Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier

John Terraine

Published by Cassell, London, 2005 (First published by Hutchinson, 1963)

508 pages, RRP $35.00

Field Marshal Earl Haig has not had a good press since at least 1918.  Generations of historians, academic and popular, have criticised his command of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, and he has also been the butt of one-liners such as that (possibly apocryphal) attributed to a German general of the First World War, that the British soldiers were ‘lions led by donkeys’.

For more than a quarter of a century, from about 1960 into the 1980s, John Terraine wrote extensively on the First World War.  From the reviewer’s recollection of various works by Terraine that he has read, much of this work attempted directly or indirectly to rehabilitate Haig in the eyes of the world (or at least the historians).  This weighty volume, first published in 1963 and recently reprinted under the Cassell Military Paperbacks mark, was an early part of this effort.

Like all of Terraine’s work it is a model of clear writing, carefully marshalled evidence, and logical thought.  It is impossible to read this book without, in the words of Cromwell, at least considering ‘the possibility that [the others] may be wrong’.  He follows Haig’s career from his time as a civilian student at Oxford, an unusual course of entry to the Army in those days, through his early regimental service (described as being ‘without particular distinction’), to his departure from regimental service ten years later.  Terraine notes that at that point, Haig left ‘the normal avenue of progess up the army hierarchy … the ladder of command’.

Terraine discusses Haig’s military maturation, and particularly his original thinking in South Africa in relation to the capabilities of the cavalry, infantry and artillery (but his criticism of the lance did not seem to carry through to later years).  Haig was an early supporter of the Territorial Force of citizen soldiers, developed under Haldane as Secretary of State for War.  This may have assisted him when he came to command the great citizen armies of the War period.

In his discussion of Haig’s service between 1914 and 1918, Terraine shows that he did develop his thinking as the war progressed.  In this he was not alone, but it must also be said that the field was not crowded.  Where Terraine is perhaps too charitable is in not commenting on the slowness of this development.  While Plumer, for example, seemed to come to grips with the particular problems of fighting in the Ypres area relatively quickly, Haig (and Gough) seemed to take an inordinate time to realise that their approach on the Somme battlefield was not productive.  When they turned their attention to Ypres late in 1917, they then seemed to prefer to learn from their own experience rather than profit from Plumer’s.

Another problem covered by Terraine, but perhaps not given the attention it deserves, was the often poor support provided by his staff.  In particular, his chief of staff, Sir Launcelot Kiggell, and his intelligence officer, Charteris, were both retained long beyond the time when their dismissal might have seemed warranted.  Charteris’ persistent optimism about the ‘collapsing’ state of the German Army in the face of clear battlefield evidence to the contrary is an object lesson for all intelligence officers on the deleterious effects of wishful thinking.

Terraine shows that by 1918, Haig, though still keeping a soft spot in his heart for the long wished-for cavalry breakthrough, understood the elements of open warfare with infantry, supported by artillery and the rudimentary and mechanically unreliable tanks of the era.  Finally, and rarely among his colleagues and the politicians of the era, he recognised the failing state of the German Army (forecast regularly over the previous two years, but not actually realised until mid-1918, after the Germans had suffered their own experience of attacking in the March-April offensives).  This was the basis of his concentration on achieving victory in 1918 with what he had, rather than wait for the promised tank fleets of 1919.

Terraine gives Haig the credit that is due to him as the successful commander of the largest British force ever deployed in one theatre, but does not, at least in the opinion of this reviewer, provide a balanced assessment of Haig.  The best assessment of Haig (and the alternatives to him) may have been given by Winston Churchill, quoted on page xii:

He might be, he surely was, unequal to the prodigious scale of events; but no one else was discerned as his equal or better.

Lloyd George seemed to recognize this reality, retaining Haig in command even though he lacked full confidence in him.

For those with a deep interest in the First World War, this is a useful book.  As well, it traces as background the development of the British Army from a colonial security force in the 1880s to the modern, war-winning force of 1918.  It contains lessons for those who wish to change an army, but its principal objective, to rehabilitate Haig’s reputation, is not achieved.

JOHN DONOVAN