from the horses (which were slaughtered and lost to service) and a sausage factory converting horse flesh. Dried meat or ‘biltong’ was also prepared.40 Not knowing how soon Buller would arrive, White had to cut the rations. Long-range fire from Boer guns was a menace. It killed and wounded garrison and civilians alike, except on Sunday when Boer gunners observed the Sabbath. On that day concerts and entertainments, cricket and football matches kept up morale, the Boer gunners on Bulwana looking on through their glasses and taking a sporting interest.41 On 3 November Rawlinson had an exciting introduction to aerial reconnaissance, going up in a balloon. He was not seasick ‘but inclined to hold on very tight’. The balloon rotating made it difficult to spot enemy guns. As he descended, Boer gunners put a shell clean through the balloon at about 800 yards. The bag did not burst but ‘came down rather faster than going up’.42 Should the garrison sit tight or mount sorties? Rawlinson was for the second. On 7 December, he spent the day spying with his glass in preparation for an attack that night on Gun Hill 4 miles to the east. ‘This scheme I have had in

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my eye for some time and shall be very pleased if it succeeds.’ On the lower slope were two big guns, a 4.5-inch howitzer and a Creusot Long Tom. Troops stood to arms 3.45 am Hunter with African Guides led 600 men of the Imperial Light Horse and the Natal Carbineers. They left their horses at the bottom of the hill and crept forward. A Boer piquet’s challenge was answered with the cry: ‘Fix bayonets and charge the [bugger]s!’ They had no bayonets, but the word was sufficient. The piquet bolted, and the raiders disabled both guns with guncotton. They carried off the two breech blocks, the sponges and the Long Tom’s gun-sight.43 On the night of 10th–11th five companies of the Rifle Brigade attacked the 4.5-inch howitzer on Surprise Hill. They captured the weapon and on the second attempt blew it up. A Boer party blocked their escape and they cut their way out with the bayonet, killing at least thirty Boers and losing nine killed and 52 wounded. Rawlinson was satisfied, despite the losses: the moral effect ‘would not be lost on the Boers’.44 Rawlinson had hoped that White would prepare a sortie to reach out to Buller, who sought to cross the Tugela to the south. Nothing was done. Then at 9 am on 16 December, a heliograph signal was received: Buller had attacked Boer positions at Colenso the previous day and lost 300 killed and wounded. The actual number was over 1,100. At Magersfontein the Highland Brigade’s attack had been beaten off with heavy losses. The message omitted the third defeat of ‘Black Week’, Gatacre’s at Stormberg. Buller’s second message followed at 11:15 in cypher: ‘I tried Colenso yesterday and failed.’ He effectively suggested White fire off his ammunition and surrender.45 ‘This is serious and we have a warm time before us,’ wrote Rawlinson.46 White was astonished at Buller’s defeatism. ‘I can make food last for much longer than a month,’ he replied, ‘and will not think of making terms unless I am forced to … The loss of 12,000 men here would be a heavy blow to England.’ A second message emphasized this: ‘Abandonment of this garrison seems to me most disastrous alternative on public grounds.’47 On 17 December there arrived another heliogram from Buller seeking advice, stating that he was short of water, he could not take Colenso nor advance again in less than three weeks. Rawlinson wrote angrily: This is all very pleasant reading for us!!! If he cannot force the passage of the Tugela he had better give up the shew [sic] and sue for terms for its no good going on pretending to fight and then not actually attacking the enemy because you think he is too strong. This is no time to sit down and say ‘I’m beat’ or ‘I can’t’ – The thing must be done at all costs or the blow not only to England but to

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General Lord Rawlinson the whole British Empire will be one from which she will not easily recover. Get up big naval guns, set the howitzers out, bring all the heaviest artillery you can to bear on the Boer, and if absolutely necessary let the Basutos and Zulus slip or send for Gurkhas and Sikhs from India. Do anything in fact but don’t sit down and say ‘I can’t’, the word does not belong to the vocabulary of a true soldier.48

Rawlinson’s irritation with Buller’s defeatism was reflected in London among ministers and at Irish HQ, Kilmainham, where Lord Roberts prepared an outspoken telegram. On 17 December Lansdowne, Balfour and Salisbury grasped events and appointed Roberts to supersede Buller with Kitchener as his chief of staff. On the 18th Buller was informed. A great burden had been lifted, and he sent Ladysmith a ‘much more cheerful telegram [heliograph]’ saying he was to be reinforced by the newly arrived 6th Division and would try to cross the Tugela at Potgieters Drift next time. Rawlinson partly guessed the truth: ‘I daresay they have sent him a smarter firm line and told him he must relieve Ladysmith. Before I am sure he had made up his mind to let us surrender when our food was done.’49 Christmas passed with no further advance by Buller. On 27 December at 10:10 am, Rawlinson heard tragic news for the Roberts family, ‘that Freddy Roberts was killed at the engagement on the 15th at Colenso’. ‘He was “shot in the groin whilst gallantly trying to rescue the guns”. This is the worst news I have heard and I fear it will have a dreadful effect on his family; his poor mother will never get over it I fear and I grieve to think of the gloom it will cast on his poor sisters.’50 There was better on the last day of 1899: ‘Roberts is confirmed as C[ommander] in C[hief] in S[outh] Africa with Kitchener as C[hief] of S[taff],’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘This is great news for me as I shall probably have to go to headquarters now.’ He would seek to obtain a division for Hunter, whose enterprising spirit he shared.51 On New Year’s Day, a message from his wife and Hamilton’s arrived by heliograph ‘All success Happy New Year both well hopeful Merrie [Rawlinson] Jean [Hamilton].’ The uxorious Rawlinson noted, ‘We were both extremely pleased at getting this the first news for the last two months of those who are nearest and dearest to us.’52 The siege meanwhile was waged against enemies without and sickness within. Rawlinson had written on 16 December: ‘I do not fear the Boers nor their artillery … but I do fear enteric.’53 He was right: the garrison kept besiegers at arm’s length, but during the summer infections were at their height. Chief scourges were enteric (typhoid) and dysentery. The water supply from the Klip River had long been suspect; new filters had been ordered but failed to arrive.

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The garrison’s efforts to distil water using a dismounted steam engine and to boil all drinking water failed to prevent to onset of gastrointestinal infection and enteric. There were 465 deaths.54 Enteric was endemic in South Africa, the Boers suffering too.55 On 9 November the Boers had made an abortive attack in Hamilton’s sector. Early in December, Rawlinson and Hamilton inspected the defences; Rawlinson found them stronger than he had thought. At 3 am on 6 January, the besiegers launched a serious assault around the eastern end of Caesar’s Camp. White rushed reinforcements to the Manchesters. At 12:30 Boers led by Commandant J. De Villiers charged the position and put the defenders to flight. The British counter-attacked. In close-quarter fighting, positions changed hands. About 5 pm the Devonshires charged with fixed bayonets, the enemy fleeing. The Devonshires triumphed, but lost all their company officers and a third of their men.56 Rawlinson visited the scene the next day and wrote in his journal: ‘ The Boers were bold and plucky to a degree which no one expected … They were only frustrated by the dash and gal[l]antry of Hamilton and some other officers who led the troops magnificently.’57 Staff officer Rawlinson did not fight, but made an invaluable suggestion to Hamilton, who wrote: I must give you my grateful thanks for your suggestion re the advancing of a section down onto the little wooded picquet in front of No 2 picquet. Deakin reinforced with 6 men & went down there himself. His little party dropped 23 Boers during the day in the river bed. Not a shot was fired in his direction. Whenever a man was hit the Boers fired furiously up at the crest line. Probably the first time on record the Boers have been out-Boered in this way.58

The Boers made no further attacks, and the siege became one of endurance against sickness and shell fire. Buller’s failures at Spion Kop (24 January) and Vaalkrantz (5–7 February) depressed garrison spirits. On 12 January Rawlinson recorded that White was ‘thinking of a flying column or of attacking and marching towards Buller with whole garrison abandoning sick and wounded’. Rawlinson thought it would be a great mistake; ‘the garrison must stick it out’. No such sortie was made. By late January White thought his position regarding provisions was becoming critical.59 To the south-west, however, the British were advancing. Within nine weeks of his arrival and four weeks of opening his campaign, Roberts relieved Kimberley, captured Piet Cronje’s force of 4,000 at Paardeberg and occupied Bloemfontein. On 13 February a message from Roberts was relayed, that he had entered the Orange Free State with a large force. Rawlinson thought the message had ‘bucked

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everyone up tremendously’. On the 27th Ladysmith received news of Cronje’s surrender at Paardeberg.60 That day Rawlinson wrote: ‘Buller has undoubtedly made a mess of it. If he does not succeed in relieving us before another ten days are out he will be a ruined man and we shall very likely find our way [as prisoners] to Pretoria after all.’61 On his fourth attempt, Buller fought his way through the hills north of the Tugela. His CRA (Commander Royal Artillery) Colonel Lawrence Parsons’s skilful deployment of artillery may have prefigured creeping barrages on the Western Front.62 On the evening of the 28th the first mounted men rode into Ladysmith. Cheering was heard across the town, the loudest and most heartfelt for White. His conduct of the defence had not been active and for a time he lost heart. Rawlinson wrote: ‘If Sir George White would go out a bit more and talk to the officers and men, he could do a lot to keep their spirits up.’63 However, White’s words at the relief echoed across the Empire: ‘Thank God we kept the flag flying.’64 His health broke down two days after the siege finished, and his campaigning ended. By contrast, as Methuen wrote, Rawlinson was ‘none the worse for his Ladysmith confinement’.65 Buller’s relief force brought Rawlinson’s friend, Henry Wilson, serving as a brigade major. Wilson’s view was that there was ‘no go or spirit about R[edvers].B[uller] … It’s most curious. Constant chopping & changing & no scheming to throw the Dutchmen off their guard.’66 Buller’s subordinates were loud in their dissatisfaction. ‘The excellence of the British infantry saved the very indifferent generalship which has been displayed,’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘Ap[p] alling mistakes have been made by the highest and the more junior leaders but the company officers and men have behaved in a way absolutely beyond praise.’67 Rawlinson shared the anger of Henry Nevinson, correspondent of the Daily Chronicle, at Buller’s failure to order pursuit of the fleeing Boers.68 Rawlinson appended to his diary Roberts’s proclaimed appeal to the Free Staters: ‘It is distinctly good and will I trust have the desired effect of separating the Free State and inducing them to make terms.’69 Christiaan De Wet, one of the most redoubtable Boer leaders, reflected dismay at the fall of his capital: ‘How can I describe my feelings when I saw Bloemfontein in the hands of the English? It was enough to break the heart of the bravest man amongst us. Even worse than the fall of our capital was the fact that, as was only to be expected, the burghers had become entirely disheartened; and it seemed as if they were incapable now of offering any further resistance.’70 At that stage, with Boers handing in their weapons, it appeared Roberts’s successes would bring an early end to the war. Rawlinson like Hamilton was keen to join their old chief, and on 3 March he wired Roberts asking to join him. On the 7th Roberts replied saying he must

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claim him. Only service under Hunter would have kept Rawlinson happy in the Natal Army. I wired to Bobs my grateful thanks [wrote Rawlinson] … I candidly confess that I am glad to be leaving Natal under the leadership of Buller but at the same time I am sorry to be parting from Hunter to whom I am much attached. We had been given the best division I think and would have been pushed to the forefront of the battle I am sure it is therefore a chance missed. But I am very pleased to be going to serve once more under Kitchener and Bobs where I fancy the best fighting will be.71

Although not occupying a fighting post, Rawlinson had been active and courageous as well as cheerful during the siege, and others had noted his conduct. On 9 March he left Ladysmith by train, dismounting to cross the Tugela, where the commandos had blown the bridges. At 7 am on the 20th he steamed into Bloemfontein. He found Roberts at Steyn’s Residency and met former colleague from India, Neville Chamberlain, now Roberts’s private secretary. Roberts briefed him at breakfast. He was to serve on the headquarters staff under Lieutenant Colonel James Grierson, the QMG, ‘interesting and responsible work’ he thought. ‘I am delighted to be with Johnny [Hamilton]. Saw many friends of course and took up my residence with Neville sharing his room. Chief asked me to be a member of his mess so I have fairly fallen on my legs.’ Grierson and Rawlinson as his assistant had to look after camping, quartering and movement of troops. There was much work, largely because of insufficient headquarters staff. The next morning, he was already in the office drawing up a map showing troop distribution, a difficult task because of confusion both at Bloemfontein and on the lines of communication.72 Bloemfontein was a pleasant town of single-storey houses with creepergrown fronts, pretty gardens and shady trees. Much of the population was Anglophile. At the Bloemfontein Club the observer could see on its verandah and in its smoking-room and bar ‘representative gatherings of the British race from all parts of the world’.73 Roberts’s huge army overwhelmed the town, it was the rainy season, and Rawlinson noted that the single-line railway had ‘all it can do to keep us supplied’. Enteric (typhoid) was spreading ‘on account of the bad water they were obliged to drink at Paardeberg and Poplar Grove. The Modder river was full of dead animals too numerous to extract and bury.’74 Roberts’s army suffered approximately 1,000 deaths from enteric.75 In the style of Victorian generals, Roberts virtually functioned as his own chief of staff, and used Kitchener ‘mainly as his right hand man, on whom he

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General Lord Rawlinson

Figure 3.1 Field Marshal Lord Roberts and staff. Rawlinson is at left, Colonel Eddie Stanley, later the Earl of Derby seated right. British staff work was found wanting in South Africa, although Rawlinson did his best to fill gaps. Photo by Reinhold Thiele/ Getty Images.

could, with implicit confidence, devolve any important piece of organizing work that turned up, or whom he could send round to “hustle” departments and subordinate commanders’.76 Kitchener’s roving commission threw more work onto Grierson and Rawlinson. At the outset of his campaign, Roberts had used the War Office plan drafted by Wilson and Northcott. Rawlinson had put his finger on the strategic solution: the British should advance across the Orange Free State. Buller had danced to the Boer tune by taking his army to Natal, where topography favoured the defenders. Christiaan De Wet, brilliant Boer guerrilla leader, had shared this view.77 Roberts brought with him G.F.R. Henderson, the staff college lecturer. He may have told Roberts that his target should be the Boer armies. Henderson’s health failed owing to malaria and exhaustion, and he returned home just before Cronje’s surrender.78 The War Office intelligence department’s secret memorandum of 1896, however, stated that, following the discovery of gold on the Rand, the mining fields, the railway junctions and the centres of population were decisive strategic points. Johannesburg, the Rand and

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Pretoria ‘must be the principal objectives’.79 Before Roberts could advance on them, Kitchener’s railway expert Percy Girouard had to repair the single-track railway line bringing supplies. Meanwhile, Boer resistance rallied. On 17 March, a War Council met at Kroonstad, the new Orange Free State capital, both Presidents Kruger and Stein being present. It was decided to change tactics. They would concentrate on destroying enemy communications. Boer forces were to be organized into smaller units and to abandon the use of wagon laagers.80 To exploit their mobility was a wise decision, but while some waged hit-and-run warfare, others continued to fight conventionally, notably Louis Botha disputing Roberts’s advance on the Rand and afterwards at Diamond Hill. Rawlinson saw the effect of new tactics, however, when on 30 March he received a message from Brigadier Broadwood with an outlying column that ‘large forces of Boers were advancing against him’. Roberts acted promptly, sending Major General Colville with his 9th Division and attached Mounted Infantry. About 6 pm Broadwood wired that he was falling back to the Modder River and there seemed no cause for anxiety. The next morning Rawlinson accompanied Colville’s force some of the way, noting they had ‘a great deal of transport with them’. Broadwood’s column was ambushed that morning and defeated by Christiaan De Wet’s commandos, losing over 400 prisoners and 6 guns.81 Hundreds of unarmed black drivers were cold-bloodedly shot dead.82 Colville dithered and French, sent out with the cavalry division, failed to arrive. The next the British heard of De Wet was on 3–4 April when he attacked a garrison of Royal Irish at Mostertshoek. Continuous fire from three Krupp guns brought the surrender of 546 defenders.83 Double success lifted Boer spirits, but De Wet’s next attack, against Cape Mounted Rifles at Wepener, failed. He unwisely spent sixteen days in an unsuccessful siege.84 Rawlinson commented each morning in his April diary whether the railway and telegraph line had been cut during the night.85 The lines to the south were precarious but vital. By 14 April, the railway was running ‘as hard as it can’. With fresh troops filling the trains, there were still insufficient supplies. Gradually, however, outside Bloemfontein a huge depot of all sorts of goods was growing every day, vast piles of boxes, bales, bags and casks heaped up.86 As April drew to a close, Rawlinson’s work increased. For three days, he was too busy to write his journal. On 27 April alone he sent fifty-seven telegrams. On 1 May, he carried orders 72 miles to the outlying columns of Broadwood and Bruce Hamilton, using two horses and leaving one partway with his Basuto servant ‘Snowball’. The last 14 miles were in the dark.87 By the start of May, Roberts was ready to advance.

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Rawlinson did not comment on his chief ’s strategy. Probably he was unaware that Milner would have preferred consolidating the Orange Free State to invading the Transvaal. Ian Hamilton believed Kitchener shared Milner’s view. Years later he told Spenser Wilkinson, military correspondent of the Morning Post, that it was against the advice ‘of Kitchener and everyone else’ that Roberts undertook the march to Pretoria. It was the boldest gamble of Roberts’s life, Hamilton thought. ‘Had the [railway] line been seriously cut and held[by the enemy], our retreat would have been like that of Napoleon across the Beresina.’88 Hamilton and Rawlinson were Roberts’s admirers, and doubted not their chief ’s skill and moral courage. Hamilton stood high in Roberts’s favour after Elandslaagte and Caesar’s Camp, given command of the M.I. and supporting infantry. Hamilton’s 14,000 mustered on Roberts’s right flank; on the left were Hunter and Methuen with 10,000 each. In the centre, Roberts’s main body advanced up the railway. The British were in overwhelming strength, the outnumbered Boers never more than 30,000.89 Hamilton’s force moved off on 1 May, Roberts’s on 3 May, the men singing, ‘We are marching to Pretoria.’ They marched at ease with helmets on the side to shelter their eyes, rifles with butt-ends over their shoulders. The long dark river of infantry stretching across the plain was interspersed with guns and wagons. French’s cavalry awaited fresh mounts until 8 May.90 The British fought a succession of engagements against Boer forces in positions across the line of march. Roberts’s usual tactic was to extend his front so as to threaten the enemy’s flanks. The mounted troops were incapable of pursuit because of the exhausted state of their horses. Altogether, there were 17,200 horses, 40,000 oxen and 22,000 mules, but only a tiny number of veterinary surgeons. For the horses the march was a trial, the Boers burning the grass from the River Vaal onward: ‘Not a blade of anything was left,’ wrote the chief vet. ‘The whole country in all directions was blackened by fire.’91 Rawlinson’s staff work kept him mostly close to Roberts. There was little scope for initiative, although he did find a water tank on 6 May after the crossing of the Vet River. Water was short, and he made the African who worked the pumping engine fill it for the approaching troops. Rawlinson had commandeered a Cape Cart at Brandfort for his kit, and he was delighted with his Basuto servant ‘Snowball’, a good driver who looked after his possessions and enabled him to stay near his chief.92 At Zand River on 10 May, the Boers deployed along a line of kopjes (small diamond-shaped hills), but were driven from their position on the cavalry’s approach.

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On 15 May, a detached column under Brigadier General Bryan Mahon joined 800 mounted Rhodesian riflemen under Brevet Colonel Herbert Plumer, and two days later entering Mafeking, ending a siege of 217 days. Rawlinson judged Roberts’s decision to halt ten days, 12–22 May, at Kroonstad unwise: ‘It seems that the Chief intends to stay here some days; a great mistake I think and Kitchener as well as many others is much opposed to it for we have supplies and everything here ready to move on and once the Boer is on the run I am sure it is sound policy to keep him moving. We ought in my opinion to push on at least as far as the Vaal River [Transvaal border].’93 The Boers had blown up the railway behind them in seventeen places, and Girouard brought forward a repairing train to put right the damage and renew the flow of supplies. Grierson and Rawlinson were over-stretched in trying to ensure the supply of bedding and other necessaries for sick and healthy alike.94 ‘Thank goodness’, wrote Rawlinson, when movement began again. ‘We shall not be many days longer at this dusty, dirty place.’95 On 27 May Roberts’s army crossed the Vaal, and on the 28th and 29th drew their lines closer round Johannesburg. Vast slag heaps and tall chimneys of the Rand lay ahead. Roberts’s force surprised the Boers at Germiston to the east (now a suburb of Johannesburg) and after a brief skirmish drove them in disorder from the town. Nine locomotives and much rolling stock was captured, as well as the railway line south to Vereeniging undamaged. This aided supply, although four days later Rawlinson still thought things were not coming up fast enough.96 He did not see the fight at Doornkop to the west in which Hamilton’s force captured a strong position, but again praised his friend’s leadership.97 The retreating Boers were abandoning Johannesburg on 30 May when the new commandant, Dr Krause, asked Roberts to defer entry for twenty-four hours: ‘The town was still full of armed Boers [wrote Rawlinson] and that if we went in there would be heavy fighting in the streets. So the Chief decided to postpone the entry until tomorrow.’98 Rawlinson was critical: it was a ploy to gain time, to get the guns in Johannesburg away. On the 31st Roberts and his army made their triumphant entry, Rawlinson with his chief: ‘All went off quietly. I was much impressed by the imposing nature of the buildings and offices in the town as well as by the size of it but the members of the community that we saw looked to be the scum of the earth. I never saw such a collection of underfed scoundrels in my life quite a sort of Port Said population.’99 In delaying one day, Roberts was influenced by his memories of a week’s terrible street fighting in Delhi in 1857. Rawlinson was wrong about the guns, which had been removed from Johannesburg’s forts long before. Nor was

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Roberts’s army with only a day’s rations in any position to ‘chase down and destroy the Boer army’ until fresh supplies arrived.100 After the delay, Roberts took the bold decision to press on to the Transvaal capital, Pretoria, as soon as his army had sufficient food. Rawlinson was busy running staff errands. On 1 June, his pony stepped in a hole, threw him, kicked him on the shin and dragged him fifty yards on his belly before pulling the stirrups out of the saddle. ‘No damage done,’ he wrote phlegmatically. At 6 am on the 4th, Roberts sent him to bring Hamilton’s column nearer for a coordinated attack on the enemy holding a line of kopjes covering Pretoria. Hamilton’s appearance at 4 pm with Broadwood’s and Henry Beauvoir De Lisle’s mounted men turned the Boer flank. At 4.15 pm De Lisle with the 2nd Mounted Infantry and the West Australian and New South Wales mounted contingents advanced over a shorter route which Broadwood thought impossible. He summoned the town to surrender.101 That night, De Lisle escorted senior Boers to Roberts’s command post in his wagon tent. He was asleep, but soon awoke to receive the town’s unconditional surrender. ‘Well, De Lisle,’ Roberts said, ‘you managed to accomplish in half an hour what the whole army has been trying to do for six months.’ Things have gone off well, Rawlinson thought, as they entered the town. A thousand rifles had been given up, and reports pointed to burghers coming in to surrender. Four good locomotives and ‘any amount’ of rolling stock had been taken. British prisoners had been freed. The troops look healthy and well, although dirty, proudly marching past their commander-in-chief and his chief of staff.102 On the 6th Rawlinson received two reassuring letters from his wife: ‘She seems less anxious about herself which is a relief.’103 By contrast, he was furious at Buller writing on 3 May: ‘Buller in Natal is still obstinate. I hear that he gives out that Bobs will not allow him to advance whereas we have been doing all we can to get him to make a move. He is so full of excuses that it is impossible to get any action out of him at all.’104 Buller’s advance, begun five days after Roberts’s, was at his usual funereal pace and no help to Roberts. On 4 June, he said he was ready to attack Laing’s Nek. The irritated Roberts wired back two days later: ‘Don’t bother now as we are in possession of Pretoria.’105 A month earlier, Rawlinson had written: ‘It looks to me as if the war would last for a good many months more. The enemy will as I have always said break up into small parties and take to guerilla warfare which will entail much time and blood to conquer.’ After the capture of Pretoria, however, he optimistically noted burghers handing in their arms, and on 13 June following further successes: ‘All is now looking well and the end seems to be within measurable distance.’106

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On 11 July, however, Koos de la Rey ambushed a force of Scots Greys and Lincolns at Zillikats Nek to the west of Pretoria. Their COs neglected to guard two higher points dominating their position. After hopeless resistance, they surrendered, losing 15 killed, 55 wounded and 189 prisoners.107 Rawlinson noted three days later that his chief had been ‘a little off colour … ever since this infernal affair of the Greys’, and on the 23rd, protected Roberts who needed a good night’s rest by not showing him a telegram with more apparent bad news.108 The 29th, however, was in Rawlinson’s words ‘a day of rejoicing’, for Major General Archie Hunter’s forces had converged on Boer commandos in the Brandwater Basin, and Hunter was negotiating Boer surrender.109 Two days later, 4,314 burghers were taken, a bigger haul than Paardeberg.110 Would another success end the war? Rawlinson claims it was on his advice that Roberts sent Kitchener to coordinate forces attempting to run down Christiaan De Wet and President Steyn.111 Philip Pienaar of the Transvaal telegraph service wrote: ‘It is chiefly owing to De Wet and Steyn that the war did not end with the fall of Pretoria.’112 To Kruger’s pessimistic telegram after the fall of Pretoria, the Free State leaders’ reply was blunt: we shall never surrender.113 For this first ‘De Wet hunt’ Kitchener with several of Roberts’s best generals, Methuen, Ian Hamilton, Smith-Dorrien, had overwhelming superiority in numbers, 18,000 to catch 2,500, control of railways and use of telegraph lines (although the Boers tapped these to overhear conversations). They lacked, however, good intelligence and a foolproof method of passing messages between columns, despite telegraph wagons that unrolled the wire as they advanced. De Wet had excellent scouts and information of British movements from local farmers. Rawlinson’s diary, following the elusive ‘Boer pimpernel’s movements in a fog of war, reveals the hunters’ difficulties. Methuen’s dogged pursuit captured a Boer gun and forced De Wet to leave thirty horses and all his prisoners behind. Ahead lay the towering Magaliesberg, with four possible passes. ‘It is difficult to forecast what De Wet will do,’ wrote Rawlinson, metaphorically scratching his head. A telegram to Hamilton brought him to Olifants Nek, one of the four, but too late. Without more modern communications and better intelligence, grasping De Wet’s column was holding quicksilver. Kitchener blamed both headquarters and Hamilton, telegraphing, ‘We ran him hard into a corner and fully relied on your closing the door at Olifants Nek how was this missed.’114 ‘This will prolong the war considerably I fear,’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘And we are very down in our luck in consequence.’115 On 12 August, at the height of the ‘De Wet hunt’, Rawlinson reflected that in Kitchener’s absence ‘I am doing a sort of chief of the staff ’. On the 15th

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Grierson, the quartermaster-general, was ordered to proceed to China at once as staff officer for the expedition against the ‘Boxer’ Rebellion at Peking. ‘He is extremely lucky and so am I for that matter as it places me at the head of the [QMG’s] department.’116 Not everyone shared Rawlinson’s self-confidence. Lieutenant General Lord Methuen arrived at Pretoria, very fed up at De Wet’s escape. ‘I am sorry to say there is a strong feeling regarding Lord R[oberts] for we all see he is not doing well,’ Methuen told his wife, ‘and he has as mental adviser only Harry R[awlinson]. This is in itself very wrong, as Kitchener and William Nicholson are out in the cold, and Harry has not the experience or rank for the false position he is holding.’ It was common talk, Methuen added.117 Methuen had written in anger, and he repeated unsubstantiated rumours. Kitchener was often on his roving commission, but there was no evidence that he and William Nicholson, trusted advisors, the latter in charge of transport, were ‘out in the cold’. This was evidence of the jealousy felt at Rawlinson’s position at headquarters. He got on well with Kitchener, who confided in his young subordinate.118 In October, when Roberts asked him whether Kitchener ‘was best as a staff officer or an independent commander’, Rawlinson honestly and loyally replied, ‘the latter most certainly’, and hoped ‘he would do all he could to get him to India where he would do far better work than at the W.O’.119 Rawlinson acknowledged he could not do everything: ‘I hope K[itchener] will be back here soon as I find it somewhat difficult to run the railway now that all the best railway officers have gone east.’120 Railway officers had ‘gone east’ to repair the line running from Pretoria to Komati Poort on the Transvaal’s eastern border with Portuguese territory. The conventional campaign was drawing to its close as Buller, French and Ian Hamilton pursued the commandos eastward: ‘This looks to me like nearing the end.’121 Both Kitchener and Rawlinson were keen with major fighting over to get Roberts home to succeed Lord Wolseley as commander-in-chief.122 On the 17th, Rawlinson wrote: We persuaded the Chief to wire to Lansdowne to say that the war now having degenerated into a guerrilla warfare it seemed hardly necessary to keep a Field Marshal in the field and that if the home government agreed he was prepared to hand over to Buller and return to England forthwith. We wonder much what the Cabinet will say but I am inclined to think they will agree. It is 6 to 4 on our going home within the next 3 weeks I think. It was a year yesterday since I sailed from Southampton and I shall not be sorry to be on my way back again. The govt. will I think be anxious to get Bobs home especially if they mean to go to the country [in an election] but they want Kitchener as well and he is very loath indeed to go. However I tell him he will have to whether he likes it or not.123

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Not even the cheerful Rawlinson could persuade Kitchener to go to the War Office. His eyes were firmly on the Indian Command.124 The cabinet, however, had no confidence in Buller to finish the war. Kitchener must stay behind. Roberts agreed, but insisted that Kitchener receive full general’s rank. Roberts told Lansdowne that his chief of staff was disinclined to take a War Office appointment and would best serve the state as Indian commander-in-chief. Rawlinson showed the wire to Kitchener ‘who was much pleased’.125 On the 29th Lansdowne’s telegram confirmed Roberts’s appointment to succeed Wolseley as commander-in-chief. Kitchener staying on in South Africa to end the war would not prejudice his changes for the Indian Command. These appointments followed the Unionist victory in the ‘Khaki election’. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury’s timing in going to the country was perfect: before the euphoria of Roberts’s early victories had been dissipated by the guerrilla campaign.126 On 19 September, Salisbury told the Queen of the very general expectation that Roberts would become commanderin-chief: ‘The popularity he has obtained and the great services he has tendered during this war make it almost impossible that any other nomination should be made.’ Salisbury pointed out that it would require a strong-willed and popular general to carry out Army and War Office reforms being urged.127 Roberts’s departure was delayed, however, by his daughter Aileen’s illness from typhoid. As Freddie had already died in South Africa, this had a particular poignancy for the field marshal and his loyal staff. On 3 November Aileen was ill, her pulse weak, ‘the Chief and her Ladyship are both very anxious about her’. Fortunately, she rallied. On the 13th she was ‘going on capitally’. Then Roberts had a fall from his horse and was in much pain.128 Not until 29 November did they get away via the Tugela battlefields, a tour which confirmed their view of Buller’s incompetence. ‘To any mind the whole conduct of the battle [Colenso] is inexplicable,’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘From what [Henry]Wilson tells us who was himself there at the time there seems to have been no definite objective.’ The objective had been the crossing of the Tugela at Bridle Drift [ford], but Buller’s blundering was such that Wilson could be forgiven his mistake. Rawlinson spotted that Hlangwane ‘was undoubtedly the key of the whole position’. One victim of the mistakes had been Roberts’s son, Freddie. On 4 December, the party went to his grave: ‘It was a sad visit just as day was dawning and the chief and Edwina were both of them much affected.’ Rawlinson who knew the close-knit Robertses intimately understood what lost hopes lay buried with the young officer.129 There was very mixed news from the war as Roberts and his party passed through cheering crowds at Durban on 5 December and embarked for home

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at Cape Town on the 11th. Dining with Milner two days before, Rawlinson warned that the Boers still on commando would not give in, but would ‘turn into brigands’. He was longing for home and Merrie, but when a last telegram arrived from Kitchener – ‘Good bye to you all and best of wishes don’t forget those you leave behind.’ – ‘I for one felt quite inclined to return.’130 The British Army’s many shortcomings, revealed by the war, made reforms essential,131 and all looked to the new commander-in-chief en route to Whitehall to carry them out. On reaching Madeira, Roberts and his party received news of Kitchener frustrating a Boer attempt to enter Cape Colony, but also a serious defeat at Noitgedacht. ‘I am very sorry that this should occur just as Kitchener has taken over command,’ wrote Rawlinson, ‘especially as the Chief has so often said in public that the war is practically over. To my mind there is still much to be done and I should not be surprised if the war went on for another 6 or 8 months.’132 This would prove a modest estimate.

4

In Pursuit of the Commandos

Harry Rawlinson arrived [at headquarters] last night: he is looking extraordinarily well, too well indeed, for he threatens to become fat. He … says that the Boers are thoroughly alarmed by the excellent intelligence which Wools-Sampson has been able to give to Bruce Hamilton. (Ian Hamilton to Lord Roberts, 24 December 1901) If you come across Rawly, tell him that I hope to hear of him as being one of the most dashing leaders in the Army. It grieves me terribly to hear doubts about him. (Lord Roberts to Ian Hamilton, 27 March 1902) Rawlinson had been out of South Africa for only six weeks when he received a telegram from Kitchener at the end of January: ‘he would be very glad if I would go out and join his staff ’. Despite Methuen’s criticisms noted earlier, Kitchener had found Rawlinson efficient enough to want him back. Roberts agreed that he could be spared from the War Office, ‘and though it was a great shock to Merrie and a very severe wrench to me I set my teeth and answered K. that I would sail on Feb[ruar]y 16th’.1 The modern critic might observe that Rawlinson’s affection for his wife always took second place to his ambitions, but could he reasonably gainsay a request from Kitchener supported by Roberts? He arrived at the Cape in early March and travelled by train to headquarters at Pretoria. Kitchener was in the process of unsuccessful negotiations at Middelburg. Rawlinson had a long talk with his new chief, who told him Louis Botha was for peace, but in the event neither side would concede enough, despite the mutual respect of the two leaders. Botha wrote to the burghers on 15 March: ‘The cause is not yet lost … it is well worth while to fight on.’ Kitchener had offered an understanding that Boer homes should be left alone by both sides, unless they gave active assistance to men in the field. Botha refused. He was entitled, he said, to force every man to

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join him, and if they did not, ‘to confiscate their property and leave their families on the veld’.2 The homesteads were bases for Boer resupply; the consequences were to be tragic.3 Rawlinson thought Kitchener in good humour. In January, following a revival of the commandos including an attempt to invade Cape Colony, a new ADC, Captain Frank Maxwell, reported him in a most dreadfully depressed state.4 The garrison at Dewetsdorp had pusillanimously surrendered. The burghers had defeated a British force at Nooitgedacht. Illness had forced Hunter to return home. Rawlinson’s arrival was a fillip to Kitchener’s spirits. So too was the support he received from the new commander-in-chief at Whitehall, although Roberts had left him an immense task. The latter’s memorandum to the cabinet asking for more mounted men for South Africa was accepted. To remount some of his troops, Kitchener raided Johannesburg racing stables. He told Roberts: ‘The result has been that they have caught up Boers galloping.’5 Some 10,000 horses a month were imported to South Africa and thousands commandeered in Cape Colony. The wastage of horseflesh in the campaign had been immense, and successfully mounting the columns was essential.6 On 12 March Rawlinson began the same staff work as before, plotting the positions of the troops and their movements. Kitchener had frustrated a Boer invasion of the Cape in January to foment rebellion, and had implemented martial law, confiscating arms and horses from potentially disloyal settlers. He pursued dual policies of military action and appeals to those on commando. He had overwhelming superiority on paper, over 240,000 white troops against 30,000–35,000.7 In practice, 100,000 were guarding lines of communications and many more in garrisons. Others could be employed in mobile columns. Rawlinson noted Kitchener’s new system of ‘drives’ with mounted troops, increasing their number and fortifying the railway lines with blockhouses. The columns would advance from line to line, finding supplies at both ends and hoping to trap the commandos against the blockhouse lines. These columns offered the chance of action, and Rawlinson told his diary: ‘I would like a column.’8 He also dropped a hint.9 His wish came quickly true. On the morning of 29 March, as he was showing Kitchener telegrams, ‘the Chief is in his short abrupt way said to me, “I think you had better go down and take command of Shackleton’s Col[umn].” I jumped at it of course. A force of 1500 mounted men with six guns and two pompoms is a very pleasant command especially when the two subordinate commanders are men like [Lieutenant Colonel G.A.] Cookson and [Major W.] Hickie.’10 As Rawlinson surmised, both were good commanders who later held senior positions in the First World

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War. Kitchener had removed Shackleton because of ‘some unpleasantness’ with his superior, Major General James Babington.11 Rawlinson would come under Babington’s local direction. The 1,500 men consisted of the 2nd and 8th Mounted Infantry, Imperial Yeomanry and elements of Kitchener’s Horse and Roberts’s Horse. Roberts wrote in April to tell Kitchener that among ‘gongs’ so far, Rawlinson received the CB (Companion of the Order of the Bath) and that he approved the new appointment: I see you have given [Rawlinson] a Column, he is sure to command it well, and he can be given his Colonelcy at the close of the Campaign. That is the rank he wants; there is a feeling against him at the War Office, but I am sure he is an officer well worth pushing on – I am advising him not to go to India, where I think it is likely you may wish to take him first, because I would like to have him at the War Office to help me to resuscitate the Quartermaster Generals Department, and secondly because his wife is very delicate and I doubt her standing the Indian climate.12

By then Kitchener thought Rawlinson was ‘doing very well in command of a column’ and would merit his colonelcy.13 Kitchener and Rawlinson were unaware the latter had a critic on his column staff, Captain C.R. Ballard, an intelligent officer who served with Roberts’s Horse and was later a biographer of Kitchener and Smith-Dorrien. Ballard wrote at the end of March, ‘Sir H. Rawlinson is to come and take over this column … I don’t know him but have heard a lot of him – he is one of the influential guardsman types and I expect to find him a specious ass, but I hope I shall be mistaken.’14 A week later he changed his tune and admitted that Rawlinson was a success. ‘He has good manners and seems to be reasonable and obliging – at present he needs experience and is rather hard on our horses, but that will wear off and I think he will be quite a good C. O.’15 Rawlinson himself noted two days later that his men were badly mounted, the horses needing rest and ‘will not last long’. He had telegraphed Kitchener but doubted he could replace them.16 On the 12th, they exchanged fire with Boer snipers on hills high above, who then quickly disappeared. ‘This was my first sort of skirmish “on my own” and I must say I enjoyed it very much’, wrote Rawlinson, his sense of adventure undiminished: ‘it is such a blessing to be able to do what one chooses instead of commanding someone else what to do’.17 On 14 April, Ballard was pleased that the column ‘had another rather good day and actually managed to do something’, a long night march bringing them just after dawn to the top of a small hill overlooking a Boer laager. The horses

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were grazing, fires smoking, the burghers thinking only of breakfast. Men were sent to left and right to prevent escape, but the bad ground, ‘nothing but rocks’, hindered movement, and most were able to slip away leaving twentyfive prisoners, a 12-pounder gun, a pom-pom, some wagons, and thousands of sheep and oxen. Rawlinson tried to get his scattered force together again and rode to where he thought men of Kitchener’s Horse were deployed, only heads appearing in tall grass. ‘What was my surprise on coming within 20 yards of them to find that they were Boers.’ Two men jumped up from the grass with their rifles pointed shouting ‘hands up’. Rawlinson turned to escape, but they shot his horse, bringing it down and leaving him sprawling on the ground. My Boer friends came on me with levelled rifles and being unarmed I was forced to surrender. They were fairly civil but demanded my watch and haversack which I had reluctantly to hand over to them … they then asked me for money so I gave them 5[shillings]. All this I did very slowly for I knew my men were all round them and that there would shortly be a row and sure enough just as one of them had got on my horse (wounded) bang went one of the 12 pounders and away went our Dutchman as hard as he could go. It was rather a narrow squeak and I should not have minded if they had not bagged my horse with my Zeis[s] glasses, Mackintosh and telescope on it.18

The small action closed with ten minutes’ exchange of rapid fire, and then ‘the Boers cleared off ’. To Merrie Rawlinson sent a reassuring telegram: Ventersdorp fifteen [Rawlinson’s column] surprised Laager yesterday morning captured one gun one pompom my horse shot and I was taken prisoner for two minutes only, then Boers bolted casualties slight hurrah.19

Rawlinson thought the columns had been badly handled by Babington: ‘He is rather wanting in dash and I should save his nerve was not very good.’20 Kitchener shared this view. He had given Rawlinson the command because of trouble between Shackleton and Babington and in September sent Babington home on leave: ‘there will be no use in his returning here he has not done anything bad, but is not good enough [chasing] after the Boers to justify his being kept on’.21 By mid-May Rawlinson’s leadership had won Ballard over. He wrote: In spite of our discomforts we are all very fit and even the horses are wonderfully well and I have found marches far more pleasant: this is chiefly due to Sir H. Rawlinson, whom I like very well. He has some consideration for men and animals, and that just makes all the difference. He worked us very hard, but made the best of it and there was no needless fuss or worry …. I only wish Rawlinson had come to us earlier.22

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By June, however, Ballard concluded that Rawlinson was slow and ineffective. ‘Rawlinson is a clever man and sensible and in fact one would pick him as likely to make a good commander’, wrote Ballard, ‘but there’s no doubt he gets slower every day. ’ The columns by now were not only pursuing commandos but also sweeping the veld in pursuit of Kitchener’s scorched-earth policy. The women and children were being taken from their farms, which the British considered bases for commando resupply, and ‘concentrated’ in internment camps run by the army. Boer reactions were mixed, according to Ballard: Some of them are quite cheery over it and take it well, but others make an awful fuss and are sure they will never get back and howl over all the treasures they have to leave behind. Of course most of them have lived all their lives on the same farm and it is rather a jar to be told to pack up in half an hour and move off. The kids generally set up a howl at first, but are very amenable to jam and chocolate and look upon it as rather good sport. They are generally very dirty.23

Ballard sympathized with the Boers ‘who are fighting patriotically for their freedom’, and he disapproved of British methods ‘which chiefly consist of burning farms and worrying women’. He wanted the British to be generous to defeated Boers and ‘put the burden of taxation on the Jew financiers’.24 ‘Jewbugs of the Rand’ were ogres to many soldiers, an anti-Semitic stance that added a twist to the radical thesis that the war was an evil capitalistic conspiracy of Cecil Rhodes and the greedy financiers of ‘Jewburg’. This view has not received support from serious historians.25 Roberts had started limited farm-burning to deter attacks on railway. He began the camps in August and early September 1900 at Pretoria and Bloemfontein for burghers who surrendered voluntarily. They were extended for families of burghers who had broken oaths of neutrality. By 21 December, Kitchener was clearing all farms in certain districts and sending the Boer inhabitants to the camps. Following the failure of the Middelburg talks, he put ruthless measures into full effect: 30,000 farms were burnt and 160,000 women and children placed in fifty camps mostly along railway lines, where they could be fed by the British Army commissariat and ‘protected from intimidation’ by Boers still fighting, the Bittereinders.26 Ian Hamilton had disliked harsh policy: while acknowledging its rightness in narrow military terms, he sympathized with the ‘white man of fighting race who has had his house picked out deliberately and burnt to the ground with all its little family records’.27 Rawlinson favoured tough measures: in August, 1901, he wrote to Roberts that the war was degenerating into the same kind of ‘dacoit hunt’ as

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Burma. ‘The Boer is becoming just as cold blooded a ruffian as the dacoit was and by his wholesale slaughter of Kaffirs, his persistent looting of his own kith and kin and his breaking up into small parties of irresponsible banditti, he has I think forfeited his right to be considered as a belligerent.’ Rawlinson had found the bodies of four black boys, none of them over twelve years of age, with their heads beaten in by the Boers and left in the kraal of their father. He wanted the Bittereinders still fighting outlawed.28 In May, black Africans came into his camp seeking protection and saying that the Boers had shot others.29 Rawlinson’s diary entries for May suggest that he was sent on a wild goose chase after Koos De la Rey, one of the ablest Boer leaders, who was nowhere near where reported.30 Kitchener struggled to gain reliable intelligence and his system of controlling the columns from the centre was very imperfect. A coordinated drive in the middle months of 1901 employing Major General Bruce Hamilton, Colonel Herbert Plumer and Major General Edward Elliott brought meagre results. In September, the commandos of Jan Smuts, J.L. Van Deventer and Pieter Kritzinger all made for the Cape Colony frontier, and Kitchener hurried up columns including Rawlinson’s.31 The threat to the Cape was averted, but the price was a Boer surprise of Lieutenant Colonel Hubert Gough’s command on 17 September. Some 200 of the enemy, off-saddled, were the bait, the concealed remainder of Louis Botha’s force were the jaws of the trap. In ten minutes, Botha and his men galloped up and rolled over Gough’s line. Forty-four officers and men were killed and wounded, 241 taken prisoner and three guns captured. Kitchener’s view was that it ‘might happen to anyone’, but impetuosity was a characteristic of Gough. The trap had been well prepared on difficult ground, but a prudent commander might have evaded it.32 Rawlinson visited headquarters during 19–23 September and found things bleak. Botha was apparently threatening Natal. Kitchener looked altered and aged from the long strain. ‘He sadly wants a rest, but cannot possibly get it.’ By contrast, Kitchener told Roberts that Rawlinson was ‘very fit and well and just as full of talk as ever’. There had been action as well as talk, for the ‘bag’ of captured Boers for three weeks of that month had been 1,500.33 October however was a bad month for Rawlinson. On the 11th and 12th he was suffering from ‘neuralgia’ and no better for the medicine he had taken. Ballard was extremely critical, ‘two grand chances’ missed, ‘everyone is very sick with Rawly’. On the first occasion the column marched at night, it was ‘pouring with rain and blowing a gale’. They were working with Colonel M.F. Rimington, veteran of Bechuanaland and Zululand who had led Roberts’s army with a scouting unit which he had raised himself. Rimington sent the Boers ‘streaking

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towards Rawly’, but they outdistanced him, and with a gap of 2 miles, he halted and opened fire with his guns. The ‘bag’ was one rifle and a dispatch case of state papers. The second occasion was in fine weather, ‘but Rimington sulked and would not play because Rawly had failed him before and there was another row and relations were so strained that Rimington went back … in quite another direction’.34 Unsurprisingly, Rawlinson’s diary differs. On 14 October (not one of Ballard’s two fiascos), the two commanders made a long gallop after a Boer convoy ‘and captured 6 prisoners, 4 wagons, 6 Cape carts about 1000 cattle and any number of sheep. Long day and horses very tired.’ On the 17th, Rawlinson was able to refuse Kitchener’s orders sent by wire ‘on account of the weak state of Rimington’s horses’. On the 24th Rawlinson’s diary supports Ballard’s account except in one detail: Rimington (wrote Rawlinson) ‘got De Wet’s haversack which contained all Louis Botha’s latest correspondence. This is very valuable and contains copies of all Botha’s most recent letters as well as reports from all his commandants …. I wired this to the chief who answers with congratulations and seems pleased.’ Intelligence was vital to Kitchener’s campaign, so a ‘bag of letters’, as Ballard deprecatingly termed it, was valuable. Kitchener told Roberts at Whitehall of the capture of the letters and of Rimington and Rawlinson’s near miss.35 Nonetheless, Rawlinson wiring Kitchener and receiving credit for allowing the Boers to escape was one of Ballard’s complaints. The Times History tells us Botha had been forewarned, and he stationed his brother and ‘300 vigilant men’ to block Rawlinson’s column by a rearguard action.36 On the 27th, Rawlinson expected to see Rimington on his left flank when some horsemen were spotted. ‘However I found that he [Rimington] had got the sulks and was enspanned some two miles behind me taking no part in the proceedings whatever. I was considerably annoyed at this and let him know it for it was not playing the game.’ On the 28th, Rimington sent a note that Boers were spotted; he and Rawlinson had agreed they should ‘have a go’. ‘As soon as we threatened them they bolted back under heavy shell fire’, wrote Rawlinson. ‘It was no good going after them.’ Rawlinson appears on this occasion damned in his own words.37 Catching and beating the Boers was not, however, simply a case of ‘galloping’ as Ballard seemed to think. The quarry could turn on their pursuers. On 30 October, Louis Botha’s commando attacked the column of Colonel G.E. Benson, one of Kitchener’s best commanders. The Boers got up close to his rearguard in heavy mist and fog and were at first taken to be British. They used a new tactic, charging in line, nearly a mile and a half long, firing from the saddle, goading forward their tired little ponies. The British column was overwhelmed and lost

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66 dead, 165 wounded and over 100 prisoners. Benson himself was mortally wounded and captured. The Boers by now were using captured British rifles and eating British supplies; they stripped the British dead and took their uniforms, as their own clothes were in tatters.38 The setback was a bleak moment for Kitchener. On 18 October, he wrote to St John Brodrick, Lansdowne’s successor as Secretary of State for War, ‘If you think that someone else could do better out there, I hope you will not hesitate for a moment in replacing me.’ On 1 November, to Roberts he confessed his despair: ‘I see the [news]papers say I am not much good as a strategist …. Can you get anyone to do it better, if so please do not hesitate – A new man at the head might evolve some new ideas for finishing the war – I try my best, I am afraid it is not much.’39 Roberts wrote urgently to Brodrick, concerned that Kitchener was overworked, and suggested the appointment of a chief of staff. ‘Ian Hamilton is quite the best man I can think of for such a position, and if you approve I will ascertain from Kitchener whether Hamilton’s appointment would be agreeable to him.’40 The offer was accepted with alacrity. When Hamilton arrived, Kitchener was able to trust him with a fair amount of work and leave headquarters to visit troops and outposts.41 Ballard was pleased at Hamilton’s arrival. Ironically, after his complaints about Rawlinson, he missed ‘three of the best days on record’ to attend a court martial.42 On 7 December, Rawlinson’s column galloped at Boer farms at 3 am, and although Boer scouts gave warning, they took eight prisoners, 336 cattle and about forty good horses. Among the prisoners was Botha’s signaller with the cipher code. On the 10th, he did better. Colonel Aubrey Wools-Sampson’s black scouts, who had worked with Benson, travelled long distances by night to seek out Boer laagers. At 3 am Rawlinson received their news, and as it was just getting light at 3.45 am his men breasted a rise and found the Boer camp below some 800 yards off. ‘The Mounted Infantry let go a cheer and a whoo-hoop which must have been a rude awakening to the laager’, he wrote. A few odd shots, the whish of one or two bullets and the whole of our line of over 2000 mounted men set off at a gallop, yelling with delight. We never waited to shoot. The more the Boers shot the more we yelled. My orders were that none of the men were on any account to stop at the laager, there was to be no looting of wagons or waiting to shoot. Our objective was to be the mounted Boers and the gun we heard was with them. I do not think I have ever seen a prettier or more exhilarating sight than that was in the grey of the dawn. The M.I. all streaming away just like a pack of hounds and giving tongue like red Indians. We had a

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good long gallop of nearly 7 miles. The horses did well and we were rewarded by collecting 53 prisoners … only 6 got away. We killed 21 and had one officer slightly wounded in the leg.

Returning to the laager, they took sixty-seven more prisoners, about 3,000 cattle, and some thirty carts and wagons. Rawlinson was full of praise for Wools-Sampson and sorry that he had not been with his column the past three months.43 On the night of the 12th, Rawlinson marched again, leading 1,100 mounted riflemen, two guns and three pom-poms, confident in Wools-Sampson and his scouts. There were two other parties of 600 each. Bruce Hamilton was in overall command. There was no moon, and the heavy clouds overhead shut out even the starlight. The column became separated in the murk, and Rawlinson persuaded Bruce Hamilton to halt, light matches and gather his lost sheep before pressing on. Coming down the face of a hill, they saw ‘little black dots swarming about in the farm below’. The order to gallop was passed and two companies of M.I. and Roberts’s Horse set to ride ‘for all they were worth’. A few rounds from the pom-poms quelled resistance and put the enemy on the run. The chase netted sixty-nine prisoners and sixteen more were killed.44 Ballard wrote: 93 Boers [captured] on first day, 138 on second, 68 on third, besides killing at least 17 on last day. Everybody is full of it and they were good sporting gallops. Our total losses only about half a dozen altogether, Boers never waited to fire a shot but simply bolted. Our leaders have had a practical lesson that hard riding is now the game and is worth more than all the shooting and manoeuvring we have learnt at Aldershot.

Rawlinson described his successes to Roberts, attributing them mainly to WoolsSampson’s use of African scouts to gather intelligence. On three occasions he had led the column to a spot exactly above a Boer laager. ‘These night marches are done without baggage at all’, wrote Rawlinson. ‘Officers take a led horse with blanket and waterproof sheet, the men nothing but a great coat on their saddles, we take one day’s forage and two days’ groceries.’ Each man carried 150 rounds of ammunition in three bandoliers. A congratulatory telegram from Roberts had just arrived ‘so I fancy our captures have made a good impression at home … but it would be a mistake to build upon them great hopes of the speedy termination of the war’.45 There followed brief days of rest, in which Rawlinson read Kipling’s Kim with great pleasure, broken up on the 22nd with a march of 65 miles which left seventy-five horses dead of exhaustion ‘which is serious but it was mostly owing to the boggy nature of the country which is very deep and the black soil is very

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soft’. On Christmas Day, Rawlinson’s men poked their noses out of waterproof sheets to be greeted by mist and rain. Their march that day ended at 7 pm, well after dark, and Rawlinson then arranged the collection of Christmas puddings and preparation of a good dinner. He finished his diary: ‘It is quite cold here this evening but as we were all dog tired we slept well on the top of turtle soup, plum pudding and Champagne.’46 Rawlinson had been right to warn Roberts against optimism, for on that Christmas Day, De Wet surprised and overran a British camp on the summit of Groenkop, taking 200 prisoners and a vast quantity of arms, ammunition and stores.47 Rawlinson spent ten days at the turn of the year 1901–1902 enjoying a rest at Johannesburg, where Kitchener had moved. To Roberts he wrote: Both [Kitchener] and Johnny [Hamilton] are very fit and Lord K is much better than when I last saw him at Pretoria some 2½ months ago. Johnny as you may imagine is a great assistance to him, for now he can go off on short trips in the various stations, see what is going on for himself, and do a great deal of good in shewing himself a little more. Besides which the trips themselves do him an immensity of good. He has lately as you know been addressing the able bodied Burghers now in our concentration camps with a view to forming them into a corps of ‘National Scouts’ which will be able to work by themselves in the field under their new leaders which they themselves will select. The scheme has met with considerable success and we shall shortly have three bona fide Boer commandos in the field about 400 strong each working on our side. Though they will not I fancy do much hard fighting, the political effect of getting these Dutchmen into the field will certainly have a great influence on those who are hesitating whether to come in or not, and we hope the number of surrenders, which even now are considerably increasing, will truly be greatly augmented.48

By now the camps housing 160,000 Boer civilians had been thoroughly reorganized. Their mismanagement had been revealed by the courageous Emily Hobhouse and the Liberal leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Reform came in the wake of the Fawcett Commission composed of high-ranking ladies from England. They toured August–December 1901 and reported the appalling state of many camps. Camp administration was taken from the army, which had failed to care for its charges, roughly 26,000 of whom died from malnutrition and disease, and given to Milner’s ‘young men’. Some camps were shifted closer to the railways. Doctors and nurses fought the epidemics, and schools were established for the children.49 Conditions in camps for black Africans, equally bad, improved more slowly, thanks largely to the work of missionaries.50

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Rawlinson scarcely mentions the camps, and would only have learnt of the stir caused by the inmates’ deaths through newspapers, busy as he was on the veld. His discussions with Kitchener led him to accept that compromise with the Boers was right. Unless the Boers were given a role in government, they would not be reconciled to a role in the empire. Rawlinson criticized Milner who favoured hard terms: ‘He is the man who should be the great arbiter between the Dutch and the British elements but he has so committed himself to the Johannesburger that his decisions must necessarily be biased and as the Boers hate him more than any other living creature except Joe Chamberlain. I do not myself think that he will ever be the high Commissioner of a really peaceful confederation of states.’51 Both Rawlinson and Hamilton shared Kitchener’s understanding that military measures had to be supported by an offer of generous terms. The Hensuppers including Christiaan De Wet’s brother, Piet, surrendered in increasing numbers, and as the National Scouts served with the British. By the war’s end, over onefifth of Boers under arms were with the British, some 5,464.52 Rawlinson had wooed his chief, who had ‘been very nice’ to him. Kitchener took him away from Bruce Hamilton’s oversight and gave him a big column of 2,000 men. He joined three other columns of roughly equal strength under Lieutenant Colonel Julian Byng, Major General Edward Elliot and Rimington. Their task was to hunt De Wet and Steyn in the Orange River Colony.53 After what he saw as Rawlinson’s earlier failures, Ballard had flippantly written to his friend Captain Frank Maxwell at Kitchener’s headquarters. ‘At present I am sick of fever and also of Rawly – the doctors tell me I shall get rid of the fever alright, but if you will give me a tip about getting rid of Rawly I shall feel much better. He simply won’t fight and I want to get under somebody who will.’ Maxwell was the licensed court jester at the headquarters, able to tease the great man with impunity and rouse him from his black moods. He had shown the letter round; Kitchener and Ian Hamilton were among those who saw it. Ballard was very angry at the disclosure, but Maxwell jauntily replied: ‘You’ll find it does you no harm – I know what I am about up here – we all hate Rawly except the Chief and it is really our duty to let him know what sort of a soldier Rawly is.’ Maxwell calmed Ballard’s anger and they had a drink. Ballard wrote: ‘He told me Rawly had very nearly been kicked out once or twice and that everybody hated him, but that the Chief had a strange fancy for him and had given him another chance – but they all knew that Rawly’s wires were a pack of lies and they all thought it was quite a misfortune that he had had so much luck lately, for it had saved him.’54 Were others jealous that Rawlinson had been given a plum appointment in the field with a picked column? All knew he enjoyed

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Roberts and Kitchener’s favour. Did his capture of the Boers seem to the envious simply a stroke of good luck? There must be some truth to Ballard’s view, but it is not the whole story. Kitchener was ruthless with subordinates whom he judged incompetent. Rawlinson continued to enjoy his confidence, and his column was employed on key ‘drives’. The year 1902 had started well with Bruce Hamilton scoring several successes. General Daniel Erasmus and seventy burghers were taken on 2 January. Rawlinson’s column had been joined by Howell Gwynne, Reuter’s chief correspondent. Gwynne as the future editor of the Standard (1904–1911) and the right-wing Morning Post (from 1911) would prove an important contact. On 22 January, the column was roused at 3.30 am to march before 4.00 am. Gwynne noted with approval: ‘Before marching Rawlinson gave the O.C. units an idea of what was going on, where the enemy was supposed to be and the columns engaged in following him, an excellent example for other columns where often the officers are in complete ignorance of what is going on.’ A party of thirty Boers was caught by surprise. On the 24th, after a 2 am start, the headquarters and one section of Rawlinson’s column led by an African guide captured twentythree ‘sheepish Boers’ without firing a shot, awakened from sleep with shouts of ‘hands up’. Then another seven and 500 cattle were added to the ‘bag’. On the 27th, after Rawlinson’s ‘morning briefing in his usual few words’, the column marched 25 miles. Gwynne was not so complimentary when they were shot at. ‘I am afraid Rawly is not bold enough. To my mind it is a positive disgrace to a column to be sniped like we were today.’55 In early February, Rawlinson and Rimington appear to have mended their differences, for they sent a joint wire to Kitchener urging him to delay a planned ‘drive’. This was part of a scheme of ‘new model drives’, as Erskine Childers described them in The Times History.56 They came from Rimington’s urging that a continuous outpost line had to be preserved at all costs, but Kitchener kept control from his headquarters by means of telegrams. The columns massed on the Bethlehem-Harrismith railway line, and advanced once intelligence gave notice of Christiaan De Wet’s movements. Some 9,000 men were deployed on a front of 54 miles, one man every ten yards. The advance was to cover 50 miles in three days beginning early 6 February. Unfortunately, on the morning of the 7th, De Wet discovered an inadequately guarded wire fence between two blockhouses and cut the wire, and his whole force passed through without a shot being fired. Marching on 40 miles, he got clean away. The drive rolled on. Rawlinson discovered and promptly filled a gap of 2 miles to his left. De Wet had gone, but others were trapped. During night of 7–8 February, his men joined

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others manning encircling trenches, watched and fired at any movement: ‘rifles crackled up and down the line [wrote Erskine Childers] the searchlights of the armoured trains could be seen to north and west flashing broad white beams over the dark veld’. All night the Boers attempted in vain to escape, and at 6 am the British advanced in line to round up their quarry. Gwynne was impressed that the drive netted 286 of the enemy, killed, wounded or captured, half falling to Rawlinson.57 The second drive beginning on 13 February was on a vastly greater scale and intended to last fourteen days. The first phase until 16 February drew an almost total blank. During the second phase (16th–27th), great difficulties were encountered because of the rugged landscape and a succession of streams running in precipitous, tortuous beds. De Wet entered the trap unwittingly and the jaws closed when Elliott occupied the drifts across the rivers. Altogether about 3,000 fighting men and a multitude of non-combatants were surrounded. Boer scouts discovered a gap and through it on the night of 28 February they streamed, led by 800–900 fighting men followed by De Wet, Steyn and their staffs, then the wagons, and finally a great herd of cattle 6 miles in length. De Wet and the toughest escaped with fourteen dead and twenty wounded whom they carried with them. The faint-hearted, the wagons and almost the whole of the cattle remained behind. At the last moment, luck turned on what seemed to be a disappointing drive. Rawlinson’s column captured the Harrismith Commando, 571 in number. A week before, another 164 burghers had been taken. The total ‘bag’ was 778 prisoners with 50 dead, 25,000 head of cattle and 200 wagons. Rawlinson was cock-a-hoop on the 27th – ‘This has been a great day.’ Envoys from the commando had come out to negotiate their surrender, and at 9 am he had ridden into their laager where the burghers were formed up in batches sitting on the ground with their personal effects, having laid down their arms and bandoliers in heaps and turned their horses loose to graze. It was a very satisfactory spectacle. He sent for wagons to carry the old and lame and made the others walk some 6 miles to his camp.58 He claimed a record ‘bag’ in February.59 Kitchener launched his exhausted troops on the third drive at the start of April. The marches were long and the men overly fatigued. Steyn and De Wet fled by a circuitous route through three blockhouse lines. There were only 100 prisoners from this last effort. Rawlinson wrote in his diary of long and exhausting marches with hardly a Boer to be seen, the maps bad, scouts who did not know the country, and men, horses and mules all very tired.60 Prior to the march, Rawlinson had had a long talk with Commandant Truter among

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the Harrismith prisoners, trying to glean vital information. Steyn and De Wet still had plenty of fighting men with them. They used cattle as a decoy to help nocturnal escapes, sending them one way to draw British fire and going in another direction. De Wet had a singular white-topped wagon drawn by eight mules, which Rawlinson hoped to identify. Truter concluded ominously, ‘they will neither of them ever surrender but we must catch or kill them’.61 The Bittereinders not only fought on; they also hit back. On the 12th, Kitchener summoned Rawlinson and others to give them bad news. Methuen’s column had been ambushed and defeated at Tweebosch by Koos De la Rey. Among the casualties was Methuen himself, wounded and taken prisoner. The magnanimous De la Rey arranged for his medical treatment and was taken to Klerksdorp. Less merciful were those Boers who shot dead black and Indian staff of the Field Veterinary Hospital accompanying the column. One farrier sergeant of Indian Cavalry and two Indian veterinary assistants, none carrying arms, were shot dead after the surrender, and nine black Africans were killed in action or murdered later.62 Kitchener told Rawlinson that ‘he wished me to transfer my energies to the W. Transvaal again & that I must march tomorrow’. This was despite De Wet being still at large in the Orange River Colony. His column’s march was delayed by a stream in flood, having risen two feet in as many hours, and cheered by a stop at ‘a beautiful farm of fruit’ where they gathered delicious ripe peaches, apricots figs, pears and apples ‘and best of all grapes’. The men got great bundles of the last ‘which I am sure did them a great deal of good’.63 On 19 March he met Kitchener’s train at Potschstroom, travelled with him ‘and he unfolded to me his plan of campaign’, as he did again to a group of four on the 21st. Rawlinson, Walter Kitchener, Colonel Robert Kekewich and Wools-Sampson were to cooperate, and they agreed on signals to draw the others in case De la Rey attacked one.64 Rawlinson also heard of the hostility at headquarters. Gwynne returned to the column the night of 21 March ‘and tells me [wrote Rawlinson] there is a regular cabal against me at Head Qtrs. I don’t care a rap for I will have my revenge.’ The next day, he reconsidered. ‘I have been thinking over what Gwynne told me yesterday and have settled in my mind that whatever happens I will serve K and Johnny H to the best of my ability throughout the war and that after that I don’t care a d – n what happens. I have written this to Johnny.’ What most distressed him was that Hubert Hamilton ‘for whom I have done so much is as great an enemy as any of the others’.65 Nothing seems to have come of this, except a letter from Roberts, who heard echoes in London, to Hamilton; Roberts grieved ‘terribly’ to hear doubts

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about his protégé.66 Kitchener and Hamilton’s confidence in Rawlinson seemed undiminished as they employed his column. Probably his previous good service outweighed uncertain gossip. On 24 March, after ‘a great march’ of 80 miles in twenty-four hours, his men and Walter Kitchener’s killed or captured 179 Boers and secured three guns and two pom-poms. That the main part of the enemy escaped Rawlinson attributed to Kitchener asking too much of his column. They had been twenty hours continuously in the saddle and their horses were very tired, while those of the pursued were fresh. Ninety-six horses were dead and 136 incapacitated from exhaustion of 1,600.67 In early April, Kitchener deployed strong columns in the Western Transvaal against De la Rey. ‘The chief is very anxious for us to strike a blow’, wrote Rawlinson. ‘I wired K. to say that he ought to send someone here with authority over all columns to act once information came, and suggested Johnny Hamilton.’68 On the 7th, Wools-Sampson had intelligence of a commando under Kemp, in command in De la Rey’s absence, but when he and Rawlinson approached, they found the quarry gone. More important, however, ‘I heard last night that Johnny Hamilton is coming down to take over command.’ Hamilton had to coordinate the movements of 10,000 men in sixteen columns. He could change the columns’ direction acting on Wools-Sampson’s information.69 Kekewich, Rawlinson and Walter Kitchener’s columns with four days’ rations were to sweep south and east in a semicircle of 140 miles. On the morning of 11 April, Rawlinson with two columns started at 7 am and within half an hour heard heavy firing in the direction of Kekewich’s camp. He had been attacked by Commandants Kemp and Potgieter and 1,500 Boers. Fire from skirmishers covered the enemy attack made on horseback with great determination, Potgieter conspicuous in a blue shirt. The Boer formation was in many places two deep and in others the men were riding knee to knee. Their centre moved at a slow canter to give time for flank attacks to develop, the men shooting from horseback. The rattle of guns, pom-poms and magazine rifles ‘all being as hard at it as they could go’ filled the air. Kekewich’s inexperienced men fired high, but their fire beat off the attackers, who could get no closer than seventy yards. Rawlinson on his initiative moved his columns towards the firing, and arriving when the action was over, took up the pursuit. After a gallop of about 14 miles he captured two guns, a pom-pom and about thirty prisoners. Hamilton sent a message to Walter Kitchener to swing across the path of the escaping Boers and cut them off. Unfortunately, he moved parallel to the quarry instead, shielded from seeing them by the thick scrub. ‘W.K. does not seem to have made much of a push yesterday’, wrote Rawlinson, ‘even after getting

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Johnny H’s message telling him to push on’. Rawlinson, however, had not always been quickest in pursuit; the Boers were masters of keeping their horses fresh and knew the ground better.70 Boer losses were fifty-one killed including Potgieter, forty wounded and thirty-six unwounded prisoners. This success at Rooiwal came at a critical time, for negotiations were soon to begin at Vereeniging, south of Johannesburg. On the 9th, Hamilton accompanying Rawlinson’s column had told him ‘that it was even money that peace would be made’.71 The defeat and death of Potgieter, a truly obdurate Bittereinder, the relentless British pressure which had reduced the veld almost to a wasteland, and the defeat of a commando by a Zulu Impi at Holkrans brought the burghers to the negotiating table. As at Fashoda, Kitchener showed himself a master of diplomacy and offered his enemy a facesaving compromise.72 The Boers had inflicted humiliating setbacks to the world’s greatest empire, but their resources were running out. When 300 delegates from the commandos met a party headed by Jan Smuts, Denys Reitz, a determined Bittereinder, wrote: ‘Nothing could have proved more clearly how nearly the Boer cause was spent than these starving, ragged men, clad in skins or sacking, their bodies covered with sores from lack of salt and food … Their spirit was undaunted, but they had reached the limit of physical endurance …. if these haggard, emaciated men were the pick of the Transvaal commandos, then the war must be irretrievably lost.’73 The fighting was at a standstill while negotiations proceeded. Rawlinson visited Mafeking to see Colonel Baden-Powell’s defences and presented Hamilton with a razor he had bought there. On 25 May, Hamilton who favoured generous terms travelled to Vereeniging to assist Kitchener. Rawlinson was bothered ‘a good deal’ by a constant headache but was pleased at a message from Kitchener cancelling earlier orders to destroy crops. ‘The men will be glad not to have to reap mealies any more.’ Soon there would be even better news. On Sunday, 1 June, Rawlinson was on his way to the morning service with his men when the clerk came running out of the telegraph tent with ‘the broadest of broad grins on his face’. Peace had been signed the night before. He formed up the men after the service and announced the good tidings, congratulating them on the success of all their work, calling on them not to forget friends they had lost and finishing up with three cheers for Lord Kitchener. The Treaty of Vereeniging was a compromise: the Boers surrendered and promised to live under the crown, but in return were promised a speedy restoration of self-government and no franchise for the black Africans. The British were prepared to pay this price to ensure in the uncertainties of the twentieth century that the Cape, the naval base

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at Simonstown and the route to India were secured. John Darwin writes: ‘In the longer view, the outcome of the struggle, the unification of South Africa as a self-governing, British dominion rather than its secession, or balkanisation into competing states, created a vital adjunct of British world power in the century of global wars.’74 The war over, Rawlinson returned with Kitchener to England, landing on 12 July. The Times special correspondent was full of praise for the returning heroes: ‘What would Ladysmith have done without Rawlinson – the man who pressed Sir George White for naval guns?’75 It was a lovely day, and on the train from Southampton, Rawlinson with an artist’s eye rejoiced in seeing England’s green fields and trees. He noted crowds of gaily dressed people in the fields and the stations they passed waving flags. Even haymakers stopped their work to wave. He received a reassuring telegram from Merrie. ‘The greatest comfort of all is that my little wife is really strong and well.’ At 1 pm they steamed into Paddington and were greeted by the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Connaught and Cambridge, Lord Roberts, and the whole of the HQ staff of the army. ‘I found Merrie on the platform also Lady Bobs and any number of other friends.’76 In the victory parade to Buckingham Palace, Kitchener took with him in the first carriage John French and Ian Hamilton. To French, Kitchener had given complete trust in the Cape, and to Hamilton discretion in the closing phase in the Western Transvaal.77 Rawlinson was in the second carriage. At Buckingham Palace, the Prince of Wales hosted the conqueror of the Boers. His Majesty was ill in bed, but his best gold plate was on the table. Kitchener in his final despatch wrote: ‘Colonel Rawlinson possesses the qualities of Staff Officer and Column Commander in the field. His characteristics will always ensure him a front place in whatever he sets his mind to.’78 Compared to the encomiums lavished on French and Hamilton, this praise was muted. Rawlinson’s erstwhile enemies Maxwell and Rimington had been among Kitchener’s suite on his return. Whatever they said of his caution, in the closing phase he had led his column well. He proudly recorded its success from 1 April 1901: sixty-four of the enemy killed, eighty-seven wounded, 1,266 prisoners, 1,924 refugees gathered up, three guns, 1,082 rifles, 68,600 rounds of ammunition taken. They had suffered a loss of twelve killed and forty-two wounded, had marched 5,211 miles and halted in 276 camps.79 He avoided the disasters that struck Gough, Benson and Methuen, but his caution criticized by Ballard would reappear on the Western Front. He was thoughtful for his men, and pleased when a subordinate organized ‘a singsong concert round the camp fire’, ensuring they celebrated Christmas and halting to allow them to pick and

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indulge in fresh fruit.80 He drew lessons from the war. Volunteers fight better so stick to volunteers, but provide a mechanism for rapid expansion in war: a properly organized staff system, better military education, mounted Infantry and cavalry able to fight on foot, infantry to shoot better and have well-equipped machine-gun companies, better infantry–artillery cooperation. As control of an extended battlefield by a commander was more and more difficult, subordinates were to be trained to accept responsibility.81 Considering his appreciation of Wools-Sampson’s black scouts, it is surprising he did not mention intelligence. His conclusions were not brilliant, but nor were they unwise, given his experiences. But was the South African conflict to prove a guide to the British Army’s future wars?

5

Ready for Armageddon? The War Office, the Staff College and Aldershot

[Colonel Trench] is firmly convinced that the whole German people have but one idea in view namely the over throw of the British Empire. (Henry Rawlinson, 26 September 1909) By his brother generals [Rawlinson] was regarded as a dangerous opponent on manoeuvres, fertile in resources, and prompt to act, while the manner in which he obtained intelligence of his adversary’s intentions came to be considered as uncanny. (The Times, 28 March 1925) The British Army entered upon a period of reform, vital but incomplete, in which Rawlinson would play an important part while advancing his career. At first the humiliations of the South African War gave the impetus, but were succeeded by the increasing threat of a continental war against a belligerent Germany. The Russo–Japanese War of 1904–1905 threw up more questions as to how training, equipment and tactics should be adapted to deal with modern firepower. The Royal Navy with expensive Dreadnought battleships competed for funds, and expenditure on the Army fell in the years 1901–1914.1 Kitchener hit one nail on the head when he stated that Rawlinson’s characteristics ‘will always ensure him a front place in whatever he sets his mind to’. With an end to the South African War almost certain, Rawlinson had written to Roberts about future employment ‘and suggest[ed] Com[man]d[an]t Staff College which was a bold stroke I think. It would suit me well to get it now as it is a post that one can rise to anywhere from’. He said he preferred not to have an office job and to keep in touch with the younger officers of the army.2 On the journey home from South Africa, Rawlinson reflected on his good fortune, the

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youngest colonel but one in the army, ‘in a most favourable position as regards the future’.3 Ambition was not a fault that either Roberts or Kitchener could tax a man with. Both were sufficiently amused by Rawlinson’s talkative cheerfulness to have enjoyed a rather feeble practical joke. Following Rawlinson’s brief capture in April 1901, Kitchener sent Roberts a letter which Rawlinson had also seen purporting to be from a Boer. ‘[Rawlinson] absolutely believes in the Boer letter about his being like an assvogel [vulture]’, Kitchener wrote, ‘so please do not enlighten him as to its origin’. In another letter, Kitchener had added that their protégé was doing well.4 Enjoying the favour of Lord Roberts, returning to South Africa and being given a plum command, sending telegrams and letters to Kitchener and Roberts respectively detailing his deeds, having the luck to gain credit for the Harrismith Commando’s surrender– all these are probably sufficient to explain the jealousy felt at Kitchener’s headquarters. Ballard’s criticism of his caution in the field has substance, but caution was not misplaced against ‘the slim [cunning] Boers’. It contrasts with Gough’s rashness, but even painstaking commanders like Methuen and Benson could fall into an ambush. On other occasions, in December 1901 and at Rooiwal, he advanced with sufficient daring to exploit an opportunity. In any case, ‘galloping’ might not be the way to win future wars. Kitchener’s continued favours for Rawlinson included an invitation to bring his wife and be his guests at the Delhi Durbar to celebrate Edward VII’s coronation. Kitchener had been appointed Indian Army commander-in-chief partly due to the urgings of the Viceroy Curzon who wanted a ‘man of power, determination and prestige’ to make ‘the veteran automatons [of the Indian Army] skip and hop’ and bring in reform. Rawlinson had scarcely reached Delhi before he and Kitchener went on a ride together and the latter confided his views to Rawlinson that he would soon introduce radical changes. ‘The Indian officers are very far from efficient in many ways [wrote Rawlinson] and there is that want of professionalism with the officers of the native army. He means to give them a good hustling which will assuredly do them good. He says he would be very sorry to lead this army in war for there would surely be a large number of regrettable incidents but the material is distinctly good and if he is given a free hand he will certainly make great improvements and will raise the fighting efficiency of the army greatly.’5 The ambitious Rawlinson immediately thought of an Indian posting: ‘Merrie could stand the country all right I think and if I went in as Deputy [A.]djutant] G[eneral, I would be in a fair way to rising to A.G. which offers a good opening. Lie low for the present.’6

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Roberts had been unsympathetic to Indian aspirations for commissions, but Curzon had introduced a Cadet Corps of eighteen Indian Princes as a step in that direction. Rawlinson admired their smart appearance, polo playing and drill.7 Years later under his command, the Indian Army would go a good deal further. The Durbar on New Year’s Day, 1903 was ‘an incomparable spectacle’ that defied description, thought Rawlinson,8 a reassertion of British rule and an attempt to strengthen links with loyal Indians, such as the soldier and sportsman, Pertab Singh of Jodhpur, a great friend of Roberts’s. The junketing lasted several days, and Rawlinson was delighted that his wife coped well: ‘Merrie is getting on famously. She is very comfortable and standing the fatigue well. She likes this climate and greatly enjoys seeing all these shews [sic].’9 Rawlinson doubted the quality of Kitchener’s staff in assisting their chief in his reforms: ‘I shall be much interested to see how things go on and I told K. I would like to come out and help him if he would have me. He said that Lord Bobs had forbidden him to take me which is rather hard luck I think especially as Bobs has not given me a billet at home.’10 The Rawlinsons’ time in India ended in late January and they returned to England on the steamer Arabia. Roberts and his team were asserting themselves at the War Office, and he had an important job for Rawlinson. He was appointed assistant adjutant general in the new Department of Military Education and Training, which Roberts had created at the War Office. In April 1903, he took up the post with Lieutenant General Sir Henry Hildyard his immediate chief and Henry Wilson his immediate subordinate. Hildyard had been Staff College commandant and had sought with G.F.R. Henderson to broaden its curriculum.11 Army education reform followed the Report of the Committee Appointed to Consider the Education and Training of the Officers of the Army (the Akers-Douglas Committee) in 1902. The committee found widespread dissatisfaction among nearly all witnesses with the ‘present state of education among the officers of the Army as a class’. They noted ‘a lack of professional knowledge and skill, and of any wish to study the science and master the art of their profession’ and were told that ‘keenness is out of fashion … it is not the correct form’.12 Hildyard, Rawlinson and Wilson were together for a short time, but a fruitful one. These three with Major Gerald Ellison as their secretary attempted to establish for the first time a coherent training doctrine for the army. Ellison had attended Imperial manoeuvres in Germany and had first-hand experience of the German General Staff. He had noted ‘the amazing thoroughness of the Staff arrangements – every factor attested war efficiency in the highest degree’.13

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They produced a Manual of Combined Training, which became Part II of Field Service Regulations. This was in force when Britain went to war in 1914. After that a staff manual was drafted, which became the nucleus of Part I of the Field Regulations.14 A committee looked at the Sandhurst and Woolwich courses (Sandhurst trained officers for the cavalry and infantry, Woolwich for the artillery and engineers). Impetus for reform came not just from Roberts and his followers. The Elgin Commission ‘appointed to enquire into the military preparations and other matters connected with the War in South Africa’ assembled a mass of evidence of the Army’s shortcomings.15 Among books criticizing the army’s performance and urging reforms, The Times History edited by Leo Amery stood out. Amery described the army in 1899 as ‘a sort of Dotheboys Hall’ (the notorious boarding school in Charles Dickens’s Nicolas Nickleby).16 The seven volumes were written with a reformist as well as an imperialist agenda, and Roberts and his young officers gave substantial help, Rawlinson, Henry Wilson and Ian Hamilton all dining with Amery on several occasions17 and various documents useful for Amery’s narrative being loaned.18 This had the added advantage for ‘the Indians’ now at Whitehall that Amery largely followed Roberts’s account of events. Volumes II and III were outspoken in their condemnation of Buller, but his long service at the War Office as quartermaster-general and adjutant general personified for Amery all that was wrong with army administration.19 Important reforms were achieved. A House of Commons Committee recommended drastic alterations to the Remount department after 347,000 horses died in South Africa, roughly two-thirds of the total employed. Improvements were made in the Veterinary Department, which had been grossly understaffed in South Africa.20 The Royal Army Medical Corps gained improved rates of pay, six months’ study leave for officers (doctors) after three years’ service and lectures at the Millbank Military Hospital. Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing Service was established by a Royal Warrant. By an Army Order of 1 February 1902, a new army uniform was introduced; henceforth British soldiers would train at home in the uniform they would wear abroad. There were improved vehicles, ambulances and store wagons. A new 18-pounder field gun was introduced, with a 13-pounder for the Royal Horse Artillery. In 1905–1906 a new heavy gun, the 60-pounder, came into service.21 The magazine-fed Lee Enfield in a shorter, handier version suitable for the cavalry was introduced for all units.22 Between 1910 and 1912 the rifle received better ammunition and new sights, and the emphasis changed from accuracy to volume of fire, ‘winning the fire-fight’.23

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Despite this progress, Rawlinson was quickly disillusioned with the War Office. In October 1903, he wrote: This is a terrible place. There are far too many cooks concerned with every brew of broth, and the result is that it takes an unconscionable time to get anything through. Even when the bigwigs here are at length induced to approve a plan, it is ten to one, if any money is involved, that the Treasury knocks it on the head. I have never worked harder for six months with less result than I have here.24

Rawlinson was not alone in this persuasion. Roberts was so frustrated at the interference of Secretary of State St John Brodrick that in September 1901 he offered to resign.25 Brodrick had already told Curzon in October 1900: ‘I never in my life could have realized what a slough of despond I was tumbling into. The army is hopelessly disorganized and used up.’26 Brodrick was succeeded in late 1903 by H.O. Arnold-Foster. Rawlinson escaped in December of that year as Roberts fulfilled his protégé’s wish for the commandant’s post at the Army Staff College with the rank of brigadier general.27 Staff work in South Africa had been chaotic, primarily because of lack of system. Roberts had told the Elgin Commission: ‘The absence of a definite system of Staff duties, leading sometimes to an overlapping of responsibilities, sometimes to waste of time, and sometimes to a neglect of indispensable precautions, was undoubtedly prejudicial to the smooth running of the military machine … Staff Officers cannot be improvised.’28 Colonel James Grierson, who had been military attache in Berlin and knew the German system, thought controlling a division was the limit of British staff capabilities.29 Expansion and improvement of staff training were essential if Britain faced a major war. The other step which would follow was a British General Staff on German lines. The Staff College itself escaped criticism from Elgin’s commission, although faults of staff officers were numerous. The Staff College’s commandant 1900–1903 was Sir Herbert Miles, insufficiently practical, and under his regime there was a decline in standards from Hildyard’s time.30 From 1903, however, the College acquired a new spirit and purpose, largely due to three successive commandants and some fine directing staff. There could hardly have been a better choice as the first of these three than Rawlinson.31 As Major Godwin-Austen wrote: ‘Blessed with an extremely attractive personality, a handsome appearance, high social standing, and more than an average share of this world’s goods, he was one to inspire his students unconsciously to follow in his footsteps. He brought a youthful, debonair spirit with him, for he was only forty when he took over his duties, and he went hard

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with the Drag on a big seventeen-hands grey.’32 ‘The Drag’ was a form of hunting, without the fox, in which hounds pursued a scent laid (‘dragged’) along the course for 10 miles or more. No one could accuse this fine horseman and keen polo player and pig sticker of being a bookworm. When Hubert Gough returned as an instructor, he found the prevailing spirit refreshingly different to Miles’s concentration on routine peacetime staff duties. Rawlinson and his Directing Staff thoroughly examined the operations of war. Gough particularly praised Lieutenant Colonel Thompson Capper who ‘inculcated a spirit of selfsacrifice and duty, instead of the idea of playing for safety and seeking only to avoid getting into trouble’.33 Other ‘Directing Staff ’ – this replaced the title of ‘Professor’ giving the college a more practical and less academic air – included Launcelot Kiggell, BEF (British Expeditionary Force) chief of staff 1915–1918; Johnnie du Cane, a forward-looking Gunner; Frederick Stopford, whose success on Buller’s staff in South Africa and on the War Office staff was not repeated at Suvla Bay when he was dug out of retirement; and the Royal Marine George Aston. Constant assessment replaced examinations. Aston, the first Marine officer to teach at Staff College, thought his colleagues on the Staff were among the most brilliant men in the Army, ‘all inspiring as teachers, but they sowed on good soil’.34 The ‘good soil’ improved as competition for places had increased: 101 candidates for twenty-four places.35 Aston’s joining the staff resulted in closer understanding of naval matters, which Rawlinson encouraged. Initiative by Aston and Rawlinson led to another major step, which followed a start made by Miles and by Lieutenant Colonel E.S. May, Henderson’s successor as teaching military art and history. A lunch party at the Naval and Military Club for Henry Wilson, then colonel in the Staff Duties section of the War Office, and Admiral Slade, commandant of the Naval War College at Portsmouth, secured agreement for naval officers to go to Camberley to see Army staff work for themselves. In 1906 two naval officers took the course and Camberley graduates began to attend naval war courses. Combined annual staff tours were held to practise amphibious operations.36 There followed an annual enrolment at Camberley of seven naval students staying for a year. Combined operations became a credible exercise.37 Under Rawlinson’s energetic direction, 30-mile bicycle exercises became common, sometimes beginning with rail journeys to distant destinations. The syllabus was oriented more to the practical study of command and the operations of war. The outbreak of the Russo–Japanese War in the Far East in February 1904 brought close study at Camberley with weekly assessments by staff and students. War on India’s mountainous North-West Frontier was simulated in North Wales. This had begun towards the end of Miles’s period as commandant. Rawlinson

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added the careful study of military problems associated with operations on the French and Belgian frontiers against Germany. This reflected the reorientation of British military strategy towards resisting German aggression nearer home than India. With Russia’s crushing defeat by Japan and the intensification of the Anglo-German naval rivalry, strategic priorities changed. In the years 1905–1907, the Staff College concentrated on possible British action if Germany attacked France through neutral Belgium. The development of German railways in the area Aix-la-Chapelle-Malmedy pointed to a German invasion of Belgium. Some of the hypothetical plans prepared by the students foreshadowed real events of 1914.38 In 1909, Rawlinson was to make a private reconnaissance of the Belgian frontier with Horace Smith-Dorrien and William Robertson, motoring along the Meuse, through Spa to the borders of Luxembourg.39 Among Rawlinson’s students was a Gunner, Archie Montgomery, later his chief of staff. Montgomery came from a family of fighting men. Three uncles had served in the Crimea, one winning a VC leading his battalion at the storming of the Redan. Commissioned from Woolwich aged twenty, he served in the South African War, first in Roberts’s campaign of February 1900. He then joined the pursuit of De Wet. In October 1901, he was wounded in an engagement with the Boers and ordered to Capetown to finish his convalescence. There he and his wife made friends with Rudyard Kipling and his wife, a friendship which lasted until the Kiplings’ deaths. Reading George Henderson’s Stonewall Jackson inspired Montgomery to attend Staff College, and he passed in on the second attempt. He described his time there as ‘two of the happiest years of my service’, one year under Rawlinson and one under his successor, Henry Wilson.40 Montgomery’s friendship with the former produced one of the BEF’s successful partnerships. He enjoyed intellectual stimulus and intelligent colleagues as much as being whip of the Staff College Drag. Rawlinson encouraged social and recreational pursuits as well as raising the standard of study, and this made for a happy but purposeful atmosphere. Another able student under Rawlinson was Johnnie Gough, Hubert’s younger brother, probably the outstanding student of these years; in his admiring brother’s words, a born soldier, ‘a very firm, resolute and independent character’. His partnership with Haig was cut short by Gough’s untimely death in February 1915.41 One important form of training for war was the Staff Ride, an exercise in the field without troops. Grierson had reported favourably on its employment in Germany, and it was first adopted in Britain in June 1895, with Methuen in command of a simulated army corps staff, which included Rawlinson, French

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and Haig, among others. The work was exacting but stimulating.42 In July 1904 Henry Wilson accompanied Rawlinson on the annual Staff College exercise in Wales, and he claimed the next step ‘was entirely my idea’,43 although the two men’s record of stimulating one other with ideas suggests Rawlinson had a part. This was the first Staff Conference and General Staff Ride for a week in early January 1905. It followed established German practice, combining a series of lectures with practical work and the writing of appreciations and orders. It included consideration of Imperial Defence and enabled many holding ‘psc’ to expand their knowledge.44 Rawlinson was in constant contact with Kitchener in planning an Indian Staff College to work in association with Camberley. It opened initially in March 1905 at Deolali and moved to Quetta in 1906. Rawlinson travelled in the winter vacation of 1905 to see developments and presented a replica of the silver owl that adorned the mess table at Camberley. Kitchener was reorganizing the Indian Army with a view to defeating a Russian invasion. He was engaged in a struggle of wills with Curzon over abolishing the post of Military Member of the Viceroy’s Council. The commander-in-chief and the Military Member shared responsibility for the Indian Army, the latter advising the viceroy, and Kitchener thought this system of dual control was ‘fatal to both efficiency and economy’.45 In his correspondence to Roberts, who opposed the planned change, Rawlinson tried to square the circle by compromising with his two mentors. Before his departure for India, he told Roberts that Kitchener, ‘with his long experience of active service conditions and with his admittedly quick grasp of the salient features of a great problem’, was more competent than many with long Indian service to give a sound opinion. Echoing a view which would be repeated by the Indian historian, S. Gopal,46 he wrote: ‘The actual question of the Military Member which has given so much trouble and which is now the point at issue between Lord K. and yourself, is in actuality, really a question of personalities rather than of organisation. Owing to Lord K’s formal characteristics, you must understand how impossible it was, and is, for him to work in conjunction with the Military Member.’ Rawlinson told Roberts that Kitchener could do much good in preparing the Indian Army for war if he were properly advised by the best senior officers available.47 In December 1905, Rawlinson told Roberts from Delhi that things were at a standstill while the cabinet resolved the vexed question of the Military Member. He and Kitchener had agreed Camberley and Quetta would share an identical test of the capacity of their students, thus preventing divergence of teaching and ensuring ‘incompetent students did not receive the certificate’, that is, ‘psc’.48

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Rawlinson warned Kitchener that at Camberley they had proved it was practically impossible for Russia to get a large army across Afghanistan into India.49 ‘He was angry about this [wrote Rawlinson], and said I ought to have told him [earlier]; but I countered by saying that he should have told me what he was up to. He means to stick to his guns, and I wish him all luck, for his plans, if he brings them off, will be a great thing for India.’ He was surprised when Kitchener prevailed. ‘Personally, I did not expect that he would defeat Curzon over the Military Member, and, having done that, he may achieve anything.’ Only Roberts among those asked in London to arbitrate sided with the viceroy.50 In London, sweeping reform was to come from the War Office (Reconstitution) Committee headed by Viscount Esher, who had submitted a minority report as a member of the Elgin Commission. Esher’s committee recommended an Army Council on the model of the Board of Admiralty; a general staff; and the division of departmental responsibilities inside the War Office on defined and logical principles. For the first two, it was essential that the post of commander-in-chief be abolished. In spring 1904, Roberts and his staff were summarily ejected from the War Office, and new men headed by Neville Lyttelton, an unsatisfactory choice as the first chief of the General Staff, were installed in their place.51 Neither Brodrick nor his successor, Arnold-Forster, succeeded in their plans to create a new field army. A Liberal government took office in 1906 with Richard Burdon Haldane as Secretary of State for War. Haldane created an Expeditionary Force of six infantry divisions and one cavalry division, to be mobilized rapidly and embark in fifteen days for a future theatre of war. Beginning in 1910, Henry Wilson who followed Spencer Ewart as DMO (Director of Military Operations), working with the French, planned for this BEF to deploy on the French Army’s left flank.52 Haldane also set up a Territorial or Reserve Force based upon County Associations. The Territorial and Reserve Forces Bill of 1907 provided for its service anywhere in the UK. It was to consist of fourteen divisions, fourteen cavalry brigades and corps troops, in all 204 infantry battalions.53 The creation of a British General Staff would follow, although Rawlinson thought this the wrong way round. Of Brodrick’s scheme he had written: ‘[Brodrick] has begun at the wrong end of the stick. We should create a real general staff first, and leave them to work out an organisation for peace and war.’54 Creating army institutions to serve both war and peace was a common aim of reformers. The General Staff was to follow practices well understood in major continental armies. Haldane had gone to Berlin in August, 1906 to observe and have a long conversation with Moltke, Chief of the German General Staff. Supported by an explanatory memorandum from Haldane, the Special Army

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Order of 12 September 1906 established the British General Staff on a basis which was to undergo only minor changes up to 1914.55 Key figures in implementing new practices and providing the right forum for military discussion were Haig, Director of Military Training, and Spencer Ewart, then Director of Military Operations. Despite prolonged illness in April and May 1908, Haig worked out Field Service Regulations Part II, which were tested in a Staff Ride. This was attended by sixty-nine officers from the War Office and various commands.56 The reformers were fortunate that Lyttelton had been succeeded in April 1908, by General William Nicholson, an able staff officer who had served with Roberts in Afghanistan and South Africa. Nicholson with Haig’s support made the General Staff a working reality.57 Reforms in both India and Britain generated controversy and disagreement. Rawlinson and Wilson, among others, wished to ensure that important staff jobs were given to those with ‘psc’ after their names, forming a corps d’elite as in Germany. Sir John French told Viscount Esher: Now both these fellows [Rawlinson and Henry Wilson] did much harm in Roberts’ time. They are very clever and were R’s special ‘Pets’. They are now trying it on again, and if the Army Council are to retain the confidence of the Army these two young gentlemen must have their wings clipped.58

French’s attitude towards Wilson changed dramatically by 1914. William Robertson would write that year that ‘Sir John French had wanted to appoint Wilson, his long-time friend and confidant’ as chief of the General Staff. He was to create for him the unique position of sub-chief of staff.59 His attitude to Rawlinson did not change, nor did his opposition to a ‘blue ribbon’ General Staff copying Germany. In 1906 he managed to get Algy Lawson, not a staff college graduate, appointed to the post of brigade major of 1st Cavalry Brigade.60 Thereafter it was possible to get join the staff without having to attend Staff College. As CIGS (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) in 1912, French made it clear that: ‘It is the duty of the Staff to present all the facts of the situation to a commander and then to take the necessary measures for carrying his decisions into effect.’ British chiefs of staff never enjoyed wide powers of German opposite numbers, but worse, the centre of gravity remained the regiment. In 1914 there was a scramble for staff officers to get back to their battalions. About half of staff college graduates were killed or crippled in first nine months of war, fighting with their battalions rather than carrying out staff duties.61 Criticism of another sort came from Charles Repington, the Times military correspondent, who argued that Camberley graduates were impractically

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educated in ‘Cloudland’ (a reference to Aristophanes). ‘We do not want to educate sucking Napoleons at the Staff College. We want officers to grease the wheels of our military machine.’ He based this on observing poor march discipline and other arrangements for manoeuvres.62 The counter-attack by the military writer Lonsdale Hale, who claimed forty years’ acquaintance with the Staff College, was a vigorous defence of Rawlinson and his successor Henry Wilson: To Sir Henry Rawlinson the service owes what I can only call the complete reconstitution of the system of education and the introduction of an amount of practical out-of-door work. General Wilson after receiving the system from his predecessor introduced into it several wise modifications; and so it remains a thoroughly practical training, handed over to this successor, who will, it is hoped, also modify and expand the training as seems best to him. Both commandants showed themselves to be ‘first-rate’ men for their positions, and they have kept the minds of the young officers in this practical mundane world, declining to utilize ‘Cloudland’ as a hall of study.63

Rawlinson also proposed placing the study of geography on a par with history, reflecting the influence of the geopolitical; the theorist Sir Halford Mackinder, whose paper on ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ given at the Royal Geographical Society that year, formulated the Heartland Theory; this is often considered the founding moment of geopolitics.64 In December 1906 Rawlinson left Camberley to succeed to the command of the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot in March 1907. His two successors, Wilson and William Robertson, continued the reforms. In the critical years from 1903 to 1913, the Staff College became something approaching a modern war school.65 Before taking up his new post, Rawlinson travelled to Canada, but his trip was cut short by the death of the wife of the man he stayed with in Ottawa. He returned again in January–February 1909.66 On the second journey, he speculated on the prospects of leaving the peacetime army and beginning a business career in North America. The era of small wars was over, he judged. The only conflict he could foresee was ‘a life and death struggle either with Russia or Germany’, and he would be as well placed in the Militia or Volunteers for a role in such a war. He decided, however, to remain a soldier until promoted to major general. He was impressed by the quality of the Canadian militia with a high proportion of keen, intelligent officers showing plenty of enterprise. He thought with two months’ intensive training these militia would be fit to face European troops. At Montreal he spoke to an audience of 500 on Lord Roberts’s

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proposal in England for National Military Training. ‘I rubbed in the imperial view strongly.’ This was a time when the British were seeking greater imperial integration in defence.67 His Montreal hosts took him skiing. ‘I got on first class,’ wrote the keen sportsman, ‘and by the end of the morning was quite efficient – it’s very easy – only a matter of leaning well forward and keeping one’s balance.’68 At Aldershot Rawlinson was converted to Smith-Dorrien’s demands for more machine guns. He advocated the addition of a machine gun company to every infantry brigade. With the naval race against Germany, there was no money.69 He became increasingly convinced of the probability of war with Germany. By now the Francophile Henry Wilson as commandant at Camberley was educating his students for such a conflict,70 and Roberts as president of the National Service League from November 1905 was trying to rouse his countrymen against the threat of German invasion. The proximity of Roberts’s home, Englemere at Ascot, to the Staff College, meant both Rawlinson and Wilson as commandants kept close links with the old field marshal, still an influence to be reckoned with, not least because of his forward-looking ideas.71 It followed that Rawlinson adopted similar views. His trips to Belgium, to investigate German railway developments, strengthened this belief. It would be a strange country to fight in, he thought, a long chain of mines and factories.72 Rawlinson would fight here against German invaders. In May 1909 he was promoted major general and gave up his brigade. Kitchener invited him to tour the Far East. Leaving England at the end of September 1909, he stopped for a short time in Berlin and visited Potsdam. He was as impressed as before with German military efficiency. The British military attache, Colonel Trench, told him that the German army and navy were working to be ready for war by the end of 1911; hostilities might come at any time after that. The German army could be virtually mobilized without anyone knowing anything about it.73 At St Petersburg he gained a different impression from Russian soldiers slouching along – ‘I could hardly believe that these men were really soldiers.’ It gave him little confidence in the military capacity of Russian arms. He was more impressed with the Russian ballet, and was unaware of the fear which Russian military reforms following defeat in 1904–1905 would cause in Berlin.74 Continuing east, he reached ‘Peking’ [Beijing], site of fighting in the Boxer Rebellion, where he met Kitchener with two ADCs. They agreed that China was absolutely at the mercy of any power that chose to attack and that power was likely to be Japan, with whom the British had signed a naval agreement in 1902.75 Kitchener and his companions were well looked after by their Japanese hosts, touring the battlefields of the Russo–Japanese War and

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observing Japanese manoeuvres. Rawlinson took part in the charge of the 26th Regiment. Western observers had admired the martial spirit of the Japanese,76 and Rawlinson reckoned their infantry in every way excellent, whereas the cavalry and artillery were not so good. He noted two machine guns per infantry battalion carried on pack ponies accompanied by two ammunition mules per gun.77 Although there was no shared consensus on the lessons of the Russo–Japanese War, it seemed to show that determined, well-trained attackers with high morale could overcome barbed wire, trenches and modern firepower. Rawlinson judged the Japanese lacking the qualities that others found. ‘I am pretty certain that, with little more enterprise and judgment, the Japs might have taken Port Arthur two months earlier than they did. They admit now that they made their main attack on the wrong side, and they were terribly deliberate.’ ‘It is to Japanese caution, rather than to trenches, that I ascribe the length of the battles.’78 Senior British officers emphasized the role of ‘fighting spirit’ and ‘moral qualities’ following their study of the Russo–Japanese War, but at the brigade level and below, emphasis on ‘fire and movement’ remained. South African lessons were not forgotten.79 Rawlinson noted that the Japanese employed their six machine guns per regiment massed – ‘This is practically the same as I have been advocating for our infantry brigades.’ He also saw how Japanese engineers and infantry liaised closely, and in his next post he would develop the use of heavy guns to cover attacks.80 Rawlinson’s time with Kitchener and long talks about the latter’s future strengthened their friendship. Rawlinson even joined in two days of enthusiastic porcelain hunting in the Chinese capital, and began to see the attraction of Kitchener’s hobby.81 Kitchener would not return to serve in the War Office, which he hated. After failing to become viceroy of India, he was appointed British Consul General in Egypt, de facto ruler.82 Rawlinson returned to England at the end of January 1910 to assume command of the 3rd division on Salisbury Plain for the next four years. A British infantry division comprised 18,073 officers and men, 5,592 horses, 76 guns and 24 machine guns. The seventy-six guns included fifty-four 18-pounder field guns, eighteen 4.5-inch howitzers and four 60-pounders. Each year in late summer there were manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain, beginning at the low level and culminating in two Army Corps facing each other. These were a great improvement on 1898 when General Sir Redvers Buller had thrown a mass of infantry against well-placed defensive positions, earning much derisory comment in the press.83 In Rawlinson’s first manoeuvres, on 23 September 1910, his South African caution reappeared, although the Times noted that this was

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probably because the orders given led him to think the main ‘enemy’ strength was facing his division. At the end of the day’s work, he nonetheless had gained the advantage.84 In June 1912, he exercised his artillery, and Repington commented approvingly: ‘An operation of altogether unusual character took place yesterday on Salisbury Plain when Major-General Sir Henry Rawlinson’s 3rd Division practised combined field firing on a scale, which, so far as the writer can recall, has never been attempted before.’ Two Royal Field Artillery Brigades and one of Royal Garrison Artillery took part, with Ian Hamilton, Smith-Dorrien and other senior officers observing ‘with close attention’. In the first phase, the infantry attacked with supporting fire from the flanks. In the second phase, artillery fire was the chief interest. Brigadier Johnny Du Cane’s guns were in action on a wide front.85 Du Cane had been one of Rawlinson’s instructors at Staff College, and the two agreed on artillery’s importance. The exercise also gave an opportunity to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps (RFC), who put up two aircrafts to spot for the artillery. Rawlinson praised the RFC’s sending messages to the ground troops despite a high wind, and added ‘that the most pressing need at the moment is a satisfactory code of signals between the aerial observers and the artillery commanders’. Success of aerial reconnaissance depended upon rapid transmission of information.86 The RFC, established in April 1912, unhappily suffered its first two fatalities in a crash near Stonehenge in July. The British Army had been quick to see the need for military aircraft, in part spurred on by Lord Roberts from retirement.87 Manoeuvres in East Anglia in September followed the Salisbury Plain work, the largest peacetime exercises held by the British Army. Haig’s ‘Red Army’ advancing south towards London was completely frustrated by Lieutenant General Grierson’s ‘Blue Army’, which he concealed from aerial reconnaissance. He used his own aircraft in early morning sorties to find Haig’s positions.88 Rawlinson’s division was in Grierson’s force. Grierson gave his divisional commanders a very free hand and was well served by them. Third division quickly took its objective at the Cambridgeshire village of Horseheath and defeated a defending brigade. The Report on Manoeuvres stated: ‘The successful efforts of the Commander of the 3rd Division to combine the action of his brigades and his energetic use of the offensive during a dangerous crisis are worthy of commendation.’89 In the 1913 manoeuvres, Rawlinson served in the 2nd Army under Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Paget. Paget was a stupid man, who preferred society to a serious pursuit of his profession.90 Perhaps frustration at serving under Paget caused Rawlinson to advance to the attack ‘with a rapidity which

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would almost certainly have been impossible in war’. Unsurprisingly, his artillery reconnaissance was good and the guns were suitably deployed. Rawlinson would have shared George V’s satisfaction when the king, attending, said ‘he was pleased to see a considerable increase in the number of aircraft compared to last year’.91 Rawlinson’s linking artillery with aircraft spotting was one way of overcoming the problem of infantry–artillery cooperation when the guns engaged at great ranges using indirect fire.92 Prior and Wilson point out that he showed commendable foresight in considering ‘the marriage of infantry with ample firepower – in particular the fire power of machine-guns and artillery’. He was thus ‘an obvious and appropriate choice for responsible command’ in the First World War.93 By background an infantryman, he still tended to regard that arm as the decisive one. An anecdote of Rawlinson on Salisbury Plain was given years later: Sir Horace Smith Dorrien too had moved from Aldershot to Salisbury, and at times he thought Rawlinson’s training methods slapdash. [Smith-Dorrien] was quick tempered, both [men] held strong views on training, both were strong willed: in my mind’s eye I see one gloomy, drizzling dawn on Salisbury Plain after all night operations; two stern, angry and unshaven generals; quick words, convinced but unconvincing; an instinctive edging away of the staff; while the weary troops trudged home across the downs in the gathering daylight. But those were soldiers both, leaders of men, and single minded in their devotion to the practical war training of the troops under them. Some irritation there may have been at times, but mutual respect and liking always, and the Southern Command and the 3rd Division did not slumber with those two at their heads.94

Was the Army sufficient for its task and was Britain safe from invasion? These questions exercised many minds in the years before 1914. From November 1905, Lord Roberts campaigned as president of the National Service League for compulsory military service for home defence. He was aided in 1908 by the apparent success of a small force in the summer invasion exercise eluding the defending fleet and scrambling ashore; and in July 1911 by the Agadir Crisis, which seemed to bring the threat of imminent war. In public the navy maintained it could prevent an invasion, but in private admirals had substantial fears that the threat was a real one.95 Membership grew and senior soldiers accepted Roberts’s arguments, but he was unable to rally either major political party behind his cause. Haldane at the War Office asked General Sir Ian Hamilton, then Inspector General of Overseas forces, to write a pamphlet countering League arguments. Compulsory Service: A Study of the Question in the Light of Experience appeared

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in November 1910. A second edition added First Sea Lord Arthur Wilson’s memorandum ridiculing the idea of invasion. Roberts was deeply hurt at Hamilton’s action; Hamilton’s friendship predated Rawlinson’s and Wilson’s, both of whom privately supported Roberts. Roberts, Leo Amery and Professor J.A. Cramb replied in Fallacies and Facts: An Answer to ‘Compulsory Service’. They charged Hamilton and Haldane with short-sightedness and abused the latter for using a serving officer to argue political questions in public.96 Rawlinson told Roberts he enjoyed reading Facts and Fallacies: ‘Parts I and II are quite unanswerable and all the soldiers I have met fully recognise that “Compulsory Service” (the book) has received a crushing blow.’ He complimented his old chief on the result of the debate and hoped he might secure Kitchener’s assistance for the campaign.97 Despite increasing support, Roberts’s campaign did not succeed. In 1914, however, when Kitchener raised vast armies, men pointed to Roberts’s foresight that would have provided trained manpower.98 In 1913–1914, the attention of politicians and soldiers alike was distracted from Europe by the question of Ireland’s future. The Army had traditionally drawn much of its strength there, although the proportion declined after the Famine.99 Irish soldiers included Roberts, French and the Goughs. The third Irish Home Rule Bill of 1913 was certain to become law and give Ireland her own Parliament and a degree of autonomy. Home Rule appeared to threaten Protestant Ulster and the traditional Irish role in the British Empire. The Ulster Volunteers, a paramilitary organization, took up arms and signed the Solemn League and Covenant pledging to refuse the authority of an Irish Parliament. Tension mounted in March 1914, and the Secretary of State for War, Colonel Jack Seely, and First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, appear to have agreed to use the armed forces to coerce Ulster. Seely summoned Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Paget, GOC Ireland, to the War Office to receive his instructions. Paget so hugely exceeded these as to give proof that he was ‘a stupid, arrogant, quicktempered man. No one was less fitted than he to handle a delicate situation, involving the loyalties of officers and the explosive atmosphere of a country torn by religious and political dissensions’.100 He told senior officers at the Curragh on 20 March 1914 that operations were intended against Ulster to support the government, he expected Ireland ‘to be in a blaze by Saturday’ (the next day) and gave them an ultimatum to follow orders or face dismissal. Those domiciled in Ulster could temporarily ‘disappear’. Brigadier Hubert Gough commanding the 3rd Cavalry Brigade decided to offer his resignation, and sixty officers followed him.101 Paget failed to win them over on 21 March, and Gough was ordered

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to London. He enjoyed widespread support. Mutinous disaffection in the army and widespread reluctance among naval officers to take part in coercion were likely.102 In London Hubert’s brother Johnnie from Aldershot aided him. The Goughs outmanoeuvred the government and received written assurance that the army would not be used to coerce Ulster. Hubert Gough returned to the Curragh virtually a hero. He claimed to have received over 450 letters of support.103 Haig commanding at Aldershot told Sir John French, CIGS, that all the senior officers at Aldershot were likely to resign if Gough were punished.104 This ‘Curragh Mutiny’ was not strictly a mutiny, as no orders were disobeyed, and the majority of officers at the Curragh would have carried out any given.105 Nonetheless, the Army played an unconstitutional role against the supremacy of Parliamentary statute. Two men close to Rawlinson, Roberts and Wilson, were closely involved. Roberts had already nominated a commanding officer for the Ulster Volunteers. Rawlinson followed his two friends and majority army opinion. On 26 December 1913, as Home Rule loomed, Henry Wilson, Johnnie Gough and Rawlinson played golf together before lunch at Englemere, Lord Roberts’s home. The Rawlys and Wilsons had spent Christmas there. The three spoke of the Irish trouble. Roberts hoped to persuade the King not to sign the Home Rule bill if it passed. If George V refused to agree, Roberts would write to the papers pointing out the legislation had been enacted while the constitution was ‘in abeyance’ and ‘by the vote of the Irish who never lost an opportunity of deriding the Army & cheering its enemies & therefore no Officer or man ought to demean himself by obeying the orders to coerce Ireland’.106 The immediate crisis was provoked by Paget’s incompetence and by the heavy-handedness of Churchill and Seeley.107 On the day that Paget addressed officers at the Curragh, Rawlinson wrote to Wilson that matters were serious, and the government was intending to use troops against Ulster. He thought if they ordered a battalion from Tidworth to Belfast a proportion of the officers would send in their papers. Ulstermen would desert and join the Ulster Volunteers. They had joined the Army to fight the King’s enemies, not his friends.108 In the wake of the Curragh Incident, there was strong feeling in the Army, but it seems an exaggeration to say that it was irredeemably split. Roberts told Wilson that he would never speak to French again,109 but when Roberts died at St Omer in November 1914, French was upset and published a glowing tribute.110 Gough depicted damage to the Army as minimal, but he appears right in saying that he, French and Sir John Seely (commanding Canadian cavalry) met again

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on the battlefield as comrades-in-arms, and that he and Seely ‘eventually became great friends’, Seely bearing no grudge.111 Wilson was on the opposite side of the affair to French, but the latter created the post of sub-chief of staff for him. Clearer and more serious was a legacy of mistrust between generals and Liberal politicians that followed. The Army entered the First World War well versed in the arts of intrigue.112 The Curragh diverted British attention from Europe when the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The Germans provided the Austrians with the infamous ‘blank cheque’ of support and prepared to implement the Schlieffen Plan. The timetable allowed six weeks for a decisive victory against France and six months for Russia. The Germans considered any British military contribution as marginal. At first it seemed Britain might remain neutral, but on 2 August most cabinet ministers agreed that ‘a substantial violation’ of Belgian neutrality would compel intervention. The German invasion of Belgium swung both public opinion and an overwhelming cabinet majority behind war.113 The British ultimatum to Germany to evacuate Belgium expired at midnight, Berlin time, on 4 August, and the countries were at war. German domination of the Low Countries was a direct strategic threat to Britain, and the atrocities that followed the invasion of Belgium gave a moral impetus to her cause.114 Rawlinson had handed 3rd Division over to Hubert Hamilton in May. He began the war, not as a fighting soldier, but as Director of Recruiting at the War Office. He had refused the post when it had been previously offered, hoping for more active employment. On 4 August ‘much to my disappointment my name did not appear amongst those selected for command’.115 To Wilson he wrote of his bitter disappointment: ‘I am more sick than I can say … I shall shoot myself if left in the W[ar] O[ffice].’116 Rawlinson did not shoot himself, and would find his way to the front.

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Sir H. Rawlinson, who now looks after recruiting & is one of the best of our younger Generals, came to see me. I thought he seemed business-like and capable. (Herbert Asquith to Venetia Stanley, 10 September 1914)1 The most satisfactory thing is the spirit which pervades all ranks and the universal determination to drive the enemy beyond the Rhine at all costs. I wish we had some heavy howitzers. (Henry Rawlinson to Field Marshal Earl Kitchener, 17 October 1914)

On 30 July, Rawlinson and Frank Maxwell went to bid Kitchener farewell before he departed for Egypt, but warned their old chief that he would not be allowed to leave should Britain become involved in the rapidly developing crisis. They were right. On 3 August he boarded the channel steamer, but received an urgent message from the prime minister to return to London. The previous day, the German ultimatum to Belgium for passage of their armies to invade France had swung British opinion decisively towards intervention. On 4 August, Asquith asked Kitchener to become Secretary of State for War.2 Rawlinson took up his post as director of recruiting, attributing his not finding a billet with the BEF due to Sir John French’s displeasure with his handling of 3rd Division at manoeuvres in 1913. He was glad, however, to find himself working under Kitchener. The warlord’s appointment was greeted with widespread satisfaction.3 Kitchener, by nature a centralizer, was unacquainted with the War Office and pre-1914 reforms and had no experience of working in a cabinet. At first this seemed to count for little compared to his energy and extraordinary vision. Rawlinson told Henry Wilson in France, ‘As you may guess K[itchener] has kicked the office upside down.’4 Major C.E. Callwell, Director of Military

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Operations and Intelligence, described messengers ‘tearing along the passage with coat-tails flying’.5 Kitchener warned the cabinet that the war would last at least three years and that the nation with the last million men in the field would dictate the peace terms. He set about raising the huge armies that would bear his name. Britain alone of the European great powers lacked such an army. Rawlinson’s job kept him at the office from 9 am to 11 pm, ‘but the work if hard has been full of interest, and though I greatly regret not having been present at the battles during the retirement of our armies towards Paris, still I have I think been doing my little bit to help make an army’. Recruitment had been helped by news of German atrocities in Belgium and by the BEF’s retreat from Mons.6 Leo Amery worked with Rawlinson to overcome delays from red tape, and he played a part in convincing Kitchener and Rawlinson of the advantages of devolution to local committees.7 In three months, Kitchener laid the foundation for thirty new divisions, ‘an achievement wholly without precedent in British history’.8 Rawlinson made a vital contribution, some would say tragic in the longer run. On 19 August, he lunched with Major the Hon. Robert White at the Travellers’ Club and asked him to raise a battalion of men who worked in the city. He wrote to White: ‘I understand that there are many City employees who would be willing to enlist if they were assured that they would serve with their friends, and I suggest that you collect the names and addresses of those who would be willing to serve in the Service Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers in Lord Kitchener’s new Army.’9 By 27 August, the 10th (Service) Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, popularly known as the ‘Stockbrokers’ Battalion’, numbered 1,600. Peter Simkins writes: Kitchener quickly appreciated that the ‘Pals’ movement offered the War Office a practical means of relieving the strain on its own recruiting organization and of solving some of the short-term financial problems arising from the massive and sudden growth in the size of the army. By mid-September 1914 he had made it known that he would authorize local battalions only when their raising committees were willing to shoulder the initial costs and to assume responsibility for housing, feeding, and clothing their own recruits until the War Office was ready to take them over and refund such expenses.10

Starting in London, the ‘Pals’ movement came to fruition in the northern industrial cities. When skilled men gave up their jobs for a recruit’s sixpence a day, Rawlinson proposed the daily subsistence allowance be increased to three shillings. He got it ‘in the neck’ from Kitchener, who knew nothing of the

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arrangements, and had to call on Prime Minister Asquith personally to secure government approval. ‘So we have defeated K who is furious!!’, wrote Rawlinson. ‘He will recover in the morning – 435,000 recruits today!!’11 On 9 September, Rawlinson was gladdened by news of the Germans being pressed back at the Marne. There were, however, reports of overcrowding and discomfort at depots for the New Armies, want of food and clothes, and shortage of blankets. Rawlinson’s office was invaded by seven MPs that evening, ‘rather hostile, but I pacified them’. His best news came from the CIGS Sir Charles Douglas: ‘I am to be given command of the 4th Army Corps 7 & 8 Divns – Hurrah!! I shall be in France in another six weeks at latest.’12 It might have been better if Rawlinson and others with his staff experience had stayed with Kitchener, yet would he have made good use of them? His oneman show cast aside some gains of pre-1914 years, the WO reorganization and creation of a general staff.13 Not all agreed with his bypassing the Territorial Force organization; he was certain that the New Army must be formed around the regiments of the regular army.14 Nonetheless, those who served with him like C.E. Callwell and William Robertson thought no one did more to win the war than ‘K’ and that he was ‘the greatest of war ministers’.15 Rawlinson wrote: K has been and still is an enormous asset. In the future he will be yet more valuable, for he has the confidence of the nation and can do pretty well what he likes. I think the war will go on until the K armies are fit to take the field. Henry [Wilson] does not agree with me – we shall see who is right in the long run.16

While Rawlinson was proven right about the New Armies, it is interesting that two of the men best fitted to make use of staff developments of the pre-war years, he and Wilson, eagerly went to the front. On 21 September, Rawlinson was sent to Paris and thence to Sir John French’s GHQ to sort out ‘drafts and relief which were in much confusion’. French told him he had already wired Kitchener for Rawlinson to take command of 4th Division from Major General Thomas Snow, badly injured with a cracked pelvis after his horse had rolled on top of him. French’s hostility does not appear to have been as unyielding as Rawlinson feared. On the 23rd, Rawlinson reached his division and went all round his lines. He thought they were curiously positioned, but the infantry well dug in and the guns well placed. He was specially satisfied with his staff which included his former student, Archie Montgomery. His command ended suddenly. On 3 October, French passed him orders from Kitchener: ‘It appears that K has selected me to go and try to save Antwerp.’ He was to take forward 7th Division under Major General Thompson Capper and 3rd Cavalry Division

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under Major General Julian Byng as soon as the troops had landed. He was joined by his younger brother Toby from GHQ. For twelve years Toby had been a managing director of a British motor manufacturing company whose main factory was on the outskirts of Paris. He knew the north of France and Belgium well, spoke French fluently and had volunteered to act as a liaison driver with his powerful American Hudson car. Henry asked Toby to accompany him and with his local knowledge could guide the party by the shortest and safest route to reach Antwerp.17 Among other adventurous drivers in fast cars – in this case a Rolls – attached to IV Corps was the Duke of Westminster, known to family and friends as ‘Bendor’.18 Henry Rawlinson had dined with Sir John French the night before he set off for his new command, and there is no hint at this stage in his diary of friction, despite French’s fierce opposition earlier to Rawlinson and Wilson’s advocacy of a ‘blue ribbon’ staff.19 On 5 October, he reached Dunkirk where troops were disembarking; 7th Division would arrive the next day. The Antwerp situation was critical with the Germans threatening its railway line.20 The attempt to save Antwerp was the idea of Winston Churchill, whose offer to the cabinet to take the field at the head of the Royal Naval Division was greeted with ‘a Homeric laugh’ by his fellow ministers.21 Even before IV Corps landed, it was clear that the task of saving Antwerp was impossible. Rawlinson’s hastily improvised corps was weak, the cavalry’s effective strength being only 1,200, and both his formations short of firepower.22 On 8 October, Kitchener and the Royal Naval Division’s temporary commander concluded that Antwerp must be abandoned.23 Rawlinson’s diary remained unwritten for over a week, a sure sign of intense pressure. ‘The situation has been a difficult one for me under the various orders of Winston, K & [Sir John] French not to mention carrying out the double role of protecting the Belgian Army as well as cooperating with Sir John.’ His being taken from Sir John’s orders to be placed directly under Kitchener soured relations. He received ‘a very nice letter from Sir John’ on 11 October ‘saying I had acted excellently in a very difficult situation’, but this was followed on the 12th ‘by a snorting telegram to the effect that the French did not know my movements and that I was upsetting his [Sir John’s] and Joffre’s plans’. Both his formations escaped the fall of the city, and the bulk of the Belgian Army of 80,000 marched westwards accompanied by most of the Royal Naval Division. One Royal Marine brigade was interned in Holland. Antwerp was a serious loss, looked upon by the Belgians as impregnable. Joffre’s representative, General Pau, and Rawlinson persuaded the Belgian king to send his army to France and his government to Dunkirk. Maurice tells

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us that Rawlinson had to manage his transport and supply, while conducting negotiations.24 An extract from Haig’s diary shortly afterwards explains why: I was amused with Rawlinson’s staff. His General Staff consists of two Regulars. R.A.K. Montgomery R.A. and [Alister] Dallas (who had a bad sun stroke in India) from the War Office …. Amery, the writer of the ‘Times History of the South African War’ was in charge of his Intelligence Section, while Toby Rawlinson (his brother) acted as Mess President. The latter is now graded as Colonel, though he left the 17th Lancers as subaltern! Joe Laycock and the Duke of Westminster were ADCs …. There were two or three other officers about, who in peace time were connected with motors or polo ponies.25

The ‘bad sun stroke’ was a neat touch, but these comments do not necessarily have an ulterior motive.26 The punctilious Haig may have been genuinely surprised, especially in view of Rawlinson’s stand against French for trained staff officers. Here was a pretty picture of the former Staff College commandant! In fact, there was a desperate shortage of staff officers, and Rawlinson’s men were not hopeless. Leo Amery’s interrogation of German prisoners discovered that three new German divisions, unknown to British intelligence, were about to attack and enabled Rawlinson to withdraw from a potential trap.27 Toby had shown his value to IV Corps HQ. As well as keeping Capper informed of plans, he commandeered two taxi cabs in Ostend and filled one with a supply of select claret from a chateau they had briefly occupied. The chit for payment was made good at the War Office after the armistice four years later.28 Conversely, Amery, Toby and ‘Bendor’ were not going to carry out the staff duties as taught at Camberley. On the night of 13–14 October, Rawlinson’s small corps marched towards Ypres, where the BEF was taking up positions. Byng’s cavalry arrived at 9 am, Capper’s infantry not until 3 pm. This was good timing, as the energetic Capper had hardened his division with route marches in the New Forest.29 Fourth Corps would now serve under Sir John French’s command. Rawlinson’s endeavours to save Antwerp had not dispelled the BEF GOC’s suspicions, especially as confused messages on 11–12 October suggested that Rawlinson was still independent and under direct War Office control.30 On the cold and foggy morning of the 14th, the great square of Ypres with its distinctive Cloth Hall was alive with transport and artillery of IV Corps, ‘a pandemonium of the clatter of hooves and stones and the rumble of guns and wagons’. Suddenly all heard the drone of an aeroplane, and in the mist could

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make out the shadowy form and then the unmistakeable shape of a German Taube. Without orders, every rifle was raised and a lucky shot cut the petrol pipe and brought down the aircraft.31 The two occupants were captured by Toby, and by the naval aviation pioneer, Commander Charles Samson, R.N., who was grounded for lack of aircraft and aggressively patrolling with his cars. The prisoners admitted they expected to find Germans occupying the town. Corps HQ slept that night at Ypres in a hotel on the great square. The next night they were in a magnificent white ornate chateau at Poperinghe with plenty of room despite the presence of the baron, baroness and children of various ages. Rawlinson and his staff must have felt that they had stepped back into an unreal, pre-war world as they enjoyed a formal dinner with their hosts, eating interminable courses served by footmen. The following day they requisitioned a house in Poperinghe belonging to a German, adjacent to a convent school which could serve as Corps HQ.32 Rawlinson sent off Toby in his car with an intelligence officer, and they came under fire from a rapidly advancing enemy. A French cavalry corps of five regular divisions was to IV Corps’ north, but they were completely outnumbered. The situation seemed desperate, and on 25 October the decision was taken to open the dykes. The low-lying valley of the Yser 3 miles west of Ypres was flooded as far as the sea at Nieuport.33 On 20 October, Haig’s I Corps began to reinforce Rawlinson’s left, not a moment too soon. GHQ’s intelligence thought few enemies were in front of Capper’s 7th Division. His information, that the Germans were in strength, was more accurate. At 11:30 am, while Rawlinson was with 7th Division, aerial reconnaissance reported formations coming against him. A strong enemy detachment attacked his northern flank. Five and a half German infantry corps and a cavalry corps were advancing. He fell back around 4 pm to positions between Zonnebeke and Langemarck. GHQ’s liaison officer Major Llewellyn Price-Davies had failed to impress on Rawlinson GHQ’s displeasure at his not attacking on 18 October.34 French and Henry Wilson’s opinion of Rawlinson was unfairly lessened. French’s antagonism seems to have led Wilson to mistrust his friend for a time.35 The so-called Race to the Sea had shifted the fulcrum of conflict from France to Flanders. Erich von Falkenhayn, who had succeeded Moltke as de facto commander of the German armies after the latter’s nervous collapse, decided on a massive bid for victory. Antwerp’s fall released three German divisions, and simultaneously four brand-new army corps became available, composed mainly of civilians who had been training since the start of the war. Three-quarters were over-age and under-age volunteers, the other quarter trained reservists. Falkenhayn threw them into the offensive that he began on 20 October with

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the aims of ousting the Allies from Flanders and taking the Channel Ports. By this means he hoped to halt the British troop build-up on the continent, capture bases for air and sea attacks against the British Isles, protect his new conquests in Belgium and France, and possibly turn the tide decisively in his favour. Joffre was equally determined to halt the new advance.36 Flooding the Yser Plain had secured the Allies’ north flank; the British had anchored the south on the River Lys. Thus the fighting became concentrated round Ypres. Sir John French hoped by moving his army to Belgium to take the offensive in a great flanking march.37 The First Battle of Ypres began as an attack by both sides, but increasingly the Allies were on the defensive. For most of the battle the Germans had greater numbers and firepower. As more German troops arrived, Sir John French considered disengaging and retreating to Boulogne. But Joffre overruled him and he decided to hold what was emerging as the infamous ‘Ypres salient’, curving east of the city, although it would probably have been wiser to stand on the shorter and straighter canal line to the west.38 From 14 to 27 October, defence of the salient fell largely on I and IV Corps holding an 8-mile front; according to Toby Rawlinson the men spread out one to each seven yards.39 The Allies sheltered behind streams and farmhouses, and increasingly dug trenches, though at first these were shallow and only intermittently protected by wire. Alternatively, they used breastworks, raised above the surface, because the high water table of the Flanders clay made trenches liable to flood.40 The Germans attacking often in dense masses suffered severe casualties from BEF small-arms fire. On 20 October, Rawlinson noted the previous five days when he had not had time to write his diary as ‘an anxious time’ and that ‘tomorrow [would be] critical’. Allied aircraft, armoured trains and armoured machine guns (with protective shields) had been ‘doing great work’. His corps had three armoured trains under a naval officer with 4.7inch guns and a dozen or more armoured cars under Commander Samson. The latter proved ‘a terror to the German cavalry’, Rawlinson told Kitchener. A chaplain with 7th Division agreed that Sampson used his cars ‘to strike terror’ into the enemy.41 While II, III and IV Corps held their ground, Sir John French had ordered Haig’s I Corps to counter-attack.42 A French withdrawal exposed the left of Byng’s cavalry and they fell back, leaving 7th Division exposed, but holding fast. Rawlinson was fortunate in his divisional commander: Capper was fearless, exposing himself almost daily in the front lines, by energy, courage and ‘the sheer force of his personality’ pulling together a broken line.43 On the 21st, the Germans broke into the division’s centre but were held. Rawlinson ordered Toby

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Map 6.1 The First Battle of Ypres. Capper’s Division and Byng’s Cavalry are in the centre of the map.

to go with Byng and 3rd Cavalry Division to extend IV Corps’ line to the right so as to meet Allenby’s cavalry. Toby reconnoitred and then rejoined Byng, another courageous commander, who calmly ordered and drank coffee in the open in full view of the enemy’s line, setting a high standard for his men’s morale.44

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Exposed to German artillery, 22nd Brigade suffered heavy losses; Haig and Rawlinson blamed the brigadier for not deploying on rearward slopes safe from direct observation by the enemy. Among its battalions 1/Royal Welch Fusiliers lost 75 per cent of their strength: ‘as a unit they have ceased to exist’, wrote Rawlinson.45 The desperate situation was pithily put by Rawlinson in his diary on the 23rd: ‘Just as well I Corps came up here for Germans had massed large forces and I should have been overwhelmed and had to give up Ypres, together we are just holding our own against the two or three corps of Germans up against us.’46 About 2 pm on 21 October, the advance of 2nd Division from Haig’s corps had considerably eased the situation,47 but from the 23rd German attacks grew more and more frequent. After one attack was repulsed near Langemarck, 1,500 dead Germans were counted in front of the trenches and 600 prisoners taken. In two days the Germans may have suffered 10,000 casualties. British losses were equally severe. Seventh Division had detrained at Bruges on 6 October over 12,000 men strong; by 28 October, they had suffered 4,500 casualties.48 The 24th was ‘full of shocks’, and on the 25th, the Germans having penetrated into the woods in the rear of the British line, Rawlinson noted: ‘We are only hanging on by our eyelids.’49 Capper was frequently in the front lines, throwing ‘his whole soul’ into the task before him. The Times later called 7th Division’s stand ‘one of the most glorious chapters’ of the war, due in no small part to Capper’s ‘insight, alertness and indomitable fighting spirit’.50 Haig’s powerful I Corps was a huge asset to the British defence, but with increasing German numbers he decided wisely to abandon the planned counterattack and go on the defensive. He and Rawlinson had met at Haig’s HQ. Haig thought Rawlinson needed assistance and sent two battalions of 4th (Guards) Brigade to reinforce the boundary between Byng’s cavalry and Capper’s 7th Division.51 Although Rawlinson’s diary entries show him undaunted by the losses and dangers, and in Byng and Capper he had true fighting men as subordinates, his corps was in fact too weak. Byng’s effective cavalry strength was only 1,200; Capper was stronger, but short of firepower with only forty-eight field guns and eight 4.7-inch naval guns. The force had not previously worked together, and Rawlinson’s heterogeneous and inexperienced staff cannot have helped.52 On top of this, there was continued friction with Sir John French. Rawlinson’s entry of 25 October details: Went to GHQ and found that Sir J was very angry with me for the telegram I had sent him which finished up with words ‘When the 8 Div arrives it will be easier to hold a front of 8 miles’. He thought this cheeky and would not see me. Archie

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Murray [Chief of Staff ] said my wire had given Sir J a sleepless night because of course there was some truth in what I had said. Most of our trouble and losses have come from being on such a wide front. … Returned to Ypres rather down in my luck. However I wrote a note of apology to Sir J …. Saw Douglas H[aig] in the evening and urged him to get forward to the support of my 7 Div. Tired and rather sad. Slept like a top.53

Rawlinson’s confident nature did not long repine. He rode out to Capper who was trying to adjust the line and fill gaps, for his front was in fact disproportionately long. On the 27th he pulled out brigades for rest and sleep. He noted, ‘The shell fire has quite demoralized them’, particularly citing German howitzers. He cannot but have noted that whereas Sir John French was hostile and had unrealistic expectations, Haig had sent units to his aid.54 That day he was ordered to hand over the remnants of his corps to Haig and proceed to England to complete 8th Division’s training and bring it out as soon as possible to join IV Corps. He set off from GHQ at St Omer at 7.30 am on 28 October, and reached London in time for 1.30 pm lunch with Merrie. The short distance between death and destruction on the Western Front and near-normality of home life was a feature of the war. He found Kitchener ‘rather down in his luck’ after a stormy cabinet meeting and talking of resigning. The next day he saw the king at Buckingham Palace, also anxious ‘and not looking very well’. Already losses were at a scale unexpected by a nation used to Victorian small wars; South Africa had hardly given warning of such profligacy. Rawlinson tried to reassure George V. At Winchester he saw 8th Division carrying out route march. ‘The material in men and horses is certainly excellent but they are far from ready to come over to France’, he thought, ‘for many battalions which came from abroad are very soft, still clothed in khaki drill and very moderately trained’. They needed another fortnight training.55 After a weekend spent with Lord Roberts at Englemere, he travelled to Larkhill, the Royal Artillery barracks on Salisbury Plain, to practise aircraft observation with 8th Division’s gun battery staff, ‘an interesting experiment’ using wireless and theodolites and doubtless extending his work of peacetime manoeuvres.56 On 6 November, he returned to the Ypres salient and found GHQ in better heart with German attacks diminished in force. His corps was to be withdrawn for a week’s rest. Various commanders had been sacked – ‘degummed’. He noted, ‘There has been a clean sweep of Brigadiers in the VII Div – all have gone. – Sir J cautions me to have no mercy and I shan’t.’57 Despite this pledge, Rawlinson was to find removing commanders difficult.

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The crisis of the battle had occurred while he was in England. After dispersed attacks from 21 to 30 October, the Germans concentrated their assault on Ypres between 31 October and 2 November, pushing the British off the Messines Ridge to the south and nearly breaking their lines. One of the most critical day’s fighting of the whole war occurred on 31 October. Three German divisions were repulsed by the BEF’s dogged defence, but colossal pounding by German guns forced some units to pull back, their trenches buried or torn apart. The village of Gheluvelt was taken soon after midday. In one of the war’s famous episodes, 2/Worcesters recaptured the village and prevented a German advance on Ypres. Before he received news of this, Haig was told of four large German shells smashing into Hooge Chateau, HQ 2nd Division, wounding senior officers with critical effects on command of the division. As yet unaware of 2/ Worcester’s heroics, Haig mounted his horse and, accompanied by Brigadier General Johnnie Gough and other officers, rode eastward down the Menin Road. Haig’s appearance may have had a good effect on the men who saw him riding calmly towards the enemy, but Gheluvelt had already been retaken, and he was able to order 6th Cavalry Brigade to advance, partly mounted, partly dismounted, and help restore the line.58 The repulse of the enemy was primarily due to personal leadership by individual brigadiers, Frederick Cavan, Edward Bulfin and Charles Fitzclarence. By 10 pm that night the British line had been restored. On 11 November, the Germans made a renewed attack preceded by the heaviest artillery bombardment of the campaign. British troops fell back to a supporting line of strongpoints and then counter-attacked. Fitzclarence was the heart of the defence but was killed leading one of the counter-attacks that night.59 The battle drew to a close on the 12th. Falkenhayn’s bid to end the war before trench stalemate set in had failed. The Allies still held the Channel Ports, Ypres, and the surrounding salient. The city was reduced to rubble by the bombardment but its possession had become a matter of prestige. Defenders of the salient remained exposed to constant fire from German artillery on the overlooking ridges. Allied losses at the First Ypres were severe: 20,000 Belgians or 35 per cent of their remaining army, 50,000 French, and 58,000 of the BEF, against German casualties of 130,000. In Britain, the battle would be remembered for the destruction of the old BEF; in Germany, inaccurately, for the Kindermord, or ‘massacre of the innocents’, student volunteers, notably at Langemarck. Falkenhayn now ordered his Western Front forces to extend and deepen the improvised trenches they had dug since the battle of the Aisne, creating a continuous system of two or more lines.60

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Seventh Division had suffered casualties commensurate with its courageous defence. On 23 November, Rawlinson published a general order congratulating the men and stating his high appreciation of their ‘endurance and fine soldierly qualities’ and their contribution to the enemy’s defeat.61 His 8th Division was nearly complete by 11 November, and Rawlinson toured units and trenches which needed more work as they were not deep enough. He realized after German shelling by howitzers and Minenwerfer (mortars), which now appeared in the German lines, that trench warfare required new weapons, and in November, 1914, sent Toby to Paris to attempt with French officers to develop a new British mortar. Initial results were ‘eminently satisfactory’ and he ordered 100 for IV Corps.62 On 29 January 1915, on the basis of two good shots, Major General Sir Stanley von Donop, Master General of Ordnance, decided a factory would be established at Versailles.63 Toby’s work in France ended when he was wounded by a German shell on 9 May, just as he was arranging his mortars ‘to shoot properly’. He returned to England to develop armoured cars and take over the air defence of London against Zeppelin and bomber attacks.64 In 1915 the BEF acquired the 2-inch mortar and the lighter Stokes mortar, but not through Toby Rawlinson’s efforts. On the 13th, IV Corps began to take over trenches from III Corps and the Indians. Two infantry divisions and two of cavalry had arrived from India in late September to support the hard-pressed BEF. With the Indians’ arrival, it was inevitable that ‘Bobs, the idol of the army’65 would pay the soldiers a visit. Accompanied by his daughter, Aileen, and his old friend Pertab Singh of Jodhpur, he visited Rawlinson’s headquarters for tea on 12 November. Leo Amery tells us that Roberts spent three of the happiest days of his life, stopping his car to speak to every turbaned soldier, but on the 13th he caught a chill when he had climbed Kemmel Hill for a distant view of the trenches.66 It turned to pneumonia and he died on the evening of the following day. Rawlinson was deeply affected; he went to tea with Henry Wilson on the 15th to hear of Roberts’s last hours and to pay his final respects. He spent half an hour beside the still body. ‘I could hardly believe that he was dead. It seemed as if he must open his eyes and speak to me so quiet an[d] natural were his features. I shall never forget that half hour spent kneeling at his bedside and I feel as if I had lost my second father.’ Both Rawlinson and Wilson wrote of the fitting end to a life of Christian heroism, ‘in the midst of the soldiers he loved and within the sound of the guns’.67 Roberts’s death came to symbolize where the path of duty lay.68 Rawlinson’s tribute on corps orders concluded: ‘Though we are great losers by his death, he leaves behind him – for all time – an example of a soldier’s life which every one of us should take as our model.’69

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Rawlinson had to think of the living as well as the dead. German quietness on 16 November made him suspicious. His two divisions were almost complete, but trenches, some within thirty yards of the enemy’s, were not finished. The men were standing up to their ankles in water, unable to show their noses over the parapet because of German proximity. Frosts made conditions most uncomfortable and on the 18th it began to snow at 11 am. He wrote, ‘ground quite white and temperature low – very miserable for men in the trenches – we have sent them down coak [sic] & charcoal to try and keep fairly warm but these nights are terribly severe for them in the cold & wet – I fear serious sickness’. The 21st saw a bitterly cold morning, many cases of frostbite, and his HQ arranged baths for the men in warm linen factories which could be heated. By the 25th, the cold was being countered by braziers in the trenches and sandbags filled with straw into which the men put their feet at night. Cloaks of white linen concealed the men in the snow at night.70 Night raids by patrols thus attired had some effect on enemy sapheads. Young officers had been promoted from the ranks of the Artists Rifles to fill gaps and were ‘doing first class work’. Rawlinson made continued endeavours to fit an aircraft with a wireless to direct artillery fire, although a new signalling lamp proved almost as good, working ‘with great success and rapidity and accuracy’ to bring fire on the enemy.71 This would pay dividends in future operations. As Christmas approached, he recorded mainly bad news. He was finding his Chief of Staff Brigadier General Robert Montgomery inadequate. ‘I am dissatisfied with Montgomery – he gives me no help at all and does not run his staff well – keeps them sitting in the office when they ought to be out and generally muddles through – I wish I could get rid of him and get [Colonel Walter] Braithwaite in his place.’ He admitted he found it difficult to remove him, and Kitchener would not send Braithwaite, who was to go to the Dardanelles as Ian Hamilton’s chief of staff. The reduction of corps staff when the BEF was formed into two armies under Haig and Smith-Dorrien gave Rawlinson a chance to move Montgomery relatively painlessly to I Corps as CRA. ‘He is broken hearted but I can’t help it for he will never make a staff officer. [Brigadier General Alister] Dallas is to succeed him.’72 His departure on New Year’s Day, 1915, was a relief to Rawlinson, but this was ironic, for he was to find Dallas no better. At this stage of the war, British staff work was weak in many respects. The corps was for them a new formation, although customary on the continent.73 Despite his staff training, Rawlinson may have tried to do too much; he and other British commanders were slow learning that ‘the skills demanded in the leadership of mass armies in an industrialised age were more managerial than heroic’.74

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There was more bad news following a GHQ order to ‘carry out local active ops with a view to containing the enemy’ and to maintain fire superiority.75 On 18 December, Rawlinson was told by GHQ to mount a major trench raid (he calls it an ‘attack’) at short notice. He supported his claim that he was forced into this against his better judgement by the oft-made assertion that Sir John French was angry at him. In this case it apparently stemmed from the appearance in The Times of story about IV Corps at Ypres. French asked Rawlinson whether he had anything to do with it. Rawlinson vigorously denied it as a ‘complete surprise’ to him. It seems unlikely the order to mount a trench raid came from personal animosity, and yet French’s sacking General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien in 1915 shows personal animus was a part of his character.76 After consulting his divisional commanders, Capper and Davies, Rawlinson was able to delay the attack from 10 am until dark.77 This avoided the too common British failing of allowing insufficient time to organize attacks. The night of 18 December was very black with wind and rain, and the attackers had mixed success: 1/ Warwicks fell into confusion and failed, as did 1/Border; 1/Devons rushed their first trench successfully, took 221 prisoners and reported the trench full of enemy dead, but were stopped by wire from getting further; 1/Scots Guards took their objective. Rawlinson ordered the troops to ‘dig hard for counterattack’. Beginning at 1 am in an unexpected tactic, the Germans used grenades to bomb the attackers out of their recent gains. The British had no equivalent weapon. The sappers improvised rudimentary grenades made from empty jam tins filled with scrap metal, with the charge being created using guncotton and a projecting fuse which required ignition by flame. According to 8th Division War Diary, the Germans knocked out ‘nearly a platoon’ with hand grenades; ‘our bombs could not be lighted’. Lieutenant Philip Neame, R.E. saved the situation: he held the Germans off single-handedly for forty-five minutes, allowing the wounded to be evacuated, and winning a VC. Eighth Division thought 100 Germans had been killed, as well as the prisoners taken, but the attackers lost 300 including nineteen officers.78 The BEF could not wage war with heroes alone. Better weapons were needed. ‘These bombs are the devil and we have had no adequate answer to them at present,’ Rawlinson wrote, ‘but I am going into the question and hope to be able to improvise something to meet the case.’ When he heard of a trench raid by Indians being repulsed in the same way, he added, ‘We absolutely must get something to answer this diabolical method of trench warfare.’79 Writing to Kitchener with Christmas good wishes, Rawlinson told his old chief of German preparedness.

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These Germans can fight and whatever may be said about their second line troops they know their work and are no means opponents. They have thought everything out to the last detail and when it comes to this trench fighting which no one could have foreseen with any certainty they produce a trench mortar and hand bombs which are decidedly better than anything that either we or the French have so far been able to make.80

Toby with French assistance had continued his experiments with mortars, with Sir John French’s approval, but his brother thought the 22-hundredweight mortar’s shell had too short a range. The mortar would be splendid ‘but it takes 8 men to carry it’, greatly lessening its usefulness.81 Henry Rawlinson told Kitchener he was making experiments with trench mortars that could be handled by two men to launch a steel shell necessary as trench warfare would continue for some time.82 Haig’s I Corps was making similar weapons. To his friend the Earl of Derby, Rawlinson was optimistic and prescient: There is no manner of doubt that we are going to succeed in crushing the German Empire. It may be a war of exhaustion, it may take one, two or three years to complete, but we shall be daily gaining wealth & strength, whilst Germany will be daily losing theirs.83

Rawlinson with his imperial background recognized that Britain could mobilize worldwide resources to supplement the great armies Kitchener had conjured up. The German bid for a quick victory in the west had failed at the Marne and First Ypres. In the east, the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia had been stopped, and the Russians despite the defeat at Tannenberg still appeared immensely strong and had penetrated Galicia. The Ottoman Empire had joined Britain’s enemies in November. If the longer strategic picture was good news, this lay in the future after a costly struggle, as Kitchener had foreseen. BEF losses until 30 November were 89,969, horrific numbers for a nation used to colonial warfare.84 To cheer the men in the trenches, Rawlinson provided both Christmas cards and Christmas puddings. Rawlinson drew the picture for the former: a soldier peering over the top of a trench towards No Man’s Land; in the distance was a rising sun with ‘1915’ on it. Officially they came from ‘Lady Rawlinson and the friends of 4th Corps’, who wished them ‘success, victory and safe return’. On the day of the puddings’ arrival, 16 December, Rawlinson rode round the units to see the officers and men. He noted they were still cheery but those coming out of the trenches looked ‘pinched and wan’ from the strain of days and nights in the mud.85 Leo Amery, back in England, purchased the puddings, acting on behalf of Lady Rawlinson; Harrods sent them to Boulogne where they were collected

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by lorries. A small pudding per man was judged ‘not nearly so nice as the good old family cannon ball for ten men’.86 Their distribution on Christmas Day was much appreciated, but so too was the unofficial cessation of hostilities. Of the Christmas truce, Rawlinson wrote: There has been a certain friendliness between our men and the Germans in the trenches. Xmas Day was looked on naturally as a peace day and both sides went out freely in front of their trenches and buried the dead which were still lying out in the fire-swept zone. Germans looked very clean and smart. Put on their best clothes for the occasion, I fancy. They conversed freely & exchanged cigarettes …. [M]any of them expressed themselves as heartily sick of the war and anxious to get home to their wives & families.87

Rawlinson’s information most probably came from 8th Division, whose diary claims that in negotiations with the Germans over burial of the dead ‘some information was obtained as to the situation & strength of the enemy’s trenches & the Regiments to which the men belong’.88 Rawlinson’s forbearing attitude, in contrast to the anger of some commanders at the fraternization, probably reflects his satisfaction at useful intelligence gathered.

7

Frustrated Endeavours: Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos 1915

Next time the Germans will get it. Given a chance with wire down and at close quarters, they will be slaughtered and I feel quite mad at it, and long for a decent smack at them. (Lieutenant Lionel Sotheby, Black Watch, after Neuve Chapelle)1 We want more guns, more men and above all more high explosive ammunition. These we must have if we are to beat the German field army. (Henry Rawlinson, 14 May 1915) Rawlinson and IV Corps staff spent winter 1914–1915 in a small but comfortable chateau on the outskirts of the town of Merville. The ground was heavy clay, with water close to the surface and very sticky mud. Everything was constantly damp. In the lines, the men faced the new hardships of trench fever and trench feet. Supplies were good, however, and the corps well and liberally fed. Reliefs were carried out regularly, three-to-four days spent in the trenches succeeded by rest. Danger came from German long-range guns firing on the billets. When the weather became colder with severe frosts, there were many cases of frostbite. Corps HQ was short of coal, and the chateau’s hot water system broken. Pheasants which they shot in the nearby forest of Nieppe made a pleasant change from bully beef.2 The extended siege warfare of the Western Front’s earthwork trenches running from the North Sea to the Swiss border was without precedent. Rawlinson’s varied campaign experience and military studies had met nothing comparable. The Russo-Japanese War came closest. The imperative for the French and British was to attack. The British had gone to war to defend Belgium, nine-tenths in This chapter draws upon Command, Parts II and III and Spencer Jones, Courage without Glory: The British Army on the Western Front 1915 (Solihull, Helion, 2015).

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German hands. The German invasion of France had dealt a heavy blow to France’s war-fighting strength. France’s heavy industrial heartland as well as fertile agricultural land had fallen to the invaders. France’s steel and cast iron production capacity fell to less than half of what it had been in peacetime.3 Joffre and GQG (Grand-Quartier-General) believed they must keep the initiative, that passive defence would sap morale; his prestige as victor of the Marne allowed him much independence, and a mainly French victory would give them leverage at peace negotiations.4 On land the French were senior partners in the alliance, and Sir John French had instructions from Kitchener to cooperate. The BEF’s offensives in 1915 were conducted as an adjunct to those of the French. Haig and Rawlinson, grappling with a new form of war, largely danced to a French tune. Rawlinson’s assessment of GHQ was low, based on his belief that French’s Chief of Staff Major General Sir Archibald Murray ‘is incapable of manging [his staff] and getting any good work out of them’.5 In January, however, Major General Sir William Robertson, the QMG, replaced Murray. ‘A vast improvement’, thought Rawlinson.6 Murray had, as Rawlinson observed, failed to form an effective team at GHQ and had suffered a collapse on the day of the battle of Le Cateau.7 Robertson was an excellent staff officer, but his relations with Sir John French were not warm, French preferring Henry Wilson. French was sixty-two and in failing health. By October Haig had doubts of his commander’s ‘balance of mind’ and thought it was ‘impossible to discuss military problems with an unreasoning brain of this kind’.8 Under Kitchener’s direction, British industry was gearing up for war, factories turning from peacetime production to armaments, hindered by voluntary recruiting which removed productive labour from the workforce.9 By spring 1915, the original BEF, officers as well as men, had been for all practical purposes annihilated. About half of those precious staff college graduates were killed or crippled in the first nine months of war.10 French begged Kitchener to release the New Armies, still training, to leaven the hardpressed Regulars. Kitchener was resolved to keep them intact, hoping their intervention in spring 1917 would be decisive, giving Britain pivotal influence at a peace conference.11 Yet he could not entirely ignore French pleas for support, especially as Russian defeats might release German divisions for a decisive effort in the west. The BEF was compelled to fight with inadequate means: improvised grenades, few trench mortars, faulty ammunition in short supply, inadequate training among junior commanders caused by the losses of 1914 and the rapid expansion.12 The BEF was at first slow to adapt to the indirect fire needed in trench warfare.13

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In 1915, the Germans stood on the defensive in the west. Unlike the British, they could call on reservists with two years’ training. Rawlinson had noted German advantages in hand grenades, trench mortars and the 5.9-inch howitzer, which fired ‘a nasty shell’.14 They usually held higher ground overlooking their enemy. Kitchener’s New Armies in training held future hope. At the end of January, Rawlinson visited them in England and was impressed: they had ‘got on magnificently’ and lacked only arms, equipment and sufficient NCOs.15 Like other ‘chateau’ generals, Rawlinson was far from out of touch. On 29 April, his diary gives his routine: My day is as follows: called at 6.30, out for a ride at 7.15, in the office at 8, visit the hospital at 9, breakfast at 9.30, office from 10.10 till lunch, after lunch out and about to the 7, 8 and West Riding Div[isions], send my horses to meet me at one or the other of HQs, then ride round some of the arty pos[itio]ns and visit some of the brigade HQs. Sometimes if fine I go to an observing point to look over enemy lines after which I return to office for half an hour before dinner at 8 p.m. After dinner I devote myself to The Times and writing private letters on a variety of subjects.

He wrote to Merrie every night and kept up ‘a pretty regular correspondence with [the king’s Assistant Private Secretary and Equerry] Clive Wigram and Lord K so as to keep H.M. and K informed as to what is going on in the units of my corps’.16 As Haig, Robertson and Smith-Dorrien were also writing, His Majesty must have been well informed, although his ability to advance or protect a general had limits, as Smith-Dorrien’s fate showed. When preparing or conducting a battle, Rawlinson wrote, ‘there is little time to spare’. In 1915, he played a major part in four: Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, the smaller Givenchy and Loos. On Boxing Day, 1914, the BEF had divided into two armies, First and Second, commanded respectively by Haig and Horace Smith-Dorrien. First Army comprised Rawlinson’s IV Corps, Sir Charles Monro’s I Corps and Lieutenant General Sir James Willcocks’s Indian Corps. Rawlinson’s men held low-lying ground south of Second Army; to their south was the French Tenth Army. In front, the Germans occupied higher ground; the trenches lay astride a grim industrial region of pitheads and slagheaps, ‘a very sinister sector into which we crept’, wrote a corporal in the 10/Duke of Wellington’s.17 A German salient was centred on the village of Neuve Chapelle. Eliminating it would remove the threat of enfilade fire against IV Corps trenches on either side. On the evening of 6 February, Haig motored to Rawlinson’s HQ, and instructed him to formulate proposals for the capture of Neuve Chapelle, to coincide with a larger French

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offensive. He hoped the operation to be ready in about ten days.18 This was an unrealistically short time, and the ground was still waterlogged. Rawlinson’s assessment was ‘that it is [a] useless waste of life to undertake [the attack] whilst the ground is in this state for it is impossible to dig trenches and we shall therefore not be able to hold the ground gained’. Water was eighteen inches from the surface, and pools were sitting in No-Man’s-Land. Noting that it was not desirable to carry out an assault ‘until the water conditions shew [sic] a marked improvement’, Rawlinson commented: I do not see great difficulty in taking two or three lines of enemy’s trenches after heavy bombardment, but I do see great difficulty in holding them after our infantry have occupied. We cannot get a good position for art[iller]y officers to observe. Nor can we dig ourselves in satisfactorily. Better to postpone op.

Reports from both Capper and Davies agreed.19 The French cancelled their attack before the British launched theirs. By the 24th however, Rawlinson recorded that Corps HQ was ‘hard at work’ on the Neuve Chapelle plan, and a conference with the Divisions had decided to go directly for the village in two columns. Rawlinson had dragged his feet over the early stages of planning, delegating to the divisions. First Army sent a written shot in the arm on 19 February: ‘So please get to work on [your scheme] at once.’ Haig followed this by visiting IV Corps HQ to rebuke Dallas when Rawlinson was unwell.20 Of the plans submitted by the two divisional commanders, Davies of 8th Division proposed a series of sapping operations, which Rawlinson chose to reject, presumably in view of the waterlogged ground.21 Capper of 7th Division proposed choosing a point of attack based on ‘(i) best artillery support; (ii) facilities for forming up assaulting columns; (iii) least difficulties in ground actually to be crossed; (iv) prospect of being able to construct, with sufficient rapidity, communications from enemy’s trenches (after capture) to our own’. The result would be a ‘bite’ out of the enemy’s line, which could be enlarged by fresh attacks until a hole was made through which a sufficiently large force could pour. If subsequent operations failed, Capper was aware that the ‘bite’ would become a salient which might be difficult to retain.22 His plan reflected his offensive spirit, but also the role of artillery. Rawlinson echoed this in his appreciation of Davies’s scheme: ‘An undertaking such as that which is under consideration depends for its success almost entirely on the correct and efficient employment of the artillery.’23 On the 25th, Rawlinson told his diary, but not the conference he attended called by Haig, that ‘unless the weather improves we shall not be able to attack N[euve]C[hapelle] with any chance of success … I strongly mean

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to resist if ground in that state’.24 He continued to be ‘exercised about the control of the Artillery’, a possible shortage of 6-inch howitzers, and the brief time for completing arrangements.25 He was more successful over the bombardment: he was able to show with calculations of guns available and rates of fire that a hurricane bombardment of short duration would destroy the enemy trenches in front of Neuve Chapelle.26 Aerial photographs, a new innovation, and observation from the church tower at Estaires gave a clear picture of enemy positions, except a distant line of concrete strongpoints behind Neuve Chapelle.27 Aircraft could send corrections to gun batteries in Morse code with the new Sterling radio and square maps lettered and numbered so that any point on the ground could be identified. Haig had met Major (later Air Chief Marshal) Hugh Trenchard on 16 February to discuss reconnaissance and artillery observation.28 Haig had become more ambitious since the initial proposals: IV Corps was to seize Aubers Ridge and advance to the La Bassee-Lille Road and if possible break the enemy’s front. When Rawlinson suggested at a conference on 5 March that the advance halt for the day after reaching the east edge of Neuve Chapelle, Haig refused.29 Haig’s ambition against Rawlinson’s caution would set the parameters of debate for much of 1915–1917. Despite his reluctance for Haig’s grander scheme, Rawlinson threw himself with energy into organizing the assault. On 5 March he visited his divisions. On the 8th the artillery was in position except two 15-inch howitzer batteries arriving from England the following day. He had given his orders and was encouraged by a strong drying wind blowing hard all day. Two cavalry divisions had been brought up to exploit a breakthrough. ‘All troops are keen and ready for this fray.’ They were to attack in columns and at a rapid pace. Capper’s suggestion that packs not be worn was adopted. Extra telephone lines were laid, avoiding trenches and roads that might have been registered by German artillery. Capper’s preparations included every third man carrying a shovel, each man in the leading sections to have a pair of wire cutters and all to carry two empty sandbags.30 Rawlinson deployed a formidable 340 guns, one for each six yards of enemy trench. These were moved at night and gun-positions camouflaged before their arrival. Registration was carried out by only a few at a time, not to arouse suspicion. The 18-pounders were allocated to wire-cutting, using shrapnel; tests had shown that best effects were achieved by exploding shrapnel rounds 3–4 feet above the wire.31 Heavier artillery was to batter down trenches and breastworks. The heaviest targeted command posts and Neuve Chapelle village. Thirty-seven guns were allocated for counter-battery work. Aerial photography was used to find enemy batteries.32 This would be a surprise bombardment, in contrast

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Map 7.1 Battle of Neuve Chapelle.

to the lengthy ones of later battles. Despite his and Toby’s efforts, Rawlinson’s corps was without modern trench mortars. There were no light machine guns, but battalions would carry heavy machine guns across No-Man’s-Land to repel German counter-attacks.33 British soldiers fought in peaked forage caps with rifle and bayonet. German defences were rudimentary judged by later standards: a front-line breastwork of earth and sandbags 5 feet thick; a double row of barbed wire from 6 to 15 feet deep; about 1,000 yards behind that a series of carefully sited concrete strongpoints with machine guns. Although German lines were weakly held, reserves were stronger. By the evening of the second day of battle it was estimated another 20,000 men could be brought forward.34 Haig chose 10 March for the attack, weather permitting, and a clear sky on the evening of the 9th meant it could go ahead. The three attacking brigades, 23 and 25 from 8th Division and the Garhwal Brigade from Willcock’s Indian Corps, marched 5 or 6 miles to the front in biting cold, but receiving a hot meal at the halfway point. Before dawn they were concentrated in assembly trenches

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and by 6.30 am deployed for attack. The 340-gun bombardment began at 7.30, and thirty-five minutes later switched from the enemy front line to lay a curtain of fire (the ‘barrage’) east of Neuve Chapelle to stop German reinforcements. Small compared to later bombardments, this one had an uplifting effect on a Black Watch Lance Corporal: [The German trenches] had become long clouds of smoke and dust, flashing continuously with shell bursts, and with enormous masses of trench material and bodies sailing high above the smoke cloud. The purely physical effect on us was one of extreme exhilaration. We could have laughed and cried with excitement. We thought that bombardment was winning the war before our eyes.35

The Germans were taken by surprise. The infantry climbed out of the trenches on specially placed ladders and advanced. Aided by the bombardment and a dense white mist, they tore a breach 1,600 yards in the German position. By 8.25 am Rawlinson heard that 25 Brigade had taken the German front line, and by 9.50 that one of the battalions had entered Neuve Chapelle and was holding the main street. It had taken an hour for this message to reach him. By 10.10 that battalion had advanced beyond Neuve Chapelle. On the left, however, 23 Brigade was held up under hostile fire by intact barbed wire, and asked for a re-bombardment of enemy trenches. The two howitzer batteries responsible for bombarding this section of the trench, arriving from England only the day before, had no time for accurate registration. At 11.15, IV Corp’s liaison officer returned from 23 Brigade HQ with the news of the critical situation remaining unchanged. Rawlinson ordered the scope of bombardment extended and a reserve brigade, 24, to advance in the wake of 25 Brigade and then turn on the flank of the enemy holding up 23 Brigade. The time-lapse between the course of battle and news of it reaching a distant HQ meant that Rawlinson’s orders were out-of-date. The Middlesex Battalion of 23 Brigade had advanced and occupied the enemy trenches. By 11.20 the whole of the German front line facing IV Corps was in British hands.36 German reinforcements, small in number but well armed with machine-guns, were coming forward, taking up positions to the southeast of Neuve Chapelle village, and closing off the opportunities for exploitation that seemed to beckon 25 Brigade. At 1.30 pm Rawlinson ordered 21st and 24th Brigades to assemble for an advance on the second objective, Aubers Ridge. He sent orders at 3 pm for the advance thirty minutes later. Thirty minutes was unrealistic: orders would take at least an hour to pass from divisions to brigades. However, at 3.30 pm, just after the two brigades began advancing on their own initiative, the renewed

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bombardment descended on them rather than designated targets. Rawlinson was confused by outdated news from the Divisions, and, given the disjointed nature of 21 and 24 Brigades’ advance, it was fortunate that other orders called off the intended assault on Aubers Ridge. As dark fell, British troops took up night positions on Layes Brook, parallel to but short of the Ridge.37 Rawlinson told his diary: ‘We have had a grand day. Our plans succeeded admirably and we have captured Neuve Chapelle village with the loss of about 1,000 casualties and some 600 prisoners.’ Counter-attacks would soon come. He concluded: ‘The great point is that a line of trenches can be broken with suitable artillery preparation combined with secrecy.’ 38 Both Haig and Rawlinson wished to renew the attack on 11 March. The Germans had, however, brought forward fresh infantry and batteries of both field guns and howitzers and constructed new defensive works. By the morning of 11 March, the British were confronting double the previous number of defenders. British commanders faced, not for the last time, the problem of exploiting an initial break-in. Aerial spotting the previous evening had noted three German trains arriving with reinforcements.39 Mist all day made it difficult to range the guns on the new German positions. German artillery bombarded British positions and cut telephone lines almost continuously. News reaching Rawlinson was two hours late. He reported to First Army HQ ‘that owing to mist and fog, there was difficulty in getting accurate artillery observation, and progress was accordingly slow’.40 He failed, however, to accept that these conditions meant that attacks were futile, ordering assaults nine times ‘despite clear evidence that his guns could not hit their targets’.41 Rawlinson’s short diary entry was succinct: Misty morning. Not a satisfactory day. 8th Division did not gain line of road ordered, nor did they help Indians. I was annoyed with Davies. The line made no progress. German counter-attack feeble. Nine guns [captured].42

For the third day, Rawlinson issued orders for similar operations. The Germans moved first. Fresh reinforcements had arrived from 6th Bavarian Reserve Division, and they were instructed to attack the British line at dawn without artillery preparation. Mist hid the German advance, but British battalion commanders had organized their defence. Their firepower halted the Germans with heavy losses, including 400 prisoners.43 Rawlinson was slow to learn of events at the front, and what he was told was inaccurate. German counter-attacks had led to ‘severe fighting at close quarters’, but 8th Division reported that they had been easily repulsed. Possibly 8th Division HQ was as ignorant as Rawlinson of the true state of front-line

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fighting.44 He then ordered his brigades to prepare to attack again, the start time delayed until 12.30 pm at Haig’s instructions. Twenty-four Brigade following up a repulsed German counter-attack occupied several houses in the village of Pietre West, but came under their own artillery fire and were driven back at 10 am by a severe German counter-attack. They took no part in the 12:30 assault. Twenty-five Brigade did come under artillery fire and reported it to Corps HQ. Rawlinson ordered artillery to bombard the German position, but this did not happen until 2.45 pm. By that time the battalions had concluded that a fresh daylight attack against a strong position with many machine guns would not succeed, and no attack occurred. Twenty Brigade had not received news of the postponement to 12:30, attacked at 10:30 unsupported and were driven off. The sole success was achieved by 21st Brigade whose objective, a strong redoubt, had been accurately bombarded. They took the position with 400 prisoners.45 Further misleadingly optimistic reports reached Rawlinson, and he ordered another assault. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed, and two hours later, his subordinate commanders used their initiative to cancel it. Rawlinson accepted Capper’s recommendation to consolidate the line instead. Brigadier Carter of 24 Brigade declared his men ‘stone cold’ and refused to participate. The message cancelling this final attack had been sent by 8th Division three hours earlier; such was the slowness of Western Front communications in 1915.46 On 13 March, Haig called off the battle. Rawlinson thought that First Army had inflicted on the Germans ‘a crushing blow from which they will not recover in a hurry’. The gallantry of officers and men was beyond praise, ‘they have fought magnificently’, and he published a general order to this effect. ‘It was our failure to press on in the early stages of the attack which caused such heavy casualties,’ he thought. ‘Had we pushed on on the afternoon of the 10[th] we would have gained more ground and not had to beat our heads against the [German front] which cost us so many lives and which we never succeeded taking.’ The heavy guns had proved the most useful assets, but ‘bombers’ using improvised hand grenades had been ‘a great success’. His overoptimistic assessment was encouraged by an incomplete knowledge of casualties, putting those of the British at 5,000.47 The total was 11,652. In IV Corps alone there were 7,500 including 2,000 dead. German casualties were only 1,000 less, many lost in counter-attacks.48 Rawlinson’s involvement in the initial stages of planning for the battle did him little credit.49 He then grasped the nettle, and preparations for 10 March were good. His assessment of artillery’s role and a probable limited success (a ‘bite’) was realistic. The British got little further than the eastern edge of Neuve Chapelle.

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Two cavalry brigades were ready to exploit the attack, but on the 10th they got no closer than Estaires, nearly 8 miles from Neuve Chapelle. On the 12th GOC 7th Division (Capper) reported ‘that there was no opportunity for the cavalry to break through’.50 Poor communications and subordinates’ initiative prevented some of his unrealistic later attacks taking place. Failure of communications with the attackers once they left their trenches proved a major handicap. So too was the iron rule that defenders could reinforce more quickly than attackers. The denouement was less creditable to Rawlinson.51 One failing had been an inability to get the reserves forward following early success on 10 March. Rawlinson unwisely and dishonestly tried to throw the blame on 8th Division’s commander, Major General Davies. To Haig this was at first credible, as he had written in his diary on 11 March: ‘So much uncertainty regarding position of units of 8th Division that Rawlinson himself went up … to see what was going on.’52 On that day, Rawlinson wrote of his annoyance with Davies, that his division did not gain its objective or help the Indians, and on the 12th: ‘8th Division did not do much.’53 Davies stood up for himself and showed the fault on the 10th to be Rawlinson’s in committing reserve battalions in the early fighting. The latter, wisely, accepted the responsibility (or guilt), forwarding Davies’s letter to Haig with his own admission.54 Haig wrote: I received a letter from Rawlinson enclosing one from Davies. As a result of this Rawlinson at once wrote that he ‘took all responsibility for having delayed the advance from the village until 3.30 p.m.’ This at once showed that Rawlinson was himself to blame for the delay and not Davies. I wrote at once to Sir John French and withdrew the letter from Rawlinson on the subject which I had left with him. After lunch I rode to Estaires and saw Davies who was overjoyed that I had discovered the truth, viz. that Rawlinson was trying to put the blame on him for the delay. I am afraid that Rawlinson is unsatisfactory in this respect, loyalty to his subordinates!55

Haig protected him against Sir John French, who for a time thought Rawlinson should be sent home.56 On 17 March Haig had taken Rawlinson aside and told him that ‘Sir John was furious with me and said I would not accept responsibility’. He quoted events in 1914 and threatened to turn me out of my Army Corps. He asked DH if he was satisfied with the way I had commanded it and when he said ‘yes’ he told DH to warn me that he Sir John was not pleased. I told DH I could only do my best. He then said he was quite prepared to fight my battles for me and I might have every confidence in him. It was very good of him and I am certain I have a good friend and staunch ally

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Rawlinson assured Haig that he ‘was out to beat the Germans and that alone’. He was prepared to step aside if Haig could find someone better, but ‘until then I would do my utmost to bring victory to our arms’. ‘I feel quite sure I shall get justice in DH’s hands.’57 Haig’s reassurance was welcome, for a meeting with an angry Haig was not a pleasant experience, as Rawlinson told a subordinate in 1916.58 Conversely, Haig knew Rawlinson had ‘many other valuable qualities as a commander on active service’.59 Had Rawlinson been ‘degummed’ at this stage, it is unlikely his career would have recovered. Smith-Dorrien who was removed by Sir John French in April 1915 was an obvious example. Rawlinson’s old friend Ian Hamilton wrote years later that ‘a moment in the war when he hung between military life and death, had a very sobering and remarkable effect upon him. He told me himself it was this short period of mortal agony which had brought him to take a wider view of life’.60 French’s criticisms continued in his dispatch on the battle, stating categorically that the failure to push on rapidly was instrumental in limiting success and singling out Rawlinson for blame. French also claimed credit for such success as had been achieved, although GHQ gave little supervision.61 He took credit which Haig thought his due.62 Sir John’s unintended effect was to join two of his chief subordinates in antagonism to his leadership. Some historians have seen this as Haig’s way of retaining a commander who would do his bidding.63 This may be so, but after his initial foot-dragging, Rawlinson ordered aggressive attacks, copying Haig’s approach. Despite his cautious diary entries, on the surface he was following his commander’s wishes. He ‘deferred to Haig, if not always without an argument … but Haig’s opinion had generally prevailed. Rawlinson’s diary shows gratitude and support, but not subservience’.64 If they were to forge a working partnership, further events confirmed that they struggled to grasp the key to victory. Both sides tried to discern Neuve Chapelle’s lessons. The Germans strengthened their defences and learnt to concentrate their artillery on the enemy infantry. Orders were issued for a second line 2,500–3,000 yards behind the front, wherever possible on a reverse slope. The effectiveness of machine guns was noted.65 Rawlinson in seeking lessons coined a phrase: What we want to do now is what I call ‘Bite & Hold’ – bite off a piece of the enemy’s line like Neuve Chapelle & hold it hard against all counter-attacks. The bite can be made without much loss & if you choose the right place & make every preparation to put it quickly in a state of defence there ought to be no difficulty in holding against the enemy’s counter attacks & inflicting on him at least twice

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the loss that we have suffered in making the bite. This policy we should I think adopt all along the line. It would keep up the spirits of the men, shew the French that we were doing our part and avoid heavy casualties66

Rawlinson was not alone in advocating such methods. We have already seen that Capper’s plan for Neuve Chapelle suggested a ‘bite’ out of the enemy’s line. William Robertson advocated choosing a battlefield with good artillery observation and conducting the advance in a series of short steps, backed by massive firepower. In early 1915, unfortunately, there was insufficient ammunition and the artillery organization necessary to provide fire support for the infantry was also missing.67 Major General ‘Johnnie’ Du Cane’s paper on the battle’s lessons noted the collapse of control once the troops entered enemy lines. He recommended attacking in a series of steps, each one being consolidated before the next. This also depended upon large quantities of guns and ammunition.68 ‘Bite and hold’ offered no quick route to victory. Haig was not interested in limited objectives. His orders for the next operation envisaged 7th Division capturing a section of German trenches on Aubers Ridge, follow-up troops pushing through the gap and advancing rapidly, and Hubert Gough’s 2nd Cavalry Division following.69 Rawlinson was not happy. German defences were stronger. On Easter Day, 4 April, he reconnoitred the ground where 8th Division was to attack: ‘It is not easy and we shall have difficulty in forming up the assaulting columns.’ They would be short of artillery unless they could procure more howitzers.70 The strain of preparation had its effect: on 6 April, he recorded, ‘Bad headache and bilious attack. Bed early and a pill’, and on the 15th, ‘Did not sleep well’.71 Rawlinson was fifty-one, over a decade younger than French and nearly three years younger than Haig, but the Western Front was a hard test for generals’ fitness and stamina. On the 16th Haig outlined a new plan for the battle: Rawlinson was sure it would be hard, the enemy was ready and the British lacked sufficient guns and howitzers. The attack was set for 8 April coinciding with the French offensive at Arras. ‘I am not too confident that an attack will succeed,’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘There are many elements of chance in it. Our preparations are hurried.’72 However, at a last conference, he learnt that British intelligence believed there were no reserves behind the German lines, giving a fair chance of success. ‘If we can bring it off we should do a really big thing which at the present juncture will be invaluable to the allied cause.’73 The attack at Aubers Ridge on 9 April failed utterly. Low clouds prevented the guns registering on their targets. Many were too worn for accurate firing. The quantity of ammunition was inadequate and much of it faulty. In only three places did men of 8th Division gain a lodgement in the enemy lines. The hail of

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fire from German machine guns and artillery prevented follow-up battalions coming forward. Haig cancelled a further attack at dusk as the roads were so encumbered ‘that fresh brigades … could not be got forward in time’. German artillery fire prevented rapid movement behind the British lines. Hubert Gough’s 7th Division was to attack at dawn on the 10th. Following reconnaissance, Gough concluded that chaos in the trenches would prevent his men relieving those of 8th Division. This attack too was cancelled.74 On the 11th Rawlinson told Major Clive Wigram: you will have heard that the result of our attacks the day before yesterday have not been satisfactory. All the attacks of the IV & the Indian Corps were repulsed & we stand today just where we did three days ago except that we must have lost some 10,000 officers and men in the First Army and expended a very large amount of Art[iller]y Ammun[i]t[ion]. But we have at least learned that the policy of ‘storm & follow on’ cannot be successfully conducted unless the front attacked is at least 1000 yards wide and the bombardment is continued for considerably longer than half an hour.

He thought ‘the French have certainly taught us a lesson’, massing 750 field and 120 heavy guns and shelling the German lines on a front of 3,000 yards for 4 hours before making their assault.75 They gained Vimy Ridge’s summit overlooking the Douai Plain, only to be driven off by German counter-attacks.76 Haig and Rawlinson drew the conclusion that a hurricane bombardment was insufficient, that only a wider attacking front and a longer bombardment would overcome stronger German defences.77 Could new methods succeed? Others wondered if there was a realistic alternative to ‘chewing barbed wire on the Western Front’. In early 1915, Winston Churchill conceived the Dardanelles operation as a decisive venture, to knock Turkey out of the war and bring help to Russia. Lloyd George and the cabinet secretary Hankey encouraged finding ‘a way around’. It was flawed from the outset, and even had the naval force won through the straits, an Ottoman regime that embarked on the Armenian genocide was unlikely to collapse. When the naval attack was defeated on 18 March, the army had to take over. On 25 April, British Empire and French troops went ashore on beaches round Cape Helles and at Anzac Cove. On 30 April, Rawlinson wrote to his old friend Ian Hamilton to congratulate him on a successful landing. Kitchener’s secretary, Colonel O.A.D. Fitzgerald, told Rawlinson that Hamilton had taken the enemy unawares and had landed at places least expected. ‘We have a stiff task before us,’ Rawlinson wrote to Hamilton, ‘and the longer we look at it more wire the Bosch puts up and stronger he makes his line of trenches.’78 Gallipoli also had trenches and wire. By 20 May, Rawlinson told his diary, ‘I fear

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Johnny at the Dardanelles is stuck. His last attack apparently failed and he is only 3½ miles from the point having lost half his force.’79 Hamilton and Rawlinson were among Lord Roberts’s most successful proteges, but 1915 was a bad year for both. Even had Hamilton possessed the mental toughness and ruthlessness of a great commander (which he lacked),80 Dardanelles success could do nothing to affect Germany’s ability to wage war. The German Army had somehow to be gripped on the Western and Eastern Fronts.81 Gallipoli and the ‘shells scandal’ precipitated a government crisis. Sir John French assisted by Charles Repington, the Times chief military correspondent, blamed the failure at Aubers Ridge on shortage of ammunition. Lord Northcliffe’s newspapers, the Times on 14 May and the Daily Mail on the 21st, attacked Kitchener in an effort to drive him from office. The attempt failed, but Admiral Sir John Fisher’s resignation left Winston Churchill exposed, and he had to leave the Admiralty. A Ministry of Munitions was formed under Lloyd George. Asquith invited Unionists into the cabinet. Rawlinson was sure that this would ‘strengthen the Gov[ernmen]t & help [end] the War.’82 He was furious at the attack on Kitchener: ‘perfectly monstrous, and has raised us out here to a pitch of fury’. He guessed that Repington’s visit to GHQ had produced the plot, a further wedge between him and Sir John French in view of his admiration for Kitchener.83 Rawlinson had no part in the battle of Festubert (15–25 May) to the south of Neuve Chapelle and Aubers. Hubert Gough’s 7th Division attacking on a wider front achieved an advance of nearly 2 miles, but casualties were disproportionate, 16,648.84 On the 23rd Rawlinson described poor communications: It is very difficult to get accurate information of what is really taking place. The best news comes from the Artillery Forward Observing Officers who if well placed can see the ground and can tell how far our men have got but the news that comes back from the trenches is much delayed owing to the difficulty of passing messages and to the doubt which exists in the minds of the troops themselves as to where they really are in the labyrinth of German trenches. Information therefore is both conflicting and unreliable.85

At the end of May, Rawlinson was ordered to launch a diversionary attack near Givenchy to draw German attention from a French offensive. On the 29th, he moved his HQ from Merville to the Chateau at Hinges. ‘This charming chateau and grounds standing on top of a hill some 200 feet high is a far more bracing place than Merville and we all feel greatly benefited from the change of air.’86 Less cheering was his objective, the Rue D’Ouvert, a straight road lined mostly

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with two-storey houses; it was ‘a nasty nut to crack so I am going down to reconnoitre the ground early tomorrow morning … My present idea is to attack the enemy’s line from two directions supported by all the heavy Artillery I can bring to bear and I have a lot of it’87 The forty-eight-hour bombardment was slow and deliberate both to observe the fire and to preserve ammunition, in short supply. A briefer, heavier shelling preceded the attack. His Corps included Gough’s 7th Division, the Canadians and the 51st Highland Division. The latter was ‘very raw’, their artillery not in a good state, ‘the men are good’ but some of the officers ‘doubtful’.88 ‘The whole division seems to be very slow at picking up active service ways,’ he wrote.89 Rawlinson and his chief of staff Dallas spent 13 June helping 51st Highland Division to put their orders together. In Rawlinson’s view these were ‘in the form of a pious aspiration rather than anything that is likely to be actually carried into effect’. New aerial photos showed ‘that the Boches have been working like beavers and have constructed many new works which will give us trouble – they have strengthened their wire to an alarming extent and it is doubtful if we shall be able to cut it satisfactorily …. My opinion is that we shall be very lucky if we get the Rue d’Ouvert after three days hard fighting and 5,000 casualties.’90 Haig, by contrast, was writing optimistically of the chances.91 The battle of Givenchy (15–16 June) was short and disastrous. A preliminary assault by 6/Gordon Highlanders and the Canadians took both prisoners and trenches, but was driven out by German trench mortars.92 The augury for the main assault was not good with too few trained ‘bombers’. Rawlinson carried out a detailed reconnaissance. ‘I had a tiring walk around the Givenchy trenches and sweated through everything.’93 Despite the ammunition shortage, the bombardment knocked the German first line about. At 5.59 pm a mine was successfully exploded and at 6 pm infantry advanced to the assault, capturing the enemy front line. Attackers came under very heavy artillery and rifle fire, met uncut German wire, formations became mixed up and many officers were killed. British bombers were ineffective as their store of grenades had been destroyed by shell fire early in the action. As the evening wore on, British battalions were counter-attacked and driven out of the trenches they had taken. The 16th brought more failure, as those battalions still in enemy trenches were successively driven out. The heavy mist prevented good observation for the guns. Haig ordered an attack on the same lines as the 15th with later timings. Small success was achieved, and it was decided there would be no further attacks that night.94 Rawlinson thought the attacks had held German troops and guns on the Givenchy front, assisting the French to the south, but the latter’s Artois offensive

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failed. On the 18th, Rawlinson postponed planned operations for twenty-four hours. He then fell back on ‘digging trenches in advance of our present line so as to maintain the offensive spirit’.95 The result was to save lives. Haig had been approached by Robertson to plan operations against Loos and he turned his attention to that.96 Joffre’s planned autumn attack would be in the Champagne. The BEF would assault Loos in support; thus the allies would hit both sides of the ‘Noyon Bulge’, the German salient pointing towards Paris. French and Haig initially did not like the plan. Haig’s reconnaissance showed a battlefield littered with slag heaps, miners’ houses and pitheads. Steel winding gear rising up to 100 feet above larger pitheads could be used for artillery spotting. Defenders would hold positions at Hill 70 and the Hohenzollern Redoubt looking down on the attackers. Enemy defences were immensely strong, and artillery and machine guns dominated the ground. The sixty-two-year-old Sir John French, whose health was no longer good, wanted a limited demonstration rather than a major assault. He proposed that British artillery neutralize the enemy’s guns and hold his infantry on their front. As yet, the Royal Artillery lacked the skill and means to do this.97 Nonetheless, Haig’s initial briefing to his corps commanders, Rawlinson (IV Corps) and Gough (I Corps) on 13 August, was that they would ‘assist the French by neutralising the hostile artillery and by holding the enemy’s infantry in our front’. All available troops would be in readiness to advance as soon as an opportunity offered itself. Use of ‘asphyxiating gas’ to support the attacks was to be considered.98 The Germans had first used chlorine gas at Second Ypres in April, evidence of Hun ‘frightfulness’, but L/Cpl Ramage of 1/Gordon Highlanders spoke for many when he argued: ‘Why object to gas and not bullets … we object to the Germans using chlorine scientifically. Why the hell don’t we use it? Humbug, hypocrisy and want of clear intelligence I expect.’99 On 19 August, Kitchener visited Haig to put a new complexion on plans for Loos. Kitchener doubted the Russians could withstand German blows much longer; their enormous losses in the battle of Gorlice-Tarnow eventually totalled 1.4 million.100 To take the pressure off them, the BEF ‘must act with all our energy and do our utmost to help the French, even though, by doing so, we suffered very heavy losses indeed’.101 Rawlinson was to attack Loos in the south and Gough the Hohenzollern Redoubt to the north. Rawlinson was pessimistic. The British could take the front-line trenches ‘without much trouble’, but the overall attack plan was ‘not an easy one & it will cost many lives’.102 On the 20th, Haig came to Rawlinson’s

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Map 7.2 Battle of Loos.

HQ for tea and explained that Kitchener wanted ‘a supreme effort next month both in justice to our own honour and to Russia – so our next attack must be “au fond”.’ Rawlinson feared heavy losses and doubted if they could penetrate

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German defences ‘unless the gas turns up trumps … but we are not very good at these new improvisations.’103 Good news for Rawlinson were staff changes. By August he had decided that his chief of staff Brigadier General Alister Dallas ‘will have to go’, preferably to a brigade to cushion the blow. So too his chief Gunner Hussey and Major General Lambert of 15th Division. ‘All these “degommes” are very trying and I hate having to do it but it is a matter of life and death,’ he wrote.104 On the 19th, Archie Montgomery took over, and was soon ‘shaking down to his work’. By the 26th Rawlinson was writing, ‘Montgomery is a great improvement on Dallas things go so much smoother and he is much more helpful.’105 Colonel Russell Luckock also joined IV Corps staff as GSO1.106 Hussey’s replacement was Brigadier Charles ‘Buddy’ Budworth. He proved as big an improvement as Montgomery. When Haig visited IV Corps at the start of September, he noted the artillery plan ‘seems to have been most thoroughly worked out’.107 Rawlinson had spent the 25th with Budworth arranging artillery tasks and targets, and the 26th working out the infantry attack. Now he was wavering between hope and pessimism. The attack was a huge task for the BEF – Britain’s biggest battle before the Somme – there was insufficient artillery, and chlorine gas would have to fill the gap. On 6 September, he went aloft in a plane for a view of the trenches, and saw enough work in progress to satisfy himself. ‘The sensation of flying is very pleasant but the noise and wind are terrific,’ he wrote. ‘One has no sense of speed nor does one feel the height at which one is. A very instructive and delightful trip’108 Diaries describe Haig, Rawlinson and Gough working together. At one stage both corps commanders thought ‘there is quite a good chance of doing a big thing’, although Rawlinson confided doubts to his diary. The Germans had three lines of defence, all well wired. Very uncertain was the wind which had to blow the gas across No-Man’s-Land; he felt ‘too much was left to chance’, and the night before the attack he ‘went off to dinner very despondent. The weather a bit of a gamble’.109 The four-day preliminary bombardment achieved only disappointing results. Both Haig and Rawlinson believed a long and methodical bombardment with enough shells could be effective, but there were insufficient guns and ammunition for even a prolonged bombardment to crush the defences, hence the need for the gas.110 Rawlinson had 251 guns to support his three divisions, fewer than the 340 of Neuve Chapelle and facing stronger defences. Ammunition was faulty. On 18 September, Rawlinson asked that certain stocks of ammunition be replaced, they were ‘absolutely unreliable and a serious source of danger to our own infantry’. First Army refused two days later.111

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Rawlinson had moved his advanced HQ into woods at Vaudricourt, about 6 miles behind the front. Here he was in contact by telephone with the three attacking divisions, 1st, 15th and 47th, the field artillery, the heavy artillery, the RFC and Haig’s headquarters.112 At a last meeting at 2 pm on the 24th Haig, Rawlinson and Gough considered alternatives if the wind was not right for gas. These proved unnecessary. Early on the morning of the 25th, Haig on the basis of a rather imprecise weather forecast ordered the gas to be used.113 At 5.50 am an intense bombardment began and the gas was released. ‘It was a wonderful sight,’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘The cloud was 2 or 300 feet high … The Phosphor bombs on the right were extraordinary … an enormous cloud of white smoke floated slowly over the German lines.’114 The attack was launched at 6.30 am Initially IV Corps was successful. In the south, 47th (London) Territorial Division captured its objectives and consolidated its line forming a defensive flank between two large slag heaps. This was accomplished with less than 1,000 casualties. The wire was successfully cut, and a rapid advance caught Germans emerging from their dugouts. Major General Barter commanding attributed the success to practising the assault over a marked course: ‘Every man knew exactly what he had to do.’ The smoke and gas had thoroughly cowed the enemy.115

Figure 7.1 Battle of Loos: British Gas on 25 September, photographed probably by a British soldier. Rawlinson described ‘an enormous cloud of white smoke [which] floated slowly over the German lines’.

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In the centre 15th (Scottish) New Army Division had the difficult tasks of taking Loos and Hill 70, breaching the German second line and pressing on to high ground some 3 miles beyond. This ambitious undertaking caused Rawlinson much heart-searching before the battle. Some men were gassed by their own cloud hanging in No-Man’s-Land, others were hit by enfilade machine-gun fire. But the wire was cut and the gas and smoke provided cover. Two brigades, 44 and 46, penetrated the Loos defence line and reached the village. Scots soldiers bombed and bayoneted their way into Loos, but discipline broke down, and there was widespread shooting of prisoners. A sergeant in 10/ Gordon Highlanders said ‘street fighting was very hot; barricades were climbed, houses bombed, and enemy detachments made prisoner’. German machinegunners resisting stubbornly in houses ‘were soon made short work of ’. The Hill 70 Redoubt proved to be unoccupied and at 10.10 am Major General F.W.N. McCracken commanding the Division told Rawlinson of its capture.116 In the north 1st Division was worst affected by the British gas, some 300 becoming casualties. The southern brigade was held up by uncut wire. The northern brigade despite losses made good progress through cut wire, and dug in facing the German second line with its wire uncut.117 Battalion COs used considerable scope to adapt their tactics.118 By mid-morning, IV Corps seemed on the verge of a major success. The previously doubtful Rawlinson told Haig that ‘the enemy was on the run’.119 By his account, IV Corps had achieved success ‘all along the line’ except opposite 1st Division’s southern brigade where ‘the gas blew back over our trenches and knocked over a good many of our men and officers in the 60th K[ings]R[oyal] R[ifle Corps]’.120 Kilted Scots soldiers streamed through Loos and ascended Hill 70 with ‘the appearance of a bank holiday crowd’.121 Most brigades in both Rawlinson’s and Gough’s corps were within sight of the second German line, but exploiting success was beyond the BEF’s capabilities. The Germans began shelling Hill 70 and sweeping it with MG fire. German reinforcements arrived. British units were mixed up, unable to follow-up quickly. British gunners found that dust, bad light, gas and smoke made observation practically impossible.122 If there had been a chance of success – and historians agree that this was a chimera – bringing forward the reserves, 21st and 24th Divisions of Major General Richard Haking’s XI Corps, was the key. The record of telephone conversations between Rawlinson, 1 Army HQ and Haking illustrates Rawlinson’s frustration, believing he could exploit 15th Division’s success.123 At 8.30 am he called First Army HQ suggesting XI Corps move at once. Delays because Sir John French was not at GHQ followed. By 1 pm Hill 70 was being

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counter-attacked. At 1.10 First Army HQ told him that 21st Division would come under the orders of GOC 15th Division and they were ‘to march as hard as possible to Loos’. This was a pious hope. It was not until 7.50 pm that XI Corps’s leading units entered the battlefield.124 Their orders were not issued until early the following day. This was one of disaster for the BEF. Two fresh German divisions entered the line that night. German IV Corps had recaptured the Quarries, one of Gough’s objectives. Early German counter-attacks threw the British off balance. Attempts to recapture the Quarries, enter Hulluch and retake Hill 70 were rushed, inadequately prepared, poorly supported by artillery. On Rawlinson’s front, 15th Division units were mixed together, tired, short of ammunition, food, water and officers to take charge. Major General McCracken opposed a renewed attack, but Rawlinson overruled him, contrary to his usual caution. As Nick Lloyd admits: ‘To be fair to Rawlinson, there was little he could do. The taking of Hill 70 and Hulluch were operations vital to the success of the main attacks to take place later in the morning.’ If they were still in German hands by the time 21st and 24th Divisions attacked at 11 am, the Germans would be able to enfilade the advance. They had to be taken.125 The Scots were unable to repeat earlier success under the enfilading cross-fire of machine guns. Of the two New Army divisions, 21st and 24th, only six battalions formed up at 11 am for their main attack. They marched through shellfire across open ground and up a low rise to the German second line. There in long grass they were stopped by uncut German wire 20 yards deep, losing 8,200 men from machine gun fire.126 Their officers’ reckless courage was to no avail, and the survivors fled to the rear. The British rallied and reoccupied the line of the night before, and the Germans suffered heavily in ill-conceived counter-attacks.127 Rawlinson told his diary that 21st and 24th Divisions ‘had panicked’. ‘As far as I can make out the whole 4 Brigades [sic] bolted in a large disorganised mass …. Had it not been for this we should certainly have held onto the Hill 70 Ridge.’128 He usually praised the troops for their efforts; here he was wrong, the fault not being that of untried troops, but of the poor arrangements by XI Corps. Brigadier G.C. Stewart told the official historian that there was ‘something wrong with our system of conducting op[eration]s’ to put in the two div[ision]s ‘to carry out a wellnigh impossible task, without adequate and efficient artillery support, and which resulted in them being sacrificed.’ Officers and men were shot down trying to tear uncut German wire with their bare hands.129 To Kitchener, Rawlinson attributed failure to the divisions being short of food and water, having poor discipline and inadequate artillery support.130 He might well

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have added their exhausting march on congested roads, for the staff-work and Royal Military Police control was poor.131 The battle continued for another three weeks. The French offensive in the Champagne broke the German first line and took 14,000 prisoners, but then bogged down. After heavy losses on 25 September, Joffre told Foch to close down the operations without giving the British the impression that they were being left to attack alone.132 The Guards Division, brought forward to stem the rout of 21th and 24th Divisions, was ordered on 27 September to retake Hill 70. With inadequate artillery support, they met an horrific fire as they crossed the open ground. Senior officers on the spot decided further progress was impossible and they withdrew 100 yards below the hill’s crest.133 Rawlinson condemned XI Corps Commander Richard Haking’s poor artillery handling: ‘If I had been doing it I should have kept every available gun on the objective for the attack up to the very last moment.’134 On the 29th Rawlinson went to Loos village ‘to see [Major General] Briggs’ [commanding 3rd Cavalry Division] and got heavily shelled ‘for my pains’. Briggs had been ordered to try to hold Loos, but the cavalry did not reach the village.135 Rawlinson had wanted to go forward and take command, but was not allowed to, rightly. Divisional commanders were killed doing exactly that. ‘They were pitching Black Marias [HE shell producing black smoke on exploding] and gas shells into the village with some frequency [he wrote] …. A good many of our dead were lying outside the German front line wire and more outside the wire protecting [the entrances?] to Loos village, about 100 at each place. The German front line trench was full of German dead. There was a dead German every 5 yards …. Our bombardment had knocked about the dugouts and trenches very much. It is a very wet night. Torrents of rain and as black as ink.’136 The battlefield had become a muddy labyrinth, making movement difficult and preventing basic supplies of water, food and ammunition arriving. Bavarian units ordered to retake Hohenzollern Redoubt on 27 Sept sank ‘up to their calves in thick slime’.137 On 1 October, IV Corps was pulled out of the line for rest and refit. ‘I am very happy with my new staff,’ wrote Rawlinson. ‘They have worked this shew [sic] admirably and I am pleased with all of them. Montgomery is an excellent staff officer.’138 Good staff work, however, had not enabled IV Corps to break German defences. The last British effort began on 13 October, Rawlinson moving closer to the divisional HQs. The bombardment by British heavy howitzers was ‘a great sight’, and with the wind almost due southwest, conditions should have been ideal for smoke and gas. The gas drifted towards German lines but did little

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harm to defenders. Smoke filled no-man’s-land but had begun to disperse when the British attacked, exposing them to German fire. Rawlinson was initially optimistic; 1st Division took about 500 yards of trench, but were driven out. German counter-attacks were halted, but on 17 October a last British attack using gas failed, the men too tired, preparations rushed.139 Loos almost matched First Ypres in its bloody cost: over 50,000 BEF casualties against 26,000 Germans. Three major generals commanding divisions had been killed, Tommy Capper, Frederick Wing and George Thesiger. Capper’s death was much mourned: ‘By his courage and devotion to duty, [he] set a splendid example to every officer, N.C.O. and man in the Seventh Division.’140 Haig’s conviction that gas would provide the opportunity for a major breakthrough, contrary to his original realistic assessment, was the prime culprit.141 The supporting cast of corps commanders share the blame: Haking for bad artillery planning and pushing forward 21st and 24th Divisions exhausted and led to think there would be little opposition; Gough for his usual aggression and bullying of subordinates; Rawlinson for failing to speak up about his doubts and then sharing Haig’s optimism.142 On the German side, General Sixt von Arnim’s IV Corps showed remarkable defensive tenacity and their machine gunners fought skilfully. A crucial failing in the battle was the poor quality of British grenades. Courage there was aplenty. Rawlinson praised his divisions: ‘Nothing could exceed the valour & dash with which they went forward.’143 Extraordinarily, Haig and his subordinates emerged with enhanced reputations, while that of Sir John French sank. The Times described IV Corps’ attack ‘under Sir Henry Rawlinson’ as ‘particularly brilliant and successful’ and gave his men ‘all due credit for incomparable skill, gallantry and tenacity’.144 Haig, Rawlinson, Gough and Haking were wrongly convinced they had had victory snatched from their grasp by Sir John French’s failure to release 21st and 24th Divisions early. On 24 October, George V visited Haig who told him that ‘French’s handling of the reserves in the last battle, his obstinacy and conceit, showed his incapacity’ and that he ought to be removed.145 On 16 November Lord Syndenham in the House of Lords stated that ‘a great victory was all but gained’. ‘ It was not want of gallantry on the part of our troops, but faulty staff arrangements which first held back and then rushed up the 21st and 24th division and hurled them into the fiery furnace of this great attack.’ Sydenham was one of many who pointed the finger at Sir John French.146 Tension between Haig and French has obscured the latter’s decline in health and his abdication to Haig of responsibility for the battle. French could not have sustained another year’s campaign. That he had to go was not in doubt.147

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Prior and Wilson forthrightly describe Rawlinson writing to Kitchener, the King’s private secretary Lord Stamfordham, Lord Derby at the War Office and Walter Bagot at the Ministry of Munitions to criticize French’s failure. Bagot showed the letter to the editor of the Times.148 It does not appear, however, from Rawlinson’s diaries or from French’s biographer’s account,149 that he joined Gough and Haking denouncing French to the King. On leave in early November, Rawlinson visited Kitchener to put his views, and was shocked at the War Minister’s physical deterioration.150 He visited Lloyd George at Munitions, but this was to acquire larger howitzers, 6-inch and above.151 While Rawlinson added his influence to the campaign to oust French, he was one of many. Prior and Wilson ignore French’s health. After some attempt to haggle over terms, French resigned ‘on the ground of age and fatigue’ and departed in early December.152 Haig received his letter of appointment on 10 December sealed in three envelopes. He took command on the 19th.153 This appeared a change for the better. At the turn of the year, Lloyd George wrote ‘Things are much more business-like than in French’s time. There is a new spirit. Haig seems very keen on his job and has a fine staff.’154 Who else was there to command since Smith-Dorrien’s removal? The alternative was Robertson, who like Rawlinson believed in ‘step-by-step’. According to Esher, however, Robertson’s ‘cool judgement and his true appreciation of our military necessities lead him to the correct conclusion that his place is at the War Office’.155 Haig would have been unsuited to the role of CIGS, inarticulate as he was in debate.156 While Rawlinson supported Haig’s appointment,157 he and Robertson in tandem would have fought a much better Somme, sharing a common view on limited ‘bites’. To benefit Haig’s staff, Rawlinson did him a favour, although possibly one he could not refuse. Haig especially felt the loss of his chief of staff, Major General Johnny Gough, fatally wounded by a German sniper. He died at 5 am on the 22 February: ‘We shall all miss him much,’ wrote Rawlinson, ‘for he was one of the best soldiers in the army.’158 Hubert to some extent succeeded Johnnie as Haig’s confidant and sounding board, but the brothers were very different.159 Nor was Brigadier General Richard Butler, Gough’s successor, a man of equal stamp. When Haig took command of the BEF, he asked Rawlinson to let his ADC Philip Sassoon, MP for Folkestone holding a commission in the East Kent Yeomanry, become his private secretary. After an initial posting with Sir John French, the urbane, sophisticated Sassoon served as one of Rawlinson’s ADCs. This suited him: both were Etonians, moved in the same sort of circles politically and socially and were interested in art.160 In September, 1915, Sassoon wrote

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of the fighting that he was ‘full of quiet hope & sober confidence’, mirroring Rawlinson’s view. He was ‘sick of the war. But we must go on till we have made those devils pay for the ruin & havoc they have caused’. When on 11 December Haig asked for Sassoon’s services, Rawlinson decided he ‘would not of course stand in Phillip’s way’.161 At GHQ, Sassoon was no Gough substitute, but rather an observer and arranger, raised the tone of the mess, and acted a conduit of good news to Rawlinson. He wrote on Haig’s behalf in December 1915 that he was confident Rawlinson would get IV Army when it formed, IV being ‘your lucky number’.162 The year had ended hopefully for Rawlinson, and for British war-making, with a BEF commander who seemed the best available man for the role163 and a new CIGS, William Robertson, bluff and strongly spoken, who had been given Kitchener’s power to advise the government over operations and in their name issue operational orders.164 If Rawlinson’s closer relationship with Haig began in the discreditable episode of ‘Joey’ Davies, it grew stronger from their working against the difficulties of 1915. Loyalty to Haig had grown stronger from Sir John French’s having ‘a down on me’ for publishing a complimentary order to his men – ‘I shall do all I can to help DH’.165 During the ‘shells scandal’, Rawlinson was furious at the press attack on his mentor Kitchener: ‘the dirtiest lowdown trick that I have ever heard’. He reassured himself, ‘I know I have a friend in DH who will see that I am not unjustly treated.’166 At the start of Loos, Rawlinson told Haig ‘that he was glad for England’s sake that the fighting of the coming battle was in [Haig’s] hands’.167 When Lloyd George tried to pump Rawlinson about Haig in London in November, he loyally replied that ‘he was the best soldier we have out in France’.168 In 1916, we shall find, as Peter Simkins writes, ‘ample evidence [in Rawlinson’s diaries] of regular, friendly and fruitful contacts’.169 Friendship in such a situation could include a degree of calculation as well as the satisfaction of working with a tried and tested colleague. Looking at the wider war, the picture was worse. In the spring, Rawlinson had optimistically written that the summer was ‘Germany’s last chance’ and if ‘she cannot do something really decisive before next October, she must eventually go under … the longer the war goes on the more certain will be the Allied victory. We are all fighting for democratic ideals and the cause of freedom, and in the end right will triumph over might.’170 At the close of 1915, that distant vision seemed further away. Russians and Serbs had been routed. Western Front offensives and the Dardanelles had brought failure and heavy losses. For 1916 there was hope: the Kitchener armies could be available. So far, however, Haig

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and his subordinates had searched in vain for a means of not just breaking into but also breaking through the German lines. Shortage of men, munitions and guns could be put right, but contact with the attacking force once it crossed NoMan’s-Land proved more intractable. After surveying the war pessimistically on 24 October, Rawlinson wrote: ‘The one thing certain is that so long as we go on killing Boches we are approaching the successful conclusion of the war for it is only by this means that we can finally triumph. For this reason the Western theatre will continue to be the important one if only that we have more Boches here than anywhere else … We must continue to kill Boches with as little loss as possible to ourselves.’171 Was the solution therefore limited objectives and a war of attrition? If so, the ambitious cavalryman Haig might not prove the best choice to lead the BEF.

8

The Battle of the Somme

‘The muddy grave of the German field army.’ (Captain von Hentig) Ahead of us rumbled and thundered artillery fire of a volume we had never dreamed of; a thousand quivering lightnings bathed the western horizon in a sea of flame. A continual stream of wounded, with pale, sunken faces, made their way back, often barged aside by clattering guns or munitions columns heading the other way. (Lieutenant Ernst Juenger, Storm of Steel) Haig’s promotion left the command of First Army vacant. Haig wrote and then telegraphed Kitchener pressing Rawlinson’s fitness for the post. When his first effort failed, he wired on 20 December that they were ‘anxiously awaiting news’. The same day Robertson told him that Charles Monro, who was supervising the Gallipoli evacuation, a master stroke without losses, would take First Army. Haig pressed again: ‘Serious delay in connection with many important and pressing matters would result from this appointment which would be very detrimental to future operations. I trust for this reason alone that nothing will prevent the immediate appointment of Rawlinson as previously requested.’ Kitchener replied that he was ‘sorry not to have been able to meet your views about Rawlinson and the First Army. I hope he will get one later on as I know how well he has worked.’1 Rawlinson would command Fourth Army. Haig’s advocacy concealed mixed feelings: to his diary he confided, ‘Though not a sincere man, [Rawlinson] has brains and experience.’ The new CIGS Robertson had agreed he would be the best man.2 Rawlinson was phlegmatic when Henry Wilson told him of the decision. That evening, 19 December, was Phillip Sassoon’s last at IV Corps HQ: ‘I am genuinely sorry that he is going. We shall all miss him terribly.’ On the 21st, he took temporary command of First Army, knowing he would soon move.

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Even before Haig succeeded French, the Allies had agreed at Joffre’s Chantilly HQ on 6 December to overcome Germany’s advantage of interior lines by coordinated offensives on the Russian, Italian and Western Fronts. Attrition of the German army was set as the goal for 1916.3 It was yet to decide where the French and British would attack in the west. On 1 February, Haig with Launcelot Kiggell, his chief of staff, unfolded to Rawlinson and Montgomery plans for 1916: ‘very secret, a very high compliment to me’. On 4 February Rawlinson handed over First Army to Monro.4 On the evening of 5 February, he proudly began a new diary: ‘Tonight the IV Army is born, may it have a successful and serious career. Tonight the new moon greeted us as we walked home from visiting the billets & chateaux available, and a beautiful moon she was.’5 Rawlinson had a staff and aspirations, but his command proper started on 1 March.6 With the Kitchener divisions arriving in France, Fourth Army grew to half a million men, a mighty but imperfect force for the BEF’s 1916 campaign. Rawlinson wasted no time. On 6 February, he met Brigadier General Hugh Trenchard, commanding the Royal Flying Corps in France, and discussed ‘many important points’ including the organization of air units and patrols.7 Haig and Rawlinson both worked with Trenchard. On the Somme, the RFC and the French Air Force enjoyed air superiority, dominant until 17 September when new German aircraft arrived.8 The RFC spotted for the artillery and prevented the enemy doing the same, especially for counter-battery fire. On 14 February, Haig accepted Joffre’s plan for the Anglo-French offensive in Picardy astride the River Somme, to be preceded by a ‘wearing-out’ attack by the BEF in Flanders.9 On 21 February, however, 1,220 Germans guns firing along a 12-mile-front heralded the Battle of Verdun. German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn planned to draw the French into a battle which would wear down their army and force the British into an offensive for its relief.10 Verdun lasted longer than the Somme and drew in most of the French army. The British took over the major role on the Somme. Pressure grew on Haig to launch his attack on or near 1 July.11 At the end of February, Rawlinson moved into the Chateau of Querrieu near Albert.12 On 12 March, he took Montgomery and his chief gunner Brigadier General J.F.N. ‘Curly’ Birch along the French front line, seeing the section that Fourth Army would occupy. Fourth Army would be interposed between Allenby’s Third Army and the River Somme.13 He eagerly grasped the challenge of preparing for the huge offensive: ‘It will be a great battle & I am delighted at having the duty of thinking & working it out.’14 Considering 1915 failures, his confidence is impressive. It stemmed in

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part from his able chief of staff, the two working almost as one, Montgomery preparing the initial plan for the attack when Rawlinson was unwell, reflecting the ‘bite & hold’ concept.15 Esher, who predicted that Montgomery would ‘command the British Armies of the future’ (he did become CIGS), wrote after meeting him: ‘His capacity is obvious after two minutes’ talk in spite of his disconcerting charm. They say he is tenacious and even masterful.’16 Edward Spears, liaison officer to the French, commented: ‘He was efficiency itself, was never ruffled, and had a much more methodical, better-ordered brain than his chief, who absolutely relied upon him. They made a remarkable combination, to be compared only, as far as our army was concerned, with General Plumer and his Chief of Staff, Tim Harington.’17 Both remarked on his height, his clear blue eyes, his good looks and his charm. The shrewdly observant Indian cavalryman, George Barrow, considered him ‘a staff officer of outstanding ability’.18 On 29 March, a conference with Allenby and Trenchard laid the groundwork for RFC support. Rawlinson would have three artillery spotting squadrons and one fighting squadron for protection. His aircraft, the FE2b and DH2, ‘pushers’ with rear engines, but fairly fast and manoeuvrable, could take on the German Fokkers. Rawlinson observed that both pilots and observers were ‘new and very inexperienced’, but by late April ‘our De Havillands’ were learning ‘how to cope with the Fokkers’. RFC aircraft gave invaluable service directing the guns and photographing the enemy front.19 British soldiers who had experienced the ‘dreary, drab and depressing surroundings’ of Flanders shared their commander’s view that Picardy was ‘a very pleasant change’. Open fields with wide stretches of scarlet poppies, yellow mustard and blue cornflowers had ‘a remarkable effect in raising the already high spirits of the troops’.20 Looking at Thiepval, Rawlinson saw that the position offered German defenders opportunities for enfilade fire.21 There were however ‘plenty of old trenches’ which could be made into forming up places, and artillery observation was good.22 British artillery could be well covered from view. Places for assembling the assaulting infantry behind the trench line ‘are the best I have seen anywhere’.23 German trenches were on a forward slope. British guns would prevent repairs except at night. Picardy, however, had one serious disadvantage: lack of infrastructure. Behind the lines, Fourth Army had to build the equivalent of a major city to sustain a fighting force of unprecedented size and appetite for both fodder and firepower. The channel ports were distant, the railways inadequate, and the roads few and indifferent.24 To supply the battle, the British built eight new

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railheads, sunk wells, buried 7,000 miles of telephone cable underground and laid 43,000 above ground. Fourth Army staff work was equal to this ‘mighty feat of organization and administration, carried out with a considerable degree of efficiency’25; the price would be paid in training. Rawlinson’s concentration on aircraft, artillery and infrastructure showed that he meant to wage a battle of material (‘Materialschlacht’, although the Germans had not yet coined the phrase) to kill Germans.26 This followed the tradition of British Imperial Warfare, using machines as force multipliers.27 As the battle proceeded, BEF demand for ammunition, fodder and military goods of all kinds put great strain on its logistics. A Fourth Army Conference on 15 July, a fortnight into the battle, projected a required thirty-five trains per day in each direction, bringing supplies and evacuating wounded. Steep gradients caused derailments and accidents. ‘Had a major breakthrough occurred on the Somme during August 1916, the BEF could not have adequately sustained its pursuit of the Germans.’28 Building the infrastructure hindered battle preparation. Kitchener divisions had been in France for ten months or more and most were accustomed to Western Front conditions, but training standards varied. This was particularly true of the artillery because of insufficient time, guns and ammunition for practice. On 12 May Rawlinson thought that training was going on ‘well as a whole. Much good work being done in the training of specialists and the physical fitness of the soldier’. He noted that Haig was pleased with Ivor Maxse’s 18th Division. The 18th Division was exceptional. Maxse rehearsed his men in the use of Lewis guns and trench mortars, and briefed them using sandbox models of German defences based on aerial photographs.29 Even the establishment of a Fourth Army school taking 100 officers and 100 NCOs for a month’s course and divisional training schools for young officers proved insufficient.30 Rawlinson and Haig failed to ensure that their citizen army was ready for the battle to come. In a coalition, Rawlinson worked with French allies. He was ‘on genuinely good terms with the French … most of the time’, helped by speaking their language well.31 His cheerful personality, his ‘way of floating over and away from his troubles’, helped solve mutual problems. He met Foch commanding the French army group twenty-three times and Fayolle commanding Sixth Army eighteen times. Rawlinson thought Fayolle had ‘sound ideas & is very wide awake for a man of 67’, and Balfourier commanding XX Corps was ‘a charming old gentleman’.32 Nine days into the battle, Rawlinson asked Fayolle to allow Balfourier’s XX Corps to remain his neighbour ‘owing to the excellent

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relations established with this corps’.33 Unfortunately, for most of the campaign, ‘the Allied armies were effectively conducting separate offensive operations side by side, rather than the co-ordinated strategic operation they had prepared’. Nonetheless, Fourth Army endeavoured to copy French manuals and absorb the lessons of Verdun.34 Foch and Rawlinson regarded the coming battle as a siege operation, and rather than seeking a breakthrough, wanted to fight a series of limited battles using huge artillery concentrations. Haig continued to press for bolder advances.35 By early May, Rawlinson was ‘much busier’. He had less time for administrative services ‘which I have to leave to [Major General H.C.] Sutton’ and an increased ‘Q’ staff. He was going through corps and divisional plans of attack. His routine began at 7 am rising ‘for an enjoyable early morning ride’, making a point of going to bed at 11 pm to ensure a good night’s sleep.36 On 6 May, Haig had decided Rawlinson needed help to control his five corps, and he gave him Major General Sir Hubert Gough. ‘I am very glad to have him,’ wrote Rawlinson, but Gough personified a different school of offensive doctrine, insisting that if units stopped at a line dictated by the artillery plan, early success would be lost. Rawlinson placed greater emphasis on the guns, pointing to tragedies of attackers pushing too far into enemy positions.37 This was reinforced by a meeting with Kitchener on 30 March and discussions with Montgomery the next day, their conclusions fortified by knowledge of corps commanders’ opposition to an ambitious plan.38 Their unanimity points the finger at Haig as primarily responsible for the 1 July disaster. His thinking was akin to Gough’s. His method was to delegate planning to respective army headquarters and then call the plans to GHQ for comment and amendment. Haig and Rawlinson’s divergence of views was to produce a disastrous ‘half-baked compromise’.39 A wide front, desired by both Foch and Haig following 1915 experience, would prevent the attackers being enfiladed from the flank.40 The 20,000 yards from Gommecourt in the north to Mametz in the south were the maximum distance that Rawlinson considered could be suppressed by his 200 heavy howitzers.41 He and Montgomery wanted a first step to capture the German front line only, ‘bite-and-hold’. The second line would follow.42 Haig’s insistence on a single lunge extended the depth to be bombarded from 1,250 to 2,500 yards without increase in guns or weight of shell.43 The overwhelming evidence is that Haig was wrong. General Birch wrote: ‘Poor Haig – as he was always inclined to – spread his guns.’44 Was Haig’s inability to grasp the use of the guns combined with a failure ‘to engage in a proper discourse with subordinates’?45 Rawlinson’s diaries pledge support for

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Haig, but give little evidence of the two thrashing-out differences. Discussion was conducted by letters and through the intermediary of Haig’s chief of staff, Major General Launcelot Kiggell or Brigadier General ‘Tavish’ Davidson, Director of Military Operations. Was Haig ‘wary of Rawlinson because … Rawlinson had sharper wits than he’ and was articulate, was sociable and had political friends?46 Rawlinson convinced Haig of the necessity of a long bombardment, but not limited gains.47 He wrote: I am quite clear in my mind now, about the plan. The bombardment is to be deliberate, four or five days, according to the ammunition supply. The attack is to go for the big thing [i.e. breakthrough]. I still think we would do better to proceed by shorter steps; but I have told D.H. I will carry out his plan with as much enthusiasm as if it were my own.48

On 23 May he still feared that the offensive was a gamble; only if the attack started a panic would Fourth Army advance further than the first line.49 There would be no German panic, even in the face of Allied success in the south. On 7 June Rawlinson personally and the British Empire collectively received a huge shock: HMS Hampshire had been sunk by a mine off the Orkneys and Kitchener drowned. The news ‘made me sad all day’. Rawlinson was glad Kitchener ‘had completed his great work of raising the new armies’ and thought his death would make Britain ‘more determined to continue the war to the bitter end, and to exact retribution to the utmost possible limit’.50 His conservatism in planning the attack should have been strengthened knowing that Kitchener did not want a ‘big push’,51 but in June hesitations seem to have vanished. His operations order of 14 June called for the enemy’s defensive system to be broken.52 Perhaps he was convinced by optimistic intelligence. Brigadier General John Charteris, Haig’s intelligence chief, underestimated enemy strength and overestimated their exhaustion from Verdun. Railway movements through Belgium seemed to show that German troops were being sent east to stem Brusilov’s Russian offensive.53 On 15 June, Haig set ambitious goals, with the Pozieres ridge as a minimum. On 21 June, he wrote that once the ridge was taken, ‘an effort should be made to push the cavalry through, covered with advanced guards and supported by as many divisions as Rawlinson can collect’. With Bapaume secure, Fourth Army would advance to the Bapaume– Peronne road.54 Mixed-arms mobile forces centred on cavalry, part of Hubert Gough’s Reserve Army, would exploit the breakthrough.55 They were mustered behind Rawlinson’s northerly army corps: Lieutenant General Aylmer HunterWeston’s VIII Corps, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Morland’s X Corps and

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Lieutenant General William Pulteney’s III Corps. On the right, Major General Henry Horne’s XV Corps and Lieutenant General Walter Congreve XIII Corps had limited objectives and would act as a protective flank to the east.56 Rawlinson still reiterated the strength of enemy defences: ‘very much more formidable than any we have had to deal with in any previous attack’ and including eleven strongly defended villages.57 He took firm action when he divided Congreve’s command and XV Corps was formed under Horne to Congreve’s left. Rawlinson was dissatisfied with Congreve’s planning. Congreve protested to Haig, who supported Rawlinson. Rawlinson recorded his satisfaction: ‘very different from things under Sir John [French]’.58 He was delighted to gain Horne’s services; Horne admired him and they got on well.59 He arrived on 23 April, stayed with Rawlinson ‘& got all my orders & instructions’ and inspected his section of the line.60 He proved an outstanding corps commander. His chief gunner, Brigadier E.W. Alexander, had fired an embryonic creeping barrage at Loos.61 In the creeping barrage’s development, Major Becke, R.A., gives credit to both Rawlinson and Horne.62 At Fourth Army conferences on 16 April and 17 May, Rawlinson stated that ‘lifts’ of the artillery barrage must conform to the infantry’s advance and that guns must ‘arrose [spray]’ each objective before the infantry assault and not move on too quickly. Instructions in XIII Corps amplified this; in XV Corps an artillery barrage in front of the infantry was to follow issued timings. In these corps, the ‘lifts’ were forebears of a creeping barrage. Rawlinson did not, however, enforce his policy on subordinates. There was as yet no uniform doctrine, as was introduced in early 1917. He allowed Hunter-Weston’s corps engineers to explode the mine under the Hawthorn Redoubt ten minutes before zero-hour and his gunners to lift their barrage off the German front lines.63 German defences were extremely strong. They occupied ridges running north-west to south-east. Thiepval, Beaumont Hamel, Pozieres and High Wood were dominating positions; the marshy River Ancre flowed through the north, and the larger River Somme to the south. Germans held two developed lines 2,000 metres apart, bunkers and dugouts, each deep enough to withstand heavy artillery fire, protected by two belts each of thirty-metre-deep barbed wire. Infantry could call from the artillery pre-planned barrage, Sperrfeuer. On 1 July this would prevent reinforcements crossing No Man’s Land.64 The Germans had started a third line, not so well built, and a fourth and fifth were later dug. The Somme was held by the German Second Army under General of Infantry Fritz von Below. Generalleutnant Freiherr von Soden, commander of the 26th

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Reserve Division, was primary architect of German success on 1 July.65 He painstakingly sited his machine guns, using spurs and re-entrants to maximize the machine guns’ beaten zone and enfilade attackers.66 The 26th and 28th Reserve Divisions had drilled continually to improve their times for rushing out of dugouts, setting up machine guns along the parapet and calling down artillery fire. A specially trained quick reaction force was going to win the firefight against British soldiers trying to occupy the lip of the Hawthorn crater.67 On 24 June, the bombardment began, which was planned to last five days. Rawlinson had 1,500 guns, two-thirds were field guns firing wire-cutting shrapnel. Ammunition for the bigger guns was unreliable, the 9.2-inch howitzer shells losing their fuses in flight and not exploding. Perhaps one-third of the shells were duds.68 In any case, they were spread over too wide an area. Some 1.73 million shells were fired in the bombardment, but German dugouts survived. Training of the gunners, on whom much depended, for example cutting barbed wire, was incomplete, despite Rawlinson’s urging at a Fourth Army conference in April.69 Rain falling in torrents forced the postponement of the attack for two days. Morale remained high: the 2/Royal Welsh Fusiliers sang, ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go’.70 Fourth Army Intelligence mostly based on prisoner interrogation supported Rawlinson’s view that ‘[m]uch damage [had been] done to enemy trenches’.71 Prisoners told of trenches knocked about, wire cut, the bombardment preventing nightly repair, disorganization of supplies and shortage of water. British aircraft dominated the skies, ranging on eighty-three targets on 26 June and fifty on the 29th. A deserter of the German 109th Regiment reported low morale: the men in the trenches had had nothing to eat for three days except some coffee and had consumed their iron rations. An 18th Division patrol entered an enemy trench after killing several Germans and found it much damaged. News from the northern sector was not as good. On VIII Corps’ front, alert defenders engaged a British patrol in hand-to-hand fighting. Wire-cutting was least successful here.72 Earlier, on 5 June, a raid by men of 29th Division had found deep dugouts between the German front and support lines with exits into both. These, thought Rawlinson, ‘may be very difficult to deal with’.73 At 7.30 am on 1 July, the bombardment lifted off the German trenches. Under a cloudless blue sky,74 the British infantry rose to the attack. The time was a compromise with the French; Rawlinson wanted a dawn assault. How should they cross No Man’s Land? Rawlinson’s Tactical Notes did not lay down a speed of advance: ‘occasions may arise where the rapid advance of some lightlyequipped men on some particular part of the enemy’s defences may turn the

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Map 8.1 Battle of the Somme.

scale’. ‘There can be no definite rule as regards the best formation for attack.’75 Battalion commanders could lead their men into No Man’s Land before zerohour or use the abandoned trenches which Rawlinson had noted in March to build ‘Russian saps’.76 Fifty-three of eighty battalions in the first wave crept close to German wire, and ten others rushed at the double, not weighed down by their

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equipment; twelve did advance at a steady pace, some of these following the ‘lifts’ of embryonic creeping barrages.77 British officers noted ‘the complete failure of our Artillery fire on the front line of Thiepval’;78 ‘lifts’ rather than a true creeping barrage drew rapidly away from the attackers (as Rawlinson had warned).79 By contrast, German shells fell on the forming-up trenches shortly before zero hour. Second Army was fully warned by intercepting careless British wireless messages.80 Germans lined the fire step at zero hour and massacred attackers north of the Albert–Bapaume Road.81 British subalterns lacked experience and training: half-trained young officers stood perplexed and paralysed if they penetrated German lines.82 Rawlinson watched from ‘the Grandstand’ near Albert from 6.30 am. He could see little beyond ‘the mass of bursting shells’ and his aircraft over German trenches. By 8.30 he was back at Querrieu, receiving optimistic reports from corps via his battery of telephones. He thought the battle had begun well: ‘we captured all the front line trenches easily’. By midday he knew that strongpoints were holding up his attack at Beaumont-Hamel, Thiepval, Fricourt and Mametz. By 3.15 he knew of VIII Corps’ failure. By 7.30 pm defeat in the north was clear. By contrast, the French Sixth Army had taken their objectives to his right, and he congratulated Foch. Of British losses, he would not have a full picture for nearly three days.83 British success was in the south. Horne’s XV Corps and Congreve’s XIII Corps had better fire plans and were better prepared. On Congreve’s front the attackers were ‘favoured with the most perfect observation from the Albert-Peronne Road’.84 Abutting the French, 30th Division achieved the greatest advance. Rawlinson’s meetings with Foch and Fayolle had secured French cooperation.85 Montauban was nearly obliterated by the weight of Allied artillery. ‘Large parties of [captured] Bosch laughing and dancing like demented creatures went streaming back … unguarded, holding their arms up and calling, “Mercy, Kamarad”’.86 Southern German defences were no pushover. Losses in XIII Corps exceeded 6,000.87 Historians have speculated that Rawlinson could have achieved a major advance on this flank had he redeployed his cavalry from their position near the Albert–Bapaume road.88 Cavalry could move on a Western Front battlefield, but their successes were usually at regimental level.89 The cavalry were 9 miles from Montauban, but further by any route along reconnoitred and prepared lines of advance. ‘Conditions at the commencement of the Somme battle and until mid-September were such that cavalry had to prepare tracks in anticipation of a possible break through, as the ground was so broken up with shell fire and

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littered with wire. Time and labour available did not permit of tracks being made in all directions.’90 None had been prepared to the south. The probability of cavalry redeployment on 1 July was slight, even had Rawlinson not stood them down at 3 pm. Staff work and traffic control difficulties in the BEF would have made such a move problematic at best. Horne’s and Congreve’s corps plans did not include further exploitation; in Haig’s plan they were simply a flank guard.91 Gough himself did not appear to believe such a move possible.92 The capture of 3 square miles in the south contrasted with disaster elsewhere: Fourth Army suffered 50,000 casualties, of whom 15,000 were dead, against 8,000 Germans on and before 1 July.93 Rawlinson wrote that the courage of the New Armies was magnificent, and that on 2 and 3 July heavy fighting continued all day by III Corps at La Boiselle and XV Corps at Fricourt. By the 3rd over 8,000 prisoners had been taken.94 The next decisions were out of Rawlinson’s hands. On the German side, Falkenhayn countermanded Below’s order to withdraw on his left facing the French and XIII Corps. He replaced his chief of staff with Fritz von Lossberg, the German army’s foremost defensive expert.95 Below’s new orders, to hold fast to present positions and regain any lost ground, encouraged counter-attacks and the massing of men in improvised positions. During the Somme campaign, the Germans launched 330 counter-attacks.96 The French still fighting at Verdun insisted the offensive continue. Haig instructed Rawlinson to exploit southern success rather than northern failure.97 Rawlinson’s doubts show that his judgement was not at its best at this moment, and the official historian Edmonds later accused Fourth Army staff of falsifying the record to defend their chief.98 Haig was right. He divided the battlefield, Rawlinson placing VIII and X Corps under Gough with responsibility north of the Albert–Bapaume road.99 A reduced Fourth Army faced the most difficult assault tasks.100 Rawlinson’s men sought to clear the substantial woods, especially Mametz Wood, which was lying in front of the next objective, the German 2nd line. Rawlinson’s attacks against these dispersed objectives were narrow and piecemeal. The period 2–13 July cost the British 25,000 casualties.101 The Germans fully exploited the woods’ defensive strength, for even trees reduced to shattered stumps provided cover for resilient machine-gunners.102 Nonetheless, the attacks kept them off balance; Fourth Army retained the initiative.103 In one attack on 3 July, 62nd Brigade followed closely on an intensive bombardment by Stokes Mortars and completely surprised the enemy in Shelter Wood.104 German counter-attacks were piecemeal. The Germans found themselves ‘in a meat-grinder … facing superior, increasingly effective British artillery, which

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was enjoying the benefits of skillful observation’ by the Royal Flying Corps with its marked air superiority.105 Rawlinson urged at a pre-battle conference that aircraft seek the enemy and inform ground troops of their position. Each division arranged signalling between aircraft and infantry.106 Within ten days of the battle opening, the Germans suffered 40,187 casualties.107 On 11 July Falkenhayn called off his offensive at Verdun. By 13 July Rawlinson was ready to attack the German second position. Planning had begun on 3 July.108 Optimism at Fourth Army HQ led Rawlinson to seek ‘a really decisive Battle of Bapaume’ as intelligence reported that German morale was low. His first orders issued on 8 July aimed for an attack on the 10th. The RFC undertook close reconnaissance, XV and XIII Corps began to mass guns, and discussion by Rawlinson and his corps and divisional commanders and senior artillery officers led to the decision to undertake a night advance, form up in No Man’s Land and launch a dawn assault.109 On the night of 10– 11 July, the British established themselves in Mametz and Trones Woods and Contalmaison, taking over 500 prisoners. Both Haig and the French doubted that the BEF’s citizen soldiers could carry out the plan. Rawlinson’s corps and divisional commanders remained in favour. So did others. Montgomery later wrote: ‘all the subordinate commanders right down into battalions believed it would be successful’.110 Rawlinson sought agreement from GHQ by telephone, but Kiggell told him Haig would not consent. Rawlinson’s diary shows that he stuck to the plan’s essence, delaying the attack twenty-four hours until the morning of the 14th. He did however accept Haig’s wish for the use of cavalry, briefing commanders of the 2nd and 3rd Cavalry Divisions on action if the attack broke through.111 Early on the 12th, Haig replied to an earlier Rawlinson letter. His answer shows good relations, but also an assumption that he was in control: ‘I was greatly touched at receiving your charming letter this morning, and hasten to send you a line to thank you a thousand times for your loyal & soldierlike decision to “play the game” to the utmost of your powers, whatever plan may be considered by me the best under the circumstances of the case.’ He went on to say they had always ‘won through’ by united action, that he had ‘given careful thought to all the “pros” and “cons” of the situation’ and that ‘I practically concur in your amended plan’. He said Kiggell would visit and explain his decision.112 Kiggell rang and said Haig, although against the night march, agreed to a simultaneous attack by XV and XIII Corps. Kiggell, Davidson, Butler and Birch on Haig’s staff all accepted the plan. On the evening of the 12th Rawlinson made a final appeal to Haig in a private letter, backed by Montgomery seeking Kiggell’s support.

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Figure 8.1 Haig and Rawlinson at Rawlinson’s Querrieu headquarters during the Battle of the Somme. Despite tension caused by their differing approaches to attacking entrenched Germans, they forged an ‘effective working relationship’ (Professor William Philpott). Photo by Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo.

Haig finally agreed after further intervention by two of his staff.113 At 5 pm on the 12th last orders were issued. On the 13th, Haig called once more. Rawlinson ‘went through the whole scheme again and I think I convinced him that the risks are not as great as he had anticipated’. Air superiority would hugely aid the artillery.114

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Map 8.2

The preparations paid careful attention to secrecy and extensive reconnaissance by both senior and junior officers. Sappers and pioneers rebuilt roads and trackways and filled trenches criss-crossing the battlefield. The guns fired a two-day preparatory bombardment of over 375,000 shells, a five-minute intensive hurricane bombardment before the attack and a barrage with lifts of fifty yards at a time.115 Trench mortar batteries fired to destroy the deep bunkers. Six brigades totalling 22,000 men made the assault. In the approach march, white engineer tape-marked the routes without physical features. Enemy activity was desultory shelling. Two Bavarian patrols in No Man’s Land were intercepted, and two reported no contact.116 Deserters said that no attack was expected.117 At 3.25 am on 14 July, as dawn was breaking, the leading waves charged. The assaulting troops were in some cases within 100 yards of enemy trenches when they attacked. Forward trenches fell quickly. A chaplain with the 8/King’s Own Royal Lancasters watched the German trenches ‘lashed with a hail of shells – 2,000 guns of all sizes barked and roared at once. It was stupendous, the sky was lighted up with the continual flashes and the whole earth throbbed and rocked.’118 At the moment of assault the guns lifted 100 yards behind enemy trenches and formed a curtain of fire to stop reinforcements. At 4.30 Rawlinson

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anxiously awaited news. Congreve and Horne told him by telephone that the troops were in possession of all the first objectives. (In fact, one, Delville Wood, was not taken.) Things had gone so well that Rawlinson authorized Congreve to send through the 2nd Cavalry Division. The cavalry, however, did not get forward quickly, due to the difficulty of crossing trenches, according to 3rd Division’s War Diary.119 The sluggish passage of orders along the chain of command caused delay. German machine-gunners were holding up XIII Corps. At 2.30 pm the frustrated Rawlinson wrote: ‘Oh! If only we could get the Cav[alr]y through to charge them.’120 Not until 6 pm did they cross trenches full of German dead. At 7.35 pm Rawlinson telephoned Haig with the message, ‘Indian cavalry sharpening their swords’. At 8 pm the 7th Dragoon Guards’ lead squadron charged Germans sheltering in shell holes, while the Deccan Horse advanced on their right. Some sixteen Germans were speared with lances and over thirty captured, but by now German reinforcements had arrived and the cavalry withdrew to a defensive position. High Wood remained uncaptured. Rawlinson told his diary that ‘it was likely to be the scene of further bloody combats’.121 The cavalry’s difficulties and German speed in advancing reinforcements suggest that horsemen would have had no more success on 1 July.122 Haig congratulated Rawlinson and told his wife: ‘This is indeed a very great success. The best day we have had this war.’123 Rawlinson thought it: ‘One of the greatest days of my life’.124 Fourth Army had broken into the German line on a front of 6,000 yards and inflicted over 2,300 casualties. The effect on the German commander-in-chief was striking. ‘Falkenhayn’s nerves were shot,’ War Minister Wild von Hohenborn recorded, ‘he was about to throw in the towel completely’.125 The Germans did not throw in the towel. By 11:30 am they were launching the first of their counter-attacks.126 British failure to follow up the success of the 14th led to a long period of bitter fighting. Wet weather frustrated advance and grounded aircraft. On the 18th Rawlinson noted: ‘clouds not more than 500 feet & drizzling rain. It is dispiriting.’ The 22nd was another ‘anxious and worrying day’ as the Germans had dug a new trench to the north-west of High Wood. This became the first obstacle to attacks on the wood.127 German defenders continued to exploit the woods’ defensive strengths. Rawlinson came to lament the loss of four days, 10 to 14 July, spent attacking intermediate positions before the big assault. ‘These four days would in all probability have enabled us to gain possession of the hostile third line of defence, which at that time was less than half finished, in the same rush and had this been

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done we could have passed the cavalry through and made a big haul of guns. It makes me very sick to think of the “might have beens”.’128 Perhaps, but Rawlinson and his staff were not as slick as they became in 1918. The Germans were quicker to bring up reinforcements,129 as shell holes, barbed wire, trenches and other battle debris held back the attackers. In the phase from mid-July until September, the British found themselves contained in a natural amphitheatre. Martinpuich, Ginchy and Guillemont villages and High Wood and Delville Wood formed defensive bastions against which the British flung themselves. To the north Gough’s Reserve Army fought to occupy the Pozières heights east of Thiepval, while to the south French Sixth Army advanced across the bluffs north of the Somme. The frustrations of this long phase are typified by costly attacks on the seventy-five-acre High Wood. These lasted nearly two months until its capture in the major assault of 15 September. There British and German soldiers fought to the limits of courage and endurance, sustaining some of the worst horrors of Western Front fighting.130 High Wood just over 500 feet above sea level had a dominating position. The tangled mass, tree roots protruding from smashed and blackened timber left by repeated bombardment, provided ideal defence. Around lay a bare, blasted landscape of countless shell holes. The Germans blew a small crater in the northern corner and dug so well down that only a direct hit with a heavy shell could have effect. Machine-gun fire from a flank 800–1000 yards distant at the far edge of the wood cut down attackers. Ranks of British dead lay in the guns’ ‘beaten zone’.131 Prior and Wilson in their analysis primarily attribute heavy British losses to Rawlinson’s poor generalship rather than German skill and strength. An attempt to repeat the successful attack on the night of 22–23 August ‘degenerated into a series of distinct and uncoordinated minor attacks’ with four separate zero hours.132 German machine-gunners’ adopted the tactic of abandoning their trenches when an attack was impending and occupying a line of shell holes a short distance to the front.133 This made the gunners’ work harder. Eventually, Rawlinson met the challenge, deploying on 27 July 368 guns in support of a two-brigade attack on Delville Wood and Longueval to its south-east. The clouds cleared at 2 pm allowing aerial spotting. The attack was entrusted to Horne’s XV Corps. A concentrated seven-minute artillery attack preceded the infantry and left the wood’s defenders either dead or too stunned to do anything except surrender.134 This ‘bite and hold’ success was Rawlinson’s.135 Longueval’s formidable defences fell on the morning of 28 July to another bombardment.136

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At the end of July, Haig using Kiggell as intermediary directed Rawlinson to concentrate on Guillemont. ‘I am doing so with every man and gun I can collect,’ he wrote.137 He visited attacking divisions and brigades: ‘All the troops seem in good heart and dying to be at the Boche again.’ On 4 August Haig himself visited to discuss the situation; Rawlinson described the visit very helpful ‘as usual’.138 On the 6th he held a conference with Congreve and divisional commanders to examine in detail their plan. ‘I had to alter one or two things and insert details regarding telling off parties for each particular job.’139 Despite careful preparation, the attack failed. German machine guns were on the flanks and ‘in positions impossible to locate and destroy’. The Germans concentrated artillery against it.140 Fourth Army command was aware of ‘the excellent effect and tactical handling of the hostile machine guns, which apparently were hidden in unexpected places such as shell holes’, but struggled to counter them. The Germans pushed forward troops who then dug in; their new positions surprised the attackers.141 When Rawlinson wrote on 9 August, ‘I don’t think the Inf[antr]y were up for [an attack]’, he was thinking, not of courage, which he frequently praised, but of faulty training. They had advanced too quickly and omitted ‘mopping up’ of cellars and dugouts, which was vital in assaults against woods and villages.142 Rawlinson’s August attacks marked a low point in his generalship. Haig laid down the law, in what Prior and Wilson call a ‘boys’-own-guide’ on how to command an army.143 Kiggell wrote on Haig’s behalf: ‘The only conclusion that can be drawn from the repeated attacks on Guillemont is that something is wanting in the methods employed.’ Criticizing Rawlinson’s laissez-faire methods, he stated that close supervision of a subordinate’s preparation of plans was not interference. Rawlinson was ‘to impress on his subordinates the importance of taking Ginchy, Guillemont and Falfemont Farm as a step for further operations’.144 Command misfortunes hindered him.145 Congreve was ill and had to go to hospital; a new corps commander, Major General the Earl of Cavan, succeeded, and brought a new XIV Corps headquarters staff. Then Cavan himself fell ill and was hospitalized. A German shell killed Major General Ingouville-Williams who was commanding 34th Division.146 On 13 August Rawlinson was ‘running around all day in order to arrange the concerted attack for the 18[th]’; Foch visited him; he then went on to Fayolle’s and to XIII Corps HQ and thence to Balfourier. The attack on 18 August captured the outskirts of Guillemont and 300–400 prisoners without heavy losses. On the 19th the gains were held against counter-attacks. Haig visited Fourth Army HQ ‘quite pleased with the success’. ‘I confess I was not so pleased myself as I think we ought to have done more,’ wrote Rawlinson. The Saxons opposing them were tired and demoralized.147

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Figure 8.2 An Irish Brigade, part of 16th Division, returning for rest after the taking of Guillemont. Attacking this village provided an arduous test of Rawlinson’s generalship. Photo by Popperfoto/Getty Images.

Attacks on the 21st, however, were so disappointing that Rawlinson resolved that Guillemont being such ‘a hard nut’ must be surrounded before attacked. Haig, ‘rather put out by the failure’, and Davidson visited to urge attacks on a wider front and ‘to impress on us the need of success’. Rawlinson took GHQ’s strictures to heart, promising his diary ‘to do everything possible’, on the 23rd calling on corps to give instructions for the attack of the 29th and to stress its urgency and importance. He believed he had provided sufficient numbers to avoid piecemeal efforts. ‘We must make this attack a success.’148 On the 27th he ‘went through XIV Corps scheme with them’, a rather complicated one.149 Bad weather delayed the attack until 3 September. The previous evening Rawlinson visited attacking corps. ‘I think preparation and orders for tomorrow are sound.’ Twenty-seven battalions attacked, and Guillemont was captured from the northern flank. Twentieth Division and an Irish brigade used innovative tactics to outflank German machine-gunners. Although Ginchy, High Wood and Falfemont Farm were not taken, Rawlinson judged it a ‘good day overall’ with 600 prisoners.150 On the night of 5 September, Falfemont Farm and two German trenches fell. Attacks on Ginchy on 4, 5 and 6 September, however,

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shattered 9th Division. The 16th (Irish) Division took over, capturing Ginchy by attacking from an unexpected direction.151 Except for High Wood, Fourth Army had secured its start line for a major stroke with tanks. In the two months, 15 July to 14 September, the BEF lost 126,000 men in gaining 6 square miles – horrific losses.152 Against this must be set grievous wounds inflicted on the German army. Twenty of 28 German divisions engaged reported their losses, only one as ‘light’, others as ‘terrible’, ‘very heavy’, ‘considerable’ and 50 per cent. From 15 July to 12 September the Royal Artillery fired 7.8 million shells.153 The chief of staff of 9th German Reserve Army Corps wrote: These are horrendous days …. Our good 9th Reserve Corps is now ‘finished up’ after fourteen days of fighting interrupted. The infantry have lost about half their men, if not more. Some of those who have survived are no longer human beings, but creatures who are at the end of their tether, no longer compos mentis, incapable of any energetic action, let alone attack.154

On 17 July Falkenhayn had divided the battle between First and Second Armies. On 28 August, Sixth and Seventh Armies joined the defenders, forming a larger army group under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. The army group notes of 27 September 1916 recorded: ‘In this battle, which has exceeded all earlier battles in its violence, some divisions fail in the face of large-scale attacks in a surprisingly short time.’155 On 29 August Falkenhayn, his strategy in ruins, was replaced by Hindenburg with Ludendorff as ‘First Quartermaster General’ with ‘joint responsibility in all decisions and measures that might be taken’.156 The catalyst for his fall was Romania’s entry into the war on the Allied side. Behind it lay losses on Verdun and the Somme and differences with Bethmann-Hollweg, Hindenburg and Ludendorff. The new chiefs issued fresh instructions for flexible defence in depth aimed at ‘letting the attacker wear himself out, bleeding himself white, but saving our own forces’.157 Work began on a new line, the ‘Siegfried Stellung’ (to the British ‘the Hindenburg Line’), 25 miles to the rear. Hindenburg gave the Somme priority for available divisions. Rupprecht noted the decline in the strength and morale of his forces, and doubted whether the German army could withstand a similar offensive in 1917.158 German reports noted Allied air dominance and ‘exemplary’ cooperation between British aircraft and their infantry and artillery: ‘The English aircraft not only direct the artillery fire on discovered batteries, dug-outs, and occupied trenches, they killed any personnel who showed themselves in the trenches with aimed machinegun fire and threw bombs and hand grenades at batteries and dug-outs from low levels.’ German artillery struggled to conduct counter-battery work.159

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In September, Foch organized a renewed and powerful offensive, using both Sixth and Tenth French Armies, breaking through the German third line north of the Somme on 12 September. Rawlinson’s Fourth Army supported by Gough’s Reserve Army would renew their assault on the 15th.160 Haig was enthusiastic about the new weapon, the tank, but Rawlinson less so: its employment was ‘a difficult & delicate matter’.161 ‘I am in favour of using them cautiously & not endeavouring to do too much in one bound. D. H. won’t like this but I am sure it is right.’162 His worries were confirmed when he saw them at the ‘tankodrome’ at St Riquier: ‘the personnel is green and wants practice’; one-third of the six tanks present broke down. Rawlinson ‘made rather a fuss’ to Davidson and Brigadier General Butler at GHQ: no one was taking in hand the lack of training.163 The twenty-eight-ton Mark 1 tank was underpowered, tended to shed its tracks and break down, and was vulnerable to artillery fire and to armour-piercing smallarms rounds. Spare parts were unavailable.164 Rawlinson first planned to employ them at night, screened by the dark from artillery fire. This idea was abandoned: trials in England had shown it to be unsuccessful. Instead, they would drive to the start line in darkness. Infantry would train with them to learn their capabilities.165 He distributed them in penny packets among attacking divisions. Lieutenant Colonel Ernest Swinton, responsible for crew training, wanted the tanks massed in attack and warned Haig that the new weapon was ‘not the foolproof product of long trial and experience’.166 A longer wait for further training would have made sense.167 Fourth Army HQ reported, ‘time was not allowed to study thoroughly their tactics, or tune up the mechanism as thoroughly as was desirable’.168 Rawlinson left gaps in the artillery barrage for the tanks to advance, to prevent them from having to cross broken ground.169 Many tanks would break down, leaving the infantry defenceless against German fire. Rawlinson had told his diary in July: ‘There are many worries and troubles in fighting a battle like this but I sleep like a top so am always fresh again the next day.’ He was now feeling the strain of command. The battle was exhausting him. On 4 August, after a typical busy day, he felt ‘rather tired tonight’, and again on the 5th had ‘a head[ache] most of the day’. On 10 September, he showed his tiredness after a long conference. Brigadier General Charles Budworth, his chief gunner, told him he ought to take twenty-four hours’ rest, just before the big offensive with his orders already given. He spent thirty-six hours at Boulogne, sleeping for twenty-one of them and for most of the others enjoying the seaside. ‘The air was magnificent & it has put new life into me.’170 Returning, he visited his corps commanders and most attacking divisions on the eve of battle. ‘All in good heart and the men desperately keen. Cavalry

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are well forward.’ At the eleventh hour, Haig appeared and asked that III Corps attack Martinpuich and the cavalry push out northwards to Le Sars. Rawlinson protested shortage of men to attack Martinpuich. Of the horsemen he wrote, I think there is a fair chance of getting the cavalry through but I am a little anxious lest [Major General Sir Charles] Kavanagh [cavalry corps commander] should act prematurely & thus compromise the action of the other arms particularly the artillery which would have to cease fire. However, if we succeed in getting the Boche on the run we may play larks with him.

Rawlinson supported Haig’s ambitions for cavalry, but gave priority to other arms.171 The Chief is anxious to have a gamble with all available troops … with [the] object of breaking down German resistance and getting through to Bapaume … If we succeed it may bring the Boches to terms; if we fail we have all the winter to recuperate …. A success would have a great effect throughout the world. It is worth risking.172

Before 15 September, the British fired 828,000 shells, double the intensity of 1 July. Of forty-nine tanks, only thirty-two reached the start line and eighteen got into action. Tanks had some of the effect Haig expected. Sergeant Weinert of the 211 Infantry Regiment wrote: ‘A man came running shouting, “There is a crocodile crawling into our lines!” The poor wretch was off his head. He had seen a tank for the first time and imagined this giant of a machine, rearing up and dipping down as it came, to be a monster.’173 At Flers tanks advancing together caused panic. The infantry followed closely behind and secured the village. Artillery fire broke up a German counter-attack. By contrast, Lieutenant General Pulteney’s misuse of four tanks against High Wood made them a liability; they were unable to cross broken tree stumps. Men of the 47th London Division ‘had a desperate fight for every foot of their advance. The enemy met them with bombs and rifle-fire from his trenches, and machine-guns from concrete emplacements, still undamaged, mowed them down.’ The concentrated fire of trench mortars ‘finally demoralised the German garrison, who began to surrender in batches, and before one o’clock High Wood was reported clear of the enemy’.174 Major General Sir Charles Barter commanding 47th Division thought ‘these strange monsters’ a great handicap and ‘the cause of delay & unnecessary loss, as the infantry had to attack without the usual bombardment’.175 The British had not yet learnt to coordinate the allarms battle, as they did in 1918.

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On the British right, tanks broke down and bombardment failed. Attacking the formidable Quadrilateral, 6th Division suffered 4,000 casualties for no gain. The Guards Division without tank support defeated Germans in the first trench in close-quarter fighting and gained 2,000 yards on a 1,500-yard front.176 The British took twice as much ground as on 1 July, 6 square miles, for half the cost, 29,376 casualties. Combined with the French attack, the BEF had hit the Germans hard indeed. Von Below recorded ‘a very heavy day with serious losses, even by Somme standards’.177 There was, however, no breakthrough.178 In his late intervention, Haig had been half right. German morale at Martinpuich was low, and the defenders surrendered to the Canadians and a single tank. The attackers never got close to Le Sars.179 Haig had urged Rawlinson to press ‘an operation planned on bolder lines’ and use the tanks ‘boldly’.180 While sceptical of reaching Bapaume, Rawlinson had thought ‘there is a fair chance of getting the cavalry through’, and the divisions were ready. Cavalry Corps diary noted laconically, ‘the attack did not develop sufficiently for the cavalry to advance’.181 Rawlinson told his diary: ‘A great battle. We nearly did a big thing. “Tanks” did well but many broke down.’182 A fortnight later he wrote more cautiously: The tanks in certain instances, such as at Flers and Martinpuich, rendered very valuable service, but they failed to have that effect on the fighting which many of their strongest advocates expected. They laboured under great difficulties. The officers and men who were driving them had not been under fire before; they had had great difficulty in maintaining their direction owing to their limited vision; and their very low speed over ground torn by shells was a very serious handicap.183

If results had been ‘eminently satisfactory’, this was due to the careful timing of the bombardment184 and ‘the dash & gallantry of the infantry’.185 Bad weather delayed further attacks, but in the next few days the remainder of the second enemy line was captured. The German third line now stood before the British. Haig accepted Rawlinson’s method of ‘bite and hold’. On 25 September Rawlinson deployed 230 heavy guns, 570 field guns and howitzers; two features of the bombardment were gas shells fired by 4-inch mortars and machine-gun barrages firing over the heads of the infantry.186 Rawlinson instructed that the infantry keep close to the creeping barrage; prisoners had said this enabled them to capture trenches before machine guns could be brought into action. The tanks were kept behind for village clearance.187 The entire British bombardment fell on this single line. A creeping barrage followed. The infantry advance at 12:35 pm gave less daylight for a German

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counter-attack. In places, the operation went like clockwork. Defenders were killed or cowed by the intensity of the shelling. The infantry followed closely behind and arrived in German trenches before the enemy emerged. Rawlinson’s staff noted the fighting spirit of the New Armies ‘led by half-trained officers, and in many cases only partially trained themselves’, the efficiency of the artillery and the aircraft signalling to the infantry.188 ‘All prisoners captured speak of the effectiveness of our artillery, both by day and by night,’ wrote Rawlinson, ‘they likewise bear witness to the dash of our infantry, and to the way in which they advanced close on the heels of the creeping barrage.’189 On the 26th the fire of 100 guns routed a German counter-attack.190 Bombing parties of 7/Leicesters supported by a single tank captured 1,500 yards of Gird Trench, the village of Geudecourt, and 370 Germans, and killed many more for five British casualties.191 Gough’s Reserve Army captured Thiepval on the 27th and the part of the Schwaben Redoubt on the 28th. British attacks of late September marked a high point.192 Crown Prince Rupprecht reported to the German High Command: ‘The enemy’s almost complete air superiority until recently, the superiority of their artillery in accuracy and number, and the

Figure 8.3 Fourth Army infantry advancing during the battle for Morval. Rawlinson’s employment of artillery made the action of 25–26 September a striking success. Photo by Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images.

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extraordinary quantity of ammunition they have, allow them utterly to pulverize our defensive positions and cause us heavy losses, and they prevent us from rebuilding them.’193 This pointed to future British successes. At this most critical period for the Germans, Army Group Rupprecht had to put all its available troops into the line leaving no reserves at all. Reinforcing divisions had to be thrown straight into the battle as they arrived.194 The attackers had been blessed with fine weather, with heavy rain on just two days in the latter half of September. But on 2 October, the weather broke. Steady rain turned the battlefield into a vast ‘primeval mud landscape’ with shell holes everywhere filled to the top with water.195 Temperatures fell. The Germans had dug further defence lines and adopted new tactics, withdrawing their machine guns to positions beyond the area in which the creeping barrage usually fell.196 On 5 October, Rawlinson wrote to Henry Wilson, ‘Rain and mud here have made it necessary to postpone operations. The roads up at the front are hell. Can’t get the am[munitio]n up to the guns.’ He told his diary they would be at the mercy of the weather until they could extend the railheads and connect them to gun positions by means of light railways.197 Grounding of the aircraft prevented artillery observation. Rawlinson’s diary in October and November is full of worries about the weather and supply, especially ammunition: the ‘all important question of the weather causing me much anxiety’. On 19 October, he wrote: ‘After last night’s heavy rain the roads & the surface of the ground are in a dreadful state.’ The Germans were now disputing air superiority and fighting stubbornly. They received fresh troops. The British came down off the high ground taken in September, making observation difficult. On the 16th Haig visited Querrieu and told Rawlinson he wished to continue the battle through winter ‘until we are forced to stop by the weather’. At the end of September, Haig had discussed using the cavalry en masse north of the River Ancre turning the enemy’s lines. He wished to deny the enemy any respite to rest or strengthen defences.198 Rawlinson replied that the governing factors were ammunition, weather and men. Three days later, he pointed out to Kiggell that tougher German resistance would leave the BEF short of men. He excused his infantry for a failed attack on the 12th despite going forward in terrible conditions ‘with great dash & determination’. Visits by Davidson and Kiggell nonetheless showed GHQ frustration at Rawlinson’s inability to advance.199 Haig should have looked at his soldiers, with whom he was out of touch. On 31 October Rawlinson toured the trenches and saw men coming out of the line ‘stone cold and beat to the world’ and ‘looking very done up’. They could not stay

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in the lines forty-eight hours without relief. He concluded: ‘Our trenches are in an appalling state of mud and slush – it is almost impossible to assault from them as the men cannot get out of the mud without being dragged out. They cannot therefore follow close under the barrage.’200 On 7 November, ‘another pouring wet day with gales of wind’, he wrote to Haig pointing to the loss of experienced instructors in NCOs and officers. Attacking through the winter prejudiced the chances of major success in the spring.201 At Fourth Army conferences, he was now emphasizing the need for huts and billets for the troops to avoid sickness. A thousand had been brought up and more were coming.202 Cavan commanding XIV Corps wrote to Rawlinson to protest against attacking in dreadful conditions. ‘No one who has not visited the front trenches can really know the state of exhaustion to which the men are reduced,’ he wrote.203 Rawlinson came to see him early one morning. He, Cavan and Brigadier General G.P.T. Feilding commanding the Guards Division slogged through mud 100 or 150 yards in front of their own wire to see the conditions. This convinced Rawlinson that attack was impossible. Cavan later wrote: ‘It was proved over & over again to be sheer murder to expose men against an entrenched enemy if the attack took more than 2½ to 3 minutes to reach the first objective. In the ground as it was in Oct-Nov 1916 it was physically impossible for the strongest man to advance more than 40 to 45 yards in a minute unopposed.’204 Rawlinson told him to limit his objectives. Haig, however, deferring to Foch, insisted on the attack. These late assaults were a desperate experience. One officer wrote of ‘the most bitter memories’ of assaulting the Transloy Line, resulting ‘in a useless loss of life and lowering of morale in formations which took part’.205 On 7 November Rawlinson pleaded with GHQ for an end in view of the shortage of trained officers and men to rebuild divisions for 1917: ‘if Battalions are bled dry there is a serious risk of lowering the standard of fighting efficiency to a point which may render doubtful the success of the operations in the coming spring campaign’.206 On 8 November, Haig faced the inevitable and gave Fourth Army instructions to stop planning for a major attack: ‘weather and training requirements make a big offensive impossible’.207 A final success on 13 November was Gough’s capture of Beaumont Hamel, one of the original objectives, with 3,300 prisoners.208 The assault was close to the 1 July starting line and did not require guns and ammunition to be brought forward over a war-torn battlefield. Haig urged his subordinate to wait for better weather and dry ground. Gough belied his reputation as an over-impatient thruster pushing subordinates into overhasty attacks.209 ‘A great day’ for Gough and the Fifth Army, wrote Rawlinson: ‘this victory is most opportune’. Coming

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just before the Allies’ meeting on 15 November; it would strengthen Haig’s hand. The Chantilly Conference concluded as Haig (and Rawlinson) wished, giving the Western Front priority. The Allies planned again to combine offensives on all fronts.210 Circumstances, however, were to change. The 1917 campaign followed a different course. On the 17th it was a bitterly cold night, and Rawlinson pitied the ‘poor people’ in the trenches. On the following day Haig formally ended the battle, and after an army commanders’ conference, Rawlinson returned on leave to London.211 What had the battle achieved? The Allies advanced only 6 miles, but captured 73,000 Germans and 300 guns.212 By 12 September, 1,068 of the defenders’ 1,208 field guns and 371 of the 820 heavy guns were put out of action.213 The German army and its morale suffered immense damage. By contrast, men of the BEF were sure by late September that they were outfighting the enemy.214 British prisoners told their captors again and again: ‘Don’t you think we have done very well?’215

Figure 8.4 German prisoners and wounded taken at Guillemont. Although here there is only a handful, the total of Germans captured during the Somme, 73,000, is a testimony to the effect of French and British attacks. Photo by Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo.

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Postal censorship reports for the Third Army (not the Fourth) in November, 1916, noted morale had never been higher: a spirit of ‘cheery optimism’ and ‘dogged resolution’ continued into January, dipped in the bitter weather of early spring and then lifted again.216 Germany faced ‘the most serious crisis of the war’ when Hindenburg and Ludendorff took command.217 Germany was forced ‘to throw division after division … into the cauldron of the battle of annihilation’.218 The English wife of a German aristocrat in Berlin wrote: The unprecedented English artillery fire on the Somme is filling the hospitals more than ever, all those on the Rhine being over-filled, so that wounded are being transported straight from the front to the Tempelhofer Hospital in Berlin, which has never occurred in the war before. Cases of overstrained nerves and temporary insanity are the order of the day.219

An official told her of both his sons ‘sent home insane, having gone out of their minds at the awful things they had witnessed’. Withdrawal in 1917 to new positions, the Hindenburg Line (Siegfried Stellung) was less a strategic masterstroke than the action of a defeated army, which was forced to shorten its front.220 At the Berlin conference on 9 January 1917, Germany’s leaders took the fatal step of renewing unrestricted U-boat warfare. With more U-boats available and the British blockade tightening, the German Admiralty’s experts argued that a submarine campaign beginning in February would force Britain to sue for peace in five months. The Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, countered that bringing the United States into the war was not worth the gamble. The new army chiefs supported the navy, Hindenburg and Ludendorff making it clear they would resign unless the navy got its way. Fourth Army’s guns played a part in Germany’s ‘worst decision of the war’.221 Hindenburg said: ‘We must save men from another Somme battle.’222 Rawlinson’s performance in the battle was mixed. He failed to stand up against Haig’s early ambitions at the outset. His apparent confidence in the bombardment – despite doubts in his diary – marks his responsibility for the tragedy suffered by three of his corps. Oliver Nugent, commander of the 36th (Ulster) Division, wrote after 1 July: ‘The man I loathe is Harry Rawlinson, the Army commander whose senseless optimism is responsible for the practical wiping out of the Division.’223 By contrast, for the 14 July attack, Rawlinson prepared a master stroke. Recruiting allies at GHQ overcame Haig’s doubts. Viscount Esher visited Querrieu following this success. His comment contrasts with Nugent’s: ‘[Rawly] is becoming impressive – so firm, so cheerful, and so resolute. It is easy to reach a goal, however long the road, if the way is fairly

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smooth; but in this war Rawly has blundered over a stone here or a log there, has fallen into a morass or two, and yet without a complaint or grumble has cheerfully persevered, and finds himself second only to Douglas [Haig]!’224 On both 1 and 14 July, Rawlinson’s adherence to ‘bite-and-hold’ may partly account for failing to exploit success. There was also inefficient BEF staff work and German quickness bringing up reinforcements. The fighting between 14 July and the advent of the tanks marks another low point in his generalship, but at the beginning of September he heeded Haig’s admonitions and massed sufficient force to capture Ginchy and Guillemont. Before 15 September, he was sceptical of tanks. His use of them in penny packets, against expert advice, was a mistake, although understandable with an untried weapon. He was right in thinking the crews were not ready. The crushing blow of 25–26 September against the Germans’ third line redounds to his credit. His October and November failures must largely be attributed to the difficulty in getting supplies and ammunition across a devastated, waterlogged landscape and making attacks with exhausted troops. Although he did not take the initiative in stopping these wasteful attacks, he tried to act when Cavan did. Rawlinson learnt from mistakes, adjusting bombardments to enable his men to surprise the defenders.225 He was aided in this by the answers to questionnaires Montgomery sent out to subordinates seeking the battle’s lessons. Replies emphasized giving sufficient time to planning an assault, the best formations for assaults, methods in shelling woods, allowing rest to restore morale and using fresh troops to attack.226 Kiggell later described Rawlinson’s influence on Haig to the official historian Edmonds. On 14 July and even more on 25–26 September, he accepted Rawlinson and his subordinates’ view ‘that each day’s advance should be limited to a line which could be effectively covered by our artillery without its having to go forward’.227 The Royal Artillery’s guns, aided by aerial spotting, subjected the German army to enormous punishment, made attrition a reality and enabled Fourth Army to capture the strongest German positions.

9

From the Somme to Amiens

[I] rang up Goughy [Sir Hubert Gough] to wish him good luck. Tomorrow’s attack is of first importance and he says all his Corps & Divisional Commanders think they have got a sitter. I hope it may be so. But it is blowing hard tonight and low clouds are drifting across the sky. (Henry Rawlinson 30 July 1917, at start of Third Ypres) The 8th of August opened the eyes of the staff on both sides; mine were certainly opened … The Entente began the great offensive, the final battle of the world-war, and carried it through with increasing vigour, as our decline became more apparent. (General von Ludendorff after the Battle of Amiens) There was widespread British optimism at the end of the Somme. Henry Wilson’s formula for 1917 was ‘two Sommes at once’.1 Among young officers, Anthony Eden of the Rifle Brigade and Charles Carrington of the Warwicks thought, despite the loss of good friends, that the evidence of enemy casualties and masses of prisoners gave ‘the unshakeable conviction of final victory’.2 The day after Gough’s capture of Beaumont Hamel, Haig visited Querrieu, delighted with the success. He recommended Rawlinson for promotion to full general.3 On 1 January this was gazetted. ‘From Capt. to Full Genl in 17 years is not bad going after being in [the] 3 Form at Eton too so there is hope for everyone.’ Archie Montgomery was made major general.4 Among letters of congratulation was one from Lord Roberts’s elder daughter Aileen, to which the delighted Rawlinson’s reply assured her that ‘the great example of the dear little man [Lord Roberts]’ still inspired his thinking.5 Both knew what opposition Roberts’s National Service campaign had raised, and were proud that he had never said ‘I told you so’ when the German war he predicted came. So Rawlinson quoted four lines of poetry which he thought relevant.

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Many years had passed since Rawlinson had written to his father from India of ‘Kipling, a very clever cad’.6 Now ‘If ’ was his favourite poem, and he gave a copy to each officer who finished the courses at Fourth Army’s Training School at Flexicourt ‘for them to learn and think over’.7 The lines were: If you can dream – and not make dreams your master; If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same

On the Somme Rawlinson had met both imposters, but his confidence facing 1917 was high. Lessons of the Somme were being absorbed even during the battle. For the creeping barrage, 100 yard ‘lifts’ in three minutes became normal practice when the examination of the ground after the 15 September attack found enemy machine gunners dead in their shell holes, killed by shrapnel.8 Lewis Guns, riflegrenades and Stokes mortars provided close support weapons for attacking infantry. Two vitally important manuals which would serve for rest of the war appeared in winter 1916–1917: SS135 Instructions for the Training of Divisions for Offensive Action and SS143 Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action. The latter recommended dividing the platoon into specialist sections, bomb throwers, Lewis guns, riflemen and snipers, and rifle-grenades. They would attack in two waves, the first with rifles to the left and bombers to the right, some fifteen-totwenty-five yards behind came the rifle grenades to the left and Lewis guns to the right, with platoon HQ somewhere in the centre. The platoon would be capable of advancing under its own firepower when the artillery failed.9 Rawlinson and Montgomery spent a whole day at Fourth Army’s school at Flexicourt teaching COs to run a tactical exercise, presumably using the new pamphlets.10 The new 106 fuse would make wire-cutting much easier. These developments as well as the blows dealt to the German Army encouraged British confidence. Haig’s despatch praising Rawlinson led to the latter becoming a hero in the patriotic British press.11 The Pall Mall Gazette wrote of ‘The Rise of Rawlinson’, basing it on the success of 14 July. The Yorkshire Evening News called him ‘the hero’ and the Daily Despatch ‘a genius of the Somme battle’. The Sunday Herald wrote, ‘Sir Henry Rawlinson’s name is in the mouths of all men.’12 This may seem ironic to the modern reader, but bitter grief at the long casualty lists was partly offset by the effect of Geoffrey Malins’s and J.B. McDowell’s film of The Somme, bringing the battlefield home to a public who felt they were now in the fight with their lads; with the enemy driven back and his strongest positions taken, it seemed that the loss had not been in vain. A correspondent to the Times wrote,

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‘I had already lost two near relatives; yet I never understood their sacrifice until I had seen the film.’13 Rawlinson’s appearance at this time impressed the liaison officer Edward Spears such that he remembered it years later: He had a big forehead well plucked by time, which was also tingeing his hair and moustache with grey. Not handsome, certainly, high in colour, weather-beaten, with a big formless nose which he had a habit of rubbing when perplexed or pretending to be, and a big mouth, the lower part of the face heavy and rather protruding as was the lower lip; his eyes, which looked at you evenly, were small, but their gaze was very kindly as he fixed you from under arched eyebrows; and his voice, which had a deep metallic resonance, was very pleasant.

Spears noted Rawlinson’s popularity among the French with whom he had worked in 1916. In February 1917, when Spears met Fayolles and his Chief of Staff Colonel Duval, the first news they asked for was of Rawlinson and of his chief of staff.14 At the turn of the year, Rawlinson eagerly anticipated being employed in command. Haig was ‘very nice’ to him at lunch in late December, speaking of offensive plans in Flanders to win back the coastline, if the coming French onslaught launched by Nivelle failed. Joffre had been ousted, and Robert Nivelle, a hero of Verdun, proposed a major offensive in the Champagne. Initially, Fourth Army would take over another 18,000 yards of front and would be incapable of offensive action, but Davidson reassured Rawlinson and Montgomery that, after mid-February, they would take command of the northern thrust of Haig’s Flanders offensive, which would become a Third Battle of Ypres. ‘This is indeed something to look forward to as it is likely to be the final and decisive battle of the campaign & will not take place before July.’15 It was a bitter winter, particularly hard for the German population feeling the effects of the Royal Navy’s blockade, but so cold on the Western Front that Wilfred Owen and his platoon of 15/Manchesters found their the army cookers would not work. On 29 December Rawlinson visited hospitals in Amiens and on 5 January the Guards Division, ‘very tired after 31 days at post where trenches are simply horrible’. There were 1,000 cases of trench foot. Morale dipped in the bitterly cold early spring, but rose again.16 Several things intervened before Rawlinson could take command. Beginning on 25 February opposite Fifth Army, the Germans fell back to the strongly fortified position, the Siegfried Stellung. In a series of well-planned stages 25 February to 5 April, Operation Alberich (the wicked dwarf who defended the treasure of the Nibelung) shortened the front by 25 miles, freeing fourteen divisions. Hindenburg and Ludendorff wished to avoid another Somme while entrusting

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the U-boats with Britain’s elimination from the war.17 In February and March, plans went ahead for a British offensive launched by Allenby’s Third Army at Arras as a diversion for Nivelle’s on the Chemin des Dames. Lloyd George and the French commander, Robert Nivelle, made a somewhat underhand attempt to subordinate Haig directly to Nivelle. This plan largely rebounded at the Calais Conference (26–27 February 1917) as Haig and Robertson confronted the prime minister. Haig now knew that Lloyd George had no confidence in him. The Tory press strongly supported Haig.18 Fourth Army’s pursuit of the retreating Germans was hampered by bad weather, lack of labour to repair roads and railways, and shortage of transport aggravated by a deficiency of 6,000 horses in the Army. There was no opportunity to strike at the retiring enemy.19 Rawlinson noted the appalling German destruction in Peronne, nearly every rail in the railway destroyed, fruit trees cut down, bridges blown and mini-craters at all important cross roads, delaying Fourth Army’s advance.20 As they did move forward, they discovered every village, bridge and tree destroyed. The Times correspondent Repington, visiting Rawlinson on 18 April, was appalled: ‘The devastated district from which the Germans have retreated is like nothing else on earth.’21 Repington had ‘a good talk’ to Rawlinson and Budworth about the Somme. He visited the scene of the 14 July attack, seeing ‘dead Boches, unexploded shells’, which confirmed his impression ‘that this was one of the finest feats of the war’.22 In choosing commanders for his long-nurtured Flanders offensive, however, Haig remembered Rawlinson’s failures in October and November when Gough had succeeded.23 Rawlinson first had an inkling on 17 April. Then, on 7 May Haig announced to Army commanders that the Flanders campaign would go ahead. Rawlinson admitted to being ‘very much dispirited and disappointed to learn that Gough was to have the command’. He wrote to Kiggell who sent a ‘comforting but specious’24 reply that he should not be anxious about his prospects. ‘The Chief has various schemes in his mind for making good use of you, but various points which are still uncertain have to be cleared up first – esp[ecially] the question of how much front the French will take over.’ He would be told plans as soon as the future was clear. Rawlinson knew that Gough’s cavalry attitudes matched Haig’s, his late success at Beaumont-Hamel reassured GHQ, despite his impatience and unpopularity with subordinates, and he was more likely to launch a vigorous pursuit. In September Rawlinson’s view was confirmed when Montgomery got the truth out of Kiggell’s deputy, Butler.25 Meanwhile, the British offensive at Arras as a diversion for Nivelle opened brilliantly on 9 April with the Canadian capture of Vimy Ridge. It then

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degenerated into disjointed costly assaults. The casualty rate of 4,076 per day was the highest of British Western Front offensives. Faced by a revolt among divisional commanders, Allenby was ‘degummed’, and broke down in front of his successor, Byng. The humiliation was a blessing in disguise. In Palestine, Allenby won spectacular victories and became a hero of the war.26 On 10 May Haig sent Davidson to lunch with Rawlinson. He would be required ‘for very important amphibious operations on Goughy’s left along the coast if things went well but everything is dependent on a variety of problematical circumstances & nothing can be said with any degree of certainty’.27 Haig planned that, if the Ypres offensive advanced far enough up the coast, Rawlinson’s force would bring tanks ashore from landing craft. Amphibious planning by Haig and Rear-Admiral Reginald Bacon of the Dover Patrol predated that for Third Ypres.28 Bacon developed a wooden landing craft 200 yards in length to carry men and tanks and to be lashed between two monitors. Their momentum would drive the pontoon ashore. Six monitors and 100 trawlers would land an initial force of 9,000.

Map 9.1

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General Lord Rawlinson

Rawlinson, sceptical at first, was then convinced. On 17 May he and Kiggell visited Rear Admiral Bacon on one of his monitors at Dunkirk. They discussed the plan for over two hours, Rawlinson gaining information which was unclear in the papers, the difference being ‘the use of self-propelled barges carrying troops to land at different places simultaneously with the [tank carrying] pontoons’. The sea wall was a major obstacle. The tanks could climb an initial slope of about 30 degrees, but the perpendicular top 2.5 feet high was insurmountable. After many failed attempts, a special ramp was designed. A tank successfully drove up a facsimile sea wall erected to reproduce the one at Middlekerke.29 Rawlinson and Bacon presented a very detailed plan, to put ashore one division on the beach near Middelkerk at dawn. Fire from monitors and a smokescreen from specially designed launches would cover the landing. Tanks coming ashore first would protect the infantry. Trawlers would carry a telephone cable to keep the force in constant contact with Rawlinson. The northernmost brigade would deal with German guns at Raversyde and thus secure sea communications. Then the troops would move inland. Once they had occupied bridges over the Plasschendaele Canal and various road junctions, XV Corps would advance to Middelkerke and link up with the landing force. On 18 June Haig, having seen practice landings and tank training, met Bacon and Rawlinson and gave approval for this imaginative scheme, which would he believed convert hard-won success at Ypres into a major strategic advance. Rawlinson established his HQ at Malo les Bains near Dunkirk on 3 July. He had just one weak corps, V Corps comprising 1st and 32nd Divisions. Rehearsals were carried out with a replica sea wall and briefings given using a scale model of the invasion area. On 10 July the enemy, after bombarding all day, attacked at 7.45 pm driving 1st Division out of their positions beyond the Yser Canal and taking two of 32nd Division’s three lines. During the night the latter regained all lost ground, and on the 14th a German attack on the Nieuport sector failed. The 32nd Division somewhat improved their position, but these attacks showed the Germans to be alert and aggressive, and made the whole enterprise more difficult.30 All hinged on the advance at Ypres. Plans for this also had a history. Early in 1916, Haig had tasked Rawlinson to study a breakout from the salient. Rawlinson considered that it could not be speedy and dramatic: ‘Any advance [would] have to be made by definite stages, with intervals of time allowed for the preparations necessary for undertaking each subsequent advance.’31 In February 1917 Haig asked Rawlinson and Montgomery to look at Plumer and Harington’s proposals. Although differing in detail, both army commanders and chiefs-of-staff agreed that the operation

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could not be rushed, should proceed ‘step-by-step’ and vast resources were needed.32 Rawlinson went somewhat further and on 29 June attempted to impress on the CIGS Robertson ‘the desirability of holding on to Goughy’s coat tails and ordering him only to undertake the limited objectives and not going beyond the range of his guns’. On 3 July, at GHQ, he urged an optimistic Haig ‘to make Goughy undertake deliberate offensives without the wild hurrooosh he is so fond of which leads to so much disappointment. The rule is that they must not go beyond the range of their guns or they will be driven back by counterattacks’.33 This view was widely held. Third Ypres began on 31 July after a bombardment four times as heavy as Rawlinson’s before 1 July 1916 and an attempted advance of 4,000 yards. Rawlinson rang Gough the night before to wish him success.34 Gough seems to have been following the ‘step-by-step approach’. ‘Limited objectives and no Hurroosh!’ Rawlinson wrote.35 The British were attacking extremely strong positions held in depth. The battle, a month shorter than the Somme, was at least as horrific. Unusually heavy rain hindered the advance. On 16 August Major General Oliver Nugent who had been outspoken against Rawlinson on the Somme told his wife: ‘It has been a truly terrible day. Worse than the 1st July I am afraid. Our losses have been very heavy indeed and we have failed all along the line’36 At the end of August, Haig passed the offensive to Plumer, and favoured by drier weather he gained three limited successes. In October, heavy rain returned and men were fighting on a half-drowned landscape, ‘a huge pool of liquid coffee’, Rawlinson called it.37 Both Plumer and Gough wished to continue using ‘step-by-step’ tactics, but on 2 October Haig overruled them and insisted reserve brigades be ready to take Passchendaele Ridge. When judging Rawlinson’s acquiescing in Haig’s ambitious aims the year before, one should remember that ‘neither [Plumer nor Gough] found it easy to stand up to Haig … in this sort of buoyant and aggressive mood’.38 The British advance at Ypres fell short on the first proposed date of the amphibious landing, 8 August, when tides were right. Rawlinson urged that his tank landing take place between 5 and 8 September, tides again being suitable. He, Haig and Bacon agreed the 6th. Once more, the BEF’s advance fell short. On 21 September at lunch Rawlinson ‘broke it to [Admiral Bacon] that in my opinion the chances were against our having to undertake the landing. I told him I thought Sir Douglas would probably concentrate the whole of his available strength at the decisive front of Ypres’. The last postponement was to the first week in October. Plumer’s success at Broodseinde came too late and the advance was not far enough. The scheme was cancelled. Sadly, Rawlinson

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contributed almost nothing to Third Ypres. In November, when Plumer was sent to Italy, he took over Second Army and then Gough’s Fifth Army front, nominally commanding between 900,000 and 1 million men. On 10 November, the day of Plumer’s departure, Arthur Currie’s Canadians by an heroic effort took Passchendaele ridge. Rawlinson had no part in this, but on 12 November toured the divisions in the line. ‘There is no cover for the men in the forward areas and in the low lying parts the mud & shell holes are appalling. It is worse than the Somme was last year.’39 Lloyd George’s special War Policy Committee had the authority during the battle to halt operations. He signally failed to do this.40 Nonetheless, by the end of Third Ypres, politicians and press were blaming Haig. He appears to have pushed his army to the brink and almost over it. Whereas British morale after the Somme was high, censors who looked at soldiers’ letters after Third Ypres pointed to intense, almost universal war weariness.41 Haig’s stock would sink further as a result of the failure of Cambrai. The battle opened on 20 November with a spectacular tank success, but ended with a brilliant German counter-attack regaining nearly all ground lost. The Germans achieved almost complete surprise and took over 6,000 prisoners and more guns than the British army had lost on any previous day in its history.42 Beside intelligence failure, a reason for this debacle was exhaustion. As Oliver Nugent told his wife, ‘[The men] were absolutely worn out from cold and exposure and hard fighting and want of sleep.’43 The policy of relieving units for rest had been ignored. ‘The year 1917 closed in an atmosphere of depression,’ wrote an officer of the 51st Highland Division. ‘Most Divisions on the Western Front had been engaged continuously in offensive operations … all were exhausted, and … weak[ened].’44 The Allies’ outlook was bleak. With Russia knocked out by revolution, they would face a hugely reinforced German army in the west before the Americans could arrive in strength. Neither Third Ypres nor Cambrai had brought victory. On 12 December Lord Northcliffe’s Times sharply criticized GHQ over the British reverse at Cambrai, concluding that its readers could ‘no longer be satisfied with the fatuous estimates … of German losses in men and morale which have inspired too many of the published messages from France’.45 A purge of BEF leadership followed over three months. Among the victims, John Charteris, Haig’s intelligence chief, held to be responsible for overoptimistic assessments, was replaced by Brigadier General Edgar Cox. Herbert Lawrence took Launcelot Kiggell’s place. The biggest change was William Robertson’s supersession as CIGS by Henry Wilson.46 Wilson was no friend of Haig, but his

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appointment took much friction out of civil–military relations and provided the necessary buffer between Lloyd George and the military hierarchy.47 Would Haig go? For the Rawlinson biographer, Lord Derby’s answer to a Lloyd George inquiry about a possible successor is of interest: There are certain difficulties in [removing Haig] which would have to be overcome, the principal one being the finding of a suitable Commander in Chief for the Western Front. Plumer is sound but certainly I think does not have that imagination for which you are looking. Birdwood to my mind would be absolutely out of the question. Munro [Charles Monro] would be the best man you could get and personally I look upon Rawlinson as a first class soldier. I think Haig’s successor, if the change is made, should lie between Munro and Rawlinson.48

The press attack on Haig reached a climax with a violent article by Lovat Fraser in the Daily Mail on 21 January 1918. He accused the generals of wasting British life on the Western Front with a ‘strategy of the Stone Age’. This went too far for most army officers and the majority of Unionist (Conservative) MPs. There was a reaction in Haig’s favour. The same day that Lovat Fraser’s article appeared, General Jan Smuts of South Africa and Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey arrived at GHQ on a five-day fact-finding mission. Could they identify a suitable successor to Haig? They found no groundswell of army opinion in favour of Haig’s replacement.49 Lloyd George unsurprisingly thought their report ‘very disappointing’.50 Haig and the BEF together would face the German onslaught of 1918. Indeed, Henry Wilson, knowing of Haig’s courageous and creditable performance in the battle of First Ypres in 1914, advised that he should not be removed until he had withstood the German offensive. The end of 1917 and beginning of 1918 were worrying times for Rawlinson personally. Merrie was laid up on 5 December with a heart attack. This does not seem to have been serious, but in January when he visited London, he found her ‘not too well. She has not recovered from her heart attack and it will take time for her to completely regain her strength’. By May she seemed better. In June, he had another short visit to London, and was pleased to note that she was ‘not too tired’. Although Merrie’s life seems to have been burdened with health problems, she was no hypochondriac. In the event, she was to outlive in her ultra-fit husband, to whom she was devoted.51 Anticipating a German offensive, Rawlinson set about putting the Ypres salient in a state of preparedness, copying the German system. On 13 January lunching with Haig he urged him to send the ‘lessons of the Cambrai attack’ to

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Army Commanders ‘as the Boche attacks will no doubt be modelled on that’. German success was due in part to German ‘stormtroopers’ infiltration tactics. Haig said he would do that.52 These methods had been used at Caporetto against the Italians and at Riga on the Russian front. In 1918, they would find full employment against the British. He was, however, not initially to have a role in the British defence. On 17 February he heard from the War Office that he was to succeed Henry Wilson as British military representative at Versailles. The Supreme War Council had been established to coordinate a common Allied strategy, and took the form of monthly meetings of the British, French and Italian heads of government, advised by a committee of Permanent Military Representatives who acted as a secretariat, gathered information and drew up plans.53 Behind this lay Lloyd George’s efforts to oust the CIGS, Robertson, sending him to Versailles, bringing Henry Wilson to London in his place. Robertson would not go without retaining his powers as CIGS, and he was removed, Haig acquiescing. Haig had discussed the matter with Wilson and nominated Rawlinson as the best man and also one who would support him.54 Rawlinson wrote: Personally, I shall be extremely sorry to leave IV Army which I have made, but in these times one’s personal feelings must go by the board, and I have only one object in view, i.e. to do my best for the State. I shall therefore go over to see Eddie Derby tomorrow and do whatever they may ask. I think I shall be able to help matters at Versailles … I told D.H. I had no axe to grind nor any personal feeling in the matter my only anxiety being to help him and the Govt to win the war.

After he received his instructions, he called on Robertson, insisting to his diary that they were still the best of friends and saying he ‘would make room for him at Versailles at any time’. He thought with the help of Haig and Wilson he could ‘manage the job if disasters are not too serious and too frequent. It will be an immensely interesting and historic time’.55 Rawlinson was however fundamentally Haig’s man – ‘he is so lié with D.H.’, wrote Wilson56 – although he began to think of other fronts.57 Rawlinson was a fish out of water in this post. He was foremost a fighting soldier. He would however soon be back at the front. The German High Command, OHL, its home front starved by the British blockade and knowing that America’s great strength was being mobilized, decided on an all-out bid for victory.58 German intelligence thought British tactical training inadequate for mobile warfare and much of the troops’ confidence gone after the 1917 failures. It underrated Tommy Atkins’s dogged courage in

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adversity.59 On 21 March Ludendorff unleashed the first of his offensives against Gough’s overstretched Fifth Army and Byng’s Third Army. That day, 21,000 British soldiers surrendered, showing how far Haig’s Passchendaele offensive had damaged morale. Assisted by exceptionally foggy conditions and a colossal artillery bombardment, German stormtroops penetrated the British battle zone, but none of the three attacking armies gained their objectives. The next few days, 22–24 March, however, saw one of the most acute crises of the war. A gap opened between Third and Fifth Armies. On the morning of the 24th the Germans were advancing on Amiens. Loss of either chief railway junction, Hazebrouk or Amiens would have been critical, perhaps fatal to the BEF on the continent. Through each passed about half of the supplies dispatched from Britain. Rawlinson warned Henry Wilson that Amiens was ‘the only [place] in which the enemy can hope to gain such a success as to force the Allies to discuss terms of peace’.60 That day he had told his diary, ‘We must maintain in AmiensMontdidier area a sufficient force of good troops to make any chance of success here out of the question.’61 Ludendorff dissipated his strength by ordering his three armies to attack northwest, west and southwest in an attempt to separate the British and French, destroy the former and eliminate French reserves. French reinforcements and stubborn British resistance stopped them short of Amiens. For an advance of 40 miles, they had paid a heavy price: nearly 240,000 irreplaceable men, losses being especially heavy among experienced officers and the elite assault divisions.62 Henry Wilson and Milner arrived in France and at Doullens on 26 March, French and British leaders agreed to charge Foch with responsibility for ‘the coordination of the action of the Allied armies on the Western Front’.63 Rawlinson was told that before parting, Foch and Haig shook each other warmly by the hand. ‘H[enry] W[ilson] also said that Goughy is to be sent home and I am to reconstitute the 4 Army to take over and reorganise the remnants of the V Army.’64 Many were glad to see Gough depart. Nugent whose Ulster Division had fought desperately in the retreat wrote that it would have been better six months earlier. ‘Please God for the sake of the British Army and the cause for which we are fighting he will never be employed out here again.’65 Gough, the youngest Army commander, had been overpromoted. Fifth Army was the poor relation in Haig’s plan of defence, but too many men were in the forward zone to be killed or captured.66 Rawlinson took up his new post on 28 March. The situation was critical: ‘The V Army troops are beat to the world and no French reinforcements are yet in sight. If the Boche attacks heavily tomorrow I fear he will break our last line of

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defence in front of Amiens and the place will fall.’67 Fifth Army’s total strength was barely 9,000.68 Gough had prepared a second defensive line covering Villers Bretonneux, although it was weakly held, and ordered cavalry divisions forward. Two hours after taking command, Rawlinson wrote to Foch asking for more troops, but he had nothing to give. Earlier in the day he had rung up Lt Gen Sir Herbert Watts commanding his only Corps, XIX Corps, to enquire of the situation. The undaunted Watts cheerfully said, ‘they may well get us by lunchtime and you by tea-time’.69 Rawlinson remained calm, knowing how important Amiens was. The German advance was losing direction and slowing. He took the important step of appointing a corps commander to coordinate defences on the Fourth Army Front, thus eliminating much confusion over defence policy.70 The 29th was an anxious day, heavy fighting following a counter-attack by 20th Division which was unsuccessful. ‘Archie [Montgomery] arrived at 5 p.m. and has already been much assistance to me.’71 On Good Friday the Germans attacked both morning and afternoon, but counter-attacks by the Australians and Jack Seely’s Canadian Cavalry Brigade restored the line. At Moreuil Wood, understrength Canadian cavalry fought a splendid small action against superior numbers. Lieutenant Gordon Flowerdew of Lord Strathcona’s Horse won a posthumous V.C. ‘Beginning to get things into some sort of order’, Rawlinson wrote. ‘3 Cav Div arrived late tonight and will be a great help if the Boche again attacks tomorrow.’ Next day the French withdrew from a wood without resisting, but on 1 April the cavalry attacked again, suffering severely from machine gun fire, but despite this killed ‘a very large number of Boches, took 50 prisoners and 18 machine-guns. A very fine performance and a splendid example to the Army’. Rawlinson sent a congratulatory telegram to Cavalry HQ.72 Rawlinson’s good news coincided, perhaps fortunately for him, with the visit of the Minister for Munitions, Winston Churchill,73 and the French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau. Clemenceau spoke fluent but slightly Gallic English. Rawlinson’s French was fluent, Churchill’s execrable. They enjoyed a picnic lunch at which Clemenceau insisted on his usual superior chicken and sandwiches, scorning Rawlinson’s improvised, meat, bread, pickles, whisky and soda. Rawlinson told Churchill that ‘Jack Seely with the Canadian Cavalry Brigade has just stormed the Bois de Moreuil’. Churchill asked if Rawlinson would be able to make and hold a new front line. ‘No one can tell,’ he replied. ‘We have hardly anything between us and the enemy except utterly exhausted, disorganised troops …. All the Fifth Army infantry are dead from want of sleep and rest. Nearly all the formations are mixed or dissolved. The men are just

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crawling slowly backwards; they are completely worn out.’ British troops had been fighting and retreating continuously. Haig drove over from his headquarters at Montreuil to join them, and at his request Clemenceau telephoned Foch successfully for French reinforcements. He then told Rawlinson, ‘I claim my reward.’ ‘What is that?’ ‘I wish to pass the river and see the battle.’

Clemenceau persisted, although Rawlinson said beyond the river the situation was uncertain. Clemenceau insisted, running a risk that he and Churchill would try to outdo each other in foolhardy courage, but they returned safely. Both Churchill and Rawlinson were hugely impressed by the Frenchman’s indomitable will and vitality at seventy-seven.74 Ludendorff called off the offensive on 4–5 March. On 9 April he attacked on the Lys in Flanders. By the 12th the British had had to evacuate dearly won gains in the Ypres salient. On the 11th Haig had issued his famous order, ‘With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.’75 Rawlinson had already written on 27 March: ‘We are short of men & Div[isio]ns but with our backs against the wall we shall I know render a good account of ourselves.’76 In the end Foch sent twelve French divisions to assist the BEF, and they took the main part in repelling the final German assault on 29 April. They were 5 miles from Hazebrouk railway junction.77 There were further grounds for Allied optimism. Americans were arriving in increasing numbers. From the military hospital where she served as a VAD, spirits already lifted by Haig’s order, Vera Brittain saw American soldiers swinging past: so god-like, so magnificent, so splendidly unimpaired in comparison with the tired, nerve-racked men of the British Army. So these were our deliverers at last, marching up the road … in the spring sunshine! There seemed to be hundreds of them, and in the fearless swagger of their proud strength they looked a formidable bulwark against the peril looming78

Fighting broke out again on Rawlinson’s sector. It was ‘the tired, nerve-racked men of the British Army’ who met the danger, but morale was rising.79 After three hours’ bombardment, the Germans attacked near Villers-Bretonneux front with two fresh divisions on 24 April. Driven back at first, a second assault with tanks succeeded and gained Villers-Bretonneux. A counter-attack launched at 10 pm ‘was executed in a most brilliant manner in spite of the darkness’ and

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re-established the line.80 Rawlinson recorded the first tank-vs-tank battle in history, the Germans having two of their monster A7Vs with conning towers and some former British ones, the British four main tanks and seven Whippets, light tanks with a road speed of eight mph. Rawlinson’s account was that four Whippets were knocked out, but two large German tanks were disabled and a third ditched. The Whippets ‘did great execution and claim 400 dead Boches at least’. On the 25th a British counter-attack succeeded beyond Rawlinson’s expectation, two Australian brigades fighting ‘brilliantly’ and recapturing Villers-Bretonneux and 600 prisoners. Seven or eight tanks broke the German line.81 Rawlinson continued to improve his defences, following the German pattern: a thinly held forward zone, and behind it infantry, tanks and machine gun units able to deliver local counterattacks. Further back he placed a second and third section.82 On 9 May, a bright, warm spring day with clear visibility, he went up in a Bristol Fighter flown by the squadron commander. ‘It was delightful in the air and I could see the detail of every trench which is just what I wanted,’ he wrote with satisfaction. ‘I was very pleased with what I saw and with the immense amount of work that has been done’ He was equally impressed by the Bristol fighter with its 250 H.P. Rolls Royce engine giving it an angle of climb of 35 degrees.83 Aircraft technology had made strides since his 1915 flight. By June, Australians delivering raids on the German lines were finding that the enemy was no longer the formidable force they had been. The Australians thought that they were facing troops of ‘very poor quality’.84 The optimism with which the Germans mounted their last offensives had gone, and they were wishing that this ‘wretched war soon ends’. Two ‘turnip winters’ and the British blockade had undermined the home front. Soldiers, although better fed than civilians, knew that malnutrition in general and lack of foods high in protein and carbohydrates exerted a terrible toll on populace. Wartime mortality increased by 37 per cent.85 In June, Rawlinson produced a sketch for the new kind of warfare he envisaged. This echoed an earlier paper of Winston Churchill, now Minister for Munitions, that the only way to inflict a decisive defeat was by mechanical means, a ‘Battle of Surprise’, not a ‘Battle of Exhaustion’.86 The reduction of British divisions from twelve to nine battalions made for more flexibility and greater reliance on firepower.87 Rawlinson remained a supporter of ‘mechanical means’, although on 29 September, fearful that Lloyd George would hold back vital manpower from the Army, told Henry Wilson: ‘We cannot beat the Boche without infantry. Tanks, aeroplanes, etc., are great helps, but they cannot and will not win for us by themselves, so do not let Lloyd George think they will, and persist in developing them at the expense of the infantry.’88

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Firepower, not manpower, held the key to success. Taking advantage of massive production of guns, tanks, aircraft and ammunition,89 he recommended thirty-six tanks be allotted to each division and sixty-four Lewis guns per battalion instead of thirty.90 Continuing reports from the Australians convinced Rawlinson that the Germans’ defences opposite Fourth Army were in a poor state and their morale was low. Australians had launched fourteen raids in May and June, improving the position of the British line and establishing a moral superiority over the enemy.91 On 18 June he toured the Australian commands and suggested to Lieutenant General John Monash, newly appointed commander of the Australian Corps, and Acting Major General Ewen Sinclair-McClagan an offensive to improve their front using two battalions of tanks against the salient formed by Hamel village and a spur.92 He asked Monash and Brigadier General A. Courage, commanding tanks attached to Fourth Army, to plan the attack. Haig considered Monash ‘a most thorough and capable commander who thinks out every detail and leaves nothing to chance’.93 Like Rawlinson, he had made mistakes in 1915 – weaknesses in frontline leadership under pressure – but meticulous planning on the Western Front combined, some said, with selfadvertising, now marked him out. He had taken command of the Australian Corps when General Sir William Birdwood took over a reconstituted Fifth Army.94 The Australians had had a bad experience with tanks at Bullecourt in 1917, but the arrival of the new Mark V would, Rawlinson believed, give them confidence in this weapon. The Mark V was slightly faster than its predecessors, less prone to breakdowns, could be driven by one man instead of four, fuel tanks were placed outside the cabin and protected by armour.95 Americans would take a part in the battle and 4 July was chosen as the day of attack. ‘The Yankees I am sure will fight like hell,’ wrote Rawlinson. On 28 June he went to see SinclairMcClagan’s 4th Australian Division practice with the tanks, which had to keep within 100 yards of the leading line of infantry ‘and then all will be well’. By 30 June he thought ‘we have now got the Australians to understand and appreciate the Tanks’. Monash’s final conference lasted four hours and twenty minutes; every detail was discussed and settled.96 At the last moment, Pershing tried to withdraw the Americans, but four companies still participated. There were last-minute adjustments. Monash’s chief of staff, Brigadier Thomas Blamey, and Sinclair-McClagan asked for a creeping barrage, not originally planned as omitted at Cambrai.97 The artillery barrage was to fall at zero hour on the enemy’s front line and remain there for four minutes while the infantry and tanks moved up close to it. At zero plus four minutes it would creep forward at the rate of 100 yards per two

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minutes, the pace decreasing slightly until nearing the furthest objective it was 100 yards every four minutes. Total air superiority would be maintained.98 Forty-six heavy machine guns were employed in direct fire support. Australian battalions attacked at 3.10 am assisted by sixty tanks covered by HE, smoke and gas. They scored a striking success, taking over 1,000 prisoners with an equal number dead or wounded. Australian and American losses were half of that. Where the tanks did not get forward, the Australians subdued German strongpoints with Lewis guns and rifle grenades. Fourth Army’s hold on the Villers-Bretonneux Ridge was much improved.99 The tactics were a precursor of future victories. Rawlinson was keen to profit from the situation. At Hamel, he believed he had hit on winning methods: a high degree of surprise, overwhelming artillery firepower in the counter-battery role and a very intense creeping barrage. The tanks’ part was probably not crucial.100 He wrote to Henry Wilson on 12 July that the Germans were ‘dog tired and full of flu’ & with 3 more divisions he could get a good knock at them’.101 The day following Hamel, at an Army commanders’ conference, Rawlinson suggested to Haig a second attack south of the Somme. Haig did not agree, but on 16 July Rawlinson lunched with him ‘and proposed an offensive east of Villers Bretonneux if he would give me the C[ana]d[ia]ns. To my surprise and delight I find he has already decided to do this’102 On the 17th Rawlinson submitted a proposal for an attack by eleven divisions on a 19,000-yard front east of Amiens on dry and uncratered ground, essentially an enlarged Hamel.103 He planned ambitiously that fresh troops would leap-frog those who had made the initial assault. Troops would be assembled in secret to mount a surprise.104 Haig took the plan to the Bombon Conference with Foch. Foch insisted on the French First Army taking part on Rawlinson’s right flank.105 The front was widened from 19,000 to 30,000 yards. The attack had two aims: push the Germans away from Amiens and its railways and administer a knock to German morale. Meanwhile, the French Army scored a major success. At 4.35 am on 18 July four French armies (Fifth, Sixth, Ninth and Tenth) with Americans and almost 500 tanks supported by over 1,000 aircraft caught complacent Germans completely by surprise. The Germans lost 30,000 prisoners and over 600 guns. The defensive expert Friedrich von Lossberg wanted to evacuate all the ground captured since March, but Ludendorff would not agree. In the crisis he was nervous, angry and depressed, blaming others and quarrelling violently with Hindenburg.106 This victory marked the beginning of a series of Allied successes in ‘the last Hundred Days’ of the war.

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Rawlinson’s would come next. Fourth Army intelligence gauged German defenders to be lax. Von der Marwitz’s Second Army and Hutier’s Eighteenth held positions consisting of shallow trenches, not all of them wired. The contrast with the Somme could scarcely have been greater. Both Ludendorff and Army Group Commander Rupprecht were complacent.107 A force of great strength was secretly assembled: four Canadian and five Australian divisions in the centre, the former the last to arrive, III Corps on the left with Debeney on the right. The Canadians had been with Plumer’s Second Army in Flanders, and left two battalions there to keep up a steady flow of false signals traffic. Movement was at night, noise concealed by straw covering the roads, wheels wrapped round with rope, aircraft flying overhead as tanks assembled. Smaller numbers in infantry battalions were more than offset by much greater firepower, thirty Lewis guns, eight trench mortars and sixteen grenade-throwing rifles each. Aerial photos, in all some 37,825, were distributed as far down as section commanders. Haig gave Rawlinson nearly the entire BEF tank force. There were 430 Mark V tanks, 2,000 guns including 677 heavy and 3 divisions of a reduced Cavalry Corps. The manoeuvrable Mark V was supplemented by the Mark V*, 6 feet longer to span trenches and carry detachments of machine gunners and infantry. Unfortunately, the engine’s fumes and heat forced these to dismount and follow on foot. Cavalry, fully integrated in the plan, was to push through the leading infantry as soon as it could, taking advantage of any opening to advance and secure enemy defences.108 The RAF (formed 1 April from the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Service) outnumbered German aircraft four to one. Eight scout squadrons were to be used exclusively for bombing and engaging with their machine guns suitable targets on the ground. Bombing would be carried out by nine other squadrons.109 On 31 July Haig and Rawlinson met at Vaux to see a demonstration of tanks working with infantry. They agreed that Rawlinson would combine lighter Whippets with the cavalry and that the former would be brought forward to the cavalry’s assistance as soon as any strongpoint held up the horsemen. At lunch, Rawlinson explained the scheme to Kavanagh, and briefed his cavalry division commanders on the 4th.110 In the event, the cavalry was successful, the Whippets not. Rawlinson’s final Fourth Army conference on 1 August settled all doubtful points and questions dealing with times, barrages, objectives, air assistance and tanks. He talked to two of his old Staff College students, now divisional commanders, and ‘helped them a bit’. ‘I find Currie and Monash very pleasant and easy to deal with. No friction or argument of any sort,’ he wrote.111 Sir Arthur Currie commanding the Canadians was a remarkable commander.

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Figure 9.1 Mark V tanks moving up before Amiens.

He and his men had captured Passchendaele the previous year under inhuman conditions. His guiding rule was stated in his diary – ‘Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing.’ His appearance belied his efficiency: immensely tall, pot-bellied, normally in shirtsleeves and braces, frequently using bad language. Like Monash, he led a formidable force – ‘the Shock Army of the British Empire’.112 Men of the Dominions had fought heroically on the Somme and in 1917; now two years of bitter and bloody experience would be rewarded. On 4 August, anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war, Rawlinson attended church to hear timely intercessions. Haig had issued a special order of the day, which was ‘very heartening’.113 On the 5th he asked Currie to correct one detail of the tanks’ employment. Haig visited Rawlinson and told him to expand his advance if the first day went well from seven to 27 miles.114 On the 6th a spoiling attack by the 27th Wurttemberg Division, in retaliation for an unnecessary Australian raid,115 took prisoners, trenches and threatened the offensive. On the 7th the 18th Division counter-attacked; fighting went on all day, trenches lost and recaptured. Rawlinson visited the Canadians and was pleased with their fine spirit – ‘If anyone can smash the Boches, they will’ He had always thought highly of Canadian soldiers since his visit before the war. Now they were led by officers of high calibre.116

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On the morning of 8 August fog hung over Fourth Army front, listlessness and apathy over the Germans.117 At 4.20 am ‘in a resounding crash’ 2,000 guns opened fire and the tanks trundled over the top, followed by the infantry. Surprise was complete. Many batteries were captured without firing a shot, gun crews asleep in their dug-outs. Photography and flash-spotting had located 503 of 530 German guns. British counter-battery fire was overwhelming.118 The infantry advanced in single file rather than waves, bypassing obstacles, and overran the first line before it could communicate with HQ and guns. The tanks were invaluable overcoming machine-guns. One of the most successful, Tank 9199 commanded by 2nd Lt Whittenbury, had to zigzag due to two field guns firing. He shot back at the flashes and advanced about 1.5 miles well in front of the infantry, firing both his 6-pounders and Hotchkiss Guns at dugouts and gun positions, causing many casualties. The enemy ‘appeared to surrender without any resistance’.119 The infantry ‘leap-frogged’, formations taking over from those in front, to break deeply into enemy positions. The cavalry made its major success of the war, fully integrated into the all-arms battle. On the Canadians’ left there was a daring and successful charge by the Inniskillings, 7th Dragoon Guards and 17th Lancers. The 17th Lancers coming under fire successfully outflanked the enemy, capturing prisoners and several complete

Map 9.2

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field hospitals. As the 15th and 19th Hussars rode forward to attack, Canadian infantrymen leapt to their feet and loudly cheered. The 15th Hussars historian wrote: ‘Almost at once the 15th came under machine-gun fire, a few men and horses fell, but the momentum was gained, the forward rush continued, and in a remarkably short time all squadrons reached their objectives, dismounted and occupied the old trenches.’ Later in the morning 5th Dragoon Guards sighted three trains in the distance, one of them disabled by a bomb from an aircraft. It was captured by ‘A’ Squadron, complete with its full complement of German soldiers returning from leave. Two squadrons continued to cause havoc beyond German lines, overrunning three batteries of artillery. Amiens was a model example of integrating cavalry into a set-piece attack120 Mark V* tanks in support shelled a German ammunition train steaming into Harbonnieres, unaware of the rapid British advance. The train burst into one great sheet of flame rising 150 feet.121 Cavalry–Whippet tank cooperation had not fulfilled hopes, the cavalry moving twice as fast as the Whippets, but the latter did some good work, taking enemy batteries in the rear and mopping up.122 After midday Haig thought the situation had developed ‘more favourably than we had even dared to hope’.123 At 6 pm Foch visited Haig delighted with the unfolding victory. The advance was 8 miles. Butler’s III Corps did not gain all its objectives, partly because of strong resistance by the 27th Wurttemberg Division and partly because of failure of infantry–tank cooperation, but still captured 2,388 prisoners and about 40 guns.124 Although neither III Corps nor Debeney’s French did as well as the Canadians and Australians in the centre, the only real failure was out of Rawlinson’s hands. Initially British aircraft supported ground troops by bombing and shooting up retiring troops, transport and gun teams. One 11-inch long-range railway gun received so much attention that when Australians reached it, they found the whole gun crew of twenty killed or wounded. Aircraft dropped bundles of small arms ammunition to advancing units in boxes of a thousand rounds with small parachutes. They then switched to attacks on the Somme bridges. Their destruction would have stopped reinforcements arriving or Germans escaping, but the task was beyond aerial technology of 1918. German fighter reinforcements speedily arrived. Forty-five British aircrafts were lost and fifty-two others damaged. None of the fourteen bridges was destroyed.125 Rawlinson had wanted to go to the front to encourage the troops, but remained glued to the telephone at Fourth Army HQ. On the 10th enemy resistance was stiffening, but on the right two French Armies, First and Third, at first sluggish, made good progress as fresh enemy divisions went to the British front.126 Foch

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wanted the British to push forward to the river Somme and establish bridgeheads on the far side, but they would be approaching the old Somme battlefield, much cut up. On the 11th resistance further hardened. On the 12th the Germans put in several heavy counter-attacks. On that day Rawlinson arranged an attack for the 15th. It was hoped Byng’s Third Army would join in.127 On the 13th Rawlinson rode round the battlefield, finding the Canadians in good heart. Currie however looked on the attack arranged for the 15th ‘as rather a desperate enterprise’ and anticipated heavy casualties. Rawlinson agreed: ‘We want a little finesse & not too much sledge hammer slogging.’ On the 14th he visited Haig with maps and photos for the attack of the morrow and Currie’s letter of protest, and pointed out that they would face a regular trench system with masses of uncut wire. An attack would risk heavy losses and possible failure. ‘I suggested [Rawlinson wrote] it would be far better and cheaper to hold the enemy to his ground here by wire cutting and bombardment until III Army is ready to put in a surprise attack …. This [Haig] agreed to without a murmur.’ This was in marked contrast to 1916–1917. Debeney was of the same mind, and a confirming conference at 3 pm left both Currie and Monash much relieved. When Foch attempted to order Haig to press the attack, Haig told him he was responsible to his Government and fellow citizens for the handling of British forces. ‘Foch’s attitude at once changed.’128 After Rawlinson had convinced Haig, he visited Australian and cavalry divisions and heard many interesting stories of the battle. ‘They are all overjoyed at the victory.’ The British had suffered 20,400 casualties, the French 24,000. They had taken 29,873 prisoners and 499 guns. Total German losses were perhaps 75,000.129 This was fewer than Foch and Mangin’s gains at VillersCotterets (‘Second Marne’), but as a second victory coming in quick succession, it had greater impact. German morale was close to collapse. Many German prisoners expressed evident pleasure at being captured ‘and thus being relieved of the necessity of fighting a losing game’. There was a prevalent conviction that Germany could not now win.130 Soldiers coming up to relieve units leaving the line were taunted as ‘strikebreakers’. Fourth Army war diary recorded that Germans ‘surrendered freely and in large numbers without any serious fighting’.131 Winston Churchill was overjoyed at the spectacular success of ‘his brainchild’, the tank. On the way to visit Rawlinson’s headquarters on 9 August, he was much delayed ‘by enormous columns of German prisoners which endlessly streamed along the dusty roads’.132 At Flixecourt he lunched with Rawlinson, and daring as always motored on along a road being shelled. ‘I am so glad about this great and fine victory of the British Army,’ he wrote to his wife. ‘It is our victory, won

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Figure 9.2 Some of the masses of German prisoners captured at Amiens.

chiefly by our troops under a British Commander, and largely through the invincible Tank which British brains have invented and developed.’ To Lloyd George he trumpeted ‘the greatest British victory that has been won in the whole war, and the worst defeat that the German army yet sustained’.133 It was a greater triumph than Ramillies or Salamanca, and yet as Rawlinson recorded, ‘The [news]papers look on the 8 Aug[ust] as a French victory which seems somewhat unfair! I don’t mind.’134 He had no need to mind, for George V visited GHQ and Fourth Army on 12 August, and later he and Queen Mary took great pleasure in reading Rawlinson’s account of the battle.135 Even more than this, one letter would have brought him particular pleasure, from the Dowager Lady Roberts: I cannot resist sending you my warmest & most appreciative congratulations on the wonderful success of the last few days. I am more delighted than I have words to express ….How pleased my dear Fred [Lord Roberts] would have been … at all that has happened & the brilliant reputation his well loved Aide-deCamp has achieved, how proud & thankful Merry must be!136

10

Victory

Meanwhile the Boche is going to get the biggest knock he has ever had during the next ten days. I shall be surprised if by October 4 we have not won the biggest victory of the war. (Rawlinson to Henry Wilson, 21 September 1918) Your progress takes our breath away, and it is almost impossible to keep pace with events. (Clive Wigram to Rawlinson, 14 October 1918) The Allied offensive did not cease on 14 August 1918. Haig switched the focus of attack to Byng’s Third Army on Rawlinson’s left. The battle of Albert began on 21 August. On 23 August Rawlinson launched an attack north and south of the Somme, breaking through the old 1916 defensive line. Fourth Army now consisted of III Corps and the Australians with 32nd Division. Artillery spent a week methodically cutting the wire protecting the German position, which was much more extensive than at Amiens. Counter-battery fire crushed German artillery. Smoke and a creeping barrage escorted thirty-six tanks and the infantry onto the enemy position. North of the Somme all objectives including Albert were taken; south of it German divisions were driven back 1.5 miles. Australian 1st Division alone had captured 2,600 prisoners.1 In the ensuing weeks, Rawlinson’s Fourth Army enjoyed unbroken success: capturing the ‘Winter Line’ (26 August–2 September), attacking an ‘outpost line’ (18 September) and rearguards (21–25 September) led to the breaking of the Hindenburg Line (29 September–5 October), crossing the River Selle (17–18 October), and finally the Sambre–Oise Canal (4 November). Continuous attacks by Third and Fourth Armies forced the Germans to fall back upon their hastily improvised ‘Winter Line’. On 26 August, Horne’s First Army launched an offensive to the north of Byng. On 31 August, Repington,

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Derby, Davidson and others dined with Rawlinson at his HQ 15 miles north of Amiens. All were in high spirits at the news that the Australians had captured the immensely strong point of Mount St Quentin north of Peronne. ‘It is a magnificent performance and no praise is too high for them,’ wrote Rawlinson.2 The Australians’ advance was planned by Monash. His proven record at Hamel and Amiens was sufficient to convince Rawlinson to let him have his head.3 By 2 September, the German Winter Line was outflanked. It consisted of two lines of trenches supported by concrete shelters and machine-gun posts, with wire in some places 100 yards wide. At the first line, large numbers of Germans surrendered. The second line fell in seven hours.4 In a brilliant operation, the Canadians now with First Army seized a section of the Drocourt-Queant Line.5 Fourth Army surprised the Germans by a series of predicted artillery concentrations fired at zero hour rather than sustained barrages.6 The enemy fell back to the Hindenburg Line, their last major defensive position in the west.7 Ludendorff in his War Memories noted the success of ‘narrow but deep penetration by [British] tanks after short but extremely violent artillery preparation, combined with artificial fog’. These tanks’ advances were more effective as German morale deteriorated and divisions grew weaker and more exhausted.8 In September and October, Rawlinson would deploy overwhelming artillery, favoured by declining German numbers. In August, they lost 228,000 of whom 21,000 were dead and 110,000 missing, and received barely 130,000 replacements.9 In September, Foch orchestrated a combined Allied effort, ‘the decisive offensive’, raining blows upon the beleaguered Germans. The French and Americans were to attack on 26 September between the Meuse and Rheims, in the direction of Sedan and Mezieres. On 27 September, First and Third British Armies would follow on the Cambrai front aiming at Valenciennes and Maubeuge. On 28 September, on the Ypres front, Plumer’s Second Army with Belgians and French would advance in Flanders towards Ghent. Finally on 29 September, Rawlinson’s Fourth Army with French First Army on its right was to burst through the Hindenburg Line. The Americans were now in strength with huge double-sized divisions. After an impressive victory at St Mihiel, they would attack the Meuse-Argonne.10 The Hindenburg Line was the toughest objective. It had been constructed in winter 1916–1917 following the Somme and expanded to six lines forming a defensive zone 6,000 yards deep. In the southern sector facing Rawlinson, the main defensive line incorporated the St Quentin Canal, a formidable obstacle. The banks fell steeply away to the water 50 feet below, the canal bed was 35 feet wide and a series of dams maintained water or mud to a 6-foot depth. Tanks could not

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be used here. In the north, the canal ran into a tunnel. To strengthen their defences, the Germans had occupied a rise to the west of the tunnel and constructed three trench lines, 200 yards apart, all wired and supplied with dugouts. The tunnel became an artillery-proof underground shelter capable of housing thousands of men. Concrete dugouts, machine-gun posts and barbed wire in places hundreds of yards deep made the line truly formidable. Yet some of the wire had not been maintained, and was old and ‘much knocked about’.11 Being linear, these defences did not incorporate the effective chequerboard of strongpoints employed at Ypres. There was another weakness. The line was not on a reverse slope, but in a valley, and could be overlooked by a considerable ridge on the west running south-east from Epehy. The Germans constructed defences along this ridge. This ‘outpost’ position, initially machine-gun posts, was augmented by dugouts and wire and garrisoned in strength. To the west were a further three trenches, which the Germans strengthened, fortifying villages within them. This westernmost position was weaker than those to its east. The Germans had also begun, but not completed, support and reserve lines behind the main position.12 Rawlinson’s men had one major advantage in attacking the Hindenburg Line, detailed knowledge of the canal section from Bellicourt to St Quentin. On 8 August, the Australians had captured plans with maps which gave the precise location of trenches, wire, dugouts, gun batteries, artillery observation points, sound-ranging posts, telephone and wireless systems, headquarters, billets and rear installations.13 Rawlinson recorded good progress as they approached the outer Hindenburg defences on 5 September: ‘the Boche is in full retreat’. He began preparing plans for the Hindenburg Line assault. The 6th was likewise a good day with an advance of 6,000–7,000 yards. The 7th was a third day of advance. Rawlinson went round all corps and divisions: ‘all in best of spirits and saying they will take the Hindenburg Line on their heads with their advance guards. I only wish it were possible.’14 On the 11th, he proposed to Haig an attack on the ‘outpost line’, despite his divisions being understrength and wearied by a month of campaigning. There was rough equality of numbers, only twenty tanks to assist the attack, but overwhelming artillery, some 1,500 guns. These would enable a creeping barrage to be fired across the whole front of attack, allowing two-thirds of heavy guns for counter-battery work and others to batter strongpoints.15 The Hindenburg Line’s strength made impossible the surprise attack after a hurricane bombardment used at Amiens. Conversely, tank attacks like Amiens required weeks of preparation, and as the Hundred Days’ advance gathered momentum, concentrating tanks at one point would have slowed the Allies.16

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Map 10.1

On the 11th Winston Churchill came to lunch and promised Rawlinson 10,000 mustard gas shells. He proposed to use ‘the lot’ against the Hindenburg Line.17 Behind the victories lay immense industrial production. By 1918 the BEF

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had 2,000 medium and heavy howitzers and could launch major assaults at more than one point. The Royal Artillery was larger than the Royal Navy. Although the BEF was now fighting an ‘all arms battle’, guns remained the core of success. Counter-battery fire neutralized enemy guns; creeping barrages dealt with machine guns. Aerial spotting and photography and sound ranging directed fire with increasing accuracy.18 On 15 September, Haig had an army commanders’ conference with Horne, Byng and Rawlinson, and decided that the latter should attack the ‘outpost line’. Its capture would give the British gun positions to support an attack on the main Hindenburg Line.19 On the day before the attack, Rawlinson spent the day visiting divisions and corps and going through the plans of III Corps and the Australians. He was well satisfied except with the complicated nature of III Corps’ scheme. Foch told Haig that Debeney’s First Army would be reinforced to assist Rawlinson. On the 15th Rawlinson went personally to ask Debeney to assist but was flatly refused, and a visit by the Head of Operations Davidson produced no better result. On the day of the attack, Debeney did ‘little or nothing’. Weaknesses in infantry and artillery rendered French First

Figure 10.1 Winston Churchill as Minister of Munitions. Churchill’s energy brought vast quantities of ammunition and other war materiel to the BEF. Later he lobbied for Rawlinson’s appointment as commander-in-chief of the Indian army.

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Army incapable of giving substantial support, although after the war Rawlinson referred to Debeney as an ‘old friend’.20 A different problem was Butler of III Corps, who had been unwell, but returned to command; Rawlinson thought he did not grip his divisional commanders, but failed to intervene.21 Fourth Army attacked at 5.20 am on 18 September in drizzling rain and thick mist. In the centre, the Australians captured their objectives. In the south Braithwaite’s IX Corps’ attack was only partly successful because Debeney’s non-appearance meant that the defenders could enfilade their right flank. In the north Butler’s III Corps met particularly strong defences, a string of villages and trenches well supplied with dugouts, and defenders including a fresh division which arrived the night before. The British artillery barrage along the line was effective, and German morale low. The Australians went straight through to their final objectives capturing 4,000 prisoners and seventy guns, with only 1,200 casualties. Rawlinson thought that except for the Alpine Corps, German divisions fought poorly. ‘We have got up within sticking distance of the main Hindenburg Line,’ he wrote. ‘I am satisfied that we can attack the main Hindenburg line with success later on.’22 Eighteenth September ended with the Australians overlooking the main Hindenburg Line positions. Rawlinson was satisfied that Fourth Army could attack it. At a 19 September army conference, he told his subordinates his decision and that two American divisions would operate with Monash ‘who will father them and give them every possible assistance both in the way of advice and in officers of all ranks to stand by them and advise them on all points’.23 The Americans were still learning the lessons absorbed by the BEF in 1916–1917. Monash being given the responsibility for planning the attack was a tribute to his high standing and his knowledge of the ground to be attacked. One problem was that Butler’s III Corps was 3,000 yards short of their objectives overlooking the main position. Belatedly, Rawlinson arranged with Haig to have Butler relieved. By 24 September, III Corps were still 1,000 yards short of the proposed start line. An American Corps would join Fourth Army and Rawlinson ordered them to capture III Corps’ objectives by the 27th. The date of Monash’s planned assault was the 29th. A week beforehand Rawlinson held a large conference to settle the outline of the attack, details to be worked out by the corps, with a further meeting on the 25th to iron these out. On the 23rd a conference with Foch and French commanders settled boundaries and cooperation between Fourth British Army and First French Army. Rawlinson laid stress on employment of the artillery and insisted that Debeney have enough guns to keep defenders pinned down, as otherwise his right wing would suffer much. Foch gave orders to this effect

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and the French promised to arrange it.24 While Rawlinson’s British divisions were doing ‘first class work’ to bring them up to the Australian line, Fourth Army HQ was further cheered by news that three German officers and 102 men walked over to British lines and surrendered, saying they were fed up with the war and depressed by news of other Allied successes. Foch’s great offensive was getting under way. On the 26th the American attack in the Argonne began with initial success; on the 27th the British First and Third Armies attacked successfully at dawn. By evening, a gap twelve miles wide and six miles deep had been torn in German lines, and 16,000 prisoners and 200 guns captured.25 There was good news from Palestine, where Allenby was winning a decisive victory against the Turkish army; and from the Balkans, where Bulgaria collapsed following a French and British advance on 15 September and signed an armistice.26 From 21 to 25 September, Rawlinson’s orders brought about a readjustment of Fourth Army’s position. Braithwaite’s IX Corps had three divisions in line and one in reserve on a 10,000-yard front. Rawlinson had a high opinion of Lieutenant General Sir Walter Braithwaite, who had proved himself ‘an excellent leader and trainer of men’ in command of the 62nd (West Riding) Division.27 He supported Braithwaite’s bold scheme for attack.28 The 46th (North Midland) Division which had allegedly shown ‘a lack of offensive spirit’ at Gommecourt in 1916 would carry out one of the great feats of arms of the war. In the centre Monash commanded his Australians and II American Corps; General Read, its commander, would work closely with Monash. Australian 1st and 4th Divisions urgently in need of rest were replaced by American 27th and 30th Divisions. Australian staff officers assisted the inexperienced Americans. To the north, III Corps, soon to be only two divisions, held a narrow front of 3,000 yards. They had fallen short of their previous objectives, but on 21–22 September fighting against increasing German resistance, they took a large part of the objectives. Army Reserve was XIII Corps.29 Rawlinson made some changes to Monash’s plan to attack the Hindenburg Line. He increased the numbers of tanks to be employed from 90 to 162 (86 for the Americans, 76 for the Australians). He reduced III Corps’ role on the left of the Australian-American attack to providing a flank guard. He widened a narrow frontage of 6,000 yards to 10,000 yards to lessen the risk of attackers being swept by enfilade fire. This required an assault on the St Quentin Canal, which Monash had wished to avoid. This task was given to 46th Division of IX Corps on the right of the Australians and Canadians. Then 32nd Division would pass through them to capture high ground to the east of the canal. For the crossing,

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3,000 lifebelts were obtained from cross-channel steamers ‘together with light portable rafts, ladders, collapsible boats and heaving lines’. Rehearsals were held on the banks of the Somme in the use of this equipment.30 As Rawlinson’s chief of staff later wrote, ‘That the enemy intended to hold the Hindenburg Line to the utmost of his power and resources, there was no reason to doubt; not a single trench rumour of further retirement reached us from prisoners.’31 For the artillery bombardment, Fourth Army could now employ all the techniques developed since 1 July 1916. Eighteen-pounder HE (High Explosive) with the sensitive 106 fuse would cut the barbed wire; heavy guns would suppress enemy artillery, smash down the canal banks, neutralize or destroy dugouts, and destroy machine-gun posts, command and communications centres. The four-day bombardment began early on 26 September. Some 1,600 guns, nearly 600 of them heavy, fired 750,000 shells (including 30,000 gas) weighing 39 million pounds on a 10,000-yard front.32 In places the damage was comprehensive. In the American sector, the creeping barrage landed in the wrong place. Elsewhere it moved ‘steadily forward, except for the flashes, in the thick morning mist which hung over the battlefield. The intense and mainly accurate bombardment achieved its aims, 126 shells per minute landing on each 500 yards of German trenches. This weight of heavy shell was an increase of 120 per cent on Amiens. The ridge secured by Monash’s earlier attack gave the BEF’s gunners the best observation enjoyed in any Western Front attack. The Mustard Gas shells which Churchill had promised Rawlinson came at a most advantageous time; the Germans were running out of materials for respirators and protective clothing. Zero hour was 5.50 am on 29 September. The eight divisions of Australian, American and British attackers numbered 40,000, against 30,000 defenders with 5,000 in reserve. The tanks, followed by the leading waves of infantry, rumbled forward and became enveloped in the fog, which was by that time greatly intensified by the smoke of the shells. Shrapnel bursts filled the air, and machinegun bullets whistled everywhere overhead.’33 On the left the attack did not reach the main Hindenburg Line. It fared better in the centre. Almost all the heavy guns of IX Corps and three-fifths of its field artillery supported 46th Division’s attack. Shrouded by fog, the men of 46th Division stormed the German trenches. Led by Brigadier J.V. Campbell, V.C., 137th Brigade exactly to timetable reached the canal, crossed, securing a bridge intact, and stormed through the fortified line beyond. They took 2,000 prisoners. Their casualties were less than 600. Rawlinson’s confidence that his men could overcome this obstacle was vindicated, as was the reputation of 46th Division.34 By 3.30 pm Fourth Army had advanced

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up to 3 miles, and taken the main German position and over 5,300 prisoners. Of these, 46th Division captured 4,200 and 70 guns. There had been a disappointing check at the northern half of the tunnel defences. Nonetheless, Fourth Army had forced a wedge into German defences 5,000–6,000 yards deep on a 10,000-yard front.35 On the morning of the 30th, the attack was renewed and on subsequent days, the BEF widened the breakthrough. On 2 October, German counter-attacks were beaten off. At 6.05 am on 3 October IX, VIII and the Australian Corps launched a successful attack behind a creeping barrage from heavy guns and field artillery, supported by thirty-six Mark Vs. They met strong resistance, sixteen tanks knocked out by direct hits from anti-tank guns and one by a mine, but after tough fighting captured their objectives. The 46th Division distinguished itself again at Ramicourt, driving the defenders from the village with the tanks’ help and taking 1,000 prisoners and a battery of field guns. Lieutenant Colonel Bernard Vann of 6/Sherwood Foresters in support of 139th Brigade showed courage and leadership, promptly bringing up his headquarters and one company in support of the attack. Vann, an ordained minister of the Church of England, was killed while leaving the village. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.36 An estimated 4,000 prisoners were taken that day and enemy counter-attacks in the evening repulsed. The 5th was a day of further success, the infantry well supported with barrage fire, bombardment of selected points and counter-battery fire. Enemy artillery retaliation, strong at first, weakened considerably during the afternoon, and all Rawlinson’s objectives for the day were taken.37 It had taken nine days (27 September–5 October) to break the Hindenburg Line, four of Haig’s armies forcing their way through. Fourth Army’s weekly appreciation for 28 September to 4 October judged that their attacks ‘have been continuous and uniformly successful’.38 The German official history, Die Weltkrieg, admitted their men were surrendering in unprecedented numbers: ‘the inner strength of the troops was no more as of old’.39 Since 8 August, Fourth Army’s military achievement had been remarkable, overrunning six German positions, including the strongest on the Western Front.40 Although the defenders had employed twenty divisions against Fourth Army’s twelve, superior firepower and better morale enabled the attackers to take 14,664 prisoners between 29 September and 5 October.41 On 1 October, Rawlinson had met Haig at Third Army HQ to discuss the situation. ‘He fully approved of the plan of action I am following,’ wrote Rawlinson with satisfaction, a striking change since the summer of 1916.42 Breaking the Hindenburg Line was a traditional Western Front battle, the artillery dominant and infantry slogging forward. The cavalry was unable to get

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through.43 Only 46th Division’s sensational crossing of the canal compares with 8 August. The common factor was the collapse of German morale. Large numbers continued to surrender. Rawlinson was aware his success fitted into a wider scheme: ‘Under Foch’s tuition and the lessons of over four years war we are really learning and the synchronisation of the various attacks has been admirable.’ On the day before Fourth Army’s attack on the Hindenburg Line, Haig had visited Rawlinson, ‘in great form’. ‘He thinks we shall finish the war this year and I hope he may be right but it is no certainty.’44 Rawlinson told Wigram, ‘I feel very proud of my Army. They have fought magnificently.’45 In July the following year, the Manchester Guardian posed the question, ‘Who really did win the Great War?’, and answered it in part by stating, ‘[Germany’s death blow] was delivered by General Rawlinson and our Fourth Army … between September 27 and October 5, 1918.’ The correspondent wrote that the British public was unaware, their attention being on President Wilson’s peace note to Germany and the reply.46 The BEF was now into open country. For the next phase, a new corps, XIII, composed of experienced men drawn from Italy and Palestine, joined Fourth Army in late September. On the 16th, Rawlinson had expressed a lack of confidence in Richard Butler commanding III Corps. Prior and Wilson note his failure to grip Butler, but less than a week later, following Rawlinson’s complaints, Haig replaced Butler’s III Corps with this new one under Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Morland, perhaps an attempt to save his protégé’s face.47 Unsuccessful on 1 July1916, Morland had done well at Messines in 1917. Anthony Eden described him as ‘a human as well as a very competent commander’.48 His corps, absorbing two of III Corps Divisions, was successful in 1918. Meanwhile, the Australians were withdrawn after 5 October for desperately needed rest. They had been Fourth Army’s spearhead, losing 21,243 since Amiens. In early October, soldiers and civilians alike were assailed by a new bringer of mass death: the influenza pandemic. The German army had been hit first, at the time of the first French offensive, but the second wave was more lethal. Globally, it was deadlier than the war, killing at least thirty million. It disproportionately affected the young, and the forced proximity of servicemen in trenches, hospitals, trains and transport ships facilitated its spread. The French army had 75,000 cases, the AEF (American Expeditionary Force) 39,000 and the BEF 14,000. There was no medical defence, but it did not stop the Allied advance.49 Rawlinson was much affected by the death of an ADC, Captain Richard Sutton, in November: ‘It is too too sad and it will take me a long time to get over for I am very fond of that boy and it does seem so hard that his young life should be taken by this infernal influenza after having been through 4½ years of war.’50

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Figure 10.2 The victorious men of the 137th Brigade mass on the St Quentin Canal banks, still wearing their life jackets, being addressed by Brigadier J.V. Campbell.

Haig had now given his army commanders their head. On 1 October, he had met Byng and Rawlinson at Third Army HQ. The two told him ‘that [the] Enemy has suffered very much, and that it is merely a question of our continuing our pressure to ensure his breaking’. They agreed that no further orders from GHQ were necessary, and both would be able to carry on without difficulty.51 After taking the Hindenburg Line, Fourth Army’s next operation was on 8 October against ‘a jumble of intermixed formations protected neither by trenches nor wire’ using villages, scattered woods and the railway line running north-south. On 5 October, Rawlinson finalized arrangements, but postponed for twentyfour hours to the 8th to complete preparations.52 He arranged a massive barrage to begin at zero hour. His guns pounded the defenders with 350,000 shells weighing 8 million pounds. Behind an ‘excellent’ creeping barrage, ninety-four tanks and infantry attacked with XIII Corps on the left, II American Corps in the centre and IX Corps on the right. The cavalry would keep close behind, and the initiative was with Kavanagh, commanding the Cavalry Corps, when to send them through. Among the tanks were Whippets who would also follow

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in pursuit. One aircraft had as its sole duty to warn the guns when the cavalry would pass through; the leading cavalry brigade HQ would fire a ‘golden rain’ rocket when they did advance. Corps guns were instructed only then to engage targets in answer to calls from the air or direct observation by forward observation officers.53 On 8 October, IX Corps met with immediate success, the exceptions being the Whippets, which broke down or were put out of action by enemy artillery fire, and the cavalry, frustrated by machine-gun fire. By nightfall IX Corps on the left had reached their final objective, and XIII Corps was also successful. In the centre, II American Corps attacked ‘with great dash’ and reached their objective, assisted by tanks. Altogether 4,000 prisoners and fifty-six guns had been taken. As these were mixed together from seventy-three different battalions of thirteen regiments, enemy disorganization was assessed as serious.54 At 5.20 am on 9 October, the attack was resumed along the whole front. Again, good progress was made, this time marked by cavalry success. The Canadian Cavalry Brigade, moving north of the main Le Cateau Road, found the infantry held up by machine-gun fire from the western edge of Gattigny Wood. At 11 am the Fort Garry Horse made a very dashing attack on the western edge of the wood, supported by horse artillery fire, putting the machine guns out of action and passing through part of the wood. The infantry then resumed their advance. Simultaneously, Lord Strathcona’s Horse occupied a small copse and then Montaux-Villes Wood. In this action, the Canadians captured 230 prisoners, two field guns and forty machine guns. In the afternoon, 3rd Dragoon Guards attacked Honnechy Wood at a gallop and scored a rapid success, followed by infantry.55 Armoured cars, which all too often bogged in soft going, gave assistance to both infantry and cavalry, scattering enemy machine-gunners and securing a bridge before it could be blown.56 The artillery continued to play a dominant role, firing 4.7 million pounds of shell on enemy rearguards on 9–10 October.57 On 11 October, having advanced 10.5 miles on a front of seven and a half, Fourth Army reached its next major obstacle, the River Selle. There were no defences of the sort encountered previously. The river was 15–18 feet wide and 3–4 feet deep, running through water meadows extending 100–200 yards on either bank. Slopes rose some 200 feet above the stream’s level. On the west there was no cover; on the east there were enclosed orchards, hedges and grass fields. To the north stood Le Cateau, with solidly built houses and cellars. A railway embankment to its east and associated buildings provided excellent cover for machine guns and field artillery. The Germans could overlook the approaching British and Americans.58

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Map 10.2 Battle of the Selle.

Rather than attempt to rush the position, Rawlinson paused until he could bring guns and ammunition up. On 14 October, he moved into his HQ train, ‘very warm and comfortable’. He held a conference at the American corps to fix details of the coming attack.59 Some 1,320 guns fired 17 million pounds of shell from 11 to 17 October. These included gas shells. Vigorous counter-battery work was carried out. Six-inch guns sited well forward engaged distant objectives including canal crossings.60 Four British and two American Divisions built floating bridges for the crossing. In the south, Debeney’s First Army assisted. The attack on 17 October at 5.20 am was successful. Infantry advanced behind a creeping barrage which came down 200 yards in front of the start line. ‘Lifts’ were 100 yards at three-minute intervals.

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The battle of Le Cateau (or the Selle Crossing) was hard fought at first, XIII Corps having much trouble from a stubborn defence at Le Cateau; however, ‘the violent bombardment to which [the Germans] had been subjected … sufficed to break down the resistance of the defenders’. The first day Fourth Army gained half its objectives and over 4,000 prisoners with thirty guns. The Americans played an active part. On the 18th they captured two enemy positions and 1,600 prisoners, but suffered heavy losses. Tanks received special attention from enemy guns and were unable to render much assistance, but the artillery and infantry killed large numbers of Germans and defeated all counter-attacks.61 By the 19th, Braithwaite’s Corps took over from the Americans. After a pause, Fourth Army attacked on the 23rd in conjunction with Byng’s Third Army north and south of Le Cateau. They gained nearly all objectives with 1,000 prisoners and twenty guns. Final objectives were taken on the 24th. Again, the Germans had been subjected to an enormous bombardment, 10 million pounds of shell. Tanks assisted the infantry. Fourth Army’s British and American Divisions had captured 20,000 prisoners and 475 guns, and were within 14 miles of the important railway junction at Aulnoye. The front line now ran along the Sambre–Oise Canal and the edge of the Forest of Mormal.62 By now the German government was negotiating for an armistice. After the British victory at Amiens, Ludendorff had suffered a nervous collapse, but had recovered and argued for continued fighting. He and his supporters at OHL (Oberste Heersleitung) were living in a world of fantasy. On 26 October at an audience he shouted at the Kaiser, who angrily accepted his offer of resignation. Hindenburg would not resign in support, and Ludendorff stormed out in a towering rage.63 Germany’s civilian government pressed on with negotiations, but Foch’s terms were hard and Rawlinson doubted if they would be accepted: ‘tantamount to unconditional surrender and he will not except them without much demur and further fighting’. He had visited all corps and divisions and found them in good heart, confident of success. Germany’s eastern allies had collapsed, and she was now alone.64 He therefore pressed on with plans to cross the Sambre and Oise Canal. This could prove a difficult obstacle, 75 feet wide from bank to bank, 7 feet deep, low ground on either side flooded by the enemy. In the north of Fourth Army’s zone lay the Forest of Mormal containing thick groves of trees and dense undergrowth. South of the forest was the fortified village of Landrecies.65 Against the canal and forest, Rawlinson brought over 1,000 guns and five attacking divisions. German positions were not protected by adequate wire or trenches, and their formations were tired and understrength. At 5.45 on the morning of 4 November the attack

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began, supported by Byng’s Third Army to the north and Debeney’s First French Army to the south. Writing the day after to Wigram, Rawlinson described the assault on the Sambre Canal by Braithwaite’s IX Corps, 1st and 32nd Divisions, and by the 25th Division of the III Corps as ‘a very fine performance’. The country along the canal banks was ‘very enclosed with hedges along the fields just like Surrey’. Hostile machine guns enfiladed the banks and enemy were in considerable strength. Notwithstanding this, the attackers succeeded in throwing bridges across 70 feet of open water at three of four points attempted. A thick morning mist assisted, but cleared off at 9 o’clock to allow the airmen full scope. The Camerons in the 1st Division rushed the enemy post on the near bank of the canal, carried down their foot bridges and then threw them across under the barrage, and the whole battalion was across the canal in six minutes without a single casualty, for the German barrage came down 300 yards behind them. The line of the canal was crossed and bridgeheads established on the far bank in less than two hours. Resistance weakened as Braithwaite’s corps crossed. Morland’s XIII Corps had the Forest of Mormal as its objective. Despite difficulty of keeping direction in the thick bushes, the staff work and leading was so good that no confusion occurred and the 50th and 18th Divisions passed through to the further edge, 4 miles distant, without mishap. ‘Considering the magnitude of the operation and the difficulties of the forest and canal combined [wrote Rawlinson] we suffered extraordinarily light casualties.’ They captured over 4,500 prisoners and fifty guns for a loss of just over 2,500 men. Rawlinson assured Wigram that Fourth Army could ‘go on doing this over the winter, but a flag of truce will come soon’.66 The battle of the Sambre and Oise Canal was Fourth Army’s last. Rawlinson was 30 miles in front of his railheads, and could manage another 10 miles only before stopping for a week to repair and rebuild the tracks. In this final stage, the rate of advance depended more on the state of roads and railways than on increasingly feeble enemy resistance.67 On 8 November, Rawlinson formed a composite force including armoured cars and cavalry under Major General Bethell of 66th Division to keep in touch with the enemy. He heard the German fleet had mutinied at Kiel and half the ships had hoisted the red flag of revolution. On the 10th he drove into the town of Avesnes less than 10 miles west of the Belgian border, the buildings untouched although the roads were cratered. He wrote: Intelligence [at] GHQ say that the Kaiser and the Crown Prince arrived in Holland with 10 motors today … Who could ever have predicted this a couple of months ago. It is wonderful and most satisfactory. Thus ends the greatest war in history. The great German Empire has crumbled to dust in its efforts to rule

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the world. The pertinacity & determination of the British Empire is primarily what has brought this about but if Germany had not forced the Americans to join by instituting unrestricted submarine war and had she been less brutal in her methods the war might have gone on two more years but I think we should have won in the end.68

Delegates of a defeated Germany signed the armistice at 5.05 am on 11 November in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiegne, the ceasefire to take effect from 11 o’clock. The war was over. All his life Rawlinson had served the British Empire, as his father had done before him, so his pride in its victory is understandable. Britain’s contribution was enormous, but ultimately the Allies had pitted superior firepower, manpower, sea power, war production and leadership, both political and military, against Germany and her satellites.69 Notably they had done this on the Western Front, where the war was nearly lost and then won in 1918. The naval blockade and the collapse of Germany’s allies contributed to her defeat, but the failure of the German offensives of that year and the smashing blows struck especially by the BEF’s Third and Fourth Armies devoured German manpower and convinced soldiers and civilians alike that they could not win. The relentless Allied advance left no choice.70 Rawlinson had made no small contribution to the Allied victory. Fourth Army had delivered the first British blow to open ‘the Hundred Days’ and then done as much as any of the BEF’s great forces. After Amiens, German soldiers realized they could no longer win. The smashing of the Hindenburg Line destroyed Germany’s last prepared defences in the west. Two years earlier on the Somme, the damage done to the German army influenced Hindenburg and Ludendorff ’s decision to support unrestricted submarine warfare. Edmonds, official historian, judged 1916 to be a turning point, the Germans sustaining casualties of well over a million on the Western Front alone.71 By pressing for step-by-step operations, in common with others, Rawlinson had, finally, impressed on Haig methods that would help win the war. Rawlinson wrote to congratulate his commander. The two had worked together, not without strains, but with ultimate success. Haig replied: My Dear Harry – My heartfelt thanks to you for your friendly words of congratulation, which I deeply appreciate. But I must congratulate you, too, on all that you have achieved since the very beginning of the war; and at the same time thank you for the whole-hearted support you have at all times given me. It is due to the generous support which you and the other high commanders have given me, that I have been able to endure to the victorious end. Every good wish to you, my dear Harry, and Believe me, Yours ever, D.H.72

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Even if both men knew that the wholehearted support was not given ‘at all times’, there had been more than sufficient: the BEF had been outstanding in 1918. ‘From Amiens to Avesnes has been a wonderful story,’ thought Rawlinson. ‘I may live to write it some day.’ He did not, but his chief of staff did. On 19 December, a fine sunny day, Haig and his five army commanders came to London and drove from Charing Cross to Buckingham Palace. There was no escort, no troops lining the road, no public decorations had been ordered. There were enough flags to make the route gay. A squadron of aeroplanes manoeuvred in the sky above. The reception by the public was wholehearted, and the cheering equalled that for Foch and Clemenceau some days earlier. Haig and Rawlinson had seen similar events, but had not experienced such crowds or such wholehearted enthusiasm. ‘Wonderful reception in the streets’, wrote Rawlinson. ‘Best I ever saw. Lunch at Buckingham Palace’.73 The British Empire had faced and overcome its greatest test. German, AustroHungarian, Ottoman and Russian Empires lay broken and humbled, torn by revolution. The Royal Navy was the undisputed master of the seas,74 and the British army, after many bitter experiences and nasty knocks, was ‘incomparably the best fighting machine in the world’75 (although by 1919 the AEF would have been half again as strong as the BEF). At the war’s end, Britain remained the world’s economic superpower with the largest foreign trade, the largest foreign income, the largest share of international services, the largest merchant fleet.76 ‘I never thought we could bring down the Boche Empire so quickly,’ wrote Rawlinson to Henry Wilson on the day the war ended, ‘when I began hammering on Aug. 8th. It is really wonderful – We have now secured for the Empire a really firm foundation on which to build.’ Sadly, Rawlinson’s optimism would not be borne out by events. ‘The Crisis of Empire’ was imminent. Nor would the world economy prosper.77 On 17 May 1919, roughly six months after the war’s end, the correspondent Repington, now with The Morning Post, had lunch with Julian Byng, ennobled as Lord Byng of Vimy, and his wife. After lunch they discussed Eton, which both Byng and Repington had attended without any distinction. How interesting, they observed, that three of the five army commanders in France in 1918 should have been Etonians. Two of them, Byng and Rawlinson, had been in the 3rd form, a receptacle for the least academic. Byng told Repington that he was ‘the stupidest boy at Eton’ till ‘Rawly’ arrived, when the latter was ‘in a class by himself ’. They were ‘scugs’ (Eton schoolboy slang for ‘a boy who is not distinguished in person, in games, or social qualities’), and the third Etonian army commander, Herbert Plumer, they described as ‘a camouflaged scug’. They agreed that the best men

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matured late and practically never at school.78 In view of their own school days, this is scarcely surprising. It was often not done to seem ‘keen’, and in later life men of renown might deprecate their achievements. An Harrovian ‘scug’ who later showed some distinction did exactly that in retelling his early life.79 Ian Hamilton had earlier recognized the ability of the two Eton Third Formers, writing to Kitchener from Gallipoli in 1915 for corps commanders with ‘a good stiff constitution and nerve. Everything is at such close quarters that many men would be useless in the somewhat exposed headquarters they would have to occupy on this limited terrain – I can think of two men, Byng and Rawlinson. Both possess the requisite qualities and seniority.’80 Byng doubtless enjoyed telling Repington that Rawlinson was even dimmer than he was, but a sceptical reader must doubt that these masters of war were such fools. In the Hundred Days, Byng’s Third Army had advanced 60 miles, mounted ten set-piece attacks and improvised assaults on seventeen days, capturing 67,000 prisoners and 800 guns.81 Fourth Army had fought eighteen separate actions and won four great battles, Amiens, Hindenburg Line, Selle and Sambre, advancing 85 miles, taking 80,000 prisoners and 1,100 guns. These were momentous achievements for men who as schoolboys had found construing Latin a trial.82

11

An Uneasy and Turbulent Peace

I impressed on [Lord] Reading, [Indian Viceroy designate] the importance of leaning on you, not only as one of the greatest soldiers that we have got but as a man who in his blood, through his father and through Lord ‘Bobs’ has had long connexion and many traditions with the East. (Henry Wilson to Henry Rawlinson, 15 March 1921)1 I can assure you & it is with much joy & quite a healthy appetite that I join the ‘fire eaters’ as you say you & Archie [Montgomery] are called!! I have a good digestion & am looking forward to lots of fire. It is both interesting and exciting. (Henry Rawlinson to Claud Jacob, 21 September 1920)2 The end of the First World War brought unresolved problems. Peacemakers had to grasp many loose ends, a daunting task.3 In early 1919, at Versailles, Rawlinson was impressed by the draft document on the League of Nations and limitation of armaments. He thought the real difficulties would be in the East with the collapse of the Russian and Ottoman Empires. He hoped the victorious Allies would establish Armenia and Georgia as independent states in the Caucasus under their protection, revive Persia as an Asian makeweight and prevent the Trans-Caspian railway at Merv and Samarkand falling into Russian hands. The unsettled state of affairs in Asia threatened India’s security. ‘I should much like to go to India as Commander-in-chief [wrote Rawlinson] in order to have a hand in these questions, which interest me enormously.’4 In March, 1919, with Fourth

This chapter relies upon: Brian Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980); Keith Jeffery, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire, 1918–1922 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984); Jeremy Black, Avoiding Armageddon: From the Great War to the Fall of France, 1918–1940 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012).

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Army’s demobilization, he returned home and on 31 March his appointment to the Aldershot command was announced, his friend Ian Hamilton rejecting the Northern Command to make way for a younger man.5 Haig had recommended Rawlinson for the Aldershot or Salisbury command.6 Circumstances would draw the two apart after the war, but now as friends they remained in touch. On 10 April 1920 Haig joined Rawlinson and others ‘for a capital day at the races’. On 23 June he, Rawlinson and Horne all spoke as guests of honour at the First Army Dinner. Later in India, Rawlinson and Merrie hosted a ball for 500 in aid of Lord Haig’s Fund, raising 5,000 rupees.7 In February 1919, Rawlinson and Lieutenant General Sir Claud Jacob, successful commander of II Corps, had wanted Haig to become Indian Viceroy.8 This was not on the cards: neither Roberts nor Kitchener had been able to gain the post, and Lloyd George’s enmity stood in the way. Rawlinson’s last meeting with Haig was in October 1924, on leave from India. He told Ian Hamilton that there was not the slightest chance of the former BEF commander going into harness again – ‘At least that is the impression he gave me when I was staying with him last October. He is quite happy where he is, and loves his new home at Bemersyde.’9 Rawlinson’s first post-war job was in Russia. In spring 1918, after the punitive Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Germans had attempted to carve out an Eastern Empire, planning to seize Petrograd and Kronstadt as bases for an advance towards the Barents Sea. From September 1918, fighting began in a civil war. Allied intervention in Russia was at first anti-German, but after Germany’s surrender, anti-Bolshevik. Japanese, Americans, British, Canadians and French were deployed in Eastern Siberia, Archangal and Murmansk, from 1919 onwards supporting the anti-Bolshevik ‘Whites’. Smaller British forces operated north of the Afghan border and at Baku. In 1919, by a mixture of propaganda, terror, Trotsky’s organizing a Red Army, and Lenin’s ruthless determination, the Bolsheviks began to get the upper hand. The ‘Reds’ struck out successfully from a central position.10 The British were forced to evacuate their forces in north Russia. The CIGS, Henry Wilson, summoned his old friend to London. He and Churchill, now Secretary of State for War and Air, briefed Rawlinson, who accepted the task of evacuation, warning he might have to attack to cover the withdrawal and asking for reinforcements and tanks. ‘North Russia is a nasty job,’ he wrote, ‘but I have decided to accept it.’11 On 4 August, on board ship, he wrote, ‘Here I am off to the wars again, on a mission which looks to be as difficult as any I have undertaken, but I have no doubt that with the luck which usually accompanies me, I shall get through all right.’ Churchill had given him instructions and a more-or-less free hand.12 On

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8 August he received news of receiving a barony among post-war peerages and a grant of £30,000. The sea voyage was a trial to a man of active spirit. ‘Studied maps and read reports till sick of them.’13 On 9 August he reached Murmansk and on 11 August was at Archangal. Here he met acting Major General Edmund Ironside, commanding a multinational force of British, French, Americans, Poles and a Slav Legion of Russian soldiers in British pay. The previous day, Brigadier Lionel Sadleir-Jackson had attacked the Bolsheviks and captured over 1,000 prisoners and 12 guns.14 Six-foot six-inch ‘Tiny’ Ironside, a Russian speaker, had succeeded the unsatisfactory General Frederick Poole, who had made little headway, partly because hundreds of his men were confined to ships with flu’.15 Rawlinson surveyed the situation: his ‘army’ had a strength of 43,400, of whom 13,400 were at Murmansk and 30,000 at Archangal.16 Other than 16,000 British, he judged his force to be ‘a job-lot – good, bad and indifferent – mostly bad’. On 12 August he and his chief subordinates agreed to evacuate Archangal as Ironside proposed. Murmansk would be retained until the end of September, when, with Archangal clear, it too could be evacuated. Rawlinson thought they would be away by midOctober. To assist breaking clear, he attacked on 15 September. Brigadier Maynard’s onslaught proved a fine bold enterprise. Lieutenant Burrows of 5/Dragoon Guards captured a railway siding with two locomotives and rolling stock. Altogether 500 prisoners were taken.17 On the 19th the British withdrew from contact down the River Dwina, and by 2 pm on the 27th would be away from Archangal. Rawlinson returned to Murmansk the previous day. On 3 October at Murmansk there was a sharp frost, the ground was white, and Rawlinson thought his arrangements for evacuation would be completed just in time. He had been visited by the Chinese Consul to arrange the embarkation of 600 Chinese railway workers. The Serbs’ and Koreans’ departure had also to be organized, the Poles having already left. On 8 October he inspected the last trainload of Serbs before they left. That same day he embarked from the quay at Murmansk at 4 pm. ‘Very glad to be quit of North Russia.’18 The Royal Navy ships’ companies manned their vessel and gave three cheers for the successfully evacuating troops. All about the hills, white with snow, and the intense cold showed winter’s arrival. ‘So ends one of the queerest adventures of my life,’ he wrote.19 He landed at Glasgow on 13 October, receiving a congratulatory telegram from George V. In mid-November, he took over the Aldershot command. The Russian civil war and famine caused losses almost as great as the World War, 7 to 10 million.20 Misery, starvation and horrors in Russia will certainly be

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appalling, predicted Rawlinson.21 From the Bolshevik victory emerged a new state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Lenin’s government had no part in the Versailles settlement, and denounced the capitalists for causing the First World War, publishing the Allies’ secret treaties. In 1920, the Red Army led by Marshal Tukhachevsky invaded Poland, but was defeated at the Battle of Warsaw 16–25 August 1920, ‘the most important battle of the 1920s’,22 saving eastern Europe from the Bolshevik rule – for a time. In contrast to harsh Russian conditions, in March 1920, Rawlinson and Churchill spent two weeks on the Duke of Westminster’s estate at Mimizan south of Bordeaux. The French War Office fitted a special sleeping car for them to the back of the Paris-Bordeaux train, but provided no blankets for the beds and only mattress covers. The two passed the night in their clothes. They reached Mimizan on the morning of 26 March. Their time was divided between boar hunting, painting and eating. A three-quarter hour’s ride brought them to the sea with lovely sands spread for miles. They both painted by the lake on the estate. ‘The General paints in water colours and does it very well,’ wrote Churchill. ‘With all my enormous paraphernalia, I have produced very indifferent results here.’23 Rawlinson agreed: ‘Did two [sketches] of the lake – am improving. Winston’s oils not much good.’ They discussed the battles of the war ‘without cessation in the intervals of painting and riding’. Rawlinson was a decided ‘westerner’ (with temporary deviation at Versailles in 1918), Churchill had sought to avoid ‘chewing barbed wire’ on the Western Front, but it is a tribute to both men’s tact that they got on extremely well. ‘We agree on most points,’ wrote Rawlinson.24 Ian Hamilton wrote to him that Churchill ‘thoroughly enjoyed his fortnight with you and told me that there never was the smallest hitch in the very jolly relations established’.25 Churchill’s World Crisis does not censure Rawlinson for the Somme, but depicts him later at Amiens: ‘He was always the same tough, cheery gentleman and sportsman. He always had the same welcome for a friend, be he highly or lowly placed, and the same keen, practical, resolute outlook on facts however they might be marshalled.’26 Churchill had of course seen Rawlinson’s victory using his tanks so effectively on 8 August. Despite Rawlinson’s optimistic prognosis in 1918, the Empire faced widespread trouble in Ireland, the Middle East and India. In mid-May, 1920, Rawlinson commented with disapproval on the Treaty of Sevres with Turkey. It was a mistake to give Anatolia and Eastern Thrace to the Greeks. Greek friendship was of less value than Turkey’s. A friendly Turkey would be a barrier against Bolshevism. Any policy partitioning the Ottoman Empire and handing it over

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to the erratic Greeks would threaten the loyalty of India’s Muslims, whom the Turks and Germans had unsuccessfully tried to subvert during the First World War.27 In February 1921, Rawlinson wrote to Churchill, who would become Colonial Secretary, urging on him the importance to India of a rapprochement with Mustapha Kemal.28 Rawlinson’s prognosis was accurate. The Chanak Crisis and Turkey’s defeat of Greece marked the bankruptcy of Lloyd George’s policy.29 The British Government of India was confronted by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who emerged as leader of a nationalist movement. He organized hartals (strikes) against the unpopular Rowlatt Acts, which enabled the Indian Government to retain wartime emergency powers. The non-violent hartals descended into riots. At Amritsar, British civilians were murdered and buildings looted. On 13 April 1919 a prohibited meeting was held in a large enclosed space, the Jallianwallah Bagh. Brigadier General R.E.H. Dyer ordered Gurkhas and Baluchis to fire without warning on the unarmed crowd, killing 379 and wounding over 1,200. Order was restored, but a scar was drawn across Indo-British relations deeper than any since the Mutiny.30 Dyer was censured by the investigating Hunter Commission and recalled, although British Army opinion was indignant at his treatment.31 The Indian Army faced serious difficulties at the war’s end. Its performance had been mixed, unprepared as it was for global war. With expansion, the quality of leadership declined, new officers did not know their men and often did not speak their languages.32 General Sir Charles Monro took command in India following ‘Mess-pot’, the bungled Mesopotamia Campaign. He expanded recruiting beyond the confines of the martial races, and provided munitions, barracks, medical services, equipment and motorized transport.33 Indian soldiers fought in the conquests of Palestine and Mesopotamia.34 The hugely expanded Army – from 155,243 to 573,48435 – which Monro bequeathed would face extensive demobilization, but there was trouble in the Middle East, a revolt in Mesopotamia and the disturbances caused by Lloyd George’s policy towards the Turks. Handing over parts of the Ottoman Empire to the Greeks would strike at the loyalty of the Empire’s Muslims, In the Punjab, the Sikh Akali movement, initially seeking to reform practices in the gurdwaras (temples) raised questions about Sikh loyalty. Sikhs formed a major part of the Indian Army as one of ‘the martial races’. The Russian Revolution stirred trouble in central Asia. In 1919 the Third Afghan War erupted when Afghan troops invaded the Khyber and Kurram Passes. Tribal militias armed by the British, including the famous Khyber Rifles, mutinied. Tribesmen from the borders armed with captured rifles raided deep

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into British-administered territory.36 The Afghans were quickly driven back, but their government continued to support the rebellious Wazirs. The campaign proved more arduous than expected because of the troops’ inexperience, the terrain and Wazir tenacity. The tribesmen accepted British terms in May 1920. Meanwhile, only the despatch of Indian divisions controlled a post-war Mesopotamian rebellion. The cost of keeping troops in Mesopotamia was immense.37 Questions over the Indian Army’s future led to the appointment of the Army in India Committee under the chairmanship of Viscount Esher. His committee’s report, published in late 1920, considered the Indian Army as part of the defences of the whole Empire. It recommended that the British and Indian Armies should be merged at command level.38 Rawlinson had received an advance copy, and told Esher that it was ‘very good … but there is an awful lot to be done to put things right’.39 Until August 1920, however, it was by no means certain Rawlinson would be commander-in-chief. And cutting across hopes for reform was the collapse of the Indian Government’s finances. The world slump beginning in spring 1920 left an increasing deficit just as the British would face for the first time an elected Legislative Assembly brought into existence by the MontaguChelmsford Reforms.40 Normally Indian Army command alternated between British and Indian Army officers. Monro was ‘British’, as was Rawlinson, and there appeared a suitable ‘Indian’ candidate in General Sir William Birdwood, a former Bengal Lancer who had commanded the Anzacs before taking over a reconstituted Fifth Army in 1918.41 Both Churchill, Secretary of State for War, and Henry Wilson, CIGS, favoured Rawlinson over the popular ‘Birdie’. Rawlinson had not accepted the offer to succeed Sir George Milne at Constantinople because he disapproved of Lloyd George’s Turkish policy. Lloyd George unlike Churchill and Wilson does not appear to have been a Rawlinson admirer because of the latter’s closeness to Haig, and he delayed a decision on India.42 Very probably it was he who in June 1916 told C.P. Scott, the radical editor of the Manchester Guardian, that ‘it was currently said in the army that every time [“old Rawly”] lost an engagement he received a step in promotion’.43 It is very unlikely that a soldier would tell the radical Scott, who had condemned the Army for Kitchener’s internment camps in South Africa, such a thing. (Scott was eighteen years the senior of ‘old Rawly’.) The steps of Rawlinson’s appointment are well documented.44 Wilson replied to a question made on Churchill’s behalf that there was ‘no compact that I can discover by which the commander-in-chief alternates between the British and Indian Armies as a matter of right’. Birdwood was eighteen

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months younger than Rawlinson and would be only sixty in five years’ time, so his chance could then come.45 Churchill was Rawlinson’s most influential supporter, writing to Edwin Montagu, Secretary of State for India, that he wanted ‘a man with vigour and experience of war’.46 Montagu replied that he would not oppose if the prime minister concurred ‘because I find I cannot disregard the unanimous preference for Lord Rawlinson expressed by Military opinion’.47 Churchill told Lloyd George that Montagu would have preferred Birdwood, but the circumstances in India were such that ‘I feel we ought not to be bound by any conventions of this kind, but that the post should go to the best qualified officer, irrespective of previous service’. His military advisors ‘entirely support my view that the best appointment we could make would be that of General Lord Rawlinson’.48 Lloyd George had pressing matters, and prevaricated. ‘Can get no news about India,’ wrote Rawlinson on 3 August. ‘Looks like off.’ He was shooting in Wales on the 20th when he received telegrams from both Henry Wilson and Merrie confirming that George V had signed his appointment: ‘At last it is settled.’49 On the 23rd ‘a good leader’ in the Times applauded his appointment to a post ‘usually regarded as the greatest prize which can be bestowed on any British soldier’ and presumed he would approach reforms with a ‘perfectly open mind’.50 The ambitious Rawlinson must have been particularly pleased: where ‘Bobs’ and ‘K’ his mentors had led, he now followed. With his appointment confirmed, he talked to experts about use of tanks on the frontier and for internal security; a lighter version of six to seven tonnes was needed. He read about the fighting in Waziristan, a worrying development. Although the Third Afghan War ended officially on 8 August 1919, raiding continued on an unprecedented scale. Wellarmed Mahsud and Wazir gangs carried off animals, property and hostages. A local garrison of 2/19 Punjabis had met disaster, being overrun in their hilltop stone sangars and routed. A large British and Indian force had its hands full, even with RAF bombing support.51 He also spent one and a half hours with Montagu at the India Office; Montagu was pessimistic, sure that Gandhi’s movement would wreck his plans to involve Indians in the government of the country. In October, he lunched with Jai Singh Prabhakar, Maharajah of Alwar in Rajasthan, a well-regarded scholar in English, who had sent the regiments of his princely army to support Britain in the war.52 Rawlinson’s rival, Birdwood, might have been more popular with the Indian Army. He had a deep and sympathetic knowledge of India and its people, although he lacked the kudos of Rawlinson’s 1918 victories. Birdwood told Ian Hamilton that he had ‘nothing whatsoever against Rawlinson whose ability is

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well known’. Hamilton advised him that beggars cannot be choosers and he should accept the Northern Army in India, one of the separate commands.53 En route to India in November, Rawlinson called at Amiens to present a silk flag to the cathedral, damaged by German shellfire. In Paris, he had the pleasure of meeting Foch, Joffre, Debeney and Weygand ‘and other old friends of the war’. Wrote Rawlinson: There was quite a heated argument about the end of the war. Some contended that we should have gained much more if we had continued fighting, instead of signing the Armistice; but this Foch would not admit, and he was right. I greatly enjoyed seeing my old friends, and was much interested in their frank talks about great events. They all wished me every possible good fortune in India.

Debeney had Rawlinson and Merrie for tea in his magnificent quarters at the Ecole Superieur de Guerre and introduced his three daughters.54 Rawlinson discussed ‘a heap of subjects’ with Derby, still ambassador there, and promised to write to him regularly and told him that I looked to him to help me if I were to get into trouble in Indian with rebellion and Dyer cases again. This I think he will do well for he has a wide circle of friends and is a reliable person for the press like Gwynn[Morning Post] and St Loe Strachy [Spectator] to refer to in times of stress. I told him straight that if there were to be any cases of Dyers I should be the next Dyer for I was determined to fight for the white community against any black sedition or rebellion.

In India Rawlinson would adapt this last view, but only somewhat. On the voyage he read the Esher Report and William Wilson Hunter’s A Brief History of the Indian Peoples, a standard British text. In India he would read, among numberless government papers and his daily Times, the second volume of Churchill’s World Crisis and the first volume of the Official History of Military Operations in France and Belgium 1915.55 He reached Bombay on 22 November, where he had long discussions with Lord Lloyd, the Governor, and Claud Jacob, his chief of staff. He reached Delhi on the 25th, attended his first Council meeting and lunched with the Viceroy Chelmsford afterward.56 The Times of India had welcomed his appointment. His command would require ‘the exercise of the imaginative qualities of a good commander and administrator’ and his ‘giving shape to the new frontier policy’. Rawlinson’s previous record gave ‘the greatest promise’. India’s security could only be assured by a sufficient army trained to the highest pitch, equipped with the modern means of war. The newspaper warned of the complexity of Indian politics in a poor country, requiring investment in education, sanitation and industry. 57

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For men like Rawlinson and Churchill, India was intrinsic to British world power.58 The Indian Army had provided Britain’s ‘strategic reserve’ in the nineteenth century and in the 1914–1918 war.59 The Indian taxpayer bore the cost of Indian soldiers and the British garrison. The Indian economy with Bombay as a metropole for East Africa was intertwined with the Empire’s. Indian manpower and commercial expertise had opened new regions in Asia and the Pacific to British influence. It was hard to imagine how the intricate fusion of British and Indian interests could be prised apart without disaster for both.60 Some Indian politicians, however, were seeking just that separation. The Indian National Congress sought before 1914 to mobilize growing public opinion. There had been a period of disturbance and some terrorism, but the outbreak of war saw strong expressions of imperial loyalty. As the fighting continued, however, it produced tension. Educated Indians were shocked at the barbarity of the Europeans’ war, and afterwards opposed the Rowlatt Acts, which enabled the Indian Government to retain wartime emergency powers. Influenza combined with bubonic plague killed 17 million in 1918–1919. The monsoon’s failure in summer 1918 led to a disastrously bad harvest. The wealth that war brought mostly flowed into the pockets of the few.61 The economic recession and fall in the value of the rupee meant that reductions had to be made in expenditure, especially military, if the budget could be balanced. Military expenditure was subjected to vehement and persistent attacks by Indian representatives. It was to be to Rawlinson’s credit that he ‘was ready to give the Indian members both in public and in private the fullest possible information regarding the military situation’, and this went some way to allay hostility.62 The Esher Commission had recommended improving the pay, housing and clothing of the Indian officer and soldier. Arriving at Delhi, Rawlinson told Derby – soon to return to the War Ministry – that he had already ‘plunged into this labyrinth of officialdom and [am] up to my neck in questions of all kinds’.63 He faced more problems than any commanderin-chief since the Mutiny, and he would have to justify expenditure in a way not confronted by his predecessors.64 Fortunately he had done his homework. The tasks which Rawlinson faced included settling the controversy on frontier policy; modernizing the Army’s organization, training and equipment; providing reserves of men and material; improving the status and conditions of service of Indian officer and soldier. Frontier tribesmen were better armed and Soviet propaganda fomented trouble. Gandhi’s call for non-cooperation threatened the stability of the British rule. Taxes would have to be raised to maintain military efficiency. While Rawlinson thought this could be done as India was ‘the least

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taxed’ part of the Empire, the British Government of India would face debates and criticism of an elected Assembly for the first time. The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms launched a new All-India Legislature of two Houses, the Legislative Assembly and Council of State, both with a large Indian majority. The Legislature enjoyed wide opportunity to discuss questions of general policy and criticize government action with some power over finance and legislation. The Viceroy’s ultimate authority was carefully guarded, although his Council included Indian members; the British still controlled defence, foreign policy, criminal law and the police. Provincial governments also shared power with elected Indians.65 The reforms suggested a military corollary, a greater Indian share in the army through ‘Indianization’, namely granting King’s commissions to Indian officers in at least part of the army. Rawlinson was expected to implement this measure and those recommended by the Esher Commission, and explain them to the Assembly. In early 1921, the Duke of Connaught arrived as the King’s representative to open the new Legislature. Rawlinson reckoned his visit a complete success with no untoward incidents, although Gandhi’s visit to Delhi holding his own meetings somewhat reduced the numbers lining the streets to welcome the Duke. At the formal opening, Connaught delivered a message from the King and then made his own speech appealing to all parties to work in harmony. This transformed the atmosphere of the proceedings, Rawlinson felt. He wrote approvingly to Derby of the moderation shown in the Assembly, his pleasure at ‘this first experiment’ in representative government, and of the quality of speaking: ‘Some of these black men speak extraordinarily well …. Most of them have been educated and trained in the law courts, with the result that they have no difficulty in expressing their ideas, and the general tone of the debater has been quite equal to that which one hears in the House of Commons.’ At a subsequent entertainment on the Delhi racecourse, Rawlinson was tackled by ‘a Jirga [assembly of leaders] of splendid old Afridi officers’ who besought him to find employment for their young men. Half the frontier trouble was due to unemployment.66 It was the nascent Legislative Assembly that determined rejection of the Esher Commission’s report. Rawlinson and his advisors mainly agreed with the recommendations, but they were in a minority.67 The proposals faced Indian financial troubles and hostility in Britain from both press and politicians. Indian representatives felt that putting the Indian Army under Whitehall’s control was an attempt to compel India to pay for policing the rest of the Empire. Sir P.S. Sivaswamy Aiyer, a prominent lawyer who had been Advocate General of Madras, introduced fifteen resolutions into the Assembly, in effect rejecting the

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entire report and any proposal to make the Indian government relinquish Army control to London. The Indian Government was in fact pleased to accept the Sivaswamy resolutions passed by the assembly in 1921.68 The Legislature was new, the Frontier an endemic problem. The Viceroy’s Defence Committee discussed Waziristan on 30 December. A relentless British advance broke the back of Mahsud resistance, punitive operations in February forcing the tribesmen to negotiate. The campaign officially ended in May after fighting of unprecedented severity.69 Rawlinson favoured permanent occupation as a step towards pacifying the whole frontier, building military roads and stationing a garrison at Razmak. Others opposed him on financial grounds, but he enjoyed the support of the viceroy and the Political Department as well as the General Staff at home, and won approval in principle.70 Rawlinson thought a treaty with the Afghan Amir to draw a line under the war was the necessary first step. Sir Henry Dobbs negotiating at Kabul found himself involved in hard bargaining and a treaty was yet to be agreed. After Christmas Rawlinson visited the frontier, and was much impressed by the natural grandeur and vast scale. He became convinced that permanent occupation of the Kurram Valley surrounded by precipitous hills, the scene of Lord Roberts’s first victory in 1878, was the best solution for that part of the frontier. It would divide the Waziris from the Afridis. The trick was to find the ideal location for the Kurram Brigade’s cantonment; a mistake could blight the whole policy.71 One historian has argued that Rawlinson’s views on Waziristan were opposed by those of Sir George Roos-Keppel, recently retired Commissioner of the NorthWest Frontier Province and a man of immense experience. He wanted a definite policy of ‘civilising the Frontier tribes up to the Durand Line’ [the border with Afghanistan, drawn up by Sir Mortimer Durand], first by crushing their fighting power and disarming them, and then by making roads and maintaining order.72 Roos-Keppel died in 1921, but it seems that his and Rawlinson’s ideas were congruent. Moreover, by spring 1921, the British and Indians were mastering the tribesmen. This did not prevent continued raids on the Army’s lines of communication.73 Rawlinson’s tour of Baluchistan and Waziristan in May 1921 quickly showed him what frontier fighting meant. A British soldier could not go beyond rifle range of the sentries. The British must either get out or proclaim permanent occupation.74 Money would determine whether he could follow this policy and carry out essential Army reforms. He set out to Henry Wilson his views of the newly installed Finance Member Sir Malcolm Hailey’s ‘delinquencies’ in drawing up an inaccurate budget, not foreseeing the fall in the value of the rupee from two

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shillings to one shilling and five pence.75 War expenditure militated against tax rises, and the fall in the currency would force the reduction of army costs to balance the budget. The army required 75 crores (1 crore = 100 lakhs or 10 million rupees, in 1921 approx = £666,000). In 1913–1914 the army had cost 29.5 crores. Since then, a global war had intervened, new pay scales been introduced, there was continued fighting in Waziristan, and there were 2,400 officers above peace requirements who must be persuaded to take a gratuity and find another profession.76 On 18 December 1920 Rawlinson wrote: ‘My job is even more complicated and difficult than I had imagined.’77 On his return, he found himself battling over the budget, which reduced military expenditure from 75 to 65 crores. In the Council he was in a minority of one, worried about a reduction in British infantry numbers. Hailey sought to get it down to sixty by sending home two British cavalry regiments, a brigade of artillery and five British infantry battalions. Rawlinson contemplated resignation, feeling he could not guarantee India’s security, but decided instead to hold out for sufficient tanks, armoured cars and aircraft to replace lost manpower. He feared that cuts would prevent the acquisition of urgently needed military and hospital equipment and motorized transport.78 Whitehall supported Rawlinson against cuts, and eventually it was agreed to delay these. A committee headed by Rawlinson would review India’s military requirements. A telegram from Montagu, Secretary of State for India, said that there would be no confidence in the City of London for a loan for India if the reductions took place. Rawlinson gained approval for a scheme of four commands replacing the three created by Kitchener. This would take much of the paperwork from headquarters.79 As Chelmsford’s successor as viceroy, India needed ‘a man not afraid to act’,80 in Rawlinson’s view. Chelmsford had been in India since 1916, had faced popular forces of discontent during and after the war, especially in the Punjab, and was now tired. Rawlinson judged him ‘informed in detail and sound in his views’, but not strong. The successor, Rufus Isaacs, Lord Reading, reached Bombay on 2 April 1921.81 His only previous landing there had been as a ship’s boy on a Glasgow cargo boat at a wage of ten shillings a month.82 Rawlinson had sent congratulations to the new viceroy, and explained that he had opposed reductions in the military budgets because there was ‘a great deal of inflammable material lying about which an accidental spark or an evil disposed person might ignite at any moment’. The Treaty of Sevres with Turkey posed the biggest problem for India internationally; a friendly Turkey meant a friendly Afghanistan, but the treaty would make enemies of the Turks.83 En route

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to welcome Reading, he thought the viceroy would face difficult problems and ‘conflicting influences of all kinds’, but saw reason for optimism in the Legislative Assembly’s moderation and their rejection of a proposal that the commander-inchief should not sit on the Viceroy’s Executive Council. Twenty-five battalions in Waziristan were pacifying the Mahsuds and Waziris.84 Regular troops occupied the area continuously for the last five months of 1921, preventing hostile action, reducing cross-border raids and pushing on road construction.85 Rawlinson was to be impressed with Reading, who told him security must come above finance86 The viceroy combined diplomatic tact with realism and firmness, his mission being to make the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms work while showing everyone the strength of the government. In May, Rawlinson wrote to Haig: ‘[Reading’s] cordial manner and brilliant intellect coupled with his surpassing clearness of thought and expression has made a profound impression on my Hon’ble Colleagues and is a very marked contrast to his predecessor.’ Reading led the Council rather than ‘pandering to [their] often wobbly views’. He had noted Reading’s judicial habit of looking all round a problem which was prone to hold back executive action, but gave resolve to the decision once made.87

Figure 11.1 The 2nd/5th Royal Gurkha Rifles in mountainous Waziristan in the 1920s. Building roads and a brigade base at Razmak was part of Rawlinson’s solution to bring peace to this turbulent area.

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In mid-July, 1921, the report of Military Requirements Committee was ready. The Committee included some of the most military minded of the Legislative Assembly, and Rawlinson adroitly got his general staff officers, especially Claud Jacob, to paint a lurid picture of Central Asian dangers and to convince Indian members of the committee that a strong army was necessary so long as Bolshevism threatened and the frontier remained unsettled.88 Following the report, Rawlinson reluctantly agreed to the reduction of three British cavalry regiments and five British infantry battalions when internal conditions and the lessening of frontier dangers made it possible. He had inherited the situation that nearly fifty infantry battalions were employed on internal security. He thought it was now impossible to defend this policy: ‘Now we have decided to trust the Indians and lead them to self-government, we cannot justify an army of occupation.’ The question of Indianization – granting commissioned rank to Indians – was likely to divide him from the Indian members of the committee. He agreed to recommend the establishment of an Indian Woolwich (for Gunners and Engineers) and a Sandhurst (for cavalry and infantry), but told the Indians that they were trying to go too fast. Rawlinson favoured setting up military schools at Dehra Dun and Bangalore at once, but not to start a Sandhurst before a sufficient supply of the right type of men came forward. The Viceroy’s Council had settled that commissions in Indian Territorial and Auxiliary Forces were to be King’s Commissions, signed by the viceroy. Rawlinson thought the Indian regular army would have to follow suit, thus opening the whole question of relations between between British and Indian officers. If the new policy were rushed, the supply of British officers would dry up before India could manage without them. He thought the solution was to make some cavalry and infantry regiments entirely Indian. Rawlinson was sceptical that educated Indians could lead members of the ‘martial races’ like Sikhs and Gurkhas into battle, and told Reading that it would take two or possibly three generations to produce Indian officers of the right kind and in sufficient numbers.89 In late August 1921, there was an outbreak of violence in the countryside of Malabar – the Moplah Rebellion (Moplahs sometimes called Mapillas90). This peasant jacquerie was serious. Muslim fanatics looted towns and treasuries, smashed up railways and murdered a few Europeans and Hindus. As soon as Rawlinson was asked to act, he did so quickly, reinforcing troops in the Madras Presidency. A four-month-long guerrilla campaign ensued before peace was restored. Major General Sir John Burnett-Stuart initially quelled the troubles, but the ‘Mops’ broke up into small bands, raiding and attacking places which

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were without troops or police. Rawlinson sent Gurkhas and Chins and Karens from Burma used to jungle fighting. The gory atrocities inflicted by the Moplahs on Hindus, publicized by the government, had a deterring effect upon Indian nationalists.91 The rebels were no match for the Indian Army. When a mountain battery’s guns failed to penetrate the walls of a solid stone mosque which 2/8 Gurkhas found preventing their advance in the jungle country, the Gurkhas broke into the mosque, killing fifty-six and dispersing the rest. On 7 January 1922 Muhamad Haji ‘the Khalifat King’ with twenty-one followers was captured. Following the sentence of a court martial, he was shot with six followers on the 20th. This practically ended the disturbances, rebels being rounded up and brought before special courts. The Madras Mail of 23 January 1922 reported 2,266 rebels killed in action, 1,615 wounded, 5,688 captured and 38,256 surrendered.92 Mixed news marked the end of 1921. The Ali brothers, Mahomed and Shaukat, had been interned during the war for their pro-Turkish sympathies. They became leading lights in the Muslim Khalifat movement, which combined protests against the Turkish peace treaty with violent opposition to the British rule. They were arrested in August 1921, for trying to foment trouble in the army.93 The treaty with Afghanistan was signed in October 1921, a success for Henry Dobbs who had seemed on the brink of failure. Britain abandoned its earlier efforts to manage Afghan foreign affairs, accepted the presence of Russian consulates west of the Hindu Kush and agreed to pay a subvention to the Afghan Amir. The Afghans terminated the Russian consulates at Jalalabad and Ghazni and quietly abandoned efforts at keeping Waziristan ablaze.94 The Prince of Wales’s visit to India starting in mid-November was intended to mitigate ill-feeling and counter discontent. He landed on the 17th from the battlecruiser Renown and made a good opening speech. Within a week he complained to Rawlinson that the police surrounded him and kept him away from the Indian people.95 His tour was not an unqualified success, disturbances worked up by Gandhi marring his tour. Gandhi had recently concluded with the Muslim leaders an agreement to overthrow the British rule. There were serious riots at Bombay, and an organized boycott of the prince at Benares and Allahabad. His reception by the Europeans was enthusiastic. The prince was angry that two regiments of cavalry were turned out to man the route when Rawlinson took him to play polo. His cheerful personality and youthful informality did something to bridge the gap with the people. Rawlinson was delighted that at Delhi he was mobbed by a crowd of 5,000–6,000 Indians who surged round him, cheering. He had another success with a speech in

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Hindustani, which he learnt by heart, to the 11th and 16th Rajputs, to whom he presented colours.96 Rawlinson was much encouraged by the continued loyalty of the army, despite attempts at subversion. In July 1921, he had told Henry Wilson that the 7/Sikhs had to be sent away from Alighar where they were they called in to suppress riots as they were got at by the rioters and seemed inclined to join them rather than support the police. In October, he was glad to report that only four cases of subversion had come to light in the previous two months, two immediately reported, two with some success. ‘But out of an Army of nearly 200,000 men this shows that Gandhi’s campaign is not having much effect.’97 Other favourable news was the good monsoon of the summer of 1921, which went far to alleviate the difficult situation.98 In May 1922 Rawlinson was able to write to Derby that the internal situation had quietened with one of the most productive harvests ever known. The Legislative Assembly had proved moderate, containing no extremist party. He had found Viceroy Reading ‘an extraordinarily pleasant man to work with’. They collaborated ‘loyally and harmoniously’. Rawlinson felt he had no difficulty persuading him of the correct course of action, ‘but with three Indian members on his Council, all of whom are below the average mediocrity, and who all the time are influenced, and deeply influenced, by the racial question, he has an extraordinarily difficult team to drive’, Rawlinson marvelled at the persuasive ability Reading showed in preventing dissensions and attaining agreement.99 In early 1922 Gandhi in a bid to refocus his movement announced a new phase of civil disobedience to begin in Gujarat and to include the ultimate defiance of refusing to pay taxes. India braced itself for a showdown. In March 1921 Rawlinson’s description in a letter to Henry Wilson showed his awareness of remarkable qualities, but confidence in government strength: Gandhi is an extraordinary personality, he is a religious fanatic and has an enormous following in the country on this account; he is clever and eminently just, he takes the strongest objection to any form of violence, and has certainly succeeded in maintaining peaceful methods so far; he never does anything against the law of the land, he has never once held a meeting in a proclaimed area, and he abides justly by the law of the land; but, of course, he raises an extraordinary amount of antagonism to the Government amongst a certain misguided section, who shout a great deal and make much more noise than either their numbers or their influence justify.

Rawlinson was right about peaceful intentions, but not about results, which were often violent. He thought the press in India exaggerated for home

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consumption and that in twelve months the situation would improve.100 Reading had met Gandhi in May 1921 and was impressed with his sincerity. The British thought he was a man with whom business could be done.101 In 1922, however, circumstances persuaded the Government of India to act. The intended peaceful hartal like others ended in murderous violence. On 5 February at Chauri Chaura in the United Province, a crowd attacked police who had fired upon their demonstration, set fire to the building where they took refuge and twenty-two or twenty-three policemen were either burnt to death or hacked down by the crowd. Gandhi cancelled the hartal. After an interval, Montagu instructed Reading to arrest the leaders of the resistance. The failure of Hindu and Muslim cooperation encouraged the British. When Rawlinson had discussed Gandhi with Montagu before his departure for India, both had favoured arresting ‘the leading seditionists’ and Rawlinson sending them to the Andaman Islands ‘and let them hunger strike there’.102 Now the governors of Bombay and Madras, Lords Lloyd and Willingdon, joined him in arguing for Gandhi’s arrest and incarceration. On 28 February, the Council agreed.103 Reading diplomatically persuaded the Indian members not to resign. Gandhi went quietly, but at his trial was allowed to speak at length, and he did dispute the charge. Mr Justice Broomfield sentenced him to six years imprisonment.104 He served two, and on release withdrew to ostentatious political retirement. Even with Gandhi behind bars, India’s internal security still worried Rawlinson and his colleagues. Between February and May 1922 troops were called out to aid the civil power on sixty-two occasions.105 In August, Rawlinson reassured Derby against the fear in England that the Moplah rising marked the beginning of a general revolt in India. The Moplahs were very poor, very fanatical, wholly uneducated, and the tenants of the richer and better educated landowning Hindus who owns the majority of the land. Nothing gave the Moplah greater pleasure than to cut the throat of his landlord, Rawlinson told his friend. Small bands all over Malabar were looting villages and cutting the throats of landlords. Politically the rising was insignificant.106 Paying for the Army was a worry. Where would the money be found to make India secure? Policing the Moplah rebellion and Waziristan would cost 9 crores, disposing of surplus officers 2 crores, the Esher recommendations 1.5 crores. With a general budget deficit of 30 crores, the only effective army economy must come from reducing the number of British troops. In January 1921 Rawlinson and his colleagues pared down the Army budget from 75 to 65 crores. To get it down to sixty, he had to accept the reduction of two cavalry regiments, an artillery brigade and five infantry battalions, all British. He hoped that tanks,

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armoured cars and airplanes would provide replacement firepower. After a week of difficult negotiation, he got his budget passed in late March 1922, at 62.2 crores. The general budget was still in deficit by 8 crores. In return for staving off some economies, Rawlinson had to accept an acceleration of Indianization.107 The machines of war would in time, he hoped, make good the discrepancy in numbers. From India both Rawlinson and Birdwood wrote regularly to Ian Hamilton. On 4 April 1921 Birdwood told him that the coming reduction in the Indian Army was ‘a dreadful blow to us’. ‘I feel really sorry for Rawly in the extraordinarily difficult position he is placed in, owing apparently to the mess that has been made in the finances of India, and as a result of which the Army budget has been ruthlessly cut down.’108 ‘Ruthlessly’ was an exaggeration, although an amalgamation scheme for Birdwood’s beloved Indian cavalry was upsetting. Rawlinson had taken his four senior commanders into his confidence on the question of cuts, but told Henry Wilson: ‘Birdie is inclined to be critical on all possible occasions with the result I have had to bite him once or twice to shew him I am CinC and not him. He always takes the narrow view as you may imagine and is always posing as the champion of the Indian army in order as usual to try and win popularity.’109 Hamilton told Birdwood that Rawlinson should have submitted his resignation.110 With Reading caught between the Legislative Assembly’s opposition to tax increases on one side, putting the Indian taxpayers’ viewpoint,111 and the War Office at home worried about imperial security on the other, this would have gained little. Rawlinson and Reading saw alike on the main issues and cooperated. Rawlinson had sufficient political nous to accept compromises rather than make threats.112 Hamilton’s view may be sour grapes at being surpassed by the younger man. Rawlinson told Hamilton that Simla had grown since their time as young officers. He was fitter than ever ‘having taken to polo again in my old age’. ‘I am considerably harder worked than Lord Bobs ever was, but the problems with which we have to deal are intensely interesting and very intricate.’ With Merrie away, he finished his letter: ‘I hope you have seen my missis in England. Everybody tells me she is looking very fit and is full of cheer.’113 After being tired and unwell in England during the handover at Aldershot, Merrie appeared to have taken with assurance to being the commander-in-chief ’s wife. She liked their house, Snowdon, at Simla. Her husband told Henry Wilson: ‘She is very well, and so long as the weather is not too hot, the climate suits her admirably.’114 His energetic sporting activity was matched by a quieter social life. He refused to

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join in Simla’s social whirl, going out late only to the Viceregal Lodge. ‘I cannot sit up all night, and do my work all day.’ At 11 pm he would say to guests: ‘I hope you will stay and enjoy yourselves as long as possible. I am going to bed.’115 Often he and Merrie dined quietly alone, while others were dancing. He watched his wife proudly as the viceroy took her into dinner before a state ball. ‘Merrie looked topping in her tiara, which was much observed.’ The tiara’s purchase in London had been the subject of much care.116 While Gandhi set about ending the British rule in India and the Middle East was alive with trouble, Ireland was torn by civil war. Sinn Fein threw down the gauntlet the day the newly elected Irish Parliament, Dail Eiureann, met, leading to two and a half years of fighting. In a letter to Derby, Rawlinson thought if hostilities continued, the British would ‘have to do to Southern Ireland what we did to South Africa – barbed wire, blockhouses, drives, concentration camps, and the sweeping up of the population’. The Sinn Feiners would be transported to the Falklands Islands or the Devil’s Island.117 This was politically impossible in a country that was still legally part of the British Isles. De Valera was raising funds in the United States, of which he was a citizen, and American opinion influenced British action. There was interplay between the two theatres of Empire. The Government of India Act was passed shortly before the Government of Ireland Bill was being drafted. The Amritsar Massacre had Irish overtones. Brigadier Dyer received strong support from Henry Wilson and Ulster Unionists. The Secretary of State for India, Montagu, warned the Cabinet in October 1920 that the scale of the problems in Ireland would be dwarfed by the threat in India: ‘A campaign comparable to the Sinn Fein campaign in Ireland would be almost impossible to deal with except by punishment and revenge, certainly not by prevention.’118 After bitter debates among the Irish Republicans and Lloyd George’s threat of all-out war, the Irish Treaty was signed partitioning Ireland and establishing a Dominion, the Irish Free State. Michael Collins, leader of the guerrilla war, stamped down on resisting IRA splinter groups and was murdered in August 1922. It was another murder, in July that year, that affected Rawlinson. Henry Wilson was especially exercised about Ireland’s fate, and refused to speak to the prime minister when he negotiated with Sinn Fein. Although he deplored the indiscipline and excesses of the ‘Black and Tans’, he supported only one policy, crushing Sinn Fein and the IRA. Retiring as CIGS in February 1922 he became MP for the Ulster constituency of North Down, but had scarcely begun his political career when he was assassinated on 22 June by two Irish republicans on his doorstep at 36 Eaton Place, London. Rawlinson had lost his most intimate

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and valued friend, whose career had paralleled his since they met in Burma in 1888 and with whom he had corresponded almost continuously for thirty years: At the dinner which the Army Council gave me before I left for India, Henry said, ‘The Lord Rawlinson and I joined the army together, and together we have gone at all our fences. He has jumped every fence just in front of me, except the last (meaning his promotion to Field-Marshal), but I am bound to admit I benefited by the holes he made in the fences.’ He finished up his last letter to me, after he left the War Office to go into politics, ‘Now you will have to jump all the fences by yourself. God bless you!’ Well, he is out of the race, and I can never replace him as a friend.119

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I hope the great Rawly is going strong. (Ian Hamilton to William Birdwood, 1 June 1921)1 The Army is doing well and I am pleased with their progress. I have got all the money I want this year and by Xmas next shall be well prepared to take on any enemy be he Afghan Turk or Arab. (Henry Rawlinson to Ian Hamilton, 20 January 1924)2

Towards the end of 1921 Rawinson toured Burma. He was impressed with the country’s development under the British rule since his last visit in 1888 fighting dacoits. The rice and timber trade had more than doubled and the discovery of oil had led to an already large and increasing business. Change seemed greatest in Mandalay where a spacious and healthy cantonment had been laid out with good barracks and bungalows. Curzon had provided a grant to preserve King Thebaw’s palace as an ancient monument.3 ‘My visit to Burma has made me very proud of British administration,’ he wrote. ‘We have done marvels in little more than a generation.’ In the interwar years the Burmese sought separation from India, but instead had been granted ‘dyarchy’ (a degree of self-government) similar to other Indian provinces. Rawlinson viewed this from a practical soldier’s viewpoint, that being part of British India was an advantage for the defence of Burma’s ports and the Chinese frontier, and that, commercially, they would lose by separation.4 The Great Depression of 1929 undid much of the prosperity Rawlinson had seen.5 Rawlinson was back in India in time to attend the Legislative Assembly on 18 January 1922. The Assembly was marked by its moderation and rejection of resolutions condemning the government’s ‘repressive policy’.6 Despite this, Rawlinson was not looking forward to having to defend military expenditure and answer questions before a body of educated and well-spoken Indians. Even

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having as his second speaker Sir Godfrey Fell, ‘a pretty clever fellow and quickwitted’ and a member of the Esher Committee, he admitted to Wilson it was not an enviable job. He had invited fifteen or twenty of the Legislative Assembly to tea for a briefing on the strategical aspects of the North-West Frontier. In thirty years he noted the change; now ‘a small number of extraordinarily intelligent Indians, who, though they have not got the character to rule or to lead, have at the same time extraordinary resource and intelligence’. He complimented Mitra, ‘a Bengali, my assistant financial advisor as black as your boot, but who has a head for figures which is simply marvellous … and does extraordinarily useful work for the army … out and away better than any of my British Staff Officers whom I could possibly put into a position of that sort’.7 In March, he spoke to the Assembly ‘and gave it to them straight’ and appeared to have gained Reading’s approval for his words, ‘though I let myself go a bit’. He explained his Waziristan policy, stating that peace and long-term economy on the frontier was best assured by permanent occupation of Mahsud territory and by constructing roads. Some gasped when he told them Indianization would take several generations. Fell and Hailey supported him with good speeches. Expenditure on the Army taking 32 per cent of government revenue was found to be controversial, and the Assembly rejected cotton and salt taxes, the Finance Bill thus passing with a 10 crore deficit.8 There followed a tour of the frontier to introduce Reading to the Khyber Pass. Sir John Maffey, Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province, collected Afridi Maliks [headmen] at Landi Kotal and Jamrud to meet the viceroy, who said he had never seen such a picturesque looking set of wildmen. These Muslim ‘wildmen’ kept a keen eye on British policy and thanked Reading profusely for having fought for the Muslim cause against Lloyd George’s policy.9 The home government urged on by the British General Staff supported Rawlinson’s strategy of complete occupation of Waziristan, but he and the Indian Government were caught by financial weakness. Occupation would cost 5 to 6 crores a year. Rawlinson’s opponent in the Council, Sir Malcolm Hailey, relinquished the Finance portfolio to Sir Basil Blackett in late 1922, but now he had two opponents as Hailey returned as Home Member. Hailey continued to fight Rawlinson’s Waziristan policy, often supported by the Council’s Indian members. Maffey, the Chief Commissioner, was also an opponent, and he took the unusual step of briefing press correspondents in London and India. On the question of Waziristan, Rawlinson wrote to Montgomery, who in 1922 returned to Britain, to Derby, to Colonel Sidney Muspratt, ‘the Rat’, who had been deputy director of Intelligence in India before serving on the War Office staff, and to

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newspaper editors, on Waziristan.10 Frontier fighting against the fierce border tribes was no walkover. In May, 1922, Rawlinson described to Montgomery how ‘the usual gangs of marauders’ were crossing the Tochi River in north Waziristan, and one of them ‘had mopped up’ a platoon of the 101st Grenadiers ‘in a way that reflects little credit on the regiment’. Rawlinson thought it was revenge for one company of the regiment defeating a gang and killing three important leaders not long before. ‘These outlaws’, Rawlinson wrote, ‘will continue to give us trouble for all time,’ a prediction born out of recent events.11 Not until February 1923, in dead of winter, did General Sir Torquil Matheson’s Waziristan Field Force fight its way onto the Razmak Plateau and destroy the villages clustered around Makin, home to an inveterate enemy of the British, Musa Khan. Matheson’s force met little serious opposition and total casualties were 134. The troops were better trained than those employed in 1919–20 and enjoyed the support of two squadrons of aircraft, which prevented tribesmen assembling. The completed central road enabled supplies and troops to be moved quickly and efficiently.12 A brigade base was established at Razmak, which at 6,500 feet up was cool and healthy, as the summer station for troops in the Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan districts.13 Rawlinson had to depend upon support from the new Secretary of State for India, Viscount Peel, to overcome Council objections. So bad had relations between Rawlinson and Hailey become that the former had written to Peel in May 1922 suggesting that Hailey be moved again, this time from the Council. In 1924 he became governor of the Punjab.14 A compromise on the budget in which Rawlinson made concessions was tied to Indianization.15 In 1917 ten vacancies were made at Sandhurst for Indians. Indian doctors had previously been commissioned. The first officers passed out in 1919, but numbers remained small.16 The career of Amar Singh, a Rajput from a princely state, illustrated the difficulties of experiencing young British officers’ prejudice. He joined Curzon’s Imperial Cadet Corps after previous service, received a limited commission in 1905, but could not command troops, serving as an ADC. Only in 1917 did he receive a full commission. He served on the Western Front and Mesopotamia and on the North-West Frontier. In 1921 after sixteen years, he left the Army in disgust at a bad confidential report.17 Aside from racism, many British feared Indianization was a step to independence. The Assembly passed resolutions in 1921, accepted by the government, that ‘the King-Emperor’s Indian subjects should be freely admitted to all arms of H.M. military, naval and air forces in India and the ancillary services and auxiliary forces’; that every encouragement should be given to Indians to gain

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commissions; that not less than 25 per cent of commissions granted each year should be given to Indians as a start.18 Indianization on a scale previously unthinkable was thus on the agenda. The Military Requirements Committee, which Rawlinson had assembled and chaired, included military-minded Assembly members. In the words of Lieutenant General Menezes, ‘With commendable courage, the Rawlinson Committee proposed … the eventual replacement of British by Indian officers, indigenous self-sufficiency, and the broadening of the base of all recruitment, including that of officers.’19 By 1931, under the scheme, half the annual Indian Army intake at Sandhurst would be Indian.20 Rawlinson foresaw that progress to Dominion status would logically mean an army lead by Indians, but he in common with most British officers doubted this would come about in the foreseeable future: ‘We are not running serious risks … Except for the inhabitants of the Punjab, the Indian races are nothing but a lot of sheep, and a few thousand British soldiers could conquer Central, Southern and Eastern India to-day just as they did 150 years ago under Clive.’21 Clive had largely achieved his conquests with sepoys not recruited from the ‘martial races’, so Rawlinson was standing on less sure foundations than he knew. The Indian Government was practical, keeping regimental identity and traditions and avoiding a costly reorganization. At home, Churchill was strongly opposed, but other circumstances threw doubt onto the scheme: India’s unsettled state, British fear of |another mutiny and a poor take-up by Indian candidates for Sandhurst places. The promotion of Indian commanders, opponents of the measure felt, would increase the threat of another 1857. Rawlinson’s Military Requirements Committee then suggested four units alone were to be officered by Indians, with this experiment having to prove successful before there was further Indianization. Rawlinson however realized that the scheme’s very limited scope would betray promises already made and damage British standing with moderate Indians.22 The viceroy agreed and the planned scheme was extended to eight units, two cavalry regiments and six infantry battalions, chosen to include as many different classes of Indians as possible. Rawlinson announced the scheme to the Legislative Assembly on 17 February 1923. Its aim, he said, was to ‘give Indians a fair opportunity of proving that units officered by Indians will be efficient in every way’.23 He told the Assembly a start would be made immediately, and rather optimistically, that by 1927 there would be enough Indian officers to staff six battalions. The Indian press soon pointed out that it would take fifteen years to complete Indianization. The British press assumed Indian officers already holding the king’s commission would prefer to serve alongside

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British officers, and highlighted the difficulty of finding suitable candidates for Sandhurst. To foster officer-like qualities as the British judged them, the Prince of Wales’ Royal Indian Military College was founded at Dehra Dun in 1922, run on English public-school lines with an initial capacity of seventy. It offered social training as well as intellectual and sought to develop healthy minds and bodies, thus making the potential cadets true and useful servants and citizens of the Empire. The emphasis on games reflected the British belief that officer material could only be bred in public schools. There remained the problem of insufficient officer candidates. By 1926 their numbers were declining, the failure rate among the Indians being 30 per cent compared to 3 per cent among the British. The Dehra Dun boys did rather better. Rawlinson’s belief that it would be many years before sufficient Indian officers of the right qualities came forward seemed an accurate assessment. In the eight chosen units, however, the number of commissioned Indian officers grew from four in 1923 to seventy-two in 1932, one more than the number of British officers.24 To hopeful Indians, this seemed a snail’s pace, but Rawlinson was convinced that too speedy a pace would be harmful to the Indian Army’s morale and discipline. Festina lente (‘hasten slowly’) were his watchwords to the Assembly.25 It was the outbreak of war in 1939 that brought massive Indianization. The Indian Army faced a pressing need for more officers. All the regiments were opened to Indians, both Dehra Dun and the Indian Military Academy were expanded, and between 1940 and 1945, Indianization fundamentally altered the character of the officer corps. This was tested in Burma 1943–45. There, in contrast to British standoffishness, relations between British and Indian officers were cordial and professional, and traditionalists’ scepticism towards the Indian officer’s ability to serve with and take command of British officers and lead men in battle was swept away.26 Many of these new officers were sympathetic to independence. By 1945 the Indian Army as a basis for the British rule was looking fragile.27 As one historian has written, the Indian Army made the successful transition from an ‘army of occupation’ to a national army, maintaining the high professional standards and sense of identity bequeathed by the British.28 To this Rawlinson had made a small but important, albeit unconscious, contribution by starting the process. Nothing could have been further from his thoughts than independence with an Indianized Army as he turned his mind to another challenge, the Inchcape Committee, an Indian equivalent to the ‘Geddes axe’ as he and others termed it.29 The Earl of Inchcape was appointed in March 1922 to chair a committee to

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investigate possible economies in Indian National Expenditure. He had played an important part under Geddes investigating economies in British government expenditure. Rawlinson told Montgomery that, as the committee would be mainly ignorant of Indian problems, they would base their opinions upon the evidence of witnesses. Official and military witnesses would be on one side, the Indians on the other, but the committee was bound to accept the Europeans evidence. ‘So I am not afraid that they [the Committee] will be able to interfere seriously with the Army, at any rate as regards the fighting troops.’30 Rawlinson arranged a combination of briefings and tours for the committee members, and spent much time personally with Inchcape. In December 1922 he and Army HQ had finished their answers to the 130 questions of the Inchcape questionnaire, and on the 13th Rawlinson went before the Committee and gave his evidence. He had been through it privately with Inchcape the night before, and was therefore confident that there would be no reduction in British units of the Army in India.31 In this, however, he was wrong and had to compromise. The necessity to cut a further 5 crores from the budget finally compelled him to reduce the Army’s fighting strength. By 1923 Waziristan was calmer than before, the Moplah rebellion subdued and the Afghans presented no threat. Financial pressure also prevented him bringing more armoured cars or even tanks to replace cavalry. This however was a recognition that the tanks of 1923 were over-sized and awkward machines ill-suited to India. They were impractical in an internal security role or in the mountainous country of the North-West Frontier.32 British tank development lagged and an Experimental Mechanized Force was not formed until 1927. As early as January, 1921, Rawlinson had written to Wilson hoping that progress was being made on the new tank, and he was promised ‘some experimental tanks to India next cold weather’.33 Wilson told him that the experimental chassis was the best he could hope for.34 In March, he sent officers to Dorset for tank courses.35 Some vehicles reached India and made trial journeys to test their durability and that of their crews in the heat, but little came of this. Tests in the Khyber Pass in April 1923 were, thought Rawlinson, ‘rather successful’; but the following year, on leave in England, observing tanks exercising, he doubted the present model would be of any use in India.36 The RAF were sure that in imperial policing aircraft could do the job of ground troops.37 Rawlinson put his finger on this exaggerated belief, writing to Montgomery in May 1922 that Churchill and Trenchard were enthusiasts for air power and sought ‘to make India keep up more squadrons, which would be available in case of emergency for Imperial purposes’. To increase air squadrons,

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they wished to reduce infantry battalions.38 Aircraft had played an aggressive role in the Third Afghan War, although on one day sharpshooters brought down three aircraft.39 Air Vice Marshal Sir Geoffrey Salmond arrived in June 1922, toured the frontier with Claud Jacob and proposed that the RAF be given an area to deal with on its own. Rawlinson wanted ‘air policing’ to prove its worth in Mesopotamia first. In September he modified his ideas: Salmond proposed his pilots should police Waziristan to maintain law and order and stop raiding, and Rawlinson agreed provided that his base at Razmak was established, road construction complete and a system of scouts put into effect.40 It was first necessary to get the existing six RAF squadrons into a state of efficiency; only six aircraft of seventy-five were fit to fly.41 It was Rawlinson’s deployment of ground troops that primarily brought success in Waziristan. The six aircraft achieved limited success in April, bombing on three successive days ‘2000 Wazir outlaws under the notorious Abdul Razak’ who had crossed the Afghan border to besiege British-armed levies. The Times correspondent pointed to ‘the necessity of keeping the air force up to the requisite standard of efficiency’ with spare parts and spare machines.42 In fact, there was an acute shortage of spare parts, for which the Army and Rawlinson bore initial part responsibility. The RAF publicized the scandal, and Rawlinson’s enemy Hailey, the Finance Member, was held responsible. ‘The case, therefore, against Hailey is, in my view, unanswerable,’ gloated Rawlinson to Montgomery, ‘and I hope to goodness it may be the finish of him.’ It was as Finance Member, but he came back from three months’ leave as Home Member, and he and his successor, Blackett, teamed against Rawlinson.43 Future effects of deploying air power would be felt after Rawlinson’s departure. On 1 March 1924 Trenchard, now RAF Chief of Air Staff, issued a directive for the use of aircraft on the Frontier, advocating bombing against ‘savage tribes who do not conform to the codes of civilised warfare’.44 In the future, this strategy would not be employed on the Frontier alone. In March 1923, although the Assembly threw out the Salt Tax, the Viceroy certified it, that is, used his powers to pass it, helping to overcome the deficit. Rawlinson accepted cuts of roughly 18,000 among British troops and the same number among Indians. Rawlinson had concluded that balancing the budget was more important for the internal peace of India than keeping extra troops. To the Assembly he pointed out that internal peace meant military reductions, but also more men on the frontier, and ‘rubbed it in that agitation and disturbance were the greatest enemies of military economy’. ‘I think they were impressed.’45 Rawlinson had got on well with Inchcape, with whom he had had ‘many a tussle’, but ending usually in good humour. In January 1923 he learnt that

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another 5 crores had to go from the military budget, rather than 10 originally envisaged. His Army Council decided to reduce the strength of British infantry battalions. Rawlinson believed cavalry were of limited use, especially for internal security, and thirty-six historic Indian regiments were merged into eighteen, causing much heartache among traditionalists, including Birdwood.46 At the farewell banquet which the viceroy gave for Inchcape, he said that in ‘the privacy of a little room’ he and the commander-in-chief had ‘many a hard tete-a-tete tussle’ and ‘the language occasionally indulged in by both of us … was I am afraid not always of a strictly Parliamentary character’. Rawlinson had ‘some important and mysterious engagement every afternoon between four and six’, which when he returned it was clear from his dress was either polo or lawn tennis. This was said with good humour. He praised Rawlinson by saying that ‘he not only works like a slave, but he plays like a boy’.47 Some of the British fear of India’s Muslims was allayed by the successful outcome of events with Turkey. Lloyd George had backed Venizelos and the Greeks to acquire Turkish territory centred on Smyrna, unwisely as it proved. Rawlinson warned of the danger of conflict spreading: ‘To undertake offensive action against the Turk is merely to consolidate the Pan-Islamic movement.’ In 1922 Mustapha Kemal drove the Greeks from Smyrna and in September descended on the neutral zone along the Dardanelles where there was an Allied army of occupation. He threatened the British force at Chanak. In the event the Turks withdrew without a shot being fired. Curzon, foreign secretary in the Conservative ministry which had succeeded Lloyd George’s coalition, achieved a close agreement with Poincare of France, and the two countries signed a new peace treaty at Lausanne (24 July 1923) with Kemal, who shortly afterwards abolished the Sultanate and became president of the new Republic of Turkey. By Lausanne, Turkey regained areas granted to Greece and Italy by the Treaty of Sevres. The Dardanelles remained militarized.48 Of this Rawlinson wrote at the end of 1922 that Curzon was doing his best, that Turkey would prefer British friendship to that of other powers, and an Islamic region favourable to Britain would be the most effective barrier to the inroads of Bolshevism into central Asia. This policy he and Wilson had sought from late 1920, not least because it would enable the Indian Government to allay Muslim hostility and detach Gandhi’s Muslim allies.49 To complement this, he broached the far-sighted proposal that an Imperial Reserve Force should be created in Asia at Britain’s expense, but the War Office in view of cuts in expenditure showed little interest, and discussion ended for a time with Rawlinson’s death in 1925.50

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In the summer of 1923, Rawlinson divided his time between his plans for Indian Army reform and a tour to Chitral and Gilgit in the North-West Frontier. Both, as Rawlinson knew, had been the scene of fierce frontier fighting.51 On 3 August he reached Chitral, where he sketched the Hindu Kush, of which there was ‘a glorious view … of snows and ice peaks towering up to 25,000 feet’. He and his staff joined in a polo match on small ponies, with their sticks cut short, beating the local ruler’s family. Rawlinson scored three goals ‘which were loudly applauded’. He believed Chitral was ‘the birthplace of modern polo’, whence it was imported to Persia, usually believed to be the country of origin. He saw that the country was wretchedly poor, but if its wealth increased, the Pathans or Afghans would descend to loot.52 From Gilgit, they went on to the remote Hunza-Nagar Valley, past torrents of water flowing down from the glaciers which enabled every scrap of ground to be admirably terraced and carefully cultivated. Fruit of all kinds abounded. The people with their Mongolian features were excellent horsemen, and Rawlinson and his men only managed a draw in a hard scuffle lasting half an hour. He thought the visit of the commander-in-chief wolud be much talked about and would raise British izzat.53 With him on the tour, he had his sketchpad and watercolours, and found subjects in the superb scenary.54 His return to Simla was marked by a characteristic burst of energy to polish off a backlog of correspondence, working ten to twelve hours a day for a week. There could be something irritating about Rawlinson’s inexhaustible confidence, as his adjutant general, George Barrow, noted. Barrow considered him the most confident soldier in his gallery of the famous, and that included Roberts and Kitchener. He knew more about artillery and field works than his principal staff officers, wrote Barrow, ‘or at least gave them to understand’, was extraordinarily quick in the uptake, but in Barrow’s view, not as far-seeing as Henry Wilson, as dominating as Edmund Allenby or as close in touch with other ranks as Charles Monro. Barrow noted his good fortune in having in Montgomery a staff officer of outstanding ability. His physical energy was inexhaustible, pig-sticking and playing polo as Indian commander-in-chief.55 Rawlinson attributed his ability to work twelve hours a day to his fitness from sport.56 In May 1920 he had led his team to victory in a hard match against the viceroy’s team, hitting the winning goal just as the final bell rang.57 On 12 October 1923 he got the Council’s approval for his Waziristan Policy, including a garrison at Razmak of six battalions, two batteries, a pioneer battalion, and two sapper and miner companies. They also approved the creation of a Master-General of Supply and the postponement of appointing a Civil Member of Council, which had been considered since Esher’s report. ‘I am delighted, for

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I am certain that by 1929 both the Waziristan Policy and the Master-General of Supply will have justified themselves.’ On 12 January 1924 Gandhi was taken from prison to the Sassoon Hospital, Poona to be operated on for an appendix. The operation, completed by the light of a hurricane lamp when the electricity failed, was successful.58 The Viceroy’s Council met to consider his release, and agreed to do so on 5 February. Although Rawlinson would not live to see it, by 1926 the policy of non-cooperation had collapsed, the Muslims had broken with Congress (as Rawlinson predicted), which was torn with dissension. Gandhi did not take long to recover his central role in the opposition to the British rule. Almost his first public act was a three-week fast in the summer in the cause of communal unity and as a reparation for recent severe riots. This led to a conference on unity and once more he was at the centre of affairs. The Swaraj Party, who were intent on wrecking dyarchy, were however making the running, and Gandhi retired to an ashram near Ahmedabad whence he campaigned against the plight of the outcastes, the Harijan. His mastery of psychology was to enable him to outmanoeuvre the British in claiming moral superiority, but his success lay in the future.59 Against this can be set the work of those who attempted to develop India’s role under the British rule, encouraged by India being a founder member of the League of Nations, its only colonial member. Indian League delegates were moderate nationalists acting apart from Gandhi and Nehru. An American historian argues that India’s presence at Geneva ‘helped secure for it an important status in the international system’ and prepared the way for its role after independence.60 The efforts of Reading, Rawlinson and others to make the new institutions of a representative India work would be in vain, but Rawlinson would not live to see his predictions of continued British rule come to nought. The Government of India Act of 1935, bitterly opposed by Churchill and other ‘die-hards’, sought to advance India’s progress to Dominion status while preserving British control with a worsening international situation. A new federal principle was embodied in the act, and provincial governments elected by Indian votes enjoyed a degree of autonomy. Although Congress after the first elections took power in seven of the eleven provinces, the British with the support of the Princes (in their separate states) and minorities, Muslims, Sikhs and others, were able to command a majority in the central vote. India’s further path to independence lies beyond the scope of a biographer of Rawlinson, but he can note Rawlinson’s ability to work with Indians, both official and representative, and to respect their qualities, despite his own attitudes, conventional for the time.

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His time as commander-in-chief was successful in its close. His ideas for army reform which took shape in the summer of 1923 laid the basis. Braithwaite’s report on the QMG’s department helped him obtain the creation of a Master-General of Supply responsible for all contracts and purchases. The first appointment, Major General Sir E. Atkinson, was able to improve the army’s business side.61 Rawlinson’s secretary, Sir Eric Burden, and financial advisor, Sir Bhupendra Mitra, financial advisor, were both excellent men. Burden knew the civil and military organization of India, Mitra had the details of finance ‘at his fingers’ ends. It was Burden who wrote most of The Army in India and Its Evolution62 to set forth clearly how each Army department worked. Rawlinson arranged for a copy to be given to each Assembly member. According to Rawlinson, Mitra worked so successfully with Blackett, the Finance Member that he had ‘got through many of my pet demands with barely a struggle’. Word of the Indian Army’s increased efficiency had reached London, and Derby told Rawlinson it was ‘proclaimed on all sides’.63 Improved training had brought success in Waziristan. In the first weeks of 1924 with fresh meetings of the Legislative Assembly, he was able to obtain 50 lakhs for armoured cars, tanks, gun and ammunition, 22 lakhs for the provision of winter mobilization clothing for the field army, and a sum for the purchase of lorries which would be kept in reserve for mobilization.64 Rawlinson sent some fifty members of both Houses, the Assembly and the Council of State, to visit Dehra Dun College. The first party returned struck by how the education made no distinction in caste, religion or province of origin. The boys were brought up as Indians foremost. He acknowledged that the rate was too slow a pace for ‘the idealism of the modern Indian politician’, but was sure they could not go faster. He wrongly doubted that any Indian boy would enter the Army for love of the profession of arms. The history of India was full of many such, but despite this lesson and that of the First World War, he was still wedded to the idea that the only good soldiers came from the north, and especially the Punjab.65 In spring and early summer 1924 the Government of India (Leave of Absence) Bill allowing the viceroy, governors and the commander-in-chief to come home on leave during their term of office slowly found its way through Parliament, and on 1 August received the King’s consent. Sidney Olivier (Baron Olivier), Secretary of State for India in Ramsey Macdonald’s government, introduced the bill, stating that his predecessor, Viscount Peel, had been convinced of the rightness of the principle of granting leave. Curzon and others spoke in support, noting the anomaly that, alone among imperial officials, those holding high rank in India were denied the opportunity of returning to Europe while in

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office, although one oddity permitted them to go almost anywhere else in the world. Cited in support was the opportunity of consulting the Secretary of State on important matters or of medical leave, which might have saved the life of a former commander-in-chief, General Sir William Lockhart.66 Lockhart had died of malaria and gout at Calcutta in post in March 1900. The bill passed and received royal assent on 1 August 1924. The sporting Rawlinson, who was waiting, had meanwhile paid a price for his prowess at games. At squash he had been hit in the eye, needing stitches. In a losing polo match he had received a kick on the shin which cut through his boot to the bone. He retired to bed in considerable pain, lucky the leg was not broken. Three days after the first injury, he was able to have the dressing off his eye, but although the following day he took part in a Council meeting on the military budget, he was hobbling on crutches. He did too much too quickly. Nonetheless, just over a fortnight after his injuries, he was playing both polo and squash.67 He and Merrie sailed on 2 August, reaching London on the 17th and enjoyed visits to old friends, as well as to Balmoral where he failed to stalk a stag, but delighted George V and Queen Mary with his Indian frontier sketches. In Scotland, he added to these. The last few weeks of leave were spent adjusting outstanding questions at the War Office: artillery for the princely states’ armies and leaving the capitation rate for British troops in India unchanged, thus sparing the Indian purse and avoiding another round of cuts in Indian military spending. Four years was a long time to be away, and he considered questions of broadening the outlook of the General Staff to take a more imperial attitude. He would never have an opportunity to implement this. On 7 November, he and Merrie embarked at Marseilles for the return journey. He was a stone heavier than when he had departed.68 The good news continued in early 1925. The internal situation was much improved. During the first three months, troops had to be called out only four times in aid of the civil power. In January, there was a large staff ride for the principal commanders and their staffs. This was followed in February with two brigades holding manoeuvres southeast of Peshawar to test the Vickers Light Tank Mark I. Rawlinson took particular care to invite members of the Legislative Assembly. The tanks performed well over difficult ground and covered 70 miles in temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Replacing manpower with machines appeared to be coming to fruition, when orders were placed early in 1924 for four Vickers Mark I Light Tanks, armed with two Vickers guns, and four half-track cars. After Rawlinson’s death, the Government of India declined the vehicles, and not until 1932 did the Indian Army have two companies of light tanks with a third on the way.69

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Rawlinson had been able in London to gain approval for a pay rise for married officers, but despite this, the military budget was 56.25 crores, a handsome reduction from the 82 crores of 1921. The adjutant general, Major General Sir James Shea, had followed Rawlinson in negotiating financial questions at the War Office. The Indian Army was smaller, 140,000 Indians compared to the 159,000 he had inherited; the British troops in India numbered 57,000, down from 75,000.70 Rawlinson claimed it was better equipped and instructed than before, and the success in Waziristan supported his assertion.71 The Mountain Warfare School at Abbottabad trained British officers in frontier war. Grenades, rifle grenades and Lewis Guns gave British and Indians greater firepower than their enemy. Motor transport, road building and deployment of armoured cars where practicable was seen as a way to revolutionize frontier logistics.72 He would be ending his command that year, and he and General Lord Cavan, about to step down as CIGS, planned a world tour together, starting at Vancouver in October. It was Cavan’s suggestion.73 He had succeeded Henry Wilson because the two were so different,74 Wilson flamboyant, political, intriguing, Cavan primarily a fighting soldier who had had a good war, but had not attended Staff College, had no previous experience of the War Office and modestly admitted that Rawlinson ought to have succeeded Wilson. A historian of interwar defence policy describes him as ‘amiable but unimaginative’.75 He presided at a time of retrenchment and demoralization. In a speech of November 1923 he declared that ‘the Army of to-day is determined to make itself a harder hitting, quicker moving instrument for all its diminution in size’,76 but little was achieved and Rawlinson’s accession was eagerly anticipated.77 Rawlinson was put out by the promotion of his nominated successor, Birdwood – no surprise – to field marshal. Rawlinson would have preferred Jacob, and insisted Birdwood would need a good chief of staff.78 Birdwood had been acting commander-in-chief in Rawlinson’s absence and had stood up for improve conditions of service for officers of the Indian Army and the Indian Civil Service.79 He was devoted to India and the Indian Army, but his last undertaking had been, in Rawlinson’s estimation, a failure. He with ‘the best representatives of all sections of the Sikh community to help him’, had tried to bring an agreement between the Punjab Government and the Sikh Akali movement. His report in Rawlinson’s view recommended ‘surrender to the Akalis all along the line’ and the viceroy was furious.80 When Birdwood’s promotion to field marshal was announced, Reading and Rawlinson could only suppose (in the latter’s words) that he had ‘committed some crime of which I know nothing for it is a serious slap in the face for me’. It did not prevent his succeeding Cavan as CIGS, as that

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had already been made official, although not publicly.81 The previous March, Birdwood had written to Derby half complaining about Rawlinson’s treatment of him, but explaining that he had ‘known Rawly over 30 years, like him and all his visibility, admire his ability, never failing himself … It is only natural that I have not always seen eye to eye with him in all he has done out here’. He added: ‘I rather gather that he is now in doubt as to whether the Empire would stand the shock if he left India’.82

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He is a soldier fit to stand by Caesar and give direction. (Othello, Act II, Scene III) His loss to the Army is absolutely irreparable – he was head and shoulders above all of us. (Lieutenant General Sir Alexander Godley)

Early in 1925, Rawlinson drew up his final budget as commander-in-chief and delivered a conciliatory speech to the Legislative Assembly, claiming members received it warmly.1 On 20 February 1925, his sixty-first birthday, he played polo again in his ‘Snowdon’ team, winning their section of the tournament. The last entry in his diary records a visit to Dehra Dun College to play cricket for Patiala against the boys. He made twenty-one runs, ‘having not had a bat in my hands for thirty years’. Towards the end of March, he was taken ill. His surgeon diagnosed appendicitis, but other medical advice recommended against surgery in view of his fitness and age. Several days of increasing discomfort led him to agree to surgery at the Hindu Rao Hospital in New Delhi on 24 March. Surgeons repaired a strangulated intestine. Inexplicably, after a brief rally he weakened and died in the early hours of 28 March. He was sixty-one.2 His death was almost entirely unexpected, most of those who knew him anticipating a safe recovery. A long-term friend, Neville Chamberlain, once Lord Roberts’s military secretary, wrote the day before his death hoping that ‘by the time you receive this all will be going well and you will be on the high road to recovery’.3 For Merrie, the dutiful soldier’s wife, his loss was devastating. He had always taken the lead and she had been prepared to admire and second him. As one correspondent told Henry Wilson after the success of 14 July at Bazentin Ridge, ‘she would imagine that Rawly was Napoleon, Moltke and Falkenhayn all rolled into one’.4 Wrote a family friend, ‘It is difficult to think how she will

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resume a normal life without him, he was so completely the centre of all her thoughts.’5 The letters of sympathy to Lady Rawlinson eulogized her late husband, as expected, but one from Kavanagh who commanded the cavalry on the Western Front is worth quoting in view of claims that Rawlinson was unsympathetic to the mounted arm: ‘It may interest you to know that of all the 5 Armies under which we at different times served during the War, the preference was always easily given to the 4th Army because as we often said, we knew that under its Commander & his staff we always got more sympathy & help than in any other.’6 Alexander Godley recalled when his Corps joined Fourth Army in France: ‘I looked forward every morning to hearing his cheery voice on the telephone – always at 9 a.m. – asking for news of the night & all about one’s situation & plans. And one always felt so sure of his help & sympathy when one was in any difficulty – and had such entire confidence in him & in any orders that one got from him.’7 Godley praised Rawlinson’s ‘unfailing optimism and camaraderie’. A biographer must recall how both Roberts and Kitchener, his mentors, were amused that Rawlinson was ‘just as full of talk as ever’, but some like Barrow could find his endless, confident bonhomie a trial.8 Douglas Haig’s letter to Lady Rawlinson was not effusive, but he wrote, ‘I feel that I have lost a tried and very true friend.’ Historians have noted that his operational divergence from Haig was often negated by a failure to stand up to him, but have neglected to emphasize his powers of persuasion before 14 July and 25 August 1916, or in ‘the Hundred Days’. Judging by the inability of most of Haig’s generals to resist that dominating Lowland Scot, Byng and Rawlinson’s securing their chief ’s confidence in 1918 must be seen as admirable. In 1918 there are examples of both Horne and Rawlinson standing up to Haig and power shifting to Army and Corps Commanders.9 The ‘Joey’ Davies affair has led historians to speak too extensively of an alleged propensity for intrigue. Haig had confided in Gough about the Davies business, which largely explains Gough’s opinion.10 Rawlinson had behaved badly over Davies, but had admitted his guilt promptly. It did not recur. As the authors of Command on the Western Front acknowledge, ‘the affair was pretty trivial’.11 In any case, by 1925, Rawlinson was a man of much greater substance than he had been a decade earlier. His admirers thought the Times obituary scarcely did him justice. Lord Roberts’s son-in-law, Brigadier Harry Lewin of the Royal Artillery, wrote: ‘Most of the newspaper articles so entirely failed to convey the true man, – talked of his “luck” and “advantages”, and never let one see the true great qualities that he had – nor the immovable firm calmness of his character

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whether in adversity or success.’12 The obituary, prepared, in 1922, was largely written by Colonel H.G. de Watteville, an educated officer of the Royal Artillery and subsequently editor of the journal of the Royal United Services Institution.13 De Watteville’s was doubtless a considered judgement, but omits much of substance. Amiens was not mentioned, and the victories of 1918 reduced to nine words about the Hindenburg Line. De Watteville made the extraordinary statement that his subject was promoted to command Fourth Army because ‘the IVth Corps was ruled by a single mind, whereas the other corps were a collection of little republics’. One can hardly see Gough or Haking commanding a ‘collection of little republics’. Rawlinson’s Indian command received more attention, but in muted phrases.14 The letters to the paper put the balance right. ‘A friend of 38 Years’ (Aileen Roberts) thought his finest work had been done for the army in India, reforming it and restoring its confidence; ‘his capacity for hard work and strenuous manly sport’ won the admiration of young officers. Lord Inchcape wrote of the loyalty with which he carried out the resolutions of his committee in India and of the pleasure of working with him. ‘A correspondent’ reminded readers that the nickname ‘Rawly’ was familiar throughout the Empire. Major General John O’Ryan of the US Army wrote to express ‘the deep regret’ of men of the 27th Division for Rawlinson’s untimely death, remembering ‘those critical months of the autumn of 1918 when British and American troops served together as comrades in battle’. Archie Montgomery, who had shared both triumph and disaster with him, concluded the tributes, praising his ability to pick out a weakness in any scheme.15 Despite his mediocre record at Eton and Sandhurst, Rawlinson was recognized as a gifted soldier by his early patrons, Roberts and Kitchener. Friendship with Henry Wilson encouraged both ambition and study. Beneath a veneer of good fellowship and sporting exploits lay intelligence and a commitment to hard work. In his first command in South Africa, he showed innate caution, maddening to his subordinate Ballard, but wise against the ‘slim’ Boers. In any case, he was sufficiently bold to win several successes. His time as Staff College commandant served the institution and the Army well. In a period of rapid change, he was well to the fore in innovation. This, allied to tactical sense and good appreciation of ground and maps, made him formidable in pre-1914 manoeuvres. ‘Vulpine’ is the term de Watteville used, indicative of one of his nicknames, ‘the fox’.16 The First World War was an unparalleled test of generalship. He had inadequate means to hold Antwerp and barely adequate for First Ypres, although hard-fighting subordinates greatly helped. The year 1915 was not a vintage year. The success of a hurricane bombardment, at Neuve Chapelle, was deceptive, for

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German defences there were rudimentary; they were stronger at Loos, much stronger on the Somme. ‘Bite and hold’ or ‘step by step’ offered, not a route to quick victory, but a means of inflicting heavy losses provided the British had sufficient quantities of guns and ammunition.17 Haig’s insistence on 1 July 1916 on an ambitious plan for three of the attacking corps meant disaster. In the south, a limited scheme in keeping with ‘bite and hold’ produced success. Montgomery thought Rawlinson’s ability to find a weak spot in a scheme of attack or defence was tempered by an understanding of human nature: he would allow commanders launching an attack to have confidence in their plans even when not the best.18 Divisional and brigade commanders serving in Fourth Army remembered his visits and encouragement before an operation, with seldom a word of doubt or criticism.19 These were saved for his diaries. Particularly on the Somme, when his diary describes him going through his subordinates’ schemes, there were times when it would have been better if he had criticized and ordered a change. Disastrously, he allowed Hunter-Weston’s Corps to explode the mine under the Hawthorn Redoubt ten minutes early on 1 July. In 1918, he might have removed Butler, but instead a complaint to Haig brought about Butler’s III Corps’ replacement with Morland’s XIII Corps.20 While commenting on his equable temperament, Montgomery could equally have written of his mental and physical stamina. He praised Rawlinson’s loyalty to Haig. This loyalty was not rewarded in 1917, when his caution and his inability to advance in the Somme’s final stages led to Gough being preferred for Third Ypres. He was, however, the obvious choice to replace Gough when the latter fell from grace after the March 1918 German offensive. The attacks of August to October 1918 were master strokes of a commander whose best qualities were fully employed, as Haig increasingly delegated to his chief subordinates. Although much is due to Currie’s and Monash’s planning, the credit ‘lies principally with Rawlinson and the 4th army staff for the extreme efficiency and secrecy with which this model attack [Amiens] was mounted’.21 Rawlinson fell short of genius, but he justified Montgomery’s description: ‘a brilliant soldier and a great leader of men’. He wisely made use of political contacts, with the King through Wigram, with Kitchener, Derby and Churchill. In India, his political acumen, his patience and comparative imperturbability, and his breadth of understanding gained success; he had the rare achievement of making his army more efficient and restoring morale while reducing its size and cost. His inability to foresee how quickly British rule would end was widely shared. Had he lived to succeed Cavan as CIGS, he would probably have made greater progress on mechanization than did George Milne, who did follow.

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Milne would embark audaciously on new projects only to turn cautious in the face of opposition.22 Merrie had decided that her husband’s body should be brought home and buried at the church near his mother’s house at Trent, where she had nurtured his love of art as a boy. For his memorial service at Delhi, a congregation headed by Lord Reading crowded to capacity the historic St James’s Church outside the Kashmir Gate, its walls bearing the marks of Mutiny gunfire.23 From Bombay,

Figure 13.1 Rawly’s last parade. The coffin with the body of General Lord Rawlinson is borne by gun carriage across Westminster Bridge to Waterloo Station for its final journey to Trent in Dorset.

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the body was taken on the troopship Assaye to Britain. On 30 April tributes were paid at St Margaret’s Westminster. Nearly every famous soldier save one was present; not even Rawlinson’s death could bring Haig from Bemersyde. Among the congregation was the former ADC of both men, Philip Sassoon. A correspondent present thought the funeral ‘had a romanticism and a military glory all its own’, as the coffin was carried down the nave to ‘the strains’ of Kipling’s ‘Recessional’.24 It was then taken over Westminster Bridge to Waterloo, by train to Sherborne, and thence to Trent. Here he was buried in the chapel of St Michael and St George, the warrior saints of England. Perhaps ironically for a man whose life was filled with action, Henry Rawlinson found his last resting place at a quiet country church, far removed from India’s teeming throngs, the North-West Frontier’s rocky heights and the thunder of the guns on the Western Front.

Notes Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12 13

Major General Sir Frederick Maurice, The Life of Gen Lord Rawlinson of Trent (London: Cassell & Co, 1928). Original publication (London: Pen and Sword Books, 1971). Original publication (London: Pen and Sword Books, 1992). Lord Curzon, The Place of India in the Empire (London: J. Murray, 1909). London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. ‘Haig and the Army Commanders’, Chapter 6 in Brian Bondand Nigel Cave, Haig: A Reappraisal Seventy Years on (Barnsley : Leo Cooper, 1999) and ‘For Better or for Worse: Sir Henry Rawlinson and His Allies in 1916 and 1918’, in Matthew Hughes and Matthew Seligmann, eds, Leadership in Conflict 1914–1918 (Barnsley : Leo Cooper, 2000). ‘Sir Henry Rawlinson’, in I.F.W. Beckett and Steven J. Corvi, eds, Haig’s Generals (Barnsley : Leo Cooper, 2006). Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2002. Major General Sir Archibald Montgomery, The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days, August 8th to November 11th, 1918 (London: Naval and Military Press, n.d.). Hamilton 15/5/9, Ian Hamilton to Archie Montgomery, 2 April 1925. Nikolas Gardner, Trial by Fire: Command and the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 15; Liddell Hart Archives, Liddell Hart papers 11/1937/4 and 11/1935/107. Hamilton 15/5/9, Archie Montgomery to Ian Hamilton, 3 April 1925. M-N 8/29, Major-General Sir Hastings Anderson to Montgomery, 26 April 1928.

Chapter 1 1 2

National Army Museum, Roberts papers 1971-01-60/4, H. Rawlinson (snr) to Lord R, 27 March 1885. Lesley Adkins, Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon (London: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 119.

242 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Notes Memoir of Major-General Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1898). Adkins, Empires of the Plain, pp. 345, 349. Ibid., p. 349. Maurice, p. 4. The Times, 31 March 1925, p. 12. Rev Hugh M. Eyton-Jones attached to the RFC at Hounslow aerodrome. David Gilmour, Curzon (London: John Murray, 1994), p. 12. Henry Broadbest & M.C. Curthoys, ‘Francis Warre-Cornish’, ODNB; information from James Harrison, former Assistant Archivist, Eton College; Maurice, p. 6. Tim Card, Eton Renewed: A History from 1860 to the Present Day (London: John Murray, 1994), p. 48. Some 1157 were killed, their names recorded in the War Memorial Cloister. Thirteen Etonians won the V.C. Eton College Chronicle, 29 May 1919, ‘Etonian Generals at Eton’, 20 May 1919. Brief account Rawly 1952-01-33-29, Typescript Diary 1919. The ‘fag-master’ was a senior boy who was the protector of his fags and responsible for their conduct. The practice was abolished in the 1970s. Sandhurst Record downloaded from the website; Maurice, p. 6. Neither the Headmaster’s Entrance Books nor the School Clerk’s Register has information for the dates of Rawlinson’s arrival and departure at Eton. Information from Assistant Archivist Joshua Tinsley. Entry record in IOR/L/MIL/9/299/169 and 205; Maurice, p. 6. Maurice, p. 8. William Dalrymple, Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 78–80; Henry Rawlinson, A Memoir of Maj-Gen Rawlinson (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1898), p. 67. Field Marshal Lord Roberts, Forty-One Years in India (New York and London: Longmans, Green & Co and Bentley & Sons, 1898), pp. 306–307. Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 362–363. National Army Museum, Roberts papers 1971-01-60/4, H. Rawlinson (snr) to Lord R, 27 March 1885. Monty 8/29, Countess (Aileen) Roberts to M-Massingberd, 9 April 1925. Rawly 7212-6, 10 April 1886. Ibid., 26 April 1886 and 3 May 1886. Monty 8/29, Countess (Aileen) Roberts to M-Massingberd, 9 April 1925. Rawly 7212-6, 15 July 1886. Ibid., 27 August 1886 to 10 October 1886. A.T.Q. Stewart, The Pagoda War: Lord Dufferin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Ava 1885–6 (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).

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27 Rawly 7212-6, 10 and 22 November 1886. 28 Details taken from Rawly 5201-1-33-1, Burmese War Journal, also in Maurice, pp. 12–16. 29 M. Jones, ‘The War of Lost Footsteps: A Re-assessment of the Third Burmese War’, Bulletin of the Military Historical Society, vol. xxxx, no. 157 (August, 1989), pp. 36–40. 30 Maurice, p. 16. 31 Quoted in Adkins, Empires of the Plain, p. 355. 32 Rawly 7216-6, 31 October 1987 and 6 November 1987. 33 Jay Luvaas, The Education of an Army: British Military Thought 1815–1940 (London: Cassell, 1965), p. 150. 34 Maurice, pp. 20–21. 35 Rawly 7212-6, 6 May 1888. This paper is discussed in R.A. Johnson, ‘“Russia at the Gates of India?” Planning the Defence of India, 1885–1900’, The Journal of Military History, vol. 67 (July, 2003), pp. 726–727. 36 Rawly 7212-6, 30 August 1888. 37 Maurice, pp. 20–21; S. Gwynnand G.M. Tuckwell, The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke (2 vols. London: Murray, 1918), II, pp. 88, 122, 294–296, 388. 38 Ibid., 6 January 1889. 39 Ibid., 15 May 1889. A belated present as his birthday was in January. 40 Bobs 61/1, 1 September 1890. The letter despite the apology does not appear to support a confession of poor staff work; cf Stephen Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–1918 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), p. 71. 41 St Paul’s marriage registers vol. 8 on microfilm, the City of Westminster Archives. None of Rawlinson’s army friends signed the register and perhaps were not present. 42 Bobs 61/2, 31 November 1890. 43 The wedding was widely reported. The Daily Telegraph, 7 November 1890; The Morning Post, 7 November 1890; The Bedfordshire Mercury, 15 November 1890, The Army & Navy Gazette (1890), p. 194, and others. 44 Monty 8/29, ‘Rawlinson’s Funeral’, esp her letters 2 May 1925 and 9 May 1925 and Clive Wigram’s 18 May 1925. 45 Rawly 1952-01-33-2, Journal of a Trip from London … November & December, 1894. The Pitti and Uffizi pictures appear to have been in different places then. 46 Adkins, Empires of the Plain, pp. 354–355. 47 Maurice, pp. 24–25. 48 Brian Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College 1854–1914 (London: Methuen, 1972), pp. 128–131, 143–145. As Bond points out, opposition to a British General Staff remained, and Wilkinson himself did not press for one, feeling sure that Wolseley or Roberts as c-in-c would carry out reforms. 49 This was recorded by James Edmonds, future historian of the Great War, in the unpublished ‘An Instructor’s Forecast’; Gary Mead, The Good Soldier: The Biography of Douglas Haig (London: Atlantic, 2007), p. 77.

244

Notes

50 Maurice, p. 28. 51 Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, From Private to Field Marshal (London: Constable, 1921), p. 88. 52 Aylmer Haldane, A Soldier’s Saga: The Autobiography of General Sir Aylmer Haldane (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1948), p. 60. 53 Keith Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier (London: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 18–19. 54 Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College 1854–1914, pp. 154–155; Maurice, pp. 25–27. 55 Maurice, p. 29. 56 Wilson diaries HHW1/1, 2, 3 and 6 November 1983. 57 Ibid., 28 November and 16 December 1893. 58 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, pp. 20–21, 26–27.

Chapter 2 1

Adkins, Empires of the Plain, pp. 355–356; The Times, 6 March 1895, p. 8, ‘Death of Sir Henry Rawlinson’. 2 The Times, 11 March 1895, p. 6, ‘Funeral of Sir Henry Rawlinson’. 3 Ibid., 11 March 1895, p. 12, ‘Indian Affairs’; Hopkirk, The Great Game, pp. 312–313, 362, 465ff. 4 Quotes in this chapter are from Rawly 5201-33-4. This is a bound ms letter book containing copies of letters Rawlinson sent to Lord Roberts, Colonel Kelly-Kenny, Henry Wilson and Sir George Clery, April–September 1898, unless otherwise given. Maurice reproduces much of it, sometimes running two or more letters together. 5 Maurice, pp. 30–31. 6 For relevant works, see Harold E. Raugh, British Military Operations in Egypt and the Sudan: A Selected Bibliography (The Scarcrow Press, Lanham, Maryland, Toronto & Plymouth, 2008). 7 Henry Keown-Boyd, A Good Dusting: A Centenary Review of the Sudan Campaigns 1883–1899 (London: Book Club Associates, 1986), p. 14. 8 Ibid., p. 7. 9 Robert Robinson, John Gallagher & Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Victorianism (London: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 339–349, for a survey of British motives. 10 Lieut.-Colonel E.W.C. Sandes, The Royal Engineers in Egypt and the Sudan (Chatham: Institution of Royal Engineers, 1937), p. 222. 11 Ismat Hasan Zulfo, Karari: The Sudanese Account of the Battle of Omdurman. Trans from the Arabic by Peter Clark (London: F. Warne, 1980), p. 91.

Notes

245

12 Ibid., pp. 91–93; Keown-Boyd, Good Dusting, pp. 121–126. 13 Edward Spiers, ed., Sudan: The Conquest Reappraised (London: Frank Cass, 1998), chapters 1 & 9. 14 Zulfo, Karari, pp. 26ff for defence; Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, pp. 178ff for the European view. 15 3–7 January 1898; 11–14 January 1898; 13 February 1898. 16 1 February 1898. 17 18 and 28 February 1898, 2 March 1898. K’s telegram partly in code. 18 G.W. Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum (London: Greenhill Books, 1990; orig. publ. 1898), pp. 45–46. 19 Ian Hamilton, The Commander, ed. A. Farrar-Hockley (London: Hollis and Carter, 1957), p. 108. 20 Keon-Boyd, Good Dusting, p. 179 describes Mahmud as a ferocious young relative of the Khalifa. 21 Zulfo, Karari, pp. 74–75. 22 Rawly 5201-33-4, 15 February 1898. 23 Rawly 5201-33-4, 8 April 1898. 24 Account of battle ibid., 8 and 25 April 1898; Sandes, British Engineers in the Sudan, pp. 218–219; Keown-Boyd, Good Dusting, pp. 195–200; Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartoum, pp. 140–152; Winston Churchill, The River War: An Historical Account of the Conquest of the Sudan (2 vols. London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1899), I, pp. 427–437. 25 Several sources emphasize the effect on the Khalifa’s army, especially Zulfo, Karari, pp. 79ff; Churchill, The River War, pp. 26 Rawly 5201-33-4, 25 May 1898. 27 Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, p. 63. 28 For a hagiographic account, Commander Chas. N. Robinson, Celebrities of the Army (London: George Newnes, 1900), p. 77. 29 Bobs 61/14, 2 February 1898. 30 Rawly 5201-33-4, letters of 24 August 1898 & 8 August 1898. Stuart-Wortley in fact commanded a force of Sudanese and Abyssinian irregulars who gave good service. 31 Ibid., 24 August 1898. 32 W. Sussex Record Office, Maxse 367, f.4, from Debbeh, 14 February 1897; Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, p. 66. 33 Robin Neillands, The Dervish Wars: Gordon & Kitchener in the Sudan 1880–1898 (London: J. Murray, 1996), p. 201. 34 Zulfo, Karari, pp. 149, 151–153, 160–166; Keown-Boyd, Good Dusting, pp. 211–212 and 223–224. 35 Rawly 5201-33-4, 12 September 1898, the date when he summarized the previous days’ events. Subsequent Rawlinson quotes are from this source unless otherwise identified.

246

Notes

36 Liddell Hart Archives, Maurice papers 2/1/5, typescript from Hunter gives the larger figure; Zulfo, Karari, pp. 112–114 the lower. 37 Cf Hunter in Maurice papers 2/1/5: ‘When the sun rose on 2.9.98 I was never so glad in all my born days.’ 38 Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, pp. 38–39 and 48–49. 39 Brigadier General John Charteris, Field Marshal Earl Haig (London: Cassell and Company Ltd, 1929), p. 17n. 40 Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, p. 72; charge described in Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume, part 2 (1897–1900) (London: Heinemann, 1967), pp. 976–980. 41 Keown-Boyd, Good Dusting, pp. 233–235. 42 General Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years Service (London: J. Murray, 1925), p. 111. Churchill, River War, II, p. 196 states that thousands of the wounded were succoured by [Kitchener’s] soldiers’ and numbers those shot at ‘not less than a hundred’. 43 Wingate’s figures. Keith Surridge, ‘Herbert Kitchener’, in Steven J. Corvi & Ian F.W. Beckett, Victoria’s Generals (Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2009), p. 208. 44 Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, p. 77. 45 Rawly 1-4, 20 September 1898. 46 Rawly 5201-33-4, 20 September 1898 and Maurice, p. 49. 47 For Austrian agreement, see Spiers, Conquest Reappraised, chapter 9. 48 Sandes, Royal Engineers in the Sudan, pp. 304–305, 339, 389–390, 470–474 & 479; Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), pp. 361–362. P. Magnus, Kitchener: Portrait of an Imperialist (London: J. Murray, 1958), p. 146 quoted Cromer as saying Kitchener had become bored with his own creation, the College. This is untrue: K took a keen interest in Sudanese education. See John Pollock, Kitchener: The Road to Omdurman (London: Constable, 1999), pp. 220–221 & The Times, 10 November 1902, p. 5, ‘Lord Kitchener at Khartoum’. The college is now part of the University of Khartoum. 49 Darrell Bates, The Fashoda Incident of 1898: Showdown on the Nile (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 50 John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System, 1830–1970 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 4. 51 Wilfred Scawen Blunt, My Diaries 1888–1914 (London: Martin Secker, 1932), p. 313 and Magnus, Kitchener, p. 133. 52 Rawly 5201-33-5, Letterbook, ‘My dear Charles’, 5 February 1898. 53 Ibid., 12 May 1898. 54 Ibid. 55 The Times, 28 October 1898, p. 7. Another officer with them was returning on leave.

Notes

247

Chapter 3 1 2

3 4 5 6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17

18

Bill Nasson, The South African War, 1899–1902 (London: Arnold, 1999), p. 68. George Grossmith aped Wolseley’s gestures as Major General Stanley in Pirates of Penzance, much to the latter’s delight. For the Africans, see I.F.W. Beckett, ‘Wolseley and the Ring’, Soldiers of the Queen: The Journal of the Victorian Military Society, no. 69 (June, 1992), pp. 14–25. Bobs 61/7, 24 April 1897. British Library, Lansdowne collection, no. 1402, 20 July 1896. Ibid., 25 April 1897. I owe this point to Ian Beckett. Ibid., no. 4875, 20 June 1899. D.M. Leeson, ‘Playing at War: The British Military Manoeuvres of 1898’, War in History, vol. 15, no. 4 (2008), pp. 432–461; Viscountess Milner, My Picture Gallery, 1886–1901 (London: J. Murray, 1951), p. 110. The Earl of Midleton, Records & Reactions 1856–1939 (London: J. Murray, 1939), p. 133. Bobs 110 and Lansdowne collection, Lansdowne to Roberts, 10 December 1899. British political-military relations are analysed in Keith Surridge, Managing the South Africa War, 1899–1902: Politicians v. Generals (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Royal Historical Society and Boydell Press, 1998). For the visit, The Times 2 December 1898, p. 9 and 26 August 1899, p. 6. Pollock, Kitchener, p. 172. Liddell Hart Archives, King’s College London, Hamilton 13/6. Other than this letter, the evidence points to Rawlinson rather than Hamilton. Iain Smith, The Origins of the South African War 1899–1902 (London and New York: Longman, 1996), pp. 337–338 and 371. Quoted W. Baring Pemberton, Battles of the Boer War (London: Pan Books, 1969), p. 24. Dennis Reitz, Commando: A Boer Journal of the Boer War (London: Faber and Faber, 1942), pp. 24–29. Andrew Roberts, Salisbury: Victorian Titan (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), pp. 791 and 822; Geoffrey Powell, Buller: A Scapegoat? A Life of General Sir Redvers Buller 1839–1908 (London: Leo Cooper, 1994), pp. 103 and 109–110. Rawlinson’s and Lady Methuen’s mothers were sisters. (Information from the present Lord Methuen.) Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 19 September 1899. Boer War Diary is ‘not a daily record but one of more important phases and movement in the campaign. Not for publication, the views are personal and strictly private’. References henceforth quoted with the date. Maurice, p. 44.

248

Notes

19 J.A.S. Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy: The Close of the Nineteenth Century (London: The University of London, Athlone Press, 1946) p. 268.; cf Thomas Pakenham, Boer War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), p. 574. 20 Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 15 October 1899. 21 Ian Hamilton, The Happy Warrior: A Life of General Sir Ian Hamilton by His Nephew (London, 1966), p. 128. 22 TH; I.F.W. Beckett points out in ‘Buller and the Politics of Command’, in John Gooch, ed., The Boer War: Direction, Experience, and Image (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 46 that Symons respected Boer mobility and marksmanship, but believed only offensive action could safeguard water supplies at Glencoe and Dundee. 23 Liddell Hart Archives, KCL, Hamilton 2/2/1, 23 October 1899; TH, II, pp. 175–195; on Hamilton’s tactics, Howard Bailes, ‘Military Aspects of the War’, in Peter Warwick, ed., The Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902 (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1980), pp. 73–74. 24 Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 21–22 October 1899. 25 Quoted Henry Mortimer Durand, The Life of Field Marshal Sir George White (2 vols. London: Edinburgh & London, 1915) II, p. 69. 26 TH, II, p. 209. Typical of their behaviour in Natal; Hugh Rethman, Friends and Enemies: The Natal Campaign in the South African War 1899–1902 (Ticehurst, East Sussex: Tattered Flag Press, 2015). 27 Frederick Maurice, History of the War in South Africa (3 vols. London: Hurst and Blackett Ltd, 1906–1908. Henceforth ‘OH’.), I, pp. 152–156. 28 Rawly 2011-11-18-1, 17 October 1899. 29 Durand, Field-Marshal Sir George White, II, pp. 90–91. 30 TH, II, pp. 245–260. 31 Maurice, p. 46; Rawly 5201-33-7a, 30 October 1899. 32 Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Methuen papers 1742/1590, 8 November 1900. 33 M.V. Brett, ed., Journal and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher (4 vols. London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1934–1938), I, p. 245, 24 October, 1899 for Wolseley’s opposite opinion. 34 Nasson, South African War, p. 111; TH, II, pp. 126–127; Brett, Journal and Letters, I, p. 377. 35 Durand, Field-Marshal Sir George White, II, pp. 100–103; the telegrams are in White 56 ‘Copies of telegrams’; Buller’s is f. 56. 36 TH, III, p. 151. 37 Diary 2 December 1899. 38 Hamilton, Happy Warrior, p. 139; for first part of siege, Liddell Hart Archives, King’s College London, Hamilton papers 2/1/1, diary of siege of Ladysmith 26 November 1899 to 16 January 1900. 39 Archie Hunter, Kitchener’s Sword-Arm: The Life and Campaigns of General Sir Archibald Hunter (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1986), pp. 133, 135, 137–138.

Notes 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65

249

OH, II, pp. 578–579; White 58, Despatch after relief …, pp. 14–15. p. 14 for ‘chevril’. Hunter, Kitchener’s Sword Arm, p. 147. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 3 November 1899. TH, III, pp. 167–169; Rawly 7–8 December 1899. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 10–11 December 1899. WO108/399, ‘Confidential telegrams’, pp. 52–53, nr 53D and nr 54, 15 December 1899. Ibid., 16 December 1899. The National Archives, WO108/399 Confidential telegrams, pp. 52–53, nrs 53D and 54; analysed by Julian Symons, Buller’s Campaign (London: The Cresset Press, 1963), p. 169; Pakenham, Boer War, pp. 239–240 defends Buller. See Spiers, Late Victorian Army, pp. 312–315 for critique of Pakenham. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 17 December 1899. Ibid., 18 December 1899. See also the rest of his entry of that day. Ibid., 27 December 1899. Ibid., 31 December 1899. Ibid., 2 January 1900. I have rearranged the word order for clarity. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 16 December 1899. Philip D. Curtin, Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 209, citing Robert J.S. Simpson’s Medical History of the War in South Africa (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1911). Report of Dr H.H. Tooth, physician specialist attached to Roberts’s forces summarized in an article by ‘Cuidich n’ Ruih’ in the South African Military History Journal, June, 1976. Hamilton, Happy Warrior, pp. 145–147; TH, III, pp. 176–205. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 6–7 January 1900. Ibid., 6 January 1900. British Library, India Office collections, George White papers, Mss. Eur. 101(i), letter of 28 January 1900. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 12 January 1900; vol. 2, 13 and 27 February 1900. Ibid., vol. 2, 27 February 1900. See my article, ‘How the Royal Artillery Saved Sir Redvers Buller’, Rodney Constantine, ed., New Perspectives on the Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902 (Bloemfontein: The War Museum of the Boer Republics, 2013), pp. 11–36. Byron Farwell, The Great Boer War (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 217 including Rawlinson quote. Donald Macdonald, How We Kept the Flag Flying: The Story of the Siege of Ladysmith (London: Ward, Lock & Co, 1900), pp. 281–282. Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Methuen papers, 1742/8590, to wife, 23 March 1900.

250

Notes

66 Jeffrey, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 31. 67 Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 3 March 1900. 68 Ibid., 2 March 1900; Henry Nevinson, The Fire of Life (London: James Nisbet, 1935), pp. 102–103; OH, II, pp. 583–584. 69 Ibid., 5 March 1900. 70 Christiaan De Wet, Three Years War (London: Constable and Co, 1903), p. 77. 71 Rawly 5201-7-3, 7 and 8 March 1900. 72 Ibid., 20 and 21 March 1900; D.S. Macdiarmid, The Life of Lieut. General Sir James Moncrieff Grierson (London: Constable, 1923), p. 152. 73 L. March Phillips, With Rimington (London: E. Arnold, 1903), pp. 92–93. 74 Rawly 5201-7-3, 21 and 24 March 1900. 75 Curtin, Disease and Empire, p. 210. The fatality rate was less than that in the Sudan. Ibid., p. 211. 76 TH, III, p. 335; Macdiarmid, Life of Grierson, p. 156. 77 Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 3 November 1899; De Wet, Three Years War, p. 41. 78 Andre Wessels, Lord Roberts and the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Stroud: The Army Records Society, 2000), pp. 26, 34 and 275n18. 79 TNA, PRO30/40/14, p. 112. 80 De Wet, Three Years War, pp. 79–80. 81 Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 30 and 31 March 1900; De Wet, Three Years War, pp. 85–92; TH, IV, pp. 30–50. 82 Lieutenant Colonel Sir John Rankin, A Subaltern’s Letters to His Wife in London (London: John Lane the Bodley head Ltd, 1930; orig. publ. 1901), p. 203. Colville’s account in The Work of the Ninth Division (London: E. Arnold, 1901), pp. 68–93 is at odds with others’, for example, Smith-Dorrien, Memories of Forty-Eight Years Service, pp. 174–178. 83 Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 4 April 1900. 84 De Wet, Three Years War, pp. 103–105; TH, IV, pp. 55–69. 85 Rawly 5201-33-7-2. 86 Phillips, With Rimington, pp. 95–96. 87 Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 27 April–1 May 1900. 88 NAM 9011-42-14, Spenser Wilkinson papers, 8 December 1931; Hamilton, Listening for the Drums (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), p. 159. 89 TH, IV, pp. 88–89. 90 Phillips, With Rimington, pp. 112–113; TH, IV, pp. 110–111. 91 Maj. Gen. F. Smith, A Veterinary History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (London: H. & W. Brown, 1919), p. 77. 92 Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 5 May 1900. 93 Ibid., 13 May 1900. 94 TH, IV, p. 125. 95 Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 20–22 May 1900.

Notes 96 97 98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

251

W.S. Churchill, Ian Hamilton’s March (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1900), p. 241; Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 1 June 1900. Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 30 June 1900. Ibid. Ibid., 31 June 1900. Nasson, South African War, pp. 176–177 seems to forget that an army marches on its stomach, but his discussion is balanced and sensible and charts a middle course between OH, IV, p. 152 defending Roberts’s delay and Pakenham, Boer War, p. 428. ‘the most serious strategic mistake’. Rawly 5201-33-7-1, 4/6/1900; Liddell Hart Archives, De Lisle Diaries, I, pp. 63–71; Churchill, Ian Hamilton’s March, p. 289; OH, III, p. 101. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 5 June 1900. Ibid., 6 June 1900. Ibid., 3 May 1900. Telegraphic exchange in Bobs 118 and WO105/13, bundle marked T8/4. Comments in Rawly 1-7-3, 13 May 190, also 26 May and 3 June 1900. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 3 May, 7 and 13 June 1900. WO108/399, p. 184, no. 287; WO32/790, Capture by the enemy of Uitvals Nek (the other name for the position). Ibid., 23 July 1900. Ibid., 29 July 1900. Hunter, Kitchener’s Sword Arm, pp. 149–167; WO105/10, 126/144, Roberts to Lansdowne forwarding Hunter’s dispatch. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 3 August 1900. Philip Pienaar, With Steyn and De Wet (London: Methuen, 1903), p. 96. Nasson, South African War, pp. 181–184. Leaders like Viljoen and Botha wanted to negotiate. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 16 August 1900. In addition to the difficulties highlighted in Rawly’s diary, see Stephen Miller, Lord Methuen and the British Army (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1999), p. 198 and n124. Rawly 52-1-33-7-3, 11–16 August 1900. De Wet, Three Years War, pp. 177ff. Ibid., 12 and 15 August 1900. Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Methuen papers, 1743/8591, 23 August 1900. Rawly 5201-33-7-2, 5 April, 8 October and 17 April 1900; 5201-33-7-3, 13 May and 14 June 1900. Ibid., 5201-33-7-3, 4 October 1900. Ibid., 1 October 1900. ‘Gone east’ refers to necessary work on the railway to Komati Poort. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 22, 23 August and 14 September 1900. Ibid., 15 and 16 September 1900; WO108/399 ‘Confidential telegrams’, p. 202, no. 334, Roberts’s telegram.

252 123 124

125 126

127

128 129

130 131 132

Notes Ibid., 17 September 1900. British Library, uncatalogued Lansdowne correspondence, Roberts to Lansdowne, 18 and 19 July, 28 August, 12 October, 8 November 1900; Pollock, Kitchener, pp. 184–185. Ibid., 19 September 1900. J.L. Garvin, The Life of Joseph Chamberlain: Vol. III: Empire and World Policy (London: Macmillan, 1934), p. 625; Cecil Headlam, ed., The Milner Papers (2 vols. London: Cassell, 1931 and 1933), II, p. 125. G.E. Buckle, ed., The Letters of Queen Victoria: Third Series: A Selection from Her Majesty’s Correspondence and Journal between the Years 1886 and 1901 (3 vols. London: J. Murray, 1930–1932), III, pp. 592–597. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 13, 14, 19 and 20 November 1900. Ibid., 1 and 4 December 1900. See also NAM, Birdwood papers, 6707-19-54, 16 December 1899: ‘I can’t help feeling sure that the key of the position is the hill on the right [Hlangwane].’ Cf, Pakenham, Boer War, p. 221. Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 8, 9 and 11 December 1900. E. H. Cairns, Absent Minded War. Being Some Reflections on Our Reverses and the Causes Which Have Led to Them. By a British Officer (London: J. Milne, 1900). Rawly 5201-33-7-3, 31 December 1900.

Chapter 4 1 2 3

Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 3 March 1900. Headlam, Milner Papers, II, pp. 225–226. For the talks and relations between Kitchener and Botha, TH, IV, pp. 158–182; Johannes Meintjes, General Louis Botha: Biography (London: Cassell, 1970), pp. 78–83; Pollock, Kitchener, p. 191. 4 Lieutenant Colonel H.C.B. Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa 1899–1902’, JSAHR, vol. 69 (1991), p. 171. 5 TH, IV, pp. 67–74; Sir George Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener (3 vols. London: Macmillan and Co, 1920), II, pp. 1–4. 6 TH, V, pp. 247–248. 7 Andre Wessels, Lord Kitchener and the War in South Africa 1899–1902 (Sutton: Stroud, 2006), p. 48. Wessels estimates over 120,000 blacks and coloureds serving the British. 8 Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 12 March 1900. 9 Maurice, p. 67. 10 Ibid., 29 March 1900. 11 PRO 30/57/22, Y38, K to Brodrick, 29 March 1901. 12 Wessels, Lord Roberts in South Africa, p. 173, letter 19 April 1901.

Notes 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

253

Ibid., p. 120, 24 May 1901. Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa’, p. 177, letter 31 March 1901. Ibid., p. 177, letter 7 April 1901. Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 9 April 1901. Ibid., 12 April 1901. Ibid., 14 April 1901. Rawly 2011-11-18-3, 16 April 1901. Ibid., p. 177, letter 25 April 1901; Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 14 April 1901. Bobs 33/21, 29 March 1901 and 33/46, 13 September 1901. Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa’, p. 180, letter 13 May 1901. The transcription of ‘pleasant’ was difficult and I have changed the wording to make better sense. Ibid., p. 182, letter 12 June 1900. Ibid., p. 181, letter 28 May 1901. For British dislike of farm-burning, see Captain J.P. Fletcher-Vane, The War and One Year After (Cape Town: South African Newspaper Co, 1903), passim. Richard Shannon, The Crisis of Imperialism 1865–1915 (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1976), p. 331; Iain Smith, ‘A Century of Controversy over Origins’, in Donal Lowry, ed., The South African War Reappraised (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2000). Pakenham, Boer War, restated it in a different form. The whole system is discussed in S.B. Spies, Methods of Barbarism? Roberts and Kitchener and Civilians in the Boer Republics January 1900–May 1902 (Cape Town and Pretoria: Human & Rousseau, 1977). Victor Sampson & Ian Hamilton, Anti-Commando (London: Faber & Faber Limited, 1931), pp. 25–26. Bobs 61/22, 28 August 1901. Correspondence relative to the Treatment of Natives by the Boers (Parliamentary Papers, Cd. 821, 1901), for other examples. Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 18 May 1901. Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 11/5, 13/5, 14/5, 17/5, 18/5, 20/5, 21/5; TH, V, p. 228: ‘The country was alive with Boer scouts who intercepted messengers, spread false rumours.’ Bill Nasson, The Boer War: the Struggle for South Africa (Stroud, the History Press, 2011), pp. 42–43. Ibid., p. 48; TH, V, pp. 337–339; Wessels, Kitchener and the War in South Africa, p. 156. Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 19–23 November 1901; Bobs 33/49, 20 September 1901. Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa’, p. 238, letter 28 October 1901. Wessels, Lord Kitchener and the War in South Africa, p. 163, letter November 1901. TH, V, pp. 362–364. Ibid.; Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 28 October 1901. Rawlinson’s Dutch is faulty. ‘Enspanned’ should mean the horses were harnessed, whereas he intends the reverse. TH, V, pp. 364–376; Meintjes, General Louis Botha, pp. 90–91.

254

Notes

39 Bobs 55; Wessels, Kitchener and the War in South Africa, pp. 162 and 163–165. 40 Wessels, Kitchener and the War in South Africa, p. 201. 41 Liddell Hart Archives, Hamilton 2/3/1, 2, 3, 4 and 6, November and December 1901; Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, II, p. 77n. 42 Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa’, pp. 240–241, letter 15 December 1901. 43 Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 7 and 10 December 1901. 44 Ibid., 11–13 December 1901. 45 Bobs R61/25, 15 December 1901. 46 Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 25 December 1901. 47 TH, V, 433–444. 48 Bobs 61/28, 7 and 10 January 1902. 49 Report on the Concentration Camps in South Africa by the Committee of Ladies appointed by the Secretary of State for War (Cd. 893, 1902), passim; Spies, Methods of Barbarism, pp. 253–259; The Times, 25 February 1902, p. 4 for schools. 50 Peter Warwick, ‘Black People and the War’, pp. 204–205, in ibid., The South African War: The Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902 (Harlow, Essex, 1980), Publisher is Longman; Wessels, Kitchener and the War in South Africa, p. 99; TH, V, pp. 252–253. 51 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 27–31 December 1902. 52 K22/Y12(b), 17 February 1902. 53 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 27–31 December 1902; TH, v, p. 473. 54 Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa’, pp. 245–246, 8 March 1902. 55 Boddleian Library, Oxford, H.A. Gwynne papers, Ms Gwynne dep. 29: Diaries, dates as text. 56 Leo Amery in his preface, p. ix, to OH, vol. v explains that the first five chapters had been drafted by Charles Repington, but writing of the volume had been entrusted to Childers, except for portions of the concluding chapter on the peace. 57 TH, v, pp. 474–481; Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 2 February 1902–9 February 1902; Gwynne papers dep. 29: Diaries. 58 TH, v, pp. 482–491; Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 27 February 1902; from Ballard, there is only criticism, Cook, ‘Letters from South Africa’, p. 245. 59 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 2 March 1902; Nasson, The South African War, p. 207; TH, v, pp. 490–491. 60 Ibid., 10–11 March 1902; TH, v, pp. 491–494. 61 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 2 March 1902. 62 TH, v, pp. 501–508; ibid., p. 507 for shooting of prisoners; also Smith, A Veterinary History of the War in South Africa , p. 213. 63 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 12 and 14 March 1902. 64 Ibid., 19, 20 and 21 March 1902. 65 Ibid., 21 and 22 March 1902. 66 Bobs 122, 27 March 1902; see chapter heading. 67 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 24 and 25 March 1902; Bobs 61/31, Rawlinson to Roberts, 27 March 1902.

Notes

255

68 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 5 April 1902. 69 Hamilton, The Happy Warrior, p. 188. 70 Rawly 5, 11–12 April 1902; Hamilton 2/3/24, telegrams to Kitchener; Hamilton 2/3/23 and Hamilton 2/3/25, letters both 18 April 1902. Bobs R61/33, Rawlinson to Roberts, 18 April 1902; TH, v, pp. 528–537. 71 Ibid., 9 April 1902. 72 Keith Surridge, ‘The Politics of War: Lord Kitchener and the Settlement of the South African War, 1901–1902’, in Greg Cuthbertson, Albert Grundlingh and Mary-Lynn Settle, eds, Writing a Wider War: Rethinking Race, Gender and Identity in the South African War (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002). 73 Reitz, Commando, p. 316. 74 Darwin, The Empire Project, pp. 219–220. 75 The Times, 14 July 1902, p. 6, ‘Lord Kitchener’s return’. 76 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 12 July 1902. 77 The Times, 30 July 1902, p. 3., ‘Lord Kitchener’s final despatch’. 78 Ibid. 79 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 11 and 12 June 1902 and ‘Table of captures’. 80 Rawly 5201-33-7-4, 18 May 1901; 5201-33-7-5, 25 December 1901 and 18 March 1902. 81 Ibid., quoted in Maurice, pp. 76–77.

Chapter 5 1

R.C.K. Ensor, England 1870–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p. 526; Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The Edwardian Army: Recruiting, Training and Deploying the British Army 1902–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 3. Causes of the First World War will be considered only as they touch on Rawlinson’s words and actions. 2 Rawly 5201-33-7-5, 30 May 1902. 3 Ibid., 6 July 1902. 4 Bobs33/27, 9 May 1901; 33/29, 24 May 1901; 33/30, 31 May 1901. 5 Rawly, 1952-01-33-11, Journal of a Trip to Delhi to see the Durbar, 25 December 1902. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., 27 and 29 December 1902. 8 Ibid., 1 January 1903. 9 Ibid., 27–28, 1902. This was after an exhausting thirty-six-hour railway journey. 10 Rawly 1952-01-33-11, 8–9 January 1903. 11 Jay Luvaas, Education of an Army: British Military Thought 1815–1940 (London: Cassell, 1965), pp. 224. 12 Report of the Akers-Douglas Committee on the Education and Training of Officers of the Army (London: HM Stationery Office, 1902), pp. 2 and 29.

256

Notes

13 Sir G.F. Ellison, ‘From Here and There’, The Lancashire Lad: Journal of the Loyal Regiment, 3rd series, no. 45 (July, 1933), p. 8. 14 Ibid., Sir G.F. Ellison, ‘Lord Roberts and the General Staff ’, Nineteenth Century and After, vol. CXII (December, 1932), p. 729. G.F.R. Henderson originally undertook to write this, but his poor health and death prevented him. 15 Report of His Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Military Preparations and Other Matters Connected with the War in South Africa (Cd 1789, London, 1903). 16 TH, II, p. 33. 17 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 56n80. 18 Churchill College Archives, Amery papers AMEL 1 January 11, Letters re: Times History, Roberts to Amery, 1 January 1903, 23 January 1903, 29 November 1903. 19 Keith Jeffery, ‘The Impact of the South African War on Imperial Defence’, in Donal Lowry, ed., The South African War Reappraised (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 188–202. 20 Smith, History of the Veterinary Corps, pp. 207–213. Further improvements followed: see Graham Winton, Theirs Not to Reason Why: Horsing the British Army 1875–1925 (Barnsley : Helion, 2013). 21 Spencer Jones, From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army, 1902–1914 (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), p. 125. The introduction of a new 4.5-inch howitzer took longer. Ibid., pp. 144–145. 22 Colonel John K. Dunlop, The Development of the British Army 1899–1914 (London: Methuen, 1938); pp. 145 and 153–155. 23 S. Bidwell and D. Graham, Firepower: British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904–1945 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1982), p. 29. 24 Maurice, p. 83. 25 L.J. Sartre, ‘St John Brodrick and Army Reform 1901–1903’, Journal of British Studies, vol. 15, pt ii (1975–1976), p. 119; Bobs 124/1, p. 31, 21 June 1901. 26 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, pp. 43–44. 27 Maurice, p. 83. 28 Report of His Majesty’s Commissioners, p. 53. 29 WO108/184, ‘Notes by Colonel J M Grierson’. 30 Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College 1854–1914, p. 196. 31 Ibid. 32 Brevet-Major A.R. Godwin-Austen, The Staff and the Staff College (London: Constable, 1927), p. 235. 33 Hubert Gough, Soldiering On: Being the Memoirs of General Sir Hubert Gough (London: Arthur Barker, 1954), p. 93. 34 George Aston, Memories of a Marine (London: J. Murray, 1919), p. 255; KCL, Aston papers, Aston 4/4. 35 Maurice, p. 84.

Notes

257

36 Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College, p. 19; E.S. May, Changes and Chances of a Soldier’s Life (London: Philip Allen, 1930), pp. 267–268. 37 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 68. 38 Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College, p. 199. 39 Victor Bonham-Carter, Soldier True: The Life and Times of Field Marshal Sir William Robertson (London: Frederick Muller Limited, 1963), p. 168. 40 M-M 10/11, Autobiography of a Gunner. 41 I.F.W. Becket, Johnnie Gough, V.C.: A Biography of Brigadier General Sir John Edmond Gough, V.C.,K.C.B., 1871–1915 (London: Tom Donovan, 1989). 42 May, Changes and Chances, pp. 186–187. 43 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 62 quoting Wilson diary 11 January 1905. 44 John Gooch, The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900–1916 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 72; Times, 17 January 1905, p. 9, ‘The Staff Conference at the Staff College’. 45 Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, II, p. 201; David Gilmour, Curzon (London: J. Murray, 1994), pp. 250, 247–255 and 296–346; S. Gopal, British Policy in India 1858–1905 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 276–291. 46 Gopal, British Policy in India, p. 290. 47 Bobs 61/35, 25 September 1905. 48 Ibid., R61/36, 20 December 1905. 49 For Indian defence and K’s ‘Kriegspiel’, Gooch, Plans of War, Chapter 7. 50 Maurice, p. 87; Peter Boyden, ‘Lord Roberts and the Kitchener-Curzon Debate’, Annual Report of the National Army Museum (1974–1975), pp. 17–21. 51 Corelli Barnett, Britain and Her Army (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1974), pp. 359– 362; Gooch, Plans of War, Chapter 2; Dunlop, Development of the British Army, pp. 198–212. For Roberts’s Role, Ellison, ‘Lord Roberts and the General Staff ’, The Nineteenth Century and After (December, 1932), pp. 722–732 on the centenary of the field marshal’s birth. 52 Gooch, Plans of War, pp. 289ff. 53 Edward Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980); Barnett, Britain and Her Army, pp. 363–366; Dunlop, Development of the British Army, pp. 243ff. 54 Maurice, p. 80. 55 WO123/48 quoted in Gooch, Plans of War, p. 107. 56 Gooch, Plans of War, pp. 108–109 and 113; Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer. Some of Haig’s work may actually have been done by Kiggell, his future chief of staff. 57 Gooch, Plans of War, Chapter 4. 58 French to Esher, 8/9/190, quoted ibid., p. 66 and Little Field Marshal, p. 127. 59 John Spencer, ‘Friends Disunited’, in Spencer Jones, ed., Courage without Glory: The British Army on the Western Front 1915 (Solihull: Helion, 2015), p. 82. Both Spencer Jones and John Spencer point to lack of documentary evidence for French’s change of heart.

258

Notes

60 Little Field Marshal, pp. 127–128. 61 Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914–1918 (London, 2005), pp. 224–225. 62 Times, 27 September 1910, p. 7, ‘The Army Manoeuvres’. Aristophanes ‘The Clouds’ lampooned Socrates. 63 Ibid., 28 September 1910, p. 11, ‘Cloudland at the Staff College’. 64 Ibid., 19 November 1904, ‘Geography and War’. 65 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 79. 66 Rawly 1952-01-33-12. Notes on a trip to Canada and America 1907 and 195201-33-13 Trip to Canada (he also visited the United States on the second journey. Maurice, pp. 89–91. 67 Gooch, Plans of War, Chapter 5. 68 Rawly 1952-01-33-13, 12 February 1909. 69 Maurice, pp. 91–92. 70 Lord Esher, The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener (London: J. Murray, 1921), pp. 84–85. 71 M.V. Brett, ed, Journal and Letters of Reginald Viscount Esher (4 vols. London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1934–1938), II, p. 432. 72 Maurice, p. 91. 73 Rawly 1952-01-33-14, ‘Journal of a Trip to the Far East’; Maurice, p. 92 has ‘Brigadier Waters’, not Trench. See Matthew Seligmann, Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 74 Ibid.; Maurice, p. 93. Bethmann-Hollweg, German Chancellor, said at the beginning of 1914: ‘The future belongs to Russia. It grows and grows and hangs upon us ever more heavily like a nightmare’. G.A. Craig, Germany 1866–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 334. 75 Rawly 1952-01-33-14, 13 and 20 October 1909. 76 Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrapbook during the Russo-Japanese War (2 vols. London: E. Arnold, 1908). 77 Rawly 1952-01-33-14, 6–9 November 1909. 78 Ibid.; Maurice, p. 94. 79 Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front & the Emergence of Modern War 1900–1918 (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2009), Chapter 2; Jones, Boer War to World War, pp. 64–65. 80 Rawly 1952-01-33-14, 6 November 1909. 81 Ibid., 13, 15–16, 21 October 1909. 82 Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, II, pp. 313ff. 83 Leeson, ‘Playing at War: The British Military Manoeuvres of 1898’. 84 Times, 24 September 1910, p. 7. The writer in this and note 81 was Repington. 85 Ibid., 28 June 1912, p. 13, ‘Combined Field Firing’. 86 Ibid., 12 July 1912, p. 12, ‘Aeroplanes in War’.

Notes 87 88

89 90

91 92 93 94 95 96

97 98 99

100 101 102 103

104 105 106 107

108 109 110

259

Michael Paris, Winged Warfare: The Literature and Theory of Aerial Warfare in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), pp. 128–129. J.P. Harris, Douglas Haig and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 51–55; a more detailed assessment in Mark Connelly, ‘Lieutenant-General Sir James Grierson’, in Jones, Stemming the Tide, pp. 144–149. WO279/47 Report on Army Manoeuvres, 1912, pp. 55–56. In 1911 although commanding one of the forces at manoeuvres, he did not attend but enjoyed himself in London, and had to be briefed for the post-manoeuvre discussion by Aylmer Haldane. See Travers, The Killing Ground, pp. 26–27. WO279/52 Report on Army Exercise, 1913. Jones, Boer War to World War, pp. 146–156 on the problems. Command, p. 10. M-M8/29, Hastings Anderson to M-M, 26 April 1928. David Morgan-Owen, The Fear of Invasion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). R.T. Stearn, ‘“The Last Glorious Campaign”: Lord Roberts, the National Service League and Compulsory Military Training 1902–1914’, JSAHR, vol. 87, no. 352 (winter, 2009), pp. 312–330. Bobs R61/38, 8[?] April 1911. F.S. Oliver, Ordeal by Battle (London: Macmillan, 1915), preface and p. 436; Percival Marling, Rifleman and Hussar (London: J. Murray, 1931), p. 350. Peter Karstern, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army: Suborned or Subordinate?’ Journal of Social History, vol. 17 (1983–1984), pp. 331–364; Keith Jeffery, ‘An Irish Empire’? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 94. Bonham-Carter, Soldier True, p. 78. Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 121, n54. I.F.W. Beckett, The Army and the Curragh Incident 1914 (London: Bodley Head for the Army Records Society, 1986), p. 24. Gough, Soldiering On , Chapter 6, especially pp. 105–110. A strong flavour of the anger felt by opponents of coercion can be found in letters in Hubert’s brother, Johnnie: NAM, Johnnie Gough papers 9211-99-IX/1. Little Field Marshal, p. 189. Beckett, The Army and the Curragh, p. 12. HHW 1/21, 26 and 31 December 1913, Rawlinson to Wilson. On Seely and Churchill, see especially Little Field Marshal, pp. 173, 175 and 177–178 and James Fergusson, The Curragh Incident (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), pp. 211–214. HHW 73/1/18, R to HW, 20 March 1914. HHW 2/74/3. Beckett, Army and the Curragh, pp. 225–226. Little Field Marshal, p. 258 citing French’s diary 14 and 15 November 1914.

260 111 112

113 114

115 116

Notes Gough, Soldiering On, p. 112. G.R. Searle, A New England: Peace and War 1886–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Bowman and Connolly, Edwardian Army, p. 182; Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 114–117. Searle, A New England, p. 522; David French, British Strategy & War Aims 1914–1916 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), p. 22. Charles Carrington, Soldier from the War Returning (Barnsley : Pen and Sword, 2015. Orig. publ. 1965), pp. 260–261; J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). RWLN 1/1, 7 September 1914. HHW 2/73/46.

Chapter 6 1

H.H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 230. 2 Arthur, Life of Lord Kitchener, III, pp. 2–3. Repington was first to propose K. Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies 1914–1916 (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Books, 2007), p. 34. The suspicious Kitchener sent Rawlinson ‘to find out what political game was behind my suggestion’. Lieut.-Col. Charles a [with accent] Court Repington, The First World War 1914–1918 (2 vols. London: Constable & Co, 1920), p. 20. 3 RWLN 1/1, 7 September 1914; George Cassar, Kitchener: Architect of Victory (London: HarperCollins, 1977), pp. 178–181. 4 HHW 2/7/353, 18 September 1914. 5 C.E. Callwell, Experiences of a Dug-Out 1914–1918 (London: Constable, 1920), p. 55. 6 RWLN 1/1, 7 September 1914. He had no chance to write his diary until that date. 7 L.S. Amery, My Political Life (3 vols. London, 1953), II, pp. 26–27; Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, pp. 73–74. 8 Holmes, Tommy, p. 139. 9 Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 83; David Carter, The Stockbrokers’ Battalion in the Great War: A History of the 10th (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Books, 2014), p. 11. 10 Peter Simkins, ‘The Pals Battalions’, in David Chandler & Ian Beckett, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (London: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 246.

Notes 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25

26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33

261

Simkins, Kitchener’s Army, p. 74; RWLN 1/11, 10 September 1914. RWLN 1/1, 9 September 2014. Gooch, Plans of War, chapter 10 develops this. Holmes, Tommy, pp. 130–137 for the arguments. Callwell, Experiences of a Dug-Out, pp. 49 and 53; Robertson, Private to Field Marshal, pp. 287–290; also Charles Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military Classics, 2015; orig. publ. 1965), pp. 31–32. Amery, Political Life, II, pp. 30–32, gives a contradictory view. 21 September 1914. Toby Rawlinson, Adventures on the Western Front August 1914–June 1915 (London: Andrew Melrose, 1925), pp. 4–15 & 135. RWLN 1/1, 5 October 1914. Little Field Marshal, p. 135. See below page 82. RWLN 1/1, 12 October 14. H.H. Asquith, Letters to Venetia Stanley, ed. M.E. Brock (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 262–263. Gardner, Trial by Fire, pp. 146 and 149–150. Ian Beckett, The Making of the First World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 19. Maurice, pp. 100–103 and n2 on p. 107; for the episode see WO95/706/1, ‘Report on the Operations of the British Naval and Military Forces Employed in the Defence and Withdrawal from Antwerp’, 18 October 1914; for French’s suspicions, Little Field Marshal, pp. 242–243. Gardner, Trial by Fire, p. 150 quoting Haig Diary 18 October 1914. R.A.K. [Robert] Montgomery is not to be confused with Rawlinson’s former Staff College student ‘Archie’ Montgomery. Simon Robbins kindly put right my confusion about the different Montgomeries. Ibid., p. 151. John Barnes & David Nicholson, ed., The Leo Amery Diaries (vol. 1, 1896–1929. London: Hutchinson, 1980), p. 109. Rawlinson, Adventures, pp. 168–169. Richard Olson, ‘Major-General Sir Thompson Capper’, in Spencer Jones, ed., Stemming the Tide: Officers and Leadership in the British Expeditionary Force 1914 (Solihull: Helion, 2013), pp. 204–205. WO95/706/1, IV Corps War Diary, 10 October 1915; Gardner, Trial by Fire, p. 152; Little Field Marshal, pp. 127 & 243. WO95/706/1 Corps War diary has this happening at noon. Rawlinson, Adventures, pp. 179–183. Toby states a ‘Taube’, but nearly all German planes at this stage of the war were thus named. Ibid., pp. 188–195; Becket, Making of the First World War, p. 25 and chapter 1, passim.

262

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34 Gardner, Trial by Fire, pp. 155–156 quoting Price-Davies’ letter to his wife admitting failure in his duty. 35 Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 152. 36 1914–1918, p. 75. 37 Stephen Badsey, ‘Sir John French and Command of the BEF’, in Jones, ed., Stemming the Tide , pp. 48–49. 38 George Cassar, The Tragedy of Sir John French (Newark, Del: University of Delaware Press, 1985), p. 164. 39 Rawlinson, Adventures, p. 215. 40 1914-1918, pp. 75–76; Little Field Marshal, p. 245. 41 PRO30/57/51, 17 October 1914; Rev E.J. Kennedy, With the Immortal Seventh Division (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916), p. 222. 42 RWLN, 20 October 1914. 43 Olson, ‘Major-General Thompson Capper’, pp. 206–208. 44 Rawlinson, Adventures, p. 198, Gibbs, p.43. 45 Ibid., 23 October 1914; Gardner, Trial by Fire, pp. 157–158. 46 RWLN 1/1 23 October 1914: Gardner, Trial by Fire, p. 159. 47 WO95/706/1, IV Corps War Diary, 21 October 1915. 48 Rawlinson, Adventures, pp. 217–218. 49 RWLNI, 25 October 1914. Brigadier Bulfin used the same phrase. 50 The Times, 1 October 1915, p. 7, Capper’s obituary; also, George de S. Barrow, The Fire of Life (London: Hutchinson, n.d.), p. 192. 51 Harris, Douglas Haig and the First World War, p. 95; Haig Diaries, pp. 73–74, 21 October 1914. Harris has a meeting at Rawlinson’s HQ, but Haig only records one at his. 52 Gardner, Trial by Fire, p. 149. 53 RWLN 1, 27 October 1915. 54 Not always. Despite all Rawlinson’s urging, he refused on 25 October. RWLN1, 27 October 1914. 55 RWLN 1, 30 October 1914. 56 Ibid., 2 and 4 October 1914. See above page 86. 57 Ibid., 6 November 1914. 58 Haig Diaries, pp. 76–77; Harris, Haig, pp. 100–103. 59 Gardner, Trial by Fire, pp. 216–226; Spencer Jones, ‘“The Demon”: BrigadierGeneral Charles Fitzclarence V.C’, in Jones, ed., Stemming the Tide, pp. 240–262. 60 1914–1918, pp. 76–77. 61 RWLN 1/2. See C.T. Atkinson, The Seventh Division 1914–1918 (London: John Murray, 1927). 62 RWLN 1/2, 11 and 12 November 1914; 29 January 1915 and 13 February 1915; Rawlinson, Adventures, pp. 234ff; Command, p. 42.

Notes

263

63 Ibid., 29 January 1915. 64 RWLN 1/1, 8 March 1915; Rawlinson, Adventures, p. 314. Also his The Defence of London 1915–1918 (London: Melrose, 1924). 65 IWM, The 1912–1922 Memoirs of Captain M.D. Kennedy, OBE. 66 Barnes & Nicholson, The Leo Amery Diaries, I, pp. 110–111. 67 RWLN 1/1, 16 November 1914 & K51, R to K, 18 November 1914; Basil Collier, Brasshat: A Biography of Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson (London, 1961), p. 203. 68 Marling, Rifleman and Hussar, pp. 349–350; M.C. Hendley, Organised Patriotism and the Crucible of War: Popular Imperialism in Britain 1914–1932 (Montreal: Queen’s-McGill University Press, 2012), p. 21. 69 RWLN 1/1. Maurice, pp. 116–117 conflates several sources in describing Roberts’s death. 70 RWLN 1/1, 16, 18, 21 and 24 November 1914; K51, R to K, 18 November 1914. 71 K51, R to K, 25 November 1914; RWLN1, 17 December 1914. 72 RWLN 1/1, 4, 12,16, 27 & 30 December 1914; 1 January 1915. 73 Holmes, Tommy, pp. 233–234. 74 Hew Strachan writing in Bond, ed., The First World War and Military History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 49. 75 WO95/1671/1, 8 Division War Diary, Army Op Oder No 8, 13 December 1914. 76 A.J. Smithers, The Man Who Disobeyed: Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien and His Enemies (London: Leo Cooper Ltd., 1970). 77 RWLN 1/117/12/1914; for the story, The Times, 16 December 1914, p. 9, ‘The Defence of Ypres’ quoting Rawlinson’s praise of ‘the stubborn valour and endurance’ of 7th Division. 78 WO95/1671/1, 19 December 1914. 79 RWLN 1/1, 19–20 December 1914. 80 PRO30/57/51, 23 December 1914. 81 Ibid., 28 November and 10 December 1914. 82 K51, 23 December 1914. Haig’s 1 Corps was making similar weapons. Haig Diaries, p. 84, 12 December 1914. 83 Quoted Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 139. 84 Hew Strachan, The First World War: Volume I: To Arms (London: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 278; three times the general staff ’s estimate. French, British Strategy & War Aims, p. 246. 85 RWLN 1/1, 16 December 1914. 86 KCL, Maurice papers 3/4/4, Amery to Lady R, 15 November 1914. 87 Ibid., 27 December 1914. 88 WO95/1671/1, 25 December 1914.

264

Notes

Chapter 7 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

Edward Spiers, ‘The Scottish Soldier at War’, in H. Cecil and P.H. Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), p. 327. Rawlinson, Adventures, pp. 227–231; RWLN 1/1, 21 and 24 November and 4 and 24 December 1914. Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914–1918 (London: Penguin Books, 2015), pp. 158–159. 1914–1918, p. 157. RWLN 1/1, 6 December 14. Haig’s assessment of GHQ was similar. Douglas Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, Gary Sheffield and John Bourne ed. (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 85, 18 December 1914. See John Bourne, ‘MajorGeneral Sir Archibald Murray’ in Jones, Stemming the Tide. RWLN 1/1, 25 January 1915. Robertson, Private to Field Marshal, p. 218. Bourne, ‘Major-General Sir Archibald Murray’. Haig Diaries, pp. 25, 113, 161. Ian M. Brown, British Logistics on the Western Front 1914–1919 (Westport, CT and London: Praeger, 1998), p. 42. Bond, The Victorian Army and the Staff College, p. 305; Holmes, Tommy, p. 225; Spencer, ‘Friends Disunited’, p. 84. French, British Strategy & War Aims, p. 158. Jones, Courage without Glory, especially chapter 2, John Mason Sneddon, ‘The Supple of Munitions to the Army’, 1915. Command, pp. 36–41. RWLN 1/1, 4 December 1914. For the 5.9’s dominating effect, see Lt-Col C.N.F. Broad, ‘The Development of Artillery Tactics – 1914–1918’, The Journal of the Royal Artillery, vol. Lxix (1922–1923), p. 67. Ibid., 2 February 1915. RWLN 1/1, 29 April 1915. Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 161. The corporal was the writer J.B. Priestley. Haig Diaries, pp. 98–99; Command, p. 23. RWLN 1/1, 8 February 1915; also 14 and 16 February 1915; WO158/374, Part 5 ‘Points for consideration in the attack….’, note 9 February 1915. RWLN 1/1, 24 February 1915; Haig Diaries, p. 103. Command, p. 25. Patrick Watt, ‘Douglas Haig and the Planning of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle’, in Jones, Courage without Glory, p. 186 quoting Capper to Rawlinson in WO95/1628/1. Quoted Command, p. 25. RWLN 1/1, 25 February 1915. Ibid., 26 February 1915.

Notes

265

26 Ibid., 6 March 1915; Command, p. 30; Haig and his CRA Mercer came to the same conclusion. 27 Ibid., p. 24; Haig Diaries, p. 101. 28 Peter Hart, ‘The BEF Takes Off ’, in Jones, Courage without Glory, pp. 128–130. 29 Haig Diaries, p. 105. 30 Command, pp. 32–34; WO158/374, Part I: Report on Operations 10–14 March, 1914. 31 Holmes, Tommy, p. 400. 32 Command, pp. 32–34. 33 Ibid., p. 42. 34 Ibid., pp. 24–25; G.C. Wynne, If Germany Attacks: The Battle in Depth in the West (London: Faber and Faber, 1940), p. 22. 35 Quoted in Peter Hart, The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 137. 36 WO95/707/6, IV Corps War Diary, ‘Operations about Neuve Chapelle’. 37 Description of Day 1 is taken largely from Command, pp. 44–54 supplemented by RWLN 1/1, WO95/707/6, WO158/374 and Wynne, If Germany Attacks, pp. 22–35. 38 RWLN 1/1, 10 March 1915. Quoted Command, p. 56 in more detail. 39 WO158/374, Part I, ‘Report on Ops’. 40 Quoted Command, p. 59. 41 Ibid., p. 62. 42 Rawly 5201-33-60, 11 March 1915. This is a typed transcript of pocket diaries. The whereabouts of the originals are unknown. 43 Wynne, If Germany Attacks, pp. 38–40; WO158/374, ‘Report on Ops’, 12 March 1915 at 12:56 pm; WO95/707/6, Operations about Neuve Chapelle; Rawlinson 5201-33-60, Short Diary, 12 March 1915. 44 These reports are in Command, p. 65. 45 Ibid., pp. 65–67. 46 Ibid., p. 67. 47 RWLN 1/1, 13 and 14 March 1915. 48 OH, 1915, vol. I, p. 151. 49 So little that Watt, ‘Douglas Haig and the Planning of Neuve Chapelle’, p. 199 thinks he should have been sacked. 50 WO158/374, Part I: Report on Operations 10–14 March 1915. 51 Haig Diaries, pp. 116 and 174; Harris, Haig, pp. 125–127. 52 Haig Diaries, p. 109. 53 Rawly 5201-33-60, dates as text. 54 RWLN 1/1, 13/ and 16/ March 1915. Haig Diaries. In his second entry Rawlinson defends himself (to his diary and his conscience): ‘It makes things look as if I had been trying to sacrifice him in order to save myself and this I do not like at all. I thought D.H. knew all the time of my order for I showed it to him in the original

266

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Notes orders and also repeated the message to him ordering the advance. However these misunderstandings will arise however careful one may be.’ Haig Diaries, p. 111. Haig knew Davies who had served under him at Aldershot. E.K.G. Sixsmith, Douglas Haig (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 88. Haig Diaries, pp. 111 and 112. RWLN 1/1, 17 March 1915. HHW 2/82/104, Congreve to Wilson, 20 April 1916. Harris, Haig, p. 125. M-M 8/29, Rawlinson’s death and funeral, Hamilton to M-M, 2 April 1925. Watt, ‘Douglas Haig and the Planning of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle’, in Jones, Courage without Glory, pp. 198–199. Haig Diaries, p. 112; Harris, Haig, p. 127. For example, Harris, Haig, pp. 114 and 125. Inter alia, RWLN 1/3, 22 October 1915, 21 December 1915, 1 January 1916, 29 January 1916. This draws on Peter Simkins, ‘Haig’s Generals’, in B. Bond and N. Cave, eds, Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On (Barnsley : Leo Cooper, 2009), pp. 84–87, 87. Wynne, If Germany Attacks, pp. 63–64. Rawly 5201-33-7, f. 52, 25 March 1915. Paul Harris and Sanders Marble, ‘The Step by Step Approach: British Military Thought and Operational Method on the Western Front 1915–1917’, War in History, vol. 15, no. 1 (2008), p. 20. Ibid., pp. 22–24. Command, p. 81; RWLN 1/1, 19 March 1915. RWLN 1/1, 4 April 1915. Rawly 5201-33-60, short diaries 6 and 15 April 1915. Ibid., 16 April and 4 May 1915. Ibid., 6 May 1915. Haig Diaries, p. 122; Command, pp. 89–90; RWLN 1/1, 10May 1915. Rawly 5201-33-7, f. 80, 11 May 1915; see also letter of same date to Fitzgerald, Kitchener’s secretary. John Keegan, The First World War (London: Hutchinson, 1998), p. 216. Haig Diaries, pp. 122–123. Rawly 5201-33-7, 30 April 1915. RWLN 1/1, 20 May 1915. George Cassar, ‘Ian Standish Hamilton’, ODNB. Stephenson, 1914–1918, pp. 117–121; Barnett, Britain and Her Army, pp. 383–387. Haig Diaries, p. 126 and n; RWLN 1/1, 20 May 1915. Maurice, p. 132; Command, p. 94.

Notes 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97

98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105

106 107 108 109 110

111

267

RWLN 1/1, 16–23 May 1915. Ibid., 23 May 1915. Ibid., 30 May and 1 June 1915. Ibid., 30 May 1915. RWLN 1/3, 2 June 1915. Ibid., 8–9 June 1915. Ibid., 13 June 1915. Command, p. 97. Ibid., 3 and 4 June 1915. Ibid., 7 June 1915. WO95/710/1, IV Corps War Diary, June, 1915. This and Rawlinson’s diary, my main sources, highlight the ferocity and skill of German counter-attacks using a plentiful supply of grenades. Cf Command, p. 99 which emphasizes the deep dugouts featured in Rawlinson’s post-battle report. RWLN 1/3, 18 June 1915. Haig Diaries, p. 128. Nick Lloyd, Loos, 1915 (Stroud: Tempus, 2006), pp. 35–42. My account draws extensively on Dr Lloyd’s account; see also Brian Curragh, ‘“A Great Victory all but Gained”: The Battle of Loos, 1915’, in Jones, ed., Courage without Glory, mainly about Gough and Capper’s attack. Philip Gibbs, Realities of War (London: William Heinemann, 1920) Gibbs, pp. 137ff for a war correspondent’s account. Haig Diaries, p. 135. Spiers, ‘Scottish Soldier at War’, p. 319. 1914–1918, p. 154. Haig Diaries, p. 137; Lloyd, Loos, pp. 40–42. RWLN 1/3, 14 August 1915. Ibid., 20 August 1915. By ‘au fond’ he meant ‘all out’, not strictly an accurate rendering. Ibid., 30 July 1915, 8 August 1915, and 13 August 1915. RWLN 1/3, 19 , 20, and 26 August 1915. See also M-M 10/11: ‘I left the 4th Division on the 18th August to become Brigadier General, General Staff, 4th Corps, commanded by Sir Henry Rawlinson, whom I knew well’. Beckett and Corvi, Haig’s Generals, p. 173. Haig Diaries, p. 141. RWLN 1/3, 6 September 1915. Ibid., 24 September 1915. On gas and the special units, Donald Richter, ‘The Experience of the British Special Brigade in Gas Warfare’, in Cecil and Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon, pp. 353–364. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 95–103; Command, pp. 110–113.

268 112

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124

125 126 127

128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

Notes Ibid., 28 August 1915, 29 August 1915, 17 September 1915, 19 September 1915, 24 September 1915; Command, p. 119 gives details but states four days before attack. Ibid., p. 153; Command, p. 119. See assessment of gas’s use, Command, p. 116. RWLN 1/3, 26 September 1915. WO95/712/1, ‘Report on the Operations of 47th Division’. WO95/1341/1, 44th Brigade War Diary, ‘Report on the attack on 25th September’; Lloyd, Loos, p. 137. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 132–138; Command, pp. 120–125. Lloyd, Loos, p. 140. Command, p. 123. RWLN 1/3, 26 September 1915. OH, 1915, ii, pp. 197–198 quoting a battalion diarist. Gibbs, p. 145 Lloyd, Loos, pp. 143–148. WO95/712/1, IV Corps diary, ‘Telephone Conversations 25 September 1915’; Command, p. 131, n11. Ibid.; Lloyd, Loos, p. 153; Little Field Marshal, p. 302: ‘French was undoubtedly wrong in leaving XI Corps over five miles from First Army’s start line: Foch and Haig believed 2000 metres would have been more appropriate.’ Lloyd, Loos, pp. 166–167; Rawly 5201-33-60, short diary 26 September 1915. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 164–171. Ibid., pp. 185–186; Alan Clarke’s The Donkeys (London: Hutchinson, 1961), the classic indictment, mis-states the number of battalions and wrongly states there were no German casualties. Not the only mistakes. RWLN 1/3, 26 September 1915. He later told Stamfordham that bodies could be seen on the barbed wire. Little Field Marshal, pp. 304–305. CAB45/121, letters 3 August 1925, 19 January 1926, 3 January 1927. Rawly 5201-33-17, ff. 114 and 115, 29 and 28 September 1915. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 189–192; WO45/121, letter of Lt Col H.J.C. Piers; Haking was a ‘thruster’ but had failed to weld XI Corps into a cohesive force. Lloyd, Loos, p. 191. Ibid.; Times, 8 November 1915, p. 8, ‘The Guards at Loos’. Rawly 5201-33-17, 28 September 1915. For Briggs’s abortive movements, see WO95/712/1, IV Corps war diary, ‘Telephone conversations’ and OH 1915 (2), pp. 339–340. RWLN 1/3, 29 August 1915. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 196–197. RWLN 1/3, 1 October 1915. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 208–209; RWLN 1/3, 13 and 17 October 1915. Atkinson, The Seventh Division, pp. 222–223. Lloyd, Loos, pp. 214–215; Harris, Haig, p. 177.

Notes 142 143 144 145

146 147

148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157

158 159 160 161 162

163

164 165 166 167 168

269

Lloyd, Loos, pp. 215–216. RWLN 1/3, 26 September 1915. Times, 10 November 1915, p. 10 and 20 November 1915, p. 7. Haig Diaries, p. 167. That day the King lunched with Gough and Haking who criticized French. Rawlinson had a cold and did not attend. Cf Harris, Haig, p. 183 stating he was there; RWLN 1/3, 24 October 1915 shows not. I am grateful to Heidi Egginton of Churchill Archives for verifying this point. Curragh, ‘A Great Victory all but Gained’, p. 361. The sympathetic Esher wrote of French’s ‘failure of vitality, and no one knows it better than [French] himself. He is never really up to the mark physically. The strain has been too much.’ Journals, III, pp. 287–288. Command, pp. 132–133; RWLN 1/3, 10 May 1915. Little Field Marshal, p. 308. RWLN 1/3, 1 November 1915. See also Esher, The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener, passim. RWLN 1/3, 5 November 1915. Esher, Journals, III, pp. 281–282; Little Field Marshal, pp. 311–312. Haig Diaries, pp. 172–173. Lord Riddell’s War Diary 1914–1918 (London: I. Nicholson & Watson, 1933), p. 146. Esher, Journals, III, p. 286, 26 November 1918. Harris, Haig, p. 185, quoting D.R. Woodward, Sir William Robertson, p. 24. I am indebted to Dr Harris for discussion of this question. RWLN 1/3, 22October 1915, 11 December 1915, 1 January 1916, 1 February 1916; Rawly 17, Letter book, f.134, R to Maxwell, 7 February 1916; Command, pp. 132–133. RWLN 1/1, 20 February 1915; Haig Diaries, p. 103. Beckett, Johnnie Gough, pp. 148–149 and 208. For Rawlinson’s interest in art, see above pp. 14–15. RWLN 1/3, 11 December 1915. RWLN 1/4, Sassoon’s letter dated 21 December 1915 acting for Haig. For Sassoon see Peter Stansky, Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003) and Damian Collins, Charmed Life: The Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon (London: HarperCollins, 2016). Esher, Journals, III, pp. 279–280; Walter Reid, Architect of Victory: Douglas Haig (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2009), pp. 250–251; Barnett, Britain and Her Army, p. 388. For a different view see Harris, Haig, pp. 192 and 538. Robertson, Private to Field Marshal, pp. 236ff. RWLN 1/1, 29 March 1915. Ibid., 23 May 1915. See Little Field Marshal, pp. 285–292. Haig Diaries, p. 152. RWLN 1/3, 5 November 1915.

270 169

170 171

Notes P. Simkins, ‘Haig’s Generals’, p. 87 in Bond and Cave, Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On. In contrast, it has been stated that after the Davies affair, ‘Initially, Haig noticeably cooled towards Rawlinson, and his visits to IV Corps became less frequent.’ Command, p. 72. If so, Rawlinson was unaware, as shown by frequent comments about Haig’s support. Maurice, pp. 132–133. RWLN 1/3, 24 October 1915. Rawlinson’s spelling of ‘Boches’ is manifold.

Chapter 8 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8

9 10

11 12

13 14 15 16

17

PRO30/57/53, ff. 60, 62, 65, 66, dates as text. Haig Diary, p. 172, 12 December 1915. I am grateful to Stephen Badsey for a summary of the 1916 strategic situation. See also William Philpott, Attrition: Fighting the First World War (London: Abacus, 2012), pp. 213–215. RWLN 1/3, 1 February 1915 and 4 February 1915. RWLN 1/5, 5 February 1916. RWLN 1/5, 1/3/16: ‘I took over command of the IV Army at noon today.’ RWLN 1/5, 6/2/16 and 30 October 1915 to 8 November 1915. H.A. Jones, The War in the Air. Vol. II (Orig. publ. 1928, republished by the Imperial War Museum, London, The Battery Press, Nashville, 1999), pp. 1955ff and 304–307. Harris, Haig, p. 207. General Erich von Falkenhayn, General Headquarters and Its Critical Decisions 1914–1916 (London: Hutchinson, 1919), pp. 209ff; Robert Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun: Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, 1870–1916 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 188–192. Haig Diaries, p. 188. Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army (London: Aurum, 2012), pp. 112–113 and 157–158; Rawly 5201-33-60, short diary, 25 February 1916. Command, p. 139. RWLN 1/5, 14 March 1916. M-M 10/11-13, ‘The Autobiography of a Gunner’; RWLN 1/3, 8 and 13 August 1915; Command, pp. 107 and 141. Quoted James Lees-Milne, The Enigmatic Edwardian: The Life of Reginald 2nd Viscount Esher (London: Sidgewick & Jackson, 1986), p. 292. They also shared a favourite poem, Kipling’s ‘If ’. Edward Spears, Prelude to Victory (London: Cape, 1939), p. 89.

Notes

271

18 General Sir George de S. Barrow, The Fire of Life (London: Hutchinson, n.d.), p. 161. 19 RWLN 1/5, 24 March 1916; 29 March 1916; 26 April 1916; Jones, War in the Air, pp. 158, 160, 172 and 324; Wilson, Myriad Faces of War, pp. 368–369. 20 Maurice, p. 152; CAB45/134, [Houblon?] to Edmonds 6 May 1930 with short notes; also John Terraine, ed., General Jack’s Diary (London, Cassell, 2003, orig. publ. 1964), p. 133. 21 RWLN 1/5, 2 March 1916. 22 Ibid., 7 March 1916. 23 Rawly, 5201-33-18, R to K, 9 March 1916; Command, p. 139. 24 OH 1916 (1). See Chapter X Administrative and Material Preparations. 25 Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), p. 317. 26 M-M 10/11-13, ‘The Autobiography of a Gunner’. Montgomery states that Joffre, Robertson, Haig and Rawlinson all sought a battle of attrition; Haig is the exception: attrition for him was a consolation prize. 27 Hew Strachan, ‘The Battle of the Somme and British Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (spring, 2005), pp. 75–95. ‘The Somme was therefore planned as a battle of machine warfare’, (p. 84). 28 Chris Phillips, C. ‘The Battle of the Somme: A Logistical Consideration’ (presented at the Colloque International les Batailles de 1916, Paris, 2016). I am grateful to Dr Phillips for our discussion of the logistics and for sending me his paper and his PhD thesis. 29 P. Simkins, ‘The War Experience of a Typical Kitchener Division: The 18th Division 1914–1918’, in Cecil and Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon, pp. 297–318. 30 Rawly 5201-33-17, f.145, R to Robertson, 8 April 1916. 31 Simkins, ‘For Better or for Worse’, passim; Beckett, ‘Rawlinson’, in Beckett and Corvi, Haig’s Generals, p. 172. 32 RWLN 1/5, 26 April 1916 and 26 May 1916. 33 IWM, Fourth Army Papers, v.1, Summary of Ops 9 July 1916. 34 Quoted Maurice, pp. 172–173; William Philpott, Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme (London: Abacus, 2010), p. 346; Bond and Cave, Haig: A Reappraisal, p. 135; Simkins, ‘For Better or for Worse’, p. 135. 35 S. Bidwell and D. Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 1982), pp. 80–81. 36 RWLN 1/5, 4 May 1916. 37 John Lee, ‘Some Lessons of the Somme: The British Infantry in 1917’, in Bond, B,ed., Look to Your Front: Studies in the First World War (Staplehurst: British Commission for Military History, 1999), p. 86; also G. Sheffield, ‘An Army Commander on the Somme: Hubert Gough’, in Sheffield, G. and Todman, D., eds, Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army’s Experience 1914–1918 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2004).

272 38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58

59

60 61 62

Notes RWLN 1/5, 31 March 1916; 1 May 1916; 23 May 1916. Harris, Haig, p. 222. Philpott, ‘The Anglo-French Victory on the Somme’. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, The Somme (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 41. The 20,000 was a reduction from a wider front; S. Robbins, British Generalship during the Great War: The Military Career of Sir Henry Horne (1861–1929) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), p. 102. WO158/233, ‘Plans for Offensive by the Fourth Army’, 3 April 1916. Command, p. 168. CAB45/132, Birch to Edmonds, 8 July 1930; quoted Sheffield, Haig, p. 181; also Travers, The Killing Ground, pp. 138–139; Command, pp. 168–169; Harris, Haig, pp. 221–222. Harris, Haig, p. 221. Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, p. 81. IWM, Fourth Army Papers v.1, the letter from GHQ, OAD876, 16 May 1916, confirming a long bombardment and deep penetration; RWLN 1/5 April, May, June 1916; discussed in Command, chapter 15. Maurice, p. 158. RWLN 1/5, 23 May 1916. Ibid., 7 June 1916. Maurice, p. 159 for somewhat different wording. Ibid., 29 March 1916. IWM, Fourth Army Papers, I, War Diary 5/3–13 July 1916, Op Order No. 2. Jim Beach, Haig’s Intelligence: GHQ and the German Army 1916–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 196–198, 206–207. Haig Diaries, pp. 190–191. S. Badsey, ‘Cavalry and the Development of Breakthrough Doctrine’, in Paddy Griffith, ed., British Fighting Methods in the Great War (London: Taylor & Francis, 1998), p. 155. RWLN 1/5, 27 June 1916. IWM, Fourth Army Papers, v.1, 21 June 1916, Rawlinson to GHQ. Ibid., 6 April 1916. Also 9 May 1916. Congreve’s account sent to Henry Wilson HHW 2/82/104, 20 April 1916 and in his diary, Hants Record Office 170A12/ WD3731. I am grateful to Spencer Jones for this source. Rawly 5201-33-18, f. 145, R to Robertson, 8 April 1916; RWLN 1/5, 19 April 1916. Simon Robbins, ed., The First World War Letters of General Lord Horne (Stroud: The History Press, 2009), p. 339, fn2. Robbins, Horne Letters, p. 168. Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, pp. 83–84; Robbins, Generalship, pp. 133 and 136. Major A.F. Becke, ‘The Coming of the Creeping Barrage’, The Journal of the Royal Artillery, vol. 58 (1931–1932), pp. 19–42.

Notes

273

63 Ibid., pp. 27, 28–29, 31–2, 35; Martin Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery: Western Front 1914–1918 (Woolwich: Royal Artillery Institution, 1986), p. 146. Tactical Notes in M-M 7/3. ‘Arose [arroser]’ to hose down. 64 R.T. Foley, ‘Learning War’s Lessons: The German Army and the Battle of the Somme 1916’, Journal of Military History, vol. 75, no. 2 (July 2003), pp. 475–476. 65 J. Sheldon, The German Army on the Somme (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Books, 2005). 66 M. Stedman, ‘The Most Brutal of Days: the Assault of Thiepval on the 1st of July, 1916’, lecture at Western Front Association meeting, Birmingham, 4 June 2016. 67 Ian Passingham, All the Kaiser’s Men: The Life and Death of the German Soldier on the Western Front (Stroud: Sutton, 2005), pp. 108–109. 68 OH (1916) 1, pp. 122–124 describes faulty munitions. 69 IWM Fourth Army Papers, v.1, Conference at IWM Fourth Army HQ 16 April 16. 70 S. Sassoon, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (London: Faber & Faber, 1940), p. 324. Also note 126 below. 71 RWLN 1/5, 30 June 1916. 72 M-M, Fourth Army War Diary 24/6 – 13 July 1916. 73 RWLN 1/5, 5 June 1916. 74 OH1916 (1), p. 315. 75 Rawly 5201-33-70, Tactical Notes, 11 April 1916. 76 18th Division used eight ‘Russian’ saps in their attack. M-M 7/3, Maxse to M-M, 31 July 1916. 77 Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 112–118. For five of the fifty-three, no record survives. For a robust dismissal of over-heavy packs and plodding infantry, see James Hayward, Myths and Legends of the First World War (Stroud: The History Press, 2005), pp. 133–134. 78 CAB45/188, Col C.M. Abercrombie to Edmonds. 79 CAB45/188, Major A.H. Burne to Edmonds, also commenting on inadequate rate of fire; Gary Sheffield, The Somme (London: Cassell, 2004), pp. 69–672. 80 Major P. Richards, ‘The First Day on the Somme’, in British Army Review, Special Edition, vol. 2, Lessons from the First World War, p. 95. 81 CAB45/188, Col C.M. Abercrombie and Captain C.R. Adams to Edmonds; Prior and Wilson, The Somme, pp. 72–73. 82 Christopher Duffy, Through German Eyes: The British & the Somme 1916 (London: Phoenix Press, 2006), p. 166; also, OH1, pp. 490–491. 83 RWLN 1/5, 1 July 1916; Rawly 5201-33-60, 1 July 1916; ibid., 5201-33-69, Somme papers 18 July 1916; OH1, pp. 342–343; Philpott, Bloody Victory, pp. 176–178. 84 Robbins, Horne Letters, to wife, pp. 171–173; CAB45/188, Brevet Major G. Fleming to Edmonds. 85 M-M 7/39, meetings 30 April 1916 and 8 May 1916. 86 Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 110–111; also Duffy, Through German Eyes, p. 163.

274 87 88 89

90 91

92

93 94 95

96 97 98

99 100 101 102

Notes OH1, p. 341n1. See Congreve’s description of German defences, HHW 2/83/56, Congreve to Wilson, 2 July 1916. Middlebrook, First Day, p. 291; Badsey, ‘Cavalry and the Development of Breakthrough Doctrine’, p. 155; Sheffield, Douglas Haig, pp. 171–180. David Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land (Barnsley : Pen & Sword, 2011), p. 233. Haig’s overestimation of what cavalry could do, as much as Rawlinson’s initially ruling them out, meant that cavalry were misused. See chapter 6. CAB45/132, W.H.G. Baker to Edmonds, 25 October 1935. Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land, pp. 45–57; Sheffield, Douglas Haig, p. 173 acknowledges staff work and transport problems, but p. 179 even suggests an advance of 20 miles was possible. On 8 August 1918, at Amiens, a battle fought by a veteran Fourth Army in which nearly everything went well, cavalry extended a 4-mile advance to 8 miles. Horsemen in No Man’s Land, pp. 203–209. Sheffield, Douglas Haig, p. 179; Hubert Gough, The Fifth Army (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1931), pp. 79, 133 and 138; Middlebrook, First Day, pp. 212–213 and 285–289, claims Congreve telephoned Rawlinson to ask permission, but Congreve does not mention it in a letter on 2 July 1916: HHW 2/83/55, Congreve to Wilson; nor in his diary, Hants R.O., Winchester 170A12/WD3731 August 1915–December 1916; absent from WO95/895 XIII Corps War Diary. Corps plans did not include further exploitation. Command, p. 177; the 57,470 usually quoted includes Third Army’s diversionary attack at Gommecourt. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 321. Rawly 5201-33-60, short diary 1–4 July 1916. General von Below, Experience of the German First Army in the Somme Battle (issued by General Staff Intelligence GHQ, 3 May 1917), p. 3; Foley, ‘Learning War’s Lessons’, p. 479. John Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire (London: Book Club Associates, 1981), pp. 111ff. Haig Diaries, 2 July 1916. Liddell Hart Archives, Edmonds papers III/16, p. 12, without giving names, but to Liddell Hart he accused Montgomery and Luckock. Liddell Hart papers 11/1931/3, talk with Edmonds, 22 January 1931. Also Travers, Killing Ground, p. 25 and Andrew Green, Writing the Great War: Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories 1915–1948 (London and Portland: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 59. It does not appear Rawlinson was accused of direct involvement. RWLN 1/5, 1 July 1916, 7.30 pm ‘I am putting Goughy in command of VIII and X Corps.’ Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack 1916–1918 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 209. Sheffield, The Somme, p. 76. For Mametz Wood, e.g. see CAB45/188, Lt Col R.C. Bell 15/RWF to Edmonds.

Notes 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119 120 121

122 123 124 125

126 127 128 129 130

275

Duffy, Through German Eyes, p. 173. CAB45/188, Captain D.J. Brass to Edmonds, 16 July 1930 (copy). Harris, Haig, p. 242. IWM, Fourth Army Papers, v.1, conference at Fourth Army HQ, 6 April 1916. Foley, Erich von Falkenhayn and the Development of Attrition, p. 251. See inter alia, T.R. Moreman, ‘The Dawn Assault – Friday 14th July 1916’, JSAHR, vol. LXXI, no. 287 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 180–204. Rawlinson wished to do this on 1 July. OH1 (1916), p. 314. CAB45/132, M-Massingberd to Edmonds, 7/12 [1929 or 1930]; Robbins, British Generalship during the Great War, p. 121. RWLN 1/5, 11 July 1916. RWLN, 1/6, f. 90, Haig to Rawlinson, 12 July 1916. The letter ends: ‘Wishing you the success you deserve, and again thanking you for your most friendly letter.’ Moreman, ‘The Dawn Assault’, p. 185. Also IWM, Fourth Army Papers, v. OAD60 and OAD63. RWLN 1/5, 13 July 1916. Becke, ‘The Creeping Barrage’, p. 37. Moreman, ‘The Dawn Assault’, pp. 185–187. M-M 7/41, Battle of the Somme, vol. iii; WO95/1377, 3rd Division War Diary. J. Leonard and P. Leonard-Johnson, ed., The Fighting Padre: Letters from the Trenches 1915–1918 of Pat Leonard DSO (Barnsley, Pen and Sword, 2010), p. 93. WO95/1377, 14 July 1916, 9.50 am, report from XIII Corps; also Congreve Diary, Hants R.O. 170A12/WD3731. Ibid., 14 July 1916; Haig diaries, p. 203; Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land, pp. 61–67. RWLN 1/5, 15 July 1916; for the message, WO95/5, N4921, telephone message; Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 139. Cavalry delays can be followed in WO95/5 and Kenyon. See also WO95/921, XV Corps War Diary, entry 14 July 1916. Haig Diaries, p. 205. Rawly 5201-33-60, 14 July 1916. A. Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 214, quoting from Afflerbach, Falkenhayn. Moreman, ‘The Dawn Assault’, p. 193. RWLN 1/5, dates as text. Rawly 5201-33-18, 1 August, 1916. Command, p. 200. Terry Norman, The Hell They Called High Wood (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Books, 2003).

276 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152

153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

Notes CAB45/132, P. Bennett to Edmonds, 5 March 1935 and C. Mostyn to Edmonds 15/3 [year not given]. Command, p. 212. Wynne, If Germany Attacks, p. 129; Command, p. 214. Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, p. 150. Sheffield and Todman, Command and Control on the Western Front, p. 88. RWLN 1/5, 27–28 July 1916; Command, p. 215. RWLN 1/5, 31 July 1916. Ibid., 4 August 1916. Ibid., 6 August 1916. CAB45/132, Cochrane to Edmonds[?], 8 January (no year given); Command, pp. 219–220. Fourth Army Papers, v.2, ‘Summary of operations 23rd July 16’. RWLN 1/5, 9 August 1916. Command, pp. 219–223. Fourth Army Papers, v.5, OAD123, Kiggell to R, 24 August 1916. Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 163–164. RWLN 1/5, 10–17 August 1916. Ibid., 13, 18, 19 August 1916. Cf Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 165–167. Ibid., 21–23 August 1916. Ibid., 26 and 27 August 1916. Ibid., 3 September 1916. RWLN 1/5, 9 September 1916. Estimate of Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 186 using an Australian War Memorial document. OH2, p. 560 gives the lesser figures of 82,000. The Imperial War Graves Commission burial figures support the higher number. Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 190. Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, p. 215. Foley, ‘Learning War’s Lessons’, pp. 481–486, 487 for quote, Below, Experience of German First Army, p. 8. General Ludendorff, My War Memories 1914–1918 (2 vols. London: Hutchinson, 1919), I, p. 239. Sheffield, Somme, pp. 109 and 111; Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 327–328. Ibid., p. 111; Foley, ‘Learning War’s Lessons’, p. 487. Jones, War in the Air, II, p. 324; Foley, ‘Learning War’s Lessons’, p. 494. Philpott, Bloody Victory, pp. 345ff. RWLN 1/5, 15 April 1916. Ibid., 28 August 1916. Ibid., 26 August 1916 and 2 September 1916. Trevor Pidgeon, The Tanks at Flers (2 vols. Cobham: Fairmile Books, 1995), I, p. 151 points out that tank commanders were almost all young and inexperienced, and had seen no action,

Notes

164 165 166 167

168 169 170

171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186

187 188

277

the training was hurried, their knowledge of the terrain slight, the orders complicated and amended at the last moment. Pidgeon, Tanks at Flers, I, p. 46; also, OH2, pp. 245–249, ‘The Evolution of the Tank’. RWLN 1/6, f. 120. Notes by Montgomery 1 September 1916. Pidgeon, The Tanks at Flers, I, p. 49. Swinton’s view; Grieves, ‘Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton’, ODNB. Historians differ, although Robin Prior, Churchill’s World Crisis as History, pp. 239–240 suggests use in small numbers to remedy defects. M-M 7/43 Battle of the Somme, vol. 5. A. Wiest, Haig: The Evolution of a Commander (Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005), p. 61. RWLN 1/5, 20 July 1916, 4 August 1916, 5 August 1916, 10 September 1916, 11 September 1916. Rawlinson took a similar break on 26 October: four months of the Somme were ‘more than human nature can stand’. He again managed eleven hours’ sleep in a night. RWLN 1/7, 26 and 27 October 1916. Rawly, 5201-33-60, short diary 14 September 1916; RWLN 1/7, 14 September 1916. RWLN 1/5, 30 August 1916. Quoted in Pigeon, The Tanks at Flers, p. 132. A. Maude, ed., The 47th London Division 1914–1919 (London: Amalgamated Press, 1922), p. 62; Norman, High Wood, pp. 218–230. HW 2/84/19, Barter to Wilson, 19 September 1916. Cuthbert Headlam, History of the Guards Division in the Great War 1915–1919 (2 vols. London: J. Murray, 1924), I, pp. 151–165. Passingham, All the Kaiser’s Men, p. 122. Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 229–238; Sheffield, Somme, pp. 113–124. Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 234 and 238. IWM Fourth Army Papers v.3, OAD 132; Command, pp. 230–232. RWLN 1/5, 14 September 1916; Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land, p. 78. Rawly 5201-33-60, diary 1916. Maurice, pp. 171–172. Cf however failures, Prior and Wilson, Somme, p. 232. Rawly 5201-33-69, Somme papers, ‘Notes on operations between 14th September and 3rd October 1916’. Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, p. 154. MG barrages had been fired at Pozieres in July, and High Wood on 24 August. My thanks to Peter Simkins for this point. IWM, Fourth Army Papers, conference 19 September 1916, p. 35; Command, p. 242. M-M 7/43, Battle of the Somme vol. 5, ‘Summary of Operations, 25th September 1916’. Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 257–258 for BEF fighting vigour.

278 189 190 191

192 193 194

195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204

205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214

Notes Rawly 5201-33-60, diary, 1916; Haig Diary, p. 233, 25 September 1916. Haig Diaries, p. 234. D. Fletcher, ed., Tanks and Trenches: First Hand Accounts of Tank Warfare in the First World War (Stroud: The History Press, 2009), p. 23; M-M 7/45, Battle of the Somme vol. 5, ‘Summary of Operations 26 September 1916’. IWM Fourth Army Papers, v.3, ‘Summary of Operations 25th September’. Fighting for total possession continued until 14 October. Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, p. 215. I owe this point to Stephen Badsey, who gives among his authorities OH 1916 (2) pp. 423–425 and pp. 554–555; G.C. Wynne, If Germany Attacks, p. 86; Holger Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London and New York: Arnold, 1998), p. 198. Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction, p. 216. Fourth Army Papers, vol. 4, Summary of Ops 12 October 1916. HW 2/84/24, R to W, 5 October 1916. RWLN 1/7, 27 September 1916. Haig Diaries, pp. 235 and 237. Ibid., 6 October 1916, 12 October 1916, 13 October 1916, 29 October 1916, 31 October 1916. RWLN 1/7, 31 October 1916. Ibid., 6/11/16 and 7 November 1916. IWM Fourth Army Papers, v.6, conferences 19/9, 13/10 and 6 November 1916. Ibid., v. 6, Confidential S/S2/103, 3 November 1916. CAB45/136, Cavan to Edmonds, 9 April 1936. He added in a P.S. to Edmonds, ‘You can tear [my letter] up if it shows any lack of trust in Rawlinson and Haig. I always fully trusted both.’ Prior and Wilson, Somme, chapter 24; CAB45/132, D.F. Anderson to Edmonds, 6 April 1936. IWM, Fourth Army Papers, R to GHQ, 7 November 1916. Travers, Killing Ground, pp. 186–187. Haig Diaries, p. 256. RWLN 1/7, 9 October 1916. Haig Diaries, p. 256. RWLN 7/1, 18 November 1916. RWLN 1/8, item 30A (up to 1 November 1916); Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 332, ‘thousands of German prisoners’. Foley, ‘Learning War’s Lessons’, pp. 481–482. Prior and Wilson, Somme, pp. 257–258; Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning , p. 123; Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War: Myths and Realities (London: Headline, 2002), p. 186. Casualty figures are much debated: see Philpott, Bloody Victory, pp. 600–603. Cf McRandle and Quick, ‘The Blood Test Revisited’, Journal of Military History, vol. 70, no. 3 (2006), pp. 667–702.

Notes 215 216 217 218 219

220 221 222 223

224 225 226 227

279

Duffy, Through German Eyes, p. 238; Harris, Haig, p. 271. Hardie manuscripts, Imperial War Museum, quoted in David Stevenson, With our Backs to the Wall. Victory and Defeat in 1918 (London, Allen Lane, 2012), p. 266. OH (1916) 2, p. xi; Ludendorff, War Memories, I, p. 242. OH (1916) 1, p. 494 quoting Captain von Hentig. Princess Evelyn Blucher, An English Wife in Berlin: A Private Memoir of Events, Politics and Daily Life in Germany throughout the War and the Social Revolution of 1918 (London: Constable & Co, 1920), p. 154; for the British perspective, Broad, ‘The Development of Artillery Tactics’, p. 81, ‘The effect of the British artillery fire had been overwhelming’; Gibbs, pp. 344, 349, 351. Sheffield, Somme, p. 155. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 325 emphasizes psychological, not material damage. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 416. Ibid., pp. 416–424; 1914–1918, 258–262; OH 1916(2), p. 555. Nicholas Perry, ed., Major General Oliver Nugent and the Ulster Division 1915– 1918 (Stroud: Army Records Society, 2007), p. 89 (to wife, 11 July 1916). Four days later he wrote that ‘the actual losses … are not so bad’, so ‘not more than 700 to 800 will be the total of dead and missing’. Ibid., p. 90. Esher, Journals, IV, p. 40 (29 July 1916). Major General J.B.A. Bailey, Field Artillery and Firepower (Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 2004), p. 250n29; other examples ibid., p. 251n32. M-M 7/3 especially letters of Major General Maxse and Brigadier General Kentish. CAB45/135, Kiggell to Edmonds, 2 December 1937 and 4 June 1938; by contrast Kiggell claimed that Gough’s influence encouraged Haig to persist so long; ibid., 4 June 1938; Travers, Killing Ground, p. 187.

Chapter 9 1 Major General C.E. Callwell, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries (2 vols. London: Cassel, 1927), pp. 296–297 quoting his diary of 14 November 1916. 2 Anthony Eden, Another World 1897–1917 (London: Allen Lane, 1976), p. 119; Carrington, Soldier from the Wars Returning, p. 123. Eden’s chapter is appropriately titled ‘The Spirit of Man’. See also Repington, First World War, I, p. 423 and Gibbs, pp. 334 and 344’. 3 RWLN 1/7, 13 and 14 November 1916; also Haig’s closing Somme dispatch complementing Rawlinson and Gough: J.H. Boraston, Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatches (London: J.M. Dent, 1979. Orig. publ. 1919), pp. 58–59. 4 RWLN 1/7, 1 January 1917. 5 Bobs R61/47, 5 January 1917. 6 Rawly 7216-16, 7 November 1888.

280 7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28

Notes RWLN 1/7, 22 December 1916. His Christmas card for 1916 used two more lines from the poem. He seems to have had no contact with the poet. Did he know of John Kipling’s death at Loos? Broad, ‘The Development of Artillery Tactics’, pp. 75–76. Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, pp. 67–68 and 76–77. RWLN 1/7, 19 April 1917. Times, 30 December 1916, pp. 7–8. These quotes are from cuttings in Rawly 5201-33-38 to 42. Quoted in Nicholas Reeves, ‘Through the Eyes of the Camera: Contemporary Cinema Audiences and Their “Experience” of War in the Film, Battle of the Somme’, in H. Cecil and P.H. Liddle, eds., Facing Armageddon p. 789. See also Beckett, Making of the First World War, chapter v. Spears, Prelude to Victory, pp. 87–88, 7, 126. RWLN 1/7, 27 and 29 December 1916; Command, p. 267. RWLN 1/7, 29 December 1916 and 5 January 1917; David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (London: Allen Lane, 2011) p. 266; viz. experience of the war poet, Wilfred Owen, who suffered a nervous breakdown. War poems reflecting this were composed at Craiglockhart Military Hospital. Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: The Last Year (London: Constable, 1992). Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 416–424 for ‘The Worst Decision of the War’. Haig Diary, pp. 266 and 270–276; Mead, The Good Soldier, pp. 277–285; RWLN 1/7, 15 and 17 March 1917. RWLN 1/7, 20 March 1917; Command, p. 266. RWLN 1/7, 22 March 1917. Repington, The First World War, I, p. 523. Ibid., pp. 524–525; RWLN 1/7, 16–20 April 1917. Command, p. 260. Perhaps Haig, like Prior and Wilson, did not realize how the state of the ground and roads prevented Rawlinson getting material up for later attacks. Ibid., p. 269. The episode is well summarized in Command, pp. 268–270; the correspondence in KCL, Kiggell papers 4/106 and 4/107, 8 and 9 May 1917. See RWLN 1/7, 17 April 1917 and 7 May 1917. For the battle, J. Nicholls, Cheerful Sacrifice: The Battle of Arras 1917 (Barnsley : Pen and Sword, 1990); for subsequent triumphs, Field Marshal Viscount Wavell, Allenby: Soldier and Statesman (London: G.G. Harrap, 1946). RWLN 1/7, 10 May 1917. For the planned coastal landings, my chief sources other than Rawlinson’s journal are Andrew Wiest ‘The Planned Amphibious Assault’, in Peter Liddle ed., Passchendaele in Perspective: The Third Battle of Ypres (Barnsley : Leo Cooper, 1997), pp. 201–212; and William Philpott, ‘The Great Landing: Haig’s Plan to Invade

Notes

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50

51 52

53

281

Belgium from the Sea in 1917’, The Imperial War Museum Review, no. 10, pp. 84–89. I owe these sources to Ian Beckett. Ibid., 18 May 1917. RWLN 1/7, 10, 11 and 14 July 1917. Quoted, Harris, Haig, p. 330. Ibid., p. 332. RWLN 1/7, 29 June and 3 July 1917. RWLN 1/7, 30 July 1917. RWLN 1/7, 1 August 1917; see the discussion in Harris, Haig, pp. 357–358 and 369. Perry, Major General Oliver Nugent and the Ulster Division, p. 166. RWLN 1/9, 27 November 1917. Harris, Haig, p. 374. Nick Lloyd’s recent study, Passchendaele: A New History (London: Penguin, 2017) makes excellent use of German sources to illustrate the effect of ‘bite and hold’ on the Germans, but on p. 265 describes the battle as ‘a German victory’. RWLN 1/9, 7–12 November 1917. Trevor Wilson and Robin Prior, ‘British Decision-Making 1917: Lloyd George, The Generals and Passchendaele’, in H. Cecil and P.H. Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon pp. 93–102. 1914–1918, pp. 336–337. Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, p. 223. Perry, Major General Oliver Nugent and the Ulster Division, p. 193. F.W. Bewsher, The History of the 51st (Highland) Divisions 1914–1918 (Edinburgh, 1921), p. 262 quoted in Sheffield, Douglas Haig, p. 263. Harris, Haig, p. 411. Douglas Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, Gary Sheffield and John Bourne ed. (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), pp. 367 and 380–382; Bonham-Carter, Soldier True, chapter 11. Jeffery, Field Marshall Henry Wilson, pp. 227–228. Letter 11 December 1917 quoted Lord Beaverbrook, Men and Power 1917–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1956), Appendix IV, p. 356. Harris, Haig, pp. 425–426. Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets (2 vols. London: Collins, 1970), I, p. 484. The only officer Hankey and Smuts were prepared to recommend was Claud Jacob commanding II Corps. RWLN 1/9, 5 December 1917, RWLN 1/11, 31 May 1918, 1 and 3 June 1918; Hamilton papers, IH 15/5/9, M-Massingberd to Hamilton, 3 April 1925. RWLN 11/9, 13 January 1918. Tim Travers, How the War Was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front 1917–1918 (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 53, states that Haig did not do so. Stevenson, 1914–1918, p. 403.

282

Notes

54 Haig Diary, p. 382. For the political manoeuvres, John Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader 1916–1918 (London: Penguin Books, 2002), pp. 411–424. 55 RWLN 1/9, 17–19 February 1918. Robertson went first to Eastern Command, then commanded Home Forces. 56 HHW 2/12B/5, 5–6 March 1918. 57 Command, pp. 278–279. 58 For the offensives, D.T. Zabecki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in the Operational Level of War (London: Routledge, 2006); Corelli Barnett, The Swordbearers (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1963), Part IV: Full Circle: General Erich Ludendorff; Martin Middlebrook, The Kaiser’s Battle, 21 March, 1918: The First Day of the German Spring Offensive (London: Allen Lane, 1978). 59 Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 516. 60 HHW 2/13A/16, 18 April 1918. 61 RWLN 1/9, 18 April 1918. 62 Watson, Ring of Steel, pp. 520–521. 63 1914–1918, p. 410; Haig Diary, pp. 393–394. 64 RWLN 1/9, 26 March 1918. 65 Perry, Major General Oliver Nugent and the Ulster Division, pp. 219 and 228. 66 Criticism by Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, pp. 90, 209 and 211–212; Andrew Wiest, ‘Haig, Gough and Passchendaele’, in G.D. Sheffield, ed., Leadership & Command: The Anglo-American Military Experience since 1861 (London: Brassey's, 2002), p. 109; Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader 1916–1918, pp. 454–455. 67 RWLN 1/9, 28 March 1918. 68 RWLN 1/10, 30 March 1918. 69 OH 1918 (2), p. 51 and n1; Command, pp. 281–282. 70 Travers, How the War Was Won, pp. 94 and 206n78; CAB45/123, Holman to Edmonds, 17 December 1932. 71 RWLN 1/9, 29 January 1918. 72 Ibid., 30/3–1 April 1918; S Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–1918 (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2008), pp. 32–34; Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land, pp. 193–197. 73 Churchill had returned from the political wilderness after the Dardanelles when Lloyd George put him in charge of Munitions 18 July 1917. 74 Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: IV: 1916–1922 (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1975), pp. 94 and 96–98 telling the story in the words of a Churchill newspaper article of 1926; RWLN 1/9, 15 August 1918 [wrongly 13 August 1918]. 75 Haig Diary, 11 April 1918. For favourable reaction from an unexpected source, see Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (London: Virago, 1978, orig. publ, 1930) p. 419. 76 RWLN 1/9, 27 March 1918. 77 1914–1918, p. 413.

Notes 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95

96

97 98 99 100

101 102 103

283

Brittain, Testament of Youth, pp. 420–421. Haig Diary, pp. 404–405, 15 April 1918. Major-General Sir Archibald Montgomery, The Story of the Fourth Army in the Battles of the Hundred Days, August 8th to November 11th, 1918 (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1919), p. 3. RWLN 1/9, 24–25 April 1918. Command, p. 285 citing 4th Army papers, vol. 42. RWLN 1/9, 9 May 1918. Command, p. 290. Watson, Ring of Steel, p. 522; Herwig, The First World War, pp. 295–296. Travers, How the War Was Won, p. 36. Barnett, The Swordbearers, p. 296. Travers, How the War Was Won, p. 141. Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 379–383. Command, p. 292. Montgomery, The Fourth Army, p. 5. RWLN 1/11, 18 June 1918. Haig Diary, p. 425. G. Serle, John Monash: A Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982), pp. 292–324. Dennis Winter, Haig’s Command: A Reassessment (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 290; Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire, p. 187. Liddell Hart championed Monash as a stick to beat Haig, hence his subsequent reputation may be inflated. J.P. Harris, Men, Ideas and Tanks: British Military Thought and Armoured Forces (Manchester & New York, Manchester University Press, 1995); Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 211–222. Command, p. 295. RWLN 1/11, 28–30 June 1918; Monash’s plan in a letter 21 June 1918 is in General Sir John Monash, The Australian Victories in France in 1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1920), pp. 44–48. Command, p. 297. WO158/252, R to GHQ, 28 and 29 June 1918. Haig Diary, pp. 425–426; Command, p. 300; Rawly 52012-33-77, ‘Operations by the Australian Corps’; Monash, The Australian Victories, pp. 51ff. Command, pp. 295–300; J.P. Harris, ‘The Rise of Armour’, in Paddy Griffith, ed., British Fighting Methods in the Great War (London and Portland, OR: F. Cass, 1996), p. 131. HHW/13A/24. RWLN 1/11, 16 July 1918; Travers, How the War Was Won, p. 115; not mentioned Haig Diaries. M-M7-25/2, letter to GHQ, 17 July 1918; Travers, How the War Was Won, p. 115.

284 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

118 119 120

121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131

Notes Command, pp. 302–304; Rawly 5201-33-77, 17 July 1918. Haig Diary, p. 435, 26–27 July 1918. Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 113–116. Command, pp. 316–317. Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land, p. 203. Montgomery, The Fourth Army, pp. 22–24 and n1. RWLN 1/11, 31 July 1918 and 4 August 1918; Haig Diaries, p. 436. Ibid., 1 August 1918. S.B. Shreiber, Shock Army of the British Empire: The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the Great War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997). RWLN 1/11, 4 August 1918; Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 64. Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, p. 119. J.F.C. Fuller, The Decisive Battles of the Western World(2 vols. London: Paladin, 1972. Orig. publ. 1954), II, p. 376. RWLN 1/11, 4–7 August 1918; M-M, 7-25/1 War Diary General Staff Fourth Army, ‘Summary of Ops’ 6 and 7 August 1918. Surprise and superior morale were key factors. Lieut-Gen Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd, ‘8th August 1918’, The Journal of the Royal Artillery, vol. LV (1928–1929), p. 15. Broad, ‘The Development of Artillery Tactics’, p. 65 on counter-battery work; Monash, The Australian Victories, p. 122 for a good description of the barrage. Travers, How the War Was Won, pp. 124–125. Kenyon, Horsemen in No Man’s Land, pp. 201–208 and 229; Fuller, Decisive Battles, p. 380 claims the train was knocked out by an armoured car; M-M 7-25/1, War Diary, Summary of Ops 8 August 1918. Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of 1918 Year of Victory (London: Pan, 1998), p. 197, account of Captain Henry Smeddle. For one Whippet, see John Terraine, To Win a War: 1918 the Year of Victory (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1978), pp. 111 and 264–267. Haig Diary, p. 440. Montgomery, Fourth Army, p. 50. Ibid.; Jones, War in the Air, IV, pp. 273–283; Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, p. 197; discussion of responsibility for attack on bridges in Harris, Haig, pp. 493–494. For relations with the French, Simkins, ‘For Better or For Worse’, pp. 27–28. RWLN 1/11, 8–11 August 1918. Command, p. 336 and Maurice, pp. 230–231 give the same account; Haig Diary, p. 446, 15 August 1918; RWLN 1/11, 12–14 August 191. OH 1918 (iv), pp. 154–155; M-M 7/25/1, ‘Summary of Ops’ 14 August 1918. Montgomery, Fourth Army, p. 69. Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, p. 123.

Notes 132 133

134 135 136

285

W.S. Churchill, The World Crisis 1916–1918: Part II (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1927), p. 506. Gilbert, Winston S Churchill: IV, pp. 132–134. Fuller, Decisive Battles of the Western World, II, chapter 7: ‘The battle of Amiens… was the most decisive battle of the First World.’ Fuller was also a tank enthusiast. Ibid., 15 August 1918. RWLN 1/11, 12 August 1918; Rawly 5201-33-73, Wigram to R, 4 September 1918. Rawly 2011-11-18-46, 11 August 1918.

Chapter 10 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Command, p. 340; Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 78–82. Australian success is best followed in C.E.W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914– 1918: The Australian Imperial Force in France (Sydney : Angus and Robertson Ltd, 1943). Repington, The First World War, II, p. 366; RWLN 1/11, 31 August 1918. Command, pp. 341–342. Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, p. 127. For the Canadians see G.W.L. Nicholson, The Official History of the Canadian Army in the First World War: Canadian Expeditionary Force 1914–1919 (Ottawa : Roger Duhamel, 1962). Robbins, Horne Letters, pp. 260–261. Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, p. 295. Command, p. 336. Ludendorff, War Memories, II, p. 689. Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, p. 127. Slight variation from William Philpott, ‘Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Allied Victory’, in Matthew Hughes and Matthew Seligmann, eds, Leadership in Conflict 1914–1918 (Barnsley : Leo Cooper, 2000), pp. 49–50. Command, p. 346; Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 146–149; RWLN 1/11, 4 October 1918. The German name for these defences was Siegfried Stellung. Ibid., pp. 348–349. Ibid., p. 350. RWLN 1/11, 5–7 September 1918. Command, pp. 351–352. Harris, ‘The Rise of Armour’, p. 132. RWLN 1/11, 11 September 1918. Broad, ‘Development of Artillery Tactics’, p. 65; Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 207–208; Bidwell and Graham, Firepower, pp. 102–103 and 110–111. Haig Diary, p. 460.

286

Notes

20 Simkins, ‘For Better or for Worse’, pp. 24ff. Compared to the Somme where the French were the more experienced, the shoe was now on the other foot. 21 Command, p. 354. 22 Command, pp. 353–357; RWLN 1/11, 18 September 1918; Rawly 5201-33-73, R to Wigram, 20 September 1918. 23 RWLN 1/11, 19 September 1918. 24 Command, p. 359; RWLN 1/11, R to Wigram, 21–25 September 1918. 25 Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 137–138. 26 RWLN 1/11, 26–28 September 1918; Wavell, Allenby, pp. 227–245; Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 142–148, 406–407 and 509–510. 27 William Philpott, ‘Walter Braithwaite’, ODNB. 28 Terraine, To Win a War, p. 165. 29 Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 138–139 and 151. 30 Command, pp. 361–362; OH 1918 (V), p. 102. 31 Montgomery, Fourth Army, p. 145. 32 Farndale, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, p. 298. 33 Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 157–158. 34 R.E. Priestley, Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) Division (London: T.F. Unwin Ltd, 1919), p. 53. 35 Montgomery, The Fourth Army, p. 169. 36 Ibid., Appendix E, p. 297; OH 1918 (5), p. 160 and n. 1; Charles Beresford, The Christian Soldier: The Life of Lt.Col. the Rev. Bernard William Vann, V.C., M.C. & Bar, Croix de Guerre avec palme (Solihull: Helion, 2017). 37 M-M 7/27/1, 4th Army War Diary, October, 1918. 38 Ibid., ‘Weekly appreciation …’. 39 Die Weltkrieg, XIV, pp. 608 and 610, quoted in Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, p. 141. Hew Strachan, ‘The Morale of the German Army’, in Cecil and Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon, pp. 383ff points out that German morale was sapped by desertions, stragglers and mass surrenders several months before the armistice. 40 Command, pp. 378–379. 41 M-M 7/27/1, ‘Weekly appreciation…’. 28/9–4 October 1918; OH 1918 (5), p. 178. 42 RWLN 1/11, 1 October 1918. 43 Rawly 5201-33-60, 3 October 1918. 44 RWLN 1/11, 28 September 1918; see also Philpott, ‘Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Allied Victory’, pp. 50–51. 45 Rawly 5201-33-73, 14 October 1918. 46 The Manchester Guardian, 20 July 1919, found in Rawly 1952-01-33-45, Newspaper cuttings 1916–1925. 47 RWLN 1/11, 16 September 1918; Command, p. 354; Montgomery, Fourth Army, p. 139; Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914–1918: Defeat into Victory (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 66. 48 Eden, Another World 1897–1917, p. 124.

Notes

287

49 Stevenson, 1914–1918, pp. 498–499; ibid., Backs to the Wall, pp. 91–92 and 162. Recent writing suggests 30 million is too low a figure for total deaths. 50 RWLN 1/11, 29 November 1918. 51 Haig Diary, p. 468; RWLN 1/11, 1 October 1918; OH 1918 (V), p. 141. 52 RWLN 1/11, 5 and 7 October 1918. 53 Command, p. 380; Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 192–194; Farndale, Royal Regiment of Artillery, p. 302. 54 M-M 7/27/1, ‘Weekly appreciation…. October 5 to 11’ has 76 battalions; Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 195–196. 55 Kenyon, Horseman in No Man’s Land, pp. 224–228; Terraine, To Win a War, pp. 191–192. 56 Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 199–200. 57 Ibid., appendix G; Command, p. 382. 58 Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 204–205 and photographs. 59 RWLN 1/11, 14 October 1918. 60 M-M 7/27/1, 4th Army War Diary, ‘Summary of Ops 17 October’. 61 M-M 7/27/1, ‘Summary of Ops 17th October’. 62 RWLN 1/11, 17–24 October 1918; Rawly 5201-33-60, short diary 17–24 October 1918; Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, pp. 165–166; Command, pp. 382–386; Montgomery, Fourth Army, pp. 209–237. 63 Martin Kitchen, ‘Ludendorff and Germany’s Defeat’, in Cecil and Liddle, eds, Facing Armageddon, pp. 51–66. 64 RWLN 1/11, 3 November 1918. 65 Montgomery, Fourth Army, p. 242. 66 Rawly 5201-33-73, 5 November 1918. 67 OH 1918 (V), p. 579. 68 RWLN 1/11, 10 November 1918. 69 Stevenson, Backs to the Wall, chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6. 70 Inter alia, Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: The Penguin Press, 1998), pp. 291–292; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, pp. 101–104. 71 OH 1918 (V), p. 581, stating Germany’s published casualty figures as Verdun 426,519 and the Somme 582,919. 72 Maurice, p. 250n1. 73 Haig Diary, pp. 491–492; Repington, First World War, II, p. 489; Rawly 5201-33-60, 19 December 1918; The Times, 20 December 1918, p. 9, ‘Home from the War’. 74 See table of fleet sizes, J.R. Hill, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (London: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 319. 75 Jim Beach, ed., The Military Papers of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Cuthbert Headlam 1910–1942 (Stroud: The History Press for the Army Records Society, 2010), p. 215. 76 Darwin, The Empire Project, p. 326. 77 HHW 2/13b/6, 11 November 1918; Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 227. 78 Repington, The First World War, II, p. 525.

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79 Winston Churchill, My Early Life (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1930), pp. 23–32. He did take three attempts to enter Sandhurst. 80 Gallipoli Diary, I (London: Edward Arnold, 1920), p. 302 quoted in Jeffery Williams, Byng of Vimy: General and Governor General (Barnsley : Pen & Sword, 2014. Orig. publ. 1983). 81 Jonathan Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 36–37. 82 The BEF’s total 1918 ‘bag’ was 188,700 prisoners and 1,880 guns. Of the third ‘scug’, Plumer’s reputation as a thoughtful planner stands high. See Stephen Badsey’s insightful entry on ‘Herbert Plumer’ in ODNB.

Chapter 11 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

HHW 2/13C/22. Rawly 1952-01-33-22. A recent discussion: Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (London: Random House, 2003). Maurice, pp. 254–255. Times, 31 March 1919, p. 13, ‘Sir H. Rawlinson for Aldershot’ prints Churchill’s letter to Hamilton and the reply. Byng turned down an offer on similar grounds, but went on to become Governor General of Canada and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Rawly 5201-33-29, Short diary, 18 November 1919. Other references 10 March, 17 April, 4 June, 13 July 1919, 10 April 1920. Rawly 5201-33-30, 25 May 1920. Lord Haig’s Fund is today the Poppy Appeal. Rawly 5201-33-29, 13 February 1919. Rawlinson later wanted Churchill, realizing Haig was not a runner. Rawly 5201-33-30, 20 October 1920. Hamilton 13/87, 11 March 1925. Black, Avoiding Armageddon, pp. 2ff. Maurice, p. 262. Ibid. Rawly 1952-01-33-29, 6 August 1919. Rawly 1952-01-33-29, 11 August 1919. Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader, p. 567. Figures from [The War Office], Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War (Orig. publ. March, 1922), p. 24. Maurice, pp. 267–268. Rawly 1952-01-33-29, 8 October 1919. Maurice, pp. 269–270.

Notes

289

20 1914–1918, pp. 432–434. 21 In November, 1920: Rawly 1952-01-33-23, 3 November 1920. 22 Black, Avoiding Armageddon, p. 18; Fuller, Decisive Battles of the Western World, II, chapter 8. 23 Gilbert, Churchill: IV: 1918–1922, pp. 384–387; 24 Rawly 1952-01-33-30, 27 March 1920. 25 Hamilton 13/87, Hamilton to R, 20 April 1920. 26 Gilbert, Churchill: IV 1918–1922, pp. 384–387; Churchill, The World Crisis 1916– 1918, p. 507; Robin Prior, Churchill’s World Crisis as History (Beckenham: Croom Helm, 1983), p. 219; Rawly 1952-01-33-20, 24 March–8 April 1920. 27 HHW 2/13C/R, R to Wilson 3 December 1920; Stevenson, 1914–1918, pp. 124–125; Fritz Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), p. 121. 28 HHW 13C/19/3, R to Wilson, 16 February 1920 giving details. 29 Jacobsen, p. xxi; Black, Avoiding Armageddon, pp. 41–46. 30 Percival Spear, The Oxford History of Modern India 1740–1947 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. 341; Nick Lloyd, The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful Day (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011). 31 Jacobsen, p. xxi. 32 David Omissi, Sepoy and Raj: The Indian Army 1860–1940 (London: Macmillan, 1994), p. 105; Hamilton 13/13, Birdwood to Hamilton, 4 April 1921. 33 T.A. Heathcote, The Military in British India: The Development of Land Forces in South Asia 1600–1947 (New York and Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 224–231; Edmund Candler, The Sepoy (London: J. Murray, 1919), passim. 34 Cyril Falls, Armageddon 1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964); Barrow, The Fire of Life; table of Indian divisions deployed in Robert Holland, ‘The British Empire and the Great War’, in Judith M. Holland and William Roger Louis, eds, The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Twentieth Century (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 137. Lt-Gen S.L. Menezes, Fidelity and Honour: The Indian Army from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 259.” 35 Heathcote, Military in British India, p. 224. 36 Brian Robson, Crisis on the Frontier: The Third Afghan War and the Campaign in Waziristan 1919–1920 (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 2004). 37 Black, Avoiding Armageddon, p. 51; D. Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), Jacobsen, pp. xxiii–xxiv. 38 Cd 943, Commons 1920, XIV; Jacobsen, pp. 2–3. 39 Jacobsen, p. 3. 40 Ibid., p. xxiv.

290

Notes

41 Field-Marshal Lord Birdwood, Khaki and Gown (London and Melbourne: Ward Lock, 1941). 42 Jacobsen, p. 2. 43 Trevor Wilson, ed., The Political Diaries of C.P. Scott 1911–1928 (London: Collins, 1970), pp. 217 and 219. The diaries do not mention Amiens or the Hindenburg Line. 44 WO32/15353 ‘Appointment of General Lord Rawlinson as Commander-in-Chief ’. 45 Ibid., 1 June 1920. 46 Ibid., 17 June 1920. 47 Ibid., 20 June 1920. 48 Ibid., 25 June 1920. 49 Rawly 1952-01-33-20, dates as text. 50 Times, 23 August 1920, p. 10, ‘Indian Command for Lord Rawlinson’. 51 T.R. Moreman, The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare 1849–1947 (London: Macmillan, 1998), pp. 106–116. 52 Rawly 1952-01-33-20, 9 and 11 October 1920. 53 Hamilton 13/13, 21 and 25 October 1919. 54 Rawly 1952-01-33-23, 3 November 1920. 55 Rawly 1952-01-33-30, 18 November 1920; 1952-01-33-31, 24 July 1921; 1952-0133-34, 4 January 1924 and 2 July 1924. 56 Rawly 1952-01-33-23, dates as text. 57 Times of India, 24 August 1920, p. 8; 22 November 1920, p. 10; 21 September 1920, p. 12. 58 Curzon, The Place of India in the Empire. An influential plea that without India Britain was a third-rate power. See Darwin, Empire Project, p. 181 and Judith M. Brown, ‘India’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 421. 59 Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 259. 60 Darwin, Empire Project, pp. 9–10. 61 Valentine Chirol, India (London: Ernest Benn, 1926), pp. 167 and 183–184; 1914–1918, pp. 498–499. 62 Ibid., pp. 248–249. 63 Eur Mss D605, R to Derby, 25 November 1920. 64 Philip Mason, A Matter of Honour: An Account of the Indian Army, Its Officers and Men (London: Macmillan, 1986), p. 453. 65 Chirol, India, pp. 229–234. The Princely states were excluded. 66 British Library, India Office Papers, Mss Eur D605, 30 March, 1921. 67 Jacobsen, p. 44, letter to Wilson, 16 January 1921. 68 Pradeep Barua, Gentlemen of the Raj: The Indian Army Officer Corps 1817–1919 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 90.

Notes 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

291

Moreman, The Army in India and Development of Frontier Warfare, pp. 119–120. Maurice, pp. 286–287. Ibid., p. 288. Robson, Crisis on the Frontier, pp. 241–242. Jacobsen, p. 33; Robson, Crisis on the Frontier, pp. 241–242 unfortunately characterizes Rawlinson’s policy as ‘burn and scuttle’, not at all what he sought. Maurice, p. 292. Moreman, The Army in India and Development of Frontier Warfare, pp. 103–123 covers Waziristan. HHW 2/13c/3, R to HW, 22 December 1920; Jacobsen, pp. 28–30. British Library, India Office Papers, Mss Eur D605, R to Derby, 13 July, 1921. Jacobsen gives 2,000 officers, Rawlinson 2,400. Also HHW 13C/R, R to Wilson, 3 December 1920, for expenses. Maurice, p. 285. HHW 2/13C/15, R to Wilson, 16 January 1921. Ibid.; Maurice, pp. 289–290;. Rawly 5201-33-23, 1 December 1920; Spear, Oxford History of Modern India, p. 323. Denis Judd, Lord Reading: Rufus Isaacs, First Marquess of Reading, Lord Chief Justice, and Viceroy of India, 1860–1935 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982). Chapter 14 covers his viceroyalty. Raja Bhasin, Simla: The Summer Capital of British India (New Delhi: Penguin, 1992), p. 92. Eur Mss F118/116B, 19 January 1921. Eur Mss D605, R to Derby, 30 March 1921. WO32/5427, Waziristan Operations 1/4/21-31/12/21. Spear, Oxford History of Modern India, p. 323. Rawly 5201-33-23, 10 May 1921; Judd, First Marquess of Reading, p. 204. Jacobsen, p. 32. Maurice, pp. 295–296. Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (London: Abacus, 1997), pp. 487–488. Rawly 5201-33-22, R to Wilson, 29 August 1921; Jacobsen, pp. 64–66, R to Derby, 24 October 1921. Lieut.-Gen. Sir George MacMunn, Turmoil and Tragedy in India: 1914 and After (London: Jarrolds, 1935), pp. 241–250. Jacobsen, pp. 61–63. Ibid., p. 33. Rawly 1952-01-33-31, 17 and 24 November 1921. Maurice, p. 303; Harold Nicolson, King George V: His Life and Reign (London: Constable, 1952), p. 364; Jacobsen, pp. 70–71. There is an optimistic account in Mss Eur 235/5, Charles Ross papers.

292 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

119

Notes Jacobsen, pp. 60 and 67. Ibid., p. 34. Eur Mss D605, R to Derby, 9 March 1922. HHW 2/13C/25, 16 March 1925. Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (London: Collins, 1982. Orig publ. 1951), p. 249; Rawly 52-01-33-31, 13/5; Denis Judd, The Lion and the Tiger: The Rise and Fall of the British Raj (1600–1947) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 143. Rawly 5201-33-23, 3 November 1920; Jacobsen, p. 17. Rawly 5201-33-32, 28 February 1922 after prolonged discussion from 7 February 1922. Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 259. Jacobsen, p. 74. Eur Mss D605,22 August 1922. Maurice, p. 288; Jacobsen, p. 94. Hamilton 13/13, Birdwood to Hamilton, 4 April 1921. HHW 2/3C/18, 10 February 1921. Hamilton 13/13, 28 April 1921. Rawly 5201-33-32, diary, 14 January1922; Jacobsen, pp. 84 and 94. Jacobsen, p. 75. Hamilton, 13/66, 12 July 1922. HHW 2/13C/25, 16 March 1921. Rawly 1952-01-33-31, 25 May 1921. Ibid., 1 February 1921; other references 5201-33-29, 21–22 and 25 December 1919; 5201-33-30, 11 December 1920. Eur Mss D605, 16 August 1921. Deirdre MacMahon ‘Ireland and the Empire Commonwealth, 1900–1948’, in Brown and Lewis, eds, Oxford History of the British Empire: The Twentieth Century p. 146. See ibid., pp. 138–154. Maurice, pp. 306–307.

Chapter 12 1 Hamilton 13/13. 2 Ibid., 13/87. 3 In World War II Allied bombing burnt the palace to the ground. It was rebuilt and is a now a sight for tourists. 4 Maurice, pp. 300–301; Rawly 1952-01-33-31, 1–15 December 1921; Mss Eur 235/5, Charles Ross papers for a host’s view. 5 Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma (London: Faber and Faber, 2007), p. 208.

Notes 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

293

Rawly 1952-01-33-32, 18 January 1922. HHW 2/13C, 10 February 1921. Rawly 1952-01-33-32, 7, 11 and 21 March 1922. Maurice, pp. 305–306; Rawly 1933-01-33-32, 28 March 1922. Jacobsen, pp. 125–126, 130, 133–134 and 139–141. Ibid., p. 102. The 101st Grenadiers had been part of the Bombay Army and underwent numerous renumbering in its history. Wazsiristan has been a haven for al-Queda and Taleban. Continuing military operations have caused the displacement of 470,000 of the population. IOL, L/MIL/17/13/121, Despatch by His Excellency General Lord Rawlinson of Trent on the operations of the Waziristan Force for the period 1st January 1922 to 20th April 1923 (Simla, 1923); Robson, Crisis on the Frontier, p. 245. Robson remains sceptical throughout of the policy, although Rawlinson’s aim seems hardly to have differed from Roos-Keppel’s, which he praises. Maurice, p. 318. Jacobsen, pp. 79–80, 104–105, 208. Ibid., p. 75; Rawly 1952-01-33-32, 5–6–7 January 1922. Alan J. Guy and Peter B. Boyden, Soldiers of the Raj: The Indian Army 1600–1947 (London: National Army Museum, 1997), pp. 17–18. Dewitt C. Ellinwood, Between Two Worlds: A Rajput Officer in the Indian Army 1905–1921 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Jacobsen, p. 75. Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 323. For Indianization, ibid.; Omissi, The Sepoy and the Raj, chapter 5; Heathcote, Military in British India, pp. 205–222. Jacobsen, p. 76. Eur Mss D605, R to Derby, 19 June 1923. Rawly 1952-01-33-23, 28 July 1922. Omissi, Sepoy and Raj, pp. 172–174. Ibid., 23 July 1923. Ibid. and Maurice, pp. 313–314. Omissi, Sepoy and Raj, table on p. 185. Jacobsen, p. 139, diary 4 February 1923. Daniel P. Marston, Phoenix from the Ashes: The Indian Army in the Burma Campaign (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), pp. 15–26 and 203. Omissi, Sepoy and Raj, p. 191. Stephen P. Cohen, The Indian Army: Its Contribution to the Development of a Nation (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 168. ‘The Geddes axes’ for retrenchment in public expenditure in Britain in the 1920s was wielded by a committee led by Sir Eric Geddes and including Inchcape. Jacobsen, p. 96. Ibid., pp. 121 and 123. Ibid., pp. 127–128. HHW 2/13C/10 and 19, 5 and 9 January 1921.

294

Notes

34 HHW 2/13C/22, Wilson to R, 15 March 1921. 35 HHW 2/13C/24, R to Wilson, 9 March 1921. 36 Jacobsen, pp. 127–128 and 188; For British interwar tanks, Bond, Military Policy between the Wars, chapters 5 and 6. 37 Black, Avoiding Armageddon, Chapter 6; Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control; Jacobsen, pp. 79, 109, 13, 114. 38 Jacobsen, pp. 101–102, letter 3 May 1922. 39 James, Raj, p. 475. 40 Jacobsen, pp. 110 and 114; Moreman, Army in India and Development of Frontier Warfare, p. 47. Salmond Report, IOL, British Library, India Office Papers, L/MIL/7765, August 1922. 41 Ibid., p. 115, letter to Cavan, 28 September 1922. 42 Times, 13 April 1922, p. 11, ‘Aeroplanes rout tribesmen’. 43 Jacobsen, p. 101, letter 24 April 1922 and p. 204n18. 44 Moreman, Army in India and Development of Frontier Warfare, p. 131; Chaz [sic] Bowyer, The Flying Elephants: A History of No 27 Sqn RFC-RAF 1915–1969 (London: Macdonald, 1972). 45 Maurice, p. 313. 46 Jacobsen, pp. 126, 128, 131; Birdwood, Khaki and Gown, pp. 364–365 and 373. 47 Report in The Pioneer, 22 March 1922, in Rawly 1952-01-33-23. 48 Black, Avoiding Armageddon, pp. 41–46, Rawlinson quote p. 45. 49 Maurice, p. 312. 50 Brian Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford, OUP, 1980). Defence Policy between the Wars, p. 104; Rawson, ‘The Role of India in Imperial Defence beyond Indian Frontiers and Home Waters, 1919–1939’ (unpublished thesis, Oxford University, 1976), pp. 152–157. 51 Captain H.L. Nevill, Campaigns on the North-West Frontier (London: J. Murray, 1912). 52 Maurice, pp. 320–322. 53 Ibid., pp. 323–326. 54 Ibid., p. 325. One watercolour is reproduced facing p. 324. 55 Barrow, The Fire of Life, pp. 160–161. Barrow’s eloquence on Rawlinson’s fitness ran away with him; he speaks of him as ‘sixty-five’; he did not reach that age. 56 HHW 2/13C/4, to Wilson, 9 December 1920. 57 Rawly 1952-01-33-31, 20 May 1921. 58 Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi, p. 273. 59 Spear, Oxford History of Modern India, pp. 323–324; Spear, A History of India, vol. 2 (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 192–200. 60 Karl Joseph Schmidt, India’s Role in the League of Nations 1919–1939 (PhD diss, Gainesville, Florida University, 1994). 61 Maurice, p. 335.

Notes 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

295

Calcutta, 1924. Jacobsen, p. 169. Maurice, p. 328. Ibid., pp. 330–331. Hansard, House of Lords Debates 8 May 1924 and 20 May 1924, vol. 57, cc. 337–358 and 527–538. Rawly 1952-01-33-34, 19/5–7 June 1924. Ibid., 2/8–7 November 1924; Rawly 1952-0133-22; Maurice, pp. 335–337; Jacobsen, p. 176. Moreman, The Army in India and Development of Frontier Warfare, pp. 129–130; Bond, Defence Policy between the Wars, p. 105. Jeffery, Crisis of Empire, p. 109. Jacobsen, p. 189; Maurice, pp. 339–340; Menezes, Fidelity and Honour, p. 328. Moreman, The Army in India and Development of Frontier Warfare, pp. 122, 126 and 128. The Indian Government ruled out the use of gas unless employed by an enemy first. Rawly, 1952-01-33-22, R to Cavan, 21 January 1925. Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, p. 278. Bond, Defence Policy between the Wars, p. 74. John G.E. Cox, ‘Frederic Rudolph Lambart, 10th Earl of Cavan’, ODNB. M-M 8/29, extracts of letters to Lady Rawlinson. Jacobsen, p. 154, letter to Derby 9 May 1923. Birdwood, Khaki and Gown, p. 373. Rawly 3/5 and 1 June 1924; Jacobsen, pp. 180 and 185. Jacobsen, p. 198; M-M 29/8, Lady Rawlinson to Montgomery 14 May 1925. Jacobsen, pp. 183–184.

Chapter 13 1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8

Maurice, pp. 343–352. Ibid., Jacobsen, pp. 189–190; The Times, 28 March 1925, p. 12. ‘Death of Lord Rawlinson. Sudden collapse after operation’. The Times, 30 March 1925, p. 13; Rawly 2011-11-18-65, 27 March 1925. An exception was the QMG (Quartermaster-General), Lt-Gen Sir George Macmunn, who told Montgomery he expected him to die. M-M8/29, 27 March 1925. HHW 2/83/119, Claude Heulan[?] to Wilson, 23 August 1916. M-M8/29, Mrs Henderson to Montgomery, 1 April 1925. Ibid., extracts of letters to Lady Rawlinson. Ibid., Godley to Montgomery, 31 March 1925. Bobs 33/49, 20 September 1901. See above, p. 74, Cf. Gibbs, pp. 40–42 and 156.

296 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Notes Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front, p. 129. Haig Diaries, p. 116, 18 April 1915. Gough is hardly a commentator of weight. Command, p. 72. Ibid., 2 April 1925. De Watteville is an elusive figure. See his obit in the Times, 2 January 1964. I am grateful to Nick May of the Times Newspapers Ltd Archives, News UK & Ireland Ltd for providing this information. The Times, 28 March 1925, p. 17, ‘General Lord Rawlinson’. Ibid., 31 March 1925, p. 18 and 1 April 1925, p. 12. The Times, 28 March 1925, p. 17, ‘General Lord Rawlinson’. RWLN 1/1, 14 April 1915 & RWLN 1/3, 24 October 1915; Harris & Marble, ‘The Step-by-Step Approach’, p. 20. Times, 1 April 1925, p. 12. General Sir Alexander Godley, Life of an Irish Soldier (London: E.P. Dutton, 1939), p. 256 for an example. Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front, p. 66. See above, p. 192. C.R.M.F. Cruttwell, A History of the Great War, 1914–1918 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1936)., A History of the Great War, p. 548. Bond, Military Policy between the Wars, p. 139. Philip Davies, The Penguin Guide to the Monuments of India: Vol. II: Islamic, Rajput, European (London: Penguin, 1989), p. 126. Times of India, 15 August 1928, p. 17. The correspondent called the poem ‘The Captains and the Kings Depart’ from one of its lines. ‘Recessional’ was usually sung to the same tune as ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’, but there was a special setting at the service.

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Index Note: The ff denotes the continuous page numbers. Afghanistan 1st Afghan War 5–6 negotiations 211, 215, 216 3rd Afghan War 205–6, 207 threat 81 air power. See under Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force Alexander, Brigadier E.W. 139 Allenby, Edmund, Field Marshal Lord Allenby 98, 135, 164, 166, 229 Americans (AEF=American Expeditionary Force) 173, 184ff, 190ff Amery, Leo 76, 88, 92, 95, 102, 105 Amiens, Battle 179–81 Amritsar 205, 210 Antwerp 94–5 armistice signed 198 Arnold-Foster, H. O. 81 Arras, battle 164–5 Asquith, Herbert H., Prime Minister 92, 120 Aston, Major-General Sir George 78 Atbara, Battle of (1898) 23–5 Aubers Ridge, battle 118–19 Australians. See BEF Austria-Hungary 90, 105, 199 Balfourier, General Maurice 136, 150 Ballard, Captain (later Brigadier) C.R. criticises Rawlinson 57–63, 64–6, 74, 237 Barrow, Brigadier-General George de S. on Montgomery 136 on Rawlinson 229 Barter, Major-General Sir Charles 125, 153 battles. See under individual name Becke, Major, on creeping barrages 139 Below, General Fritz von 140, 143 Benson, Colonel G.E. 61–2

Birch, Brigadier-General J.F.N. ‘Curly’ 134, 144 Birdwood, William, Field-Marshal Lord 175, 206, 207–8, 218, 221, 228, 233–4 ‘bite-and-hold’ 117–18 Blackett, Sir Basil, Indian government official 227 Blucher, Princess Evelyn, quoted 159 Boers and Boer War. See South African War Botha, Louis, Boer leader 47, 56, 60 Braithwaite, General Sir Walter 103, 188, 196, 197, 231 Brandwater Basin, capture of Boers 51 British Army BEF and Territorial Force created 81 British General Staff loss of staff officers 81–2 1898 manoeuvres 40 firepower at Omdurman 26–7 Gatacre’s Brigade in Sudan 24ff ‘incomparably the best fighting machine in the world’ 199 ‘Indians’ vs ‘Africans’ 34 medical arrangements 25, 32 1910 manoeuvres 85–6 1913 manoeuvres 87 1912 manoeuvres 86 New Armies overcrowding 93 ‘Pals’ battalions 92 post-Boer War reforms 76 Royal Flying Corps (see Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force) Staff College reform 77ff tanks at Amiens 179–80 at Cambrai 168 Churchill praises 181–2 at Hamel 176

Index for India 207, 217–18, 225, 232 Ludendorff comments 184 Mark V 175 1918 campaign 185, 193–4, 196 on the Somme 152–4, 155 vs. tank action 174 Whippets 177 units First Army 109ff, 133–4, 183, 184 Second Army 109, 168, 184 Third Army 164, 171, 181, 183, 192, 200 Fourth Army 134ff, 170, 175ff, 183ff Fifth Army 168, 171, 172, 175 Corps I Corps 96ff, 122ff II Corps 98 III Corps 98, 102, 139, 143, 177, 180, 183, 187, 188, 190, 192 IV Corps 93ff, 106ff V Corps 188 VIII 140, 142, 143 IX Corps 188, 193, 196, 197 X Corps 138 XI Corps 127 XIII Corps 139, 142, 143, 144, 147, 149, 193 XIV Corps 148, 159 XV Corps 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 166 XIX Corps 172 divisions Guards Division 128 1 Div 129, 166, 197 2 Div 99, 101 4 Div 93 6 Div 154 7 Div 93, 99, 120, 121 8 div 93, 102, 119 15 Div 126 18 Div 136, 140, 179, 178 21 Div 126–8 24 Div 126–8 32 Div 166, 184, 190, 192, 97 36 Div 159 46th (North Midland) Div 189–90, 192, 197 47 (London) Div 125, 153 51 Div 121

307

62nd (West Riding) Div 189 66 Div 197 2 Cavalry Div 143 3 Cavalry Div 99, 143 regiments and battalions 15th Hussars 180 19th Hussars 180 Scots Greys (2nd Dragoon Guards) 51 3rd Dragoon Guards 194 5th Dragoon Guards 180 7th Dragoon Guards 179 5th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards 179 17th Lancers 179 21st Lancers futile charge 28 1/Scots Guards 104 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers 140 Camerons 197 1/Gloucesters 38 2/Worcesters 101 1/Warwicks 104 1/Border 104 1/Devons 43, 104 1/Lincolns 51 8/King’s Own Royal Lancashires 146 10/Royal Regiment of Fusiliers 92 10/Duke of Wellington’s 109 10/Gordon Highlanders 126 7/Leicesters 155 1/Manchesters 53 15/Manchesters 163 Artists Rifles 103 Royal Artillery 106, 139, 151, 159, 187, 106 Fuse 190 British Expeditionary Force (BEF) acquires mortars 102 Australians 174ff, 178ff, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 190 Canadians 168, 178ff, 184, 194, 197 commanders ‘degummed’ 101, 124, 168 creeping barrage, prefigured 44, 139 fighting with inadequate means 109, 112 grenades ineffective 121 morale 158, 163

308

Index

1915 equipment 111 1914 casualties 105 split into two armies 109 trench raids 104 Western Front morale 140, 159 Brittain, Vera 173 Brodrick, St John, 1st Earl of Midleton 77, 81 Brusilov offensive 138 Budworth, Brigadier-General 124 Bulfin, Brigadier-General Sir Edward 101 Bulgaria surrenders 189 Buller, General Sir Redvers 34, 39, 40–5, 50, 53 Burden, Sir Eric 231 Burma 10ff, 221, 225 Butler, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard 188, 192, 238 Byng, General Sir Julian 8, 15, 65, 94, 98, 99, 183, 187 Etonian ‘scug’ 199–200

Rawlinson reads 237 in Sudan 26, 28 supplies armaments 186, 190 supports Rawlinson for Indian command 206–7 visits Western Front 172, 183 World Crisis 204 Clemenceau, Georges 172–3 Colenso, Battle 42 Collins, Michael 219 Colville, Major-General Sir Henry 47 Congress, Indian National Congress. See under India Congreve, Lieutenant-General Sir Walter 139, 142, 143, 149 Connaught, Duke of 71, 210 Cookson, Lieutenant-Colonel G.A. 56 Currie, General Sir Arthur 168, 177–8, 181 Curzon, George, 1st Marquess 74, 75, 80, 228, 231

Caesar’s Camp, fighting 43 Callwell, Major C.E. 91–2, 93 Cambrai, battle 168 Cambridge, 2nd Duke of, c-in-c British Army 15, 71 Canadians. See British Expeditionary Force (BEF) Caporetto, battle 170 Capper, Major-General Sir Thompson 78, 99, 100, 104, 111, 116, 129 Carrington, Charles 161 Cavan, Field-Marshal Lord, ‘Fatty’ 8, 101, 149, 157, 233 Chamberlain, Colonel Neville 45, 235 Chanak Crisis 228 Chantilly Conference 134 Charteris, Brigadier-General Sir John 138, 168 Chauri Chaura, police station burnt by rioters 217 Chelmsford, Frederic Thesiger, Lord, Viceroy 212 Christmas truce, 1914 106 Churchill, Sir Winston Gallipoli 119 Irish Crisis 88 opposed Indianization 224 painting expedition with Rawlinson 204

Dallas, Brigadier-General Alister 95, 103, 110, 124 Dardanelles. See Gallipoli Davidson, Major-General John ‘Tavish’ 17, 138, 144, 150, 152, 157, 163, 165 Davies, Major-General J. ‘Joey’ 104 Rawlinson attempts to scapegoat 116–17, 131, 237 Debeney, General Marie-Eugene 181, 187, 188, 195, 208 De la Rey, Koos, Boer commando leader 51, 69 De Lisle, Colonel Henry Beauvoir 49–50 Delhi 74, 208, 210, 235, 239 Derby, Edward Stanley, Earl of 46, 208, 216, 217, 238 de Watteville, Colonel H.S., obituary notice of Rawlinson 237 De Wet, Boer commando leader 46–7, 51, 52, 62, 66, 67, 68 Diamond Hill, battle 47 Dilke, Sir Charles 13 Donop, Major General Sir Stanley von, Master General of Ordnance 102 Douglas, General Sir Charles, CIGS, 93 Du Cane, General Sir John ‘Johnnie’ 86, 118, 119

Index ‘dyarchy’. See under ‘India, Government Dyer, Brigadier-General R.E.H. 205, 219 East India Company 5 Eden, Anthony 161, 192 Edmonds, Brigadier Sir James 143 Edward VII (as Prince of Wales) 71 Elliot, Major-General Edward 60, 65, 67 Ellison, Lt-Col Gerald 75 Esher, Reginald, 2nd Viscount (Army in India Committee) 81, 135, 159–60, 171–2, 206, 208, 210–11 Eton College Etonian Army commanders as ‘scugs’ 199–200 postwar visit 8 Rawlinson’s education 7–8, 237 Falkenhayn, General Erich von, War Minister and then Chief of German General Staff 96–7, 102, 134, 143, 144, 147, 151 Fayolle, General Marie Emile 137, 142, 150 Feilding, Brigadier-General G.P.T. Fielding, 157 Festubert, Battler 120 Fitgerald, Colonel O.A.D., Kitchener’s secretary 119 Fitzclarence, Brigadier-General Charles 101 Flowerdew, Lt Gordon 172 Foch, General Ferdinand, French general 137, 142, 152, 157, 172, 177, 184, 187, 188, 208 France and French Army 16–17, 96 role in First World War 107–8, 122, 128, 136–7, 176, 180, 181 (see also ‘Joffre’, ‘Foch’ and ‘Nivelle’) Fraser, Lovat 169 French, Field-Marshal Sir John Curragh Incident 89–90 First Ypres 97ff Haig’s doubts about his command 108 Loos 122 relations with Rawlinson 82, 94, 95, 100, 104 reputation sinks 129 resigns command 130 sacks Smith-Dorrien 104

309 Shells Scandal 122 in South Africa 38, 39, 71

Gallipoli 119–20 Gandhi, Mohandas K. 205, 209, 216 arrested 217, 219 released 230 George V, King-Emperor 87, 89, 100, 129, 130, 182, 203, 207, 210, 232 German Army ‘bid for victory’ 170 in Belgium 94ff on defensive 1915, 109 losses 151, 158, 159 losses and exhaustion 184 losses at Langemarck 99 new orders issued 143 offensive 1918 171, 172 1st Ypres 96ff poor morale 174, 176, 181, 188 Rawlinson impressed by 16–17 reports note RFC attacks 151 rudimentary defences 113 1917 withdrawal in 1917 163–4 Somme defences 139–40 Somme defensive tactics 143, 148, 149 superior weapons 102, 104, 107, 109, 114 tenacity at Loos 129 threat 79, 94, 105 unprepared at Amiens 177 Germany ‘blank cheque’ to Austria 90 decides on U-boat warfare 159, 198 German Empire broken 199 home front 174 Kaiser flees 197–8 Kiel Naval Mutiny 197 seeks armistice 197 signs armistice 198 ultimatum to Belgium 91 Givenchy, battle 120–2 Godley, Lieutenant-General Sir Alexander, quoted 235, 236 Gorlice-Tarnow, battle 122 Gough, General Sir Hubert 7, 60, 122, 161, 164, 236, 237 Curragh Incident 88–9 in 1918 171–2, 238 1915 campaign 121, 122, 129

310 on Rawlinson 236 relations with Haig 130 Somme 137, 138, 152, 157 3rd Ypres 167–8 Gough, Brigadier-General Sir John, ‘Johnnie’ 79, 89, 101, 130 Grierson, General Sir James 45, 50, 52, 77, 79, 86 Gwynne, H.A. ‘Taffy’ 66, 68, 208 Haig, Douglas assumes command of BEF 130 ‘Backs to the Wall’ order 173 commands First Army 109ff criticised in press 168–9 doubts about 14 July 144 Earl Haig Fund 202 enthusiasm for tanks 152 Field Marshal Earl 15, 167, 170, 185, 186, 213 Field Service Regulations 82 1st Ypres 96ff gives Byng and Rawlinson free hand 194 instructs Rawlinson to attack in south 143 Lloyd George tries to remove 164 mutual congratulations with Rawlinson 198 negotiates with Rawlinson and Foch after Amiens 181 notkeen to leave retirement 203 part in removing Sir J. French 129–30 peacetime manoeuvres 87 quoted 236, 237, 240 Rawlinson and Jacob want as Viceroy 202 relations with Rawlinson 109, 116–17, 131, 137–8, 144–5, 160, 199, 202 Somme battle 140ff Somme planning 134ff South Africa 39 in Sudan 28, 38 writes to King 109 Hailey, Sir Malcolm, Indian government official 211, 222, 223, 227 Haking, Lt-Gen Sir Richard 126, 127, 128, 129, 237 Haldane, Richard Burdon 81–2, 87 Hale, Colonel Lonsdale 17, 83

Index Hamel, battle 175–6 Hamilton, General Sir Ian 3, 10, 35–6 Gallipoli 119–20 quoted 221 South Africa, comments on Rawlinson 38, 39, 40, 43, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 59, 62, 64, 68–70, 71, 87–8, 92, 117, 200, 218, 221 Hamley, General Sir Edward, The Operations of War Explained and Illustrated 13 Hankey, Maurice, cabinet secretary 119, 170 Harrismith Commando, captured by Rawlinson 67 Henderson, Colonel G.F.R., Staff College lecturer 16 Stonewall Jackson 36, 46 Hentig, Captain von, German staff officer quoted 134 Hickie, Major W.J. 56 High Wood 147, 148, 150, 154 Hildyard, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry 75 Hindenburg, General Paul von 151, 159 Hindenburg Line attack on 185–92 built 151, 164 described 184–5 Holkrans, Zulus beat Boers 70 Horne, General Sir Henry, later Baron Horne 139, 142, 143, 147, 148, 183, 184, 187 Hundred Days, British victories 1918 179ff Hunter, General Sir Archibald 21, 24, 29, 32, 39, 41, 45, 51 Hunter-Weston, Lieutenant-General Sir Aylmer 138, 139, 238 Inchcape, Earl of, politician and financial expert 225–6, 227–8 India Council of India 7 First World War 209 Government of India Act 1935 230 independence movement 216ff, 230ff (see also ‘Gandhi’) Khalifat Movement 215 League of Nations Membership 230 Leave of Absence Bill 231–2

Index Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms 210ff, 216, 221ff Moplah rebellion 214–15 postwar troubles 205–6, 209 Rawlinson family connection 5 Rowlatt Acts 205, 209 Russian threat 80–1 Indian Army aid to civil power 217 Army in India Committee (Esher) 206–8, 210–11 budget 211–12 Burma 1943-1945, 225 command 206 Curzon’s cadet corps 75 deployed to Burma 1885, 10ff frontier fighting 207, 211, 222 Indians murdered by Boers 68 Kitchener’s reforms 74–5, 80 loyalty 216 ‘martial races’ 224 Mountain Warfare School 235 Razmak Brigade base 222 staff college at Quetta 80 ‘strategic reserve’ 209 wartime expansion and postwar problems 205–6 on Western Front 109, 112, 113, 116, 119 Indian ‘ring’. See ‘Roberts’ Indianization. See under ‘Indian Army’ influenza pandemic 192 Ireland, Home Rule Crisis 88–9 civil war 219 Ironside, Major-General Edmund ‘Tiny’ 203 Jacob, Claud 202, 214, 227 Jacobsen, Mark, Rawlinson in India 3 Jallianwallah Bagh 205, 219 Japanese 84, 85 Joffre, Marshal Joseph 94, 134, 163, 208 Jorrocks (R.S. Surtees) 13 Juenger, Lieutenant Ernst, quoted 133 Kaiser Wilhelm II, accepts Ludendorff resignation, flees with Crown Prince to Holland 197 Kavanagh 153, 178, 194 quoted 236

311

Kekewich, Colonel Robert 68–9 Kemal, Mustapha (‘Ataturk’). See under Turkey Kemp, Boer commandant 69 Kennard, Coleridge John, father-in-law 14 Kiggell, Lieutenant-General Sir Launcelot 15, 134, 138, 144, 149, 156, 160, 168 Kipling Kim 63, 79 poem ‘If ’ 162 ‘Recessional’ 240 Kitchener, Horatio Herbert, Field Marshal Earl 1, 2 briefs Haig on Loos 122 campaign in the Sudan 17, 20–32 camps and ‘scorched earth’ 59, 64 De Wet Hunt 51–2 death 138 diplomatic success at Fashoda 31 directs mobile columns 56, 66–9 Far Eastern Tour 84–5 favours Rawlinson 23, 237 favours Rawlinson 73–4 Indian command 74–5, 80–1 memorial service for Charles Gordon 30 negotiates peace & returns to London 71 newspaper attack 120, 131 ‘Rather down on his luck’ 100 Rawlinson corresponds 130 Roberts’s chief of staff 45ff Secretary of State for War & New Armies 91ff South Africa, Rawlinson arranges meeting with Roberts 35 takes command 53ff turns down Rawlinson for command of First Army 133 Kruger, Johannes 33, 35 Ladysmith, siege 39ff Lansdowne, 5th Marquess 34, 42, 52, 53 Lewin, Brigadier Harry, comment on Rawlinson’s obituary notices 236–7 Lloyd George, David 120, 130, 168, 169, 170, 182, 202, 205, 206, 207, 228 Loos, battle 122–9 Lossberg, Colonel Friedrich Karl ‘Fritz’ von, German defensive expert 143 Lovat Fraser, Claude, journalist, attacks Haig 169

312

Index

Luckock, Colonel Russel 134 Ludendorff, General Erich 151, 159 nervous collapse 196 1918 offensives 171ff quoted 161 McCracken Major-General F.W.N. 127, 127 Maffey, Sir John, Chief Commissioner of North-West Frontier Province 222 Magersfontein Battle 42 Mahmud, Mahdist general 23–4 Mahsuds. See under ‘Waziristan’ Major-General Sir Bruce 63, 65, 66 Marne, battle 1914 93 Mary, Queen, consort to George V 182, 232 ‘Materialschlacht’ 136 Matheson, General Sir Torquil. See under ‘Waziristan’ Maurice, Frederick, biographer of Rawlinson 1, 14 Maxse, Major-General Sir Ivor 138 Maxwell, Brigadier General Frank 56, 65, 72, 92 Mesopotamia 205–6 Methuen, Paul, Field Marshal Lord 33, 35, 39, 52, 55, 68, 74, 79 Meuse-Argonne, battle 184 Middlebrook, Martin, The First Day on the Somme 2 Milner, Alfred, Viscount 35, 48, 65 Mitra, Sir Bhupendra, financial advisor 222, 231 Monash, General Sir John 175, 177–8, 184, 190 Monro, General Sir Charles 134, 229 Montagu, Sir Edwin, Secretary of State for India 207, 212 Montgomery, Brigadier-General Robert 95, 103 Montgomery, General Sir Archibald (later Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd), 3, 79, 93, 222 becomes Rawlinson’s chief of staff IV Corps 124, 128 eulogises Rawlinson 237 Rawlinson’s chief of staff 1918 172 praised 135 Somme 134, 137, 144

Moplah rebellion. See under ‘India’ Moreuil Wood, engagement (March 1918) 172 Morland, General Sir Thomas 138, 192, 238 Murray, Major-General Sir Archibald Murray 99–100, 108 Muspratt, Colonel Sir Sydney 222 Neame, Lieutenant Philip, wins V.C. 104 Neuve Chapelle, battle 109–16 Nicholson, Field Marshal Sir William 82 Nicholson’s Nek 39 Nivelle, General Robert, French commander 164–5 Noitgedacht, British defeat 53 Northcliffe, Lord, newspaper tycoon 120, 168 Nugent, Major-General Sir Oliver 160, 168, 171 Omdurman, Battle (1898) 28–30 O’Ryan, Major-General John 237 Ottoman Empire. See Turkey Owen, Wilfred, poet 163 Paardeberg 43–4 Paget, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur 87, 89 ‘Pals’ battalions. See under ‘British Army’ Parsons, Colonel Lawrence 44 Pepworth Hill 39 Plumer, Herbert, Field Marshal Lord 8, 49, 60, 161 Potgieter, Boer commandant 69–70 Prior, Robin and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front 2, 87 Pulteney, Lieutenant-General Sir William 139, 153 Quetta. See ‘Indian Army, Staff College’ Rawlinson, Alfred ‘Toby’ 7, 12–13, 20, 94ff, 102, 105, 111 Rawlinson, George (uncle) 6, 7, 12, 14 Rawlinson, Henry Seymour, General Lord art trip to Italy 14–15 birth, family and education 7–8 career summarised 1

Index commands IV Corps in 1915 108–32 Aubers Ridge 118–19 ‘bite and hold’ 117 daily routine 109 Davies affair 116–17 Givenchy 120–2 Loos 122–9 Neuve Chapelle 109–16 part in Sir J. French’s removal 129–30 Philip Sassoon to join Haig 130–1 summary of 1915 132 up in a plane 124 continued success August-Sept, 1918 arranges with Haig to relieve Butler 188, 192 attack on River Selle 194–6 attack on Hindenburg Line 184–92 Haig gives Rawlinson and Byng free rein 194 into Avesnes 10 Nov, contribution to Allied victory 198, 200 London victory parade 199 optimistic assessment at war’s end 199 on Sambre & Oise Canal 196–7 death 235 assessed 237–9 funeral 239–40 obituary notices and tributes 235–6 designs pocket book for field service 17 director of recruiting 90–3 Antwerp 93–5 death of Roberts 102 1st Ypres 95–102 takes over 4th Division 93 trenches and Christmas 1914 103–6 Haig recommends 202 appointed to India 206–7 Barrow assesses 229 Connaught’s visit 210 describes Gandhi 216 eulogises Henry Wilson 220 frontier policy 211 frontier tours 211, 222, 229 impressed by Reading 212–13, 216 Inchcape Committee 225–8 Indian Army budget 211, 216–17, 223, 227, 233, 235

313 Indianization 214, 223–4, 225 injury 232 leave in UK 232 Prince of Wales visit 215–16 reaches India 208–9 reforms 229–30, 231 Russian expedition 202–4 social life 218 ‘South African policy’ for Ireland 219 tours Burma 221 trip with Churchill 204 visits France 208 wants Haig as Viceroy 202 working with Indians 221–2, 231 marriage 14 promoted 161 learns Somme lessons 162 praised in newspapers 162–3 described 163 not chosen for 3rd Ypres 164 plans amphibious assault 165ff possible successor to Haig 169 to Versailles 170 takes over Fifth Army 171 improves defences 174 plans Hamel 175 planning for Amiens 176–8 and battle 179–81 reforms at War Office 73, 75–7, 82 commands 2 infantry brigade 83, 84 Irish Crisis 88–90 National Service League 87–8 planning Quetta 80 trip to Canada 83–4 trip to Delhi 74–5 with Kitchener to Far East 84–5 and Staff College commandant 77–83 3rd Division 85–7 Somme and 1916 refused command First Army 133 assessment 159–60 divides Congreve’s Corps 139 late July-August attacks 148ff launches 14 July attack 146–7 logistical preparation 135–6 rain October-November 156ff relations with the French 136–7

314

Index

rest at Boulogne 152 Somme planning 134ff success at Morval 154–6 takes command of Fourth Army 134 tanks 152ff views 1 July attack 142 returns to England 14 Sandhurst and commissioned 8 South African War besieged in Ladysmith 40–4 joins Roberts and serves on staff 44–53 on Kitchener’s staff 56 leads mobile column 56–70 presses for Roberts to command and arranges Kitchener’s visit to Ireland 32–35 results and achievements 71–2 return to Britain and then South Africa 53–5 return to London 71 service in South Africa 36ff at Staff College, friendship with Henry Wilson 15–17 With Kitchener in the Sudan 20–32 comments on Kitchener 22–3, 26, 31–2 lessons gained 32 medical care 25–6, 30 With Lord Roberts and in Burma 9–14 Rawlinson, Louisa Caroline Harcourt, nee Seymour (mother) marriage 6–7 death 13 encourages artistic interest in son 7 Rawlinson, Meredith (Merrie), nee Kennard (wife) devastated by husband’s death 235 enjoys India 202, 208, 218–19, 232 greets husband 72 and his funeral 240 Italian art trip 14–15 letters and telegrams 38–9, 43, 51, 59, 109 marriage 14 Rawlinson leaves to join Kitchener 21–2 unwell 23, 169 Rawlinson Sir Henry Creswicke (father) 5–7, 9, 13

death and funeral 19 Reading, Rufus Isaacs, Lord, Viceroy 212, 213, 222, 231, 239 Rear-Admiral Reginald 164–6 Repington, Colonel Charles a Court, war correspondent 120, 164, 199–200 Riga, battle 170 Rimington, Lieutenant-Colonel M.F. 60–1, 66, 72 Roberts, Aileen, elder daughter of Field Marshal 12, 53, 102, 161, 237 Roberts, Edwina, younger daughter 12 Roberts, Freddie 12, 26, 31, 42, 53 Roberts, Frederick, Field Marshal Earl 1, 2, 3, 26, 34, 45, 57, 59, 60, 64 appointed to South African command 42 army reforms as c-in-c 75–7 doubts about Rawlinson 68–9 introduced to Henry Wilson 17–18 Irish crisis 88–9 National Service League 87–8 Rawlinson and Hamilton press for his command in South Africa 32–5 Rawlinson criticises 49, 54 Rawlinson joins staff as ADC 9–10, 15 Rawlinson remembers 161, 182 in South Africa 43, 45–54 visits BEF on Western Front and death 102 Roberts, Nora, Countess, welcomes Rawlinson to her husband’s staff 9–10 writes to congratulate 182 Robertson, Field Marshal Sir William 16, 83, 93, 108, 122, 133, 170 Rooiwal, Boer defeat 69–70 Roos-Keppel, Sir George, North-West Frontier official 211 Royal Flying Corps and Royal Air Force 86 aerial photographs 111 Amiens 180 George V comment 87 NW frontier 207, 226–7 Somme 134, 135, 144, 151, 156 Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria 156, 177

Index Russia and Russian Army 9, 79, 80, 84, 105, 122, 131 Rawlinson’s mission 202–4 revolution 168, 170 Russo-Japanese War 78–9, 85, 108 St Mihiel, battle 184 Salmond, Air Vice Marshal Sir Geoffrey 226 Sambre and Oise Canal, battle 196–7 Samson, Commander Charles, R.N. 96, 97 Sassoon, Lieutenant Sir Phillip 130–1, 133, 240 Scott, C.P. 206 Seely, Brigadier-General Jack 88, 89–90, 172, 173 Selle, battle (1918) 194–6 Shea, Major-General Sir James, AdjutantGeneral, Indian Army 223 ‘Shells Scandal’ 120 Singh, Amar, Indian officer 223–4 Singh, Sir Pertab, Indian prince, sportsman and officer 75, 102, 103 Smith-Dorrien, General Sir Horace 30, 52, 57, 87, 130 Smuts, Jan, Boer leader, later Field Marshal 169 Snow, Major-General Thomas 15, 16, 93 Soden, Lieutenant-General Freiherr von 139–40 Somme, Battle of, July-Nov 1916 planning 134ff battle 140ff for phases (see under ‘Rawlinson, Henry Seymour’) Somme film 162–3 South African War 1899-1902 Boer commandos 34 Boer gunnery 40 camps and ‘scorched earth’ 59, 64 Kitchener and guerrilla war 53–71 National Scouts 65, 66 opening phase 35–8 plans 17–18 results 70–1 Roberts’s offensive 45–54 sieges and Buller’s offensive 39–44, 49 Vereeniging 71 Spears, Edward, quoted 135 and 163 Spion Kop, battle 43

315

Steyn, Marthinus, President of the Orange Free State 35, 51, 68 Stormberg, Battle 42 Sudan 17–18 Kitchener’s campaign 19–32 Sutton, Major-General H.C., staff officer 137 Sydenham, Lord, speaks on Loos in H. of Lords 129 Symons, Major-General Sir William Penn 37–8 Talana, battle 38 tanks. See under ‘British Army Thesiger, Major-General Frederic, killed at Loos 129 trench warfare, conditions, 103ff, 107–8, 135, 140, 148, 156ff, 167 Trenchard, Hugh, Brigadier-General, later Viscount Trenchard 134, 135, 226 Turkey 105, 189, 201, 204–5, 212–13, 228 Tweebosch, engagement, Methuen ambushed 68 United States and Army. See under ‘Americans (AEF)’ VaalKrantz, battle 43 Vann, Lt-Col Bernard, wins V.C. 191 Verdun, Battle of, Feb-Dec 1916, 134 Villers-Cotterets, French victory 176–7 Vimy Ridge 119, 164 Wales, Edward, Prince of, visits India 215–16 Watts, Lt-Gen Sir Herbert 172 Waziristan and Wazirs 206, 207, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217, 222, 223, 227, 231, 233 Westminster, the Duke of, ‘Bendor’ 94, 95, 204 White, Field Marshal Sir George 36–44 Wigram, Major Clive, King’s assistant private secretary 109, 183, 192, 197 Wilkinson, Spencer, military correspondent and writer 15 Wilson, Field Marshall Sir Henry briefs Amery 92 Burma 12

316 criticises Rawlinson 170 introduced to Roberts 17–18 lifelong friend and rival 44 murdered 219–20, 233, 235 quoted 169, 201 Rawlinson correspondence 206, 211, 218, 226 Staff College 16–17 supports Rawlinson for India 206 tea with Roberts 102 Wilson, Trevor. See under ‘Prior, Robin’ Wing, Major-General George, killed at Loos 129

Index Wolseley, Garnet, Field Marshal Lord 16, 34, 40 Wood, Field Marshal Sir Evelyn 28, 34 Wools-Sampson, Colonel Aubrey 62–3, 68, 69, 72 Ypres, town and Cloth Hall 95, 101 1st Battle 97–102 3rd Battle 167–8 Yser River, valley flooded by opening dykes, 96, 97