Talk:Hubert Gough

CE

Blammed a few typos, added a few metric conversions and took out about three dozen duplicated wikilinks. The analytical sections could do with some material from the German side to balance the claims of writers and historians, some of whom rely on polemical secondary and tertiary writing of dubious accuracy.Keith-264 (talk) 11:23, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Article Splitting

If anybody has a constructive suggestion as to where or whether the article should be split, feel free to get a conversation going.

Will write up a proper intro when I get a sec. I agree it needs one (most people only read the intro and maybe scroll down to the analysis) but I'd just never got round to writing one.Paulturtle (talk) 03:28, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Someone else had a stab at an intro and I've worked on it as well. Re splitting I would suggest Early Life to 1914, Early War 1914-15, 1916, 1917, then 1918 & later life in a single article. Analysis will stay in the main article. Open to suggestions though.Paulturtle (talk) 05:04, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Lede image

The lede image (presumably a doctored photo) is good, but the caption needs amendment. It was apparently published in 1917 (when Gough was 47), but it clearly shows him as a much younger man – I would say in his early 20s, i.e. in the early 1890s, which also fits the general style of uniform. It's therefore misleading to style him "Lieutenant General", which he didn't become until 1917. His cap badge is that of the 16th Lancers, but I can't tell (and I'm not sure if it's possible to tell) whether he's a second lieutenant or a lieutenant. Can anyone date it more precisely? GrindtXX (talk) 23:54, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Photo was added by somebody called Farawayman on 10 Aug 2009. No idea where it comes from. He has recently (within the last month or two) become active on wikipedia again for the first time in five years, so he might respond if you ask him nicely! Paulturtle (talk) 01:25, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Who Fired Gough?

I am certain the order came from the top (Lloyd George), based on these statements:

Callwell, C.E., Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, His Life and Times, Vol. II, pg. 86 (April 3rd)

and...

UK National Archives, CAB 23-6, pg. 34 of 457. (Lloyd George talk: 14th to 11th lines from the bottom, April 6th)

Also, note ...

UK National Archives, CAB 23-6, pg. 158 of 457. (Paragraph 8: Gough was put on half pay, May 2nd)

(the above comment was added by editor "Lord_Milner" on 1 December 2021).

Lloyd George had no legal power to fire him (I suppose at a pinch he could have tried to issue an order "in the King's name", like Asquith's famous little note summoning Admiral Fisher back to work from the Charing Cross Hotel). The orders had to come from the Army Council, chaired by the Secretary of State for War. In strict law, Ministers are appointed by the Monarch, their powers defined by Order In Council - the existence of the Cabinet, let alone the modern custom that ministers report to and are hired and fired by the Prime Minister, are matters of convention. I dare say the distinction has been blurred a bit in recent years - in Miller 2 and the recent case about Priti Patel the courts seem to have arrogated to themselves the right to rule on what were once recognized as matters of convention, but we'll argue about that another time.

You may recall that Robertson was given special powers when appointed CIGS at the end of 1915, and at first tried to insist that all Army orders go out over his sole signature - in the interests of constitutional propriety Esher then brokered a compromise that Kitchener (Secretary of State) be co-signatory (a lot of books miss out the Esher fudge). At the start of 1918 then was there an almighty row about the setting up of an Allied Reserve reporting to an Executive War Board, chaired by Foch (still Chief of the French General Staff at the time) with Henry Wilson as the British rep. Haig demanded to know by what legal channel this body could give orders to him (to hand over divisions) and in one meeting with Lloyd George pointedly reminded him that only the Army Council or a Field Marshal senior to him (a category which presumably included His Majesty the King) could give him an order. Robertson insisted that he personally had to be on the EWB for that reason. The government wanted the EWB rep to be Deputy CIGS and a member of the Army Council, solving the problem, and offered him a choice of remaining as CIGS restored to normal powers, or else going to the EWB (either way he would have been sidelined), and in the end Robertson had to walk the plank.

As far as the removal of Gough goes, it was in two stages. He was removed from command of Fifth Army during the crisis period. That was on Haig's orders, via Ruggles-Brise. Haig had been told by Milner (member of the War Cabinet) and Wilson (now CIGS), who were over in France for the Doullens Conference, that the government wanted Gough gone - I dare say it was technically couched as a "request". Haig then put him to work preparing a defensive line from west to east, in case the BEF had to form a perimeter around the Channel Ports. He was then sacked altogether about a week later - Lloyd George went for a car journey with Haig and asked him to sack him. Haig refused unless given a direct order through lawful channels, and Lloyd George arranged said order through Lord Derby who was still Secretary of State for War. It's all in the article. (Haig actually offered to resign, and Lloyd George was minded to accept, but the War Cabinet after discussion kept him on, albeit without any great enthusiasm).

That was why Churchill invented the ministerial post of "Minister of Defence" in WW2 - so that there was no doubt of his power to issue direct orders to the top brass. Regards,Paulturtle (talk) 06:40, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Flicking through the War Cabinet minutes which you posted, I see Lloyd George mentioning the failure to destroy the Somme bridges as his excuse for getting rid of Gough (the Somme flows roughly south-north in front of what had been the French sector in the 1916 battle, before doing a roughly 300 degree turn (around Peronne if memory serves) and flowing roughly SW from that point - the British sector had been north of that part of the Somme in 1916).Paulturtle (talk) 06:57, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Having a flick through this - I wrote all this 7 or 8 years ago and needed to refresh my memory. There had been a good deal of criticism of Gough throughout the autumn of 1917 and into early 1918, partly no doubt because people were looking for a scapegoat after Third Ypres but also because of perfectly genuine concerns that Fifth Army was sloppily run compared to Plumer's Second Army (as some recent historian remarked, the anecdotal evidence is too consistent to be ignored). There was also speculation, to which James Edmonds gave credence in the Official History, that the new CIGS Henry Wilson may have been a prime mover in Gough's removal. He had a long-standing feud with Gough (and his brother Johnnie, now deceased) going all the way back to the Curragh Incident and under whom he had briefly served as a corps commander in 1916. He may also have wanted to create a vacancy to remove Rawlinson, a strong character, from his post as British Permanent Military Representative (PMR) at the Supreme War Council at Versailles. Gough certainly detested Wilson enough to sneer about him in his TV interview in the early 1960s. But my point still stands - Gough's removal as GOC Fifth Army at the end of March 1918 was a matter of Haig bowing to pressure - not an "order" from Lloyd George - and probably not from anyone else, as none of the books make mention of any such "order". In early April he was then sacked altogether (from the job of notionally equivalent seniority which Haig was creating for him) on the orders of Lord Derby (at Lloyd George's behest, of course).Paulturtle (talk) 08:20, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

This is the latest from Printing House Square:

Who fired General Gough?, from a Parliament transcript.

Lord Milner (talk) 01:12, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

As far as Gough’s initial removal as GOC Fifth Army goes, at some point in the winter of 1917-18 Wully Robertson had urged Haig to sack Gough (there was talk of appointing him Governor of Gibraltar if memory serves) then Wilson again asked Haig to sack Gough after Wilson replaced Robertson as CIGS. Wilson also phoned Haig on 23 Mar (2 days after the Michael Offensive began) and urged him to sack Gough. Haig finally bowed to the pressure from London a few days later.

The Parliamentary debate above refers to Gough’s final sacking in early April. In early April there was much mutual recrimination about the near-debacle suffered by Fifth Army, after months of argument in the press between supporters of Lloyd George and of Robertson. The specific debate was on the new military service bill, the second that year, agreed by the War Cabinet on 6 April. The bill had a rough time through Parliament but passed 18 April, raising the upper age limit for conscription to 50 and granting the minister power to cancel occupational exemptions by proclamation - on 20 April occupational exemptions were withdrawn from all young men under 23. The manpower barrel had been well and truly scraped by this stage. Recruitment to the Army increased, but at a level which jeopardised war industries. At this point the war was still expected to carry on at least into 1919 and probably 1920.

The Maurice Debate arose out of statements made by Lloyd George about troop numbers in the course of that series of debates in early April.Paulturtle (talk) 06:49, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

After the retreat of the Fifth Army, on March 23rd didn't General Haig famously say to General Gough, "Well Hubert, you cannot fight if you do not have men."? 🧐 Lord Milner (talk) 02:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, yes, he did. Gough (who was obviously biased because of his disgrace but whose view cannot be discounted altogether, for the simple reason that he was there) later alleged in the 1930s that Haig's massing of reserves in the north in March 1918 was not just to cover the Channel Ports but also in part out of childish sulkiness ("that'll larn 'em" as Gough put it) that the Government had starved him of men - as he saw it. But everything to do with manpower was and remains a source of argument and recrimination. You won't learn anything useful about it from reading books by people like Duff Cooper, John Terraine or Gary Sheffield. RJQ Adams on Conscription and Keith Grieves on the Politics of Manpower remain authoritative, if you want to get your head around some numbers.Paulturtle (talk) 00:53, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Here's some more:

"Memoirs of Lloyd George, Vol V", pgs. 391-392 (Written in 1936, Lloyd George is singing a different tune. He says Haig fired Gough. However, Duff Cooper, below, says this only happened after Haig met with Lloyd George. Politicians always had to be reminded to follow the chain of command, so Haig was likely asked to meet with LG, Lord Derby, and Henry Wilson (Haig's chain of command) to be told to do this).

"Haig, Vol. II", by Duff Cooper: pgs. 267-268 (Duff says the War Cabinet made this decision; However, Lloyd George ran the War Cabinet. We should look for more evidence, but I think the culprit here was the Prime Minister).

Lord Milner (talk) 10:44, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Jolly good. I own hard copies of both of those books, and of the 1953 Robert Blake edition of Haig's Diaries and papers which you posted above. They are not telling us anything which I have not explained in my extensive comments in this discussion, namely:

Gough was already a bit of a scapegoat for Third Ypres (rightly or wrongly), but Haig refused to bow to pressure from London to get rid of him. By March 1918 there was also a new CIGS Henry Wilson, who had little respect for Gough, for reasons going back to the Curragh Incident. Once the storm broke on 21 March 1918, Haig was repeatedly told by Wilson, Milner etc that he MUST sack Gough from command of Fifth Army, until in the end he bowed to pressure and did so round about the time of the Doullens Conference. I know of no evidence that it was formally discussed by the War Cabinet, but it didn't need to be. Haig moved Gough to a new role as GOC "Reserve Army", drawing up a defence line from Amiens to the sea. Then, in early April, Lloyd George told Haig in the course of a long car journey that he wanted Gough gone altogether. Haig refused. Lloyd George then arranged for Lord Derby to issue Haig a direct order to that effect, and Gough was "sent home".

Historians sometimes get the two-stage process muddled up (including Andrew Suttie in Rewriting The First World War, his study of Lloyd George's memoirs which I re-read a few months ago).

I doubt it had anything to do with "politicians not following the chain of command". They followed the chain of command. One could, if one were so minded, speculate at length about what might have been running through Haig's mind, but we don't know, and we have to stick to the evidence and what reputable published historians have written.

You will also recall that the direct order had to come not from the War Cabinet but from Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War and chairman of the Army Council. He was, like Arthur Balfour (Foreign Secretary), an attendee rather than a full member of the War Cabinet. In strict law, ministers are appointed by the Monarch in their own right. By convention, they are bound by the collective decisions of the Cabinet, which in practice (to a certain extent in those days, and to a much greater extent nowadays) means the Prime Minister.

Now, I don't really think there is much more to be said on this topic.Paulturtle (talk) 00:14, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

I trust you are also aware that Gough co-operated with Lloyd George on the writing of the latter's memoirs in the 1930s. That is why he says that Gough was eventually exonerated, and states that Haig was never directly ordered to sack Gough from command of Fifth Army, a statement which is not the whole truth. Paulturtle (talk) 00:58, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

My efforts are in 1918, and I hope this is everything:

Link (1): Edmond's official history of the war (please read from the middle of pg. 118 to the middle of pg. 119)

Link (2): Gough's book (pages 179-180)

Recall the chain of command: Lloyd George/Lord Derby/General Wilson/General Haig/General Gough.

Lord Milner, as a member of the war cabinet, worked between the PM and Derby. Gough could have come up during war cabinet meetings (and not mentioned by Hankey in the cabinet minutes), or in separate conferences with the PM. We have to remember that Gough came under Petain's command (Haig asked him to take over the 5th Army front, and Haig placed the 5th Army under Petain's command), and Gough was replaced by Wilson at the end of the Doullens Conference (Wilson offered Rawlinson to Haig to reconstitute a new Army, the 4th Army, to supersede the 5th Army). Normally, he would have been immediately reassigned by the War Office (this is SOP with all officers), but sometime after Doullens and before April 3rd a proactive decision was made not to do this, instead he was put into retirement (unlike the civilian world, military generals are not fired. They are either reassigned, relieved of command and put into retirement, or disciplined; the 2nd happened with Gough). On the matter of half pay, this happened to General Maurice after he gave away the war plans for 1918 to the press; but he, like Gough, was never formally charged (half-pay may occur to all officers put into retirement before they reach mandatory retirement age, but this deserves a little investigation).

This is getting very tedious now. Your enthusiasm for the subject is commendable, but the matter is already fully discussed in the article, and has been explained to you several times on this page. Wilson wasn't quite "in the chain of command" in the sense that you seem to imagine (not the way Robertson had been, under his special powers), and the fact that Gough was temporarily under French command for reasons of geographic convenience is neither here nor there.

As far as the principal matter in hand goes, you state that "Gough was replaced by Wilson at the end of the Doullens Conference ... normally, he would have been immediately reassigned by the War Office ... but sometime after Doullens and before April 3rd a proactive decision was made not to do this". WRONG. Gough was sacked by Haig from command of Fifth Army round about the end of the Doullens Conference, after repeated pressure from Wilson and Milner. He was moved by Haig to a new Army command drawing up east-west defences ("in charge of the digging" as Lloyd George sarcastically wrote in his memoirs). Lloyd George then demanded that he be sacked altogether, and when Haig refused, Lloyd George had Lord Derby give Haig a direct order to that effect, and he was "sent home".

Now please stop this.Paulturtle (talk) 19:49, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Nobody disputes that Gough was finally “sent home” in early April after Derby issued Haig an order to that effect.

The only issue under dispute is whether Haig had previously been ordered to remove Gough as GOC Fifth Army on or around the time of the Doullens Conference. The relevant pages of Edmonds Official History are not the ones you’ve posted but rather pp27-8, earlier. Edmonds discusses how Gough was sacked (on Haig’s orders, brought to him by Maj-Gen Ruggles-Brise) between 5-6pm on 26 March. Edmonds says in a footnote that Wilson had told the Deputy CIGS and other officers that orders were being issued to Haig to remove Gough from command of Fifth Army. Edmonds also says that the proposal to remove Gough came from Henry Wilson who wanted to remove Rawlinson from Versailles, although he mentions that Derby had written to Haig 5 March 1918 to say that Lloyd George had said to Derby that he wanted Gough gone and that he believed Lloyd George had spoken to Haig about it as well.

All I will say to that is that (a) demands from London for Gough’s removal had been coming for months (discussed above), (b) Gough had become a bit of a Jonah and there were lots of murmurings about him from officers in France (historians tend to concur that he had been over-promoted earlier, and that Fifth Army was sloppily run, but that he was sacked unfairly in March 1918 just as he had grown into the job) and (c) nobody else says that Wilson specifically ordered Haig to sack Gough.

In his 1930s official biog of Haig (P266-7) Duff Cooper says: Haig had “thought it wise” to remove Gough from command of Fifth Army, not least as Foch had also been rude to him (as you rightly say, Gough was under French command by this stage, and Foch, newly appointed generalissimo, had turned up at Gough’s HQ and started ordering him around – some say it was perfectly normally for French senior generals to order junior generals in a manner which seemed rude to the British, eg. when Haig was briefly under Nivelle’s command in early 1917, and in the full expectation that the junior would argue and answer back in suitably Gallic fashion, but that’s by-the-by. Again, it’s all in the article).

In his memoirs (P392-3) Lloyd George says no order was given to remove Gough as GOC Fifth Army, but that Haig did it “entirely on own initiative”. He makes clear in the footnote that he is specifically contradicting Edmonds. I don’t see any reason to disbelieve him, even though he is obviously not telling the whole truth.

Frankly, it’s all a bit of a moot point. After months of nagging from London, Haig finally bowed to pressure from Wilson and Milner to sack Gough as GOC Fifth Army on 26 March, but other than an unsubstantiated assertion in Edmonds there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he was given a direct order to that effect. Maybe Wilson drew up such an order but in the event didn’t need to use it, or maybe they hadn’t got round to drawing one up yet. Who knows. I’m sure if Haig had been ordered to sack Gough from command of Fifth Army he would have mentioned it in his diary, which was always intended for the public record, and made sure that the world and his dog knew about it.

Gough’s memoirs (Soldiering On, 1954) are notoriously unreliable. I said above that I didn’t want to get into a discussion on manpower issues, not least because it will attract the attention of know-a-littles who get all pissy when you tell them that it’s not as simple as Gary Sheffield would have his readers believe. However, since you’ve posted the link, I have to point out that he repeats the canard that there wouldn’t have been a problem if that nasty Lloyd George hadn’t been hoarding 300,000 men in the UK. This was widely asserted by the generals and their political/press allies and is widely believed to this day (and to be fair Lloyd George sometimes said silly things to that effect). It’s complete crap, to use a technical term. There were about 1.5m soldiers in the UK, of whom a few hundred thousand were fit for the Western Front (the rest were too old/too young/too sick/unfit/wounded etc etc). The government had repeatedly urged the Army to “comb out” more men from their reserves at home, and it was the government which, in late March 1918, finally banged brass-capped heads together and insisted that they do so. (The BEF was just shy of 2m men, of whom half were combatants and fewer still were infantry – so losing a few hundred thousand men at Passchendaele was a very big deal indeed). All of this was at a time when the British manpower barrel had finally been scraped (see my comments about the spring 1918 Manpower Bill No 2, above), the war was expected to go on until 1920, the US Army was having to be rushed to France much earlier than planned, and plans to cut the BEF to less than half of its present size had to be postponed indefinitely in the full knowledge that this meant cutting into war production/agriculture/shipping etc. See the books on manpower by RJQ Adams and Keith Grieves which I mentioned above, or Vol 4 of Grigg on Lloyd George, or Cassar “Lloyd George At War”, or David Woodward “Lloyd George and the Generals” (or “Trial By Friendship”, his excellent book on Anglo-American relations in WW1), or Vol3 of David French’s magnificent trilogy on British strategy in WW1, or Alison Hine’s work on BEF Manpower (“Refilling Haig’s Armies”). I mention this at length to illustrate (a) how contentious and wrapped up in mutual recrimination everything to do with Passchendaele and the near-debacle of March 1918 was and (b) why you have to be careful with old books which you find scanned online.

But other than that, my points still stand. The matter is already fully covered in the article, I've spent a lot of time reading the extracts which you've posted, and writing lengthy comments for the benefit of others who stumble upon this discussion. The matter has been discussed exhaustively on this page. Enough.Paulturtle (talk) 03:53, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

For the sake of completeness of the discussion, pp266-7 of John Spencer "Wilson's War" mentions that Wilson telephoned Herbert Lawrence, BEF Chief of Staff, on 23 March (2 days into the "Michael" Offensive but 3 days before Doullens) and, according to Wilson's diary pointedly asked him whether Haig was happy with Gough's performance as GOC Fifth Army. Lawrence curtly replied that he was. It was no secret that Wilson and Gough were long-standing bitter rivals, and Gough had been subject to much criticism lately. But the point still stands that there is no evidence that Haig was ordered to remove Gough as GOC Fifth Army. On 3 April Wilson and Milner discussed Gough prior to the Beauvais Conference and agreed with one another that he needed to be "sent home" from his new job preparing the perimeter around the Channel Ports, and Wilson later helped to draft the direct order which Derby sent Haig to sack Gough.Paulturtle (talk) 05:13, 18 May 2024 (UTC)