Maybe they should have been.ġ914 saw the deaths in action of four British generals, the trend continuing into 1915. The remaining two thirds are those generals who were wounded during the war some lightly, some seriously, some to return to command and others not, but surviving, as opposed to being killed, sheer luck in the mayhem of war, surely should not preclude these men from this series, nor does it suggest in any way that their bravery was anything but equal to those who died. And every single one of them died before 11th November 1918. They died because they were close enough to the front lines to be obliterated by a German shell or picked off by the infamous sniper’s bullet. Because, of course,…Īround one third of the men you are going to meet over the next six posts were either killed in action, or died of wounds received in action they did not die of sickness, or disease, or old age, or for any reason other than enemy action. The posts are intended, I hope, to serve as a refutation of the whole ‘Château General’ concept on behalf of a group of these generals who were unable to answer back when it came to the post-war recriminations and character assassinations. Luckily for all of us, far more qualified people than yours truly have aired their opinions over the ensuing years on the competence or otherwise of British Great War generals, including some of you lot, so it isn’t their quality that we shall primarily be looking at during this series of posts, although doubtless we shall touch on it at times. Thus wrote John Terraine in his 1980 book ‘The Smoke and the Fire’, and yet here we are nearly forty years later, and still the debate rages. That is the only proper, the only sensible starting point for the examination of their quality.” Their Army and their country were on the winning side. The British Generals had done their duty. No British Government was forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty. No German Army of Occupation was stationed on the Thames, the Humber or the Tees. It was not a British delegation that crossed the lines with a white flag in November 1918. “It is a simple historical fact that the British Generals of the First World War, whatever their faults, did not fail in their duty.
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