The Last Veteran

by Peter Parker

  Similarly, it could be said that, as someone who had joined up at the age of nineteen in December 1914, served as a subaltern with the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) on the Western Front, and been gassed at Mametz Wood in 1916, Captain B.H. Liddell Hart was amply qualified to write a book entitled The Real War. After his war service Liddell Hart embarked on a career in journalism and produced several volumes of military history, so his voice also had the authority of a seasoned professional historian. In his preface, he writes:

  Some may say the war depicted here is not ‘the real war’ – that is to be discovered in the torn bodies and minds of individuals. It is far from my purpose to ignore or deny this aspect of the truth. But for anyone who seeks, as I seek here, to view the war as an episode in human history, it is a secondary aspect. Because the war affected individual lives so greatly, because these individuals were numbered by millions, because the roots of their fate lay so deep in the past, it is all the more necessary to see the war in perspective, and to disentangle its main threads from the accidents of human misery.

  The perspective, however, was clearly coloured by Liddell Hart’s own experiences: he may have been a professional historian, but he was also a veteran of the conflict he was writing about.

  He admits that his book (which in 1934 he revised, expanded and retitled less combatively History of the First World War) is not perfect, but suggests it

  may at least claim one merit, and one contrast to most war ‘histories’. I have as little desire to hide its imperfections as to hide the imperfections of any who are portrayed in its pages. Hence in writing it my pursuit of the truth has not been interrupted by recourse to the pot of hypocritical varnish that is miscalled ‘good taste’. In my judgement of values it is more important to provide material for a true verdict than to gloss over disturbing facts so that individual reputations may be preserved at the price of another holocaust of young lives. Taking a long view of history, I cannot regard the repute of a few embodied handfuls of dust as worth more than the fate of a nation and a generation.

  Reading this, it is impossible to forget that Liddell Hart had fought on the first day of the Somme, by the end of which he was one of only three second lieutenants in the 9th KOYLI surviving of the eight who had been present when the attack started. Though he scrupulously avoids bringing his own experiences explicitly into his history, this is clearly an account of the Western Front by someone who had served there and witnessed at first hand the results on the ground of decisions made at GHQ.

  In an early chapter, he outlines the individual qualities of the generals, noting that ‘the process of selection had not succeeded in bringing to the fore the officers best fitted for leadership’. He quotes Sir John French’s observation in 1912 that Haig and General Sir John Grierson (‘a man of full figure and sedentary habits’ who perhaps fortunately dropped dead on his way to the front) would ‘always shine more and show to greater advantage as superior staff officers than as commanders’. Liddell Hart adds that although, when serving in the South African War, Haig’s ‘thoroughness and methodicity had made him an ideal staff officer to French’, his appointment to command a mobile column caused Colonel Woolls-Sampson, ‘an incomparable Intelligence officer and fighter scout’, to remark: ‘He’s quite all right, but he’s too ____ cautious: he will be so fixed on not giving the Boers a chance, he’ll never give himself one.’ Liddell Hart notes that according to the Official History of the 1914–18 war, ‘Haig’s excessive caution on reaching the Aisne [in September 1914] allowed the day of opportunity to slip away, and the enemy to establish their four-years’ tenure of the position beyond’, a judgement he repeats and enlarges upon when he comes to writing about that episode in the main narrative.

  Liddell Hart does at least acknowledge that ‘the ill-fated Loos-offensive [in September 1915] was undertaken directly against the opinion of Haig, the man who, as commander of the First Army, had to carry it out’, but this allows him to criticise the British and French commanders-in-chief, Sir John French and General Joffre. He quotes Lord Kitchener, who as Britain’s Secretary of State for War had political responsibility for the overall conduct of the war, complaining that these two men ‘told me in November [1914] they were going to push the Germans back over the frontier; they gave me the same assurances in December, March, and May. What have they done? The attacks are very costly and end in nothing.’ It was this impatience which was partly responsible for the attack at Loos being launched with less than a quarter of the troops French and Haig deemed necessary to make it a success. Gradually, a picture emerges from Liddell Hart’s account, a picture that would become the prevailing view of the war: political and military misjudgements led to the needless slaughter of thousands upon thousands of soldiers. Indeed, by the end of the battle in mid-October British casualties amounted to 60,392 compared with German losses of fewer than 20,000. Even so, Liddell Hart writes, Haig (whose concern about inadequate troops had evidently waned) ‘was working up a new general attack for November 7th, an operation whose inevitable cost does not seem to have any adequate excuse. Happily, Generals Winter and Weather intervened.’ This little flourish is characteristic of Liddell Hart’s style, which manages to remain lively and readable without ever losing an authority he reinforces by frequently quoting from the compendious Official History of the war. Even this work, more properly The History of the Great War Based on Historical Documents, concluded that the Battle of Loos ‘had not improved the general situation in any way and had brought nothing but useless slaughter of infantry’, but Liddell Hart was more inclined to apportion blame, believing that ‘the historian’s task is to distil experience as a medicinal warning to future generations’. And it was his history of the war, rather than the official one running to a daunting twenty-eight volumes, that the general public would read. The book retained its popularity for decades and was still being republished in the 1990s.

  Liddell Hart’s account of the Battle of the Somme is, as one would expect, equally critical of the High Command, while that of Passchendaele (‘so fruitless in its result, so depressing in its direction [that it has become] a synonym for military failure – a name black-bordered in the records of the British Army’) continues the criticism of Haig’s ‘lofty optimism’ and records the many deaths that were the result. Ninety years later, a veteran of that battle, Harry Patch, was still alive to remember those deaths. It was at the Battle of Passchendaele that he first saw action, saw a young man torn open by shrapnel begging to be put out of his misery, and subsequently lost three of his closest friends. These were experiences from which he said he never really recovered. ‘Some nights I dream of that first battle,’ he said. ‘I can’t forget it.’

  Liddell Hart’s reservations about the competence of Haig (who had died in 1928) were as nothing to those of Lloyd George

  in his War Memoirs. Lloyd George had replaced Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916, having already taken an active part in the conduct of the war as successively Chancellor, a spectacularly effective Minister of Munitions, and Secretary of State for War. He was appointed to this last post in July 1916 as the Battle of the Somme was taking place in France. Although he believed in ‘total war’, he had already spoken out in January 1915 against the strategy of attrition. His relations with the generals, never cordial, grew worse once he was Prime Minister – to the point that, since members of the High Command were virtually unsackable, he used the press to undermine their position. He failed, however, to prevent Haig from mounting a new offensive at Passchendaele in the conspicuously wet summer of 1917, and the massive loss of life that resulted preyed on his conscience thereafter, further alienating him from the High Command. He was nevertheless widely seen as ‘the man who won the war’, and his re-election in December 1918 had in part been a reflection of this belief. After a bruising few years, he left office in October 1922, remaining an influential political figure thereafter.

  Like most political autobiographies, Lloyd George’s War
Memoirs were in part an exercise in vindication and self-exculpation. The author had no qualms whatsoever in criticising the military leaders with whom he had so often disagreed while in office. In part the memoirs read like an account by the man who won the war of the stubbornness and ineptitude of those who very nearly lost it. Anyone who might innocently imagine the book would provide a first-hand but objective account of the war need only look up the very long entry under ‘Haig, Field-Marshal Earl’ in the index that forms part of Volume VI, as someone evidently did in a copy at the London Library, pencil in hand. Running to over four pages in double columns, entries begin reasonably neutrally though perhaps pointedly with ‘his reputation founded on cavalry exploits’ and conclude on the qualified commendation of ‘no conspicuous officer better qualified for highest command than’. In between these two entries, however, is a comprehensive catalogue of Haig’s professional and personal failings, which the reader at the London Library has helpfully underlined: ‘his refusal to face unpleasant facts’, ‘his limited vision’, ‘Germans accustomed to his heavy-footed movements’, ‘his stubborn mind transfixed on Somme’, ‘his misconceptions concerning morale of German army’, ‘obsessed with Passchendaele and optimistic as to military outlook’, ‘none of his essential conditions for success prevail at Passchendaele’, ‘misrepresents French attitude’, ‘his plans strongly condemned by Foch’, ‘misleads Cabinet about Italian Front’, ‘prefers to gamble his hopes on men’s lives than to admit an error’, ‘completely ignorant of state of ground at Passchendaele’, ‘fails to appreciate the value of tanks’, ‘not anxious for success on Italian Front’, ‘a mere name to men in the trenches’, ‘narrowness of his outlook’, ‘incapable of changing his plans’, ‘his judgement on general situation warped by his immediate interests’, ‘his fanciful estimates of man-power’, ‘jealous of Foch’, ‘does not expect big German attack in 1918’, ‘distributes his reserves very unwisely’, ‘his conduct towards Fifth Army not strictly honourable’, ‘his unwise staff appointments’, ‘his defeatist memorandum of 25/3/18’, ‘unfairly removes Gough from command of Fifth Army’, ‘his complaints as to lack of men unjustified’, ‘does not envisage Americans being of use in 1918’, ‘stubbornness’, ‘unreliability of his judgements’, ‘launches successful attack of 8/8/18 […] but fails to follow it up’, ‘his censorious criticism of his associates’, ‘his attempt to shirk blame for March, 1918, defeat’, ‘only took part in one battle during War’… and so on. It is something of a surprise to find the entry ‘Lloyd George has no personal quarrel with’, but this is wittily placed since the entries immediately following it read: ‘unequal to his task’, ‘industrious but uninspired’, ‘did not inspire his men’, ‘entirely dependent on others for essential information’, ‘the two documents that prove his incapacity’, ‘unselfish but self-centred’, ‘his inability to judge men’, ‘liked his associates to be silent and gentlemanly’, ‘his contempt for Foch’, ‘his intrigues against Lord French and Kitchener’, ‘his failure at Loos’, ‘his ingenuity in shifting blame to other shoulders than his own’, ‘his shabby treatment of Gough’, ‘his conspiracy to destroy General Reserve’.

  Some commentators thought it in poor taste to attack Haig, who was no longer in a position to answer back, but by a stroke of good fortune Lloyd George was still at work on the final two volumes of his War Memoirs when extracts from Haig’s diaries were published, edited by Duff Cooper. This allowed him to add a late chapter, ‘Lord Haig’s Diaries and After’. Of Haig’s diaries he writes: ‘The publication of these intimate reflections – or rather aspersions – by Lord Haig on the men, some now living, some dead, with whom he was associated in the service of his country during the War, must silence the reproof directed against my Memoirs on the absurd ground that they occasionally express adverse opinions on the strategy of Generals who have now passed away.’ Delighted to have the opportunity of returning to the attack, Lloyd George savages Haig’s prose as well as his conduct: ‘Considering that the Diaries contained a daily record of momentous events in which Lord Haig took a leading part and of his impressions and reflections upon them in the quiet of his study at dusk, the extracts are not only meagre but remarkably sterile and undistinguished. If this represents the best which Mr Duff Cooper could find, what must be the quality of the rest?’ Haig’s diaries, he says, are the result of ‘a sustained egoism which is almost a disease’, before slyly adding: ‘I certainly had no time or inclination amidst the labour and anxiety of the War for sitting down every evening to write for the enlightenment of posterity the tale of my accomplishments during the day. It could not have been of any assistance to me or anyone else in the discharge of our onerous duties.’ He is at pains to point out (not altogether truthfully) that:

  During the critical days of the War, when it was important not to undermine public confidence in the Commander-in-Chief of our own Army, I made no public attack on his personal fitness for so immense a responsibility […] but I never concealed from myself or my colleagues that I thought Sir Douglas Haig was intellectually and temperamentally unequal to the command of an Army of millions fighting battles on fields which were invisible to any Commander […] He had long training on lines which were irrelevant to the experiences and exigencies of this War. That was not his fault. There never had been such a war, and the narrow and rigid system which he had learnt and taught made it difficult for so unsupple a mind to adapt himself readily to any other ideas.

  Far more than Churchill, Lloyd George had the trick of appearing to make every excuse for Haig as a man in an impossible position before undercutting any faint praise with a deadly rider. This makes his War Memoirs very entertaining, and certainly a far livelier read than poor old Haig’s pompous and ponderous diaries. This quickness and imagination that Haig so signally lacked are apparent on virtually every page of Lloyd George’s book, and it is this which makes it persuasive even though highly partisan and self-serving. Within a year of the publication of the final volume, the War Memoirs had sold over 54,000 copies. Along with Churchill’s and Liddell Hart’s books, they did enormous damage to Haig’s reputation in particular, and fixed in people’s minds the inadequacies of the High Command and the huge losses that resulted. The fact that two of these authors had served in the government during the war, one of them as Prime Minister, while the other was a respected historian who had seen active service on the Western Front, lent these books considerable authority.

  These three accounts of the war, and the novels and memoirs already mentioned, were merely the most famous of the period, and represent a very small portion of the torrent pouring from the presses. Some of these novels and memoirs, mostly forgotten or little read now, were quite as graphic and savage as anything produced by Graves, Sassoon or Aldington. Indeed, so many ‘War Books’ had appeared by 1930 that the military historian Cyril Falls was able to compile a descriptive bibliography, in which nearly two hundred of the 690 titles he included were either memoirs or novels. As Falls acknowledged in the book’s preface, almost as much ink had been spilled since the war as blood had been spilled during it. Of the 188 volumes of ‘reminiscence’ he listed alphabetically from J. Johnston Abraham’s My Balkan Log (1921) to Francis Brett Young’s Marching on Tanga (1917), he observed:

  These books are of the most diverse kinds. Some are bald records, a few works of genius. Some are inspired by the historical spirit, some by the desire to tell a good story. Some by the spirit of propaganda, to prove that their side was the right and the other wrong, or – but these, as might be expected, are English only – that their side was wrong and the other side right, more often still to make an end of war. On the whole it may be said that as time goes on they become more and more critical of their own country’s political and military leadership, more and more bitter in tone, more and more filled with loathing of war.

  Falls found war novels rather more consistent: ‘One may say that to an overwhelming extent “War fiction” is concerned with the junior officer or man
in the ranks, and especially the infantryman, the worst sufferer. And in the case of five books out of six it is not only bitterly opposed to war but marked by certain characteristics which are worth examination.’ These characteristics are remarkably similar to those that continue to colour the general public’s view of the war, and Falls was one of the very earliest military historians to formulate what later scholars would call the ‘myth of the First World War’ and challenge it. What is particularly interesting about this is that, unlike many of his successors, Falls had actually fought in the war. Having joined the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers in 1914 and spent much of the war on the Western Front (he was twice mentioned in dispatches and twice nominated for the Croix de Guerre), Falls was well aware of what service in the front line had been like:

  The general conditions of the War, especially on the Western Front, were horrible, and the infantryman had a worse time of it than anyone who did not serve in the ranks or as a junior officer can realise […] while the private was setting forth on a working-party, [the general behind the lines] might sympathise with him but he was so far off that he might have been in England. It may also be said that there is ample room for criticism regarding the manner in which many British offensives were conducted. The War was a ghastly experience, and everyone should do all that in him lies to ensure that it is not repeated.