: Walter Reid
: Architect of Victory Douglas Haig
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: 9780857901248
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Douglas Haig's popular image as an unimaginative butcher is unenviable and unmerited. In fact, he masterminded a British-led victory over a continental opponent on a scale that has never been matched before or since. Contrary to myth, Haig was not a cavalry-obsessed, blinkered conservative, as satirised in Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth. Fascinated by technology, he pressed for the use of tanks, enthusiastically embraced air power, and encouraged the use of new techniques involving artillery and machine-guns. Above all, he presided over a change in infantry tactics from almost total reliance on the rifle towards all-arms, multi-weapons techniques that formed the basis of British army tactics until the 1970s. Prior re-evaluations of Haig's achievements have largely been limited to monographs and specialist writings. Walter Reid has written the first biography of Haig that takes into account modern military scholarship, giving a more rounded picture of the private man than has previously been available. What emerges is a picture of a comprehensible human being, not necessarily particularly likeable, but honourably ambitious, able and intelligent, and the man more than any other responsible for delivering victory in 1918.

Walter Reid studied at the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh and is the author of a number of acclaimed biographies and books of military and political history. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

1


BUTCHER AND BUNGLER OR ARCHITECT OF VICTORY?


Douglas Haig died on 29 January 1928. In the years since the end of the Great War, almost ten years earlier, he had certainly not been at the centre of the national stage. On the other hand, his activities, particularly his work for the British Legion, continued to attract regular mention in the press. He was only sixty-six, and not known to be in ill health. His death was accordingly unexpected as well as sudden. It occurred late on a Sunday evening, and the news did not become generally known until the Tuesday morning: then for several days the newspapers were filled with memoirs and tributes. Even if Haig was never loved by the nation, like a Nelson, he was certainly respected, both by the millions of soldiers of whom very few indeed would ever have seen him and also by the great mass of the population, for whom he was the man who had brought victory to Britain and returned the world to peace. There was a profound sense of loss.1

Tributes poured in from around the world, from royalty, politicians and generals. From South Africa, Field-Marshal Smuts said: ‘All honour to him. He left a record of qualities and work of which the British people may justly be proud.’ When tributes came to be paid in Parliament, speakers sought to identify what for them had been special about Haig. In the House of Lords, the Marquis of Salisbury said:

In one respect the position of Lord Haig was different from and more difficult than that of any other Commander because of the vastness of the forces which it was his duty to control. This not only made the complexity of operations much greater, but it necessarily prevented him from having that personal contact with the soldiers in the field upon which great Commanders in the past have so much relied to inspire their armies to achieve their purpose.2

Lord Beauchamp said:

He was a man of a rare and single-minded devotion to duty – during these last few years we had, I think, specially learned to admire the reticence he has shown with regard to the great operations in which he was engaged. That is an example of dignity which has commended itself, I am sure, to every member of your Lordships’ House.3

In the Commons, Major-General Sir Robert Hutchison said:

I loved Lord Haig. I have known Lord Haig all my life . . . I had the privilege of serving in two campaigns with him – in South Africa and in the Great War – and in the Great War for a time I was one of his Staff Officers. The memory of Haig will always remain with me, sweet, clean and just what I would like it to be.4

Brigadier-General Charteris, perhaps the closest of all his Staff Officers, quoted the verse that Kipling had written of Lord Roberts:

Clean, simple, valiant, well-beloved,

Flawless in faith and fame,

Whom neither ease nor honours moved

One hair’s-breadth from his aim.5

He lay in state in St Columba’s Church, Pont Street, London, for two days, while a constant stream of mourners, some 25,000 in all, passed by for more than twelve hours each day. Lady Haig came to the church twice. On the first occasion she left two wreaths of Flanders poppies on the coffin. Among those who came to pay their tributes were many sightless and handicapped ex-servicemen, who were helped through the crowds. A Scotsman laid a sprig of heather at the foot of the coffin.

The family had been offered a burial in St Paul’s, the usual dignity for someone in Haig’s position, but he h