HAIG AND MONTGOMERY - A COMPARISON - PART ONE
HAIG AND MONTGOMERY – A COMPARISON
Despite the title of this article, in comparing Haig with Montgomery we are not comparing like with like. Haig as commander in chief of the British Expeditionary Force was not only responsible for Britain’s entire military effort on the main theatre of the First World War – the Western Front – but also responsible for dealing with the British and Dominion governments, liaising with French, Belgian and American allies, and with the French and Belgian governments in regard to one and a half million men of the British Empire stationed on their territory. Montgomery, on the other hand, always had a supreme commander as his superior, able to deal with governments and other outside agencies and institutions and cope with much of the administration, allowing Montgomery to devote his sole attention to fighting the war. Alexander, Eisenhower and for a while Macmillan were able to deflect from Montgomery many of the burdens that had to be borne by Haig. Today no military commander would be required to look both upwards and downwards, and it would be more accurate to compare Haig with Marlborough or Wellington, both of whom, like him, had military as well as political responsibilities.
In terms of responsibilities and breadth of command too, there is wide discrepancy. On the Western Front by 1917 Haig commanded the five armies of the BEF, or sixty-one infantry and three cavalry divisions, around one and three quarters million men, whereas Montgomery commanded one army (8th) of twelve divisions in North Africa and then in Northwest Europe 21 Army Group of two armies (2nd British and 1st Canadian) with a maximum of twenty-five divisions or around 300,000 men. Despite these very different levels of command, as the best known soldiers of their respective wars a comparison is of interest, particularly when the one is held in contempt by much of the population while the other is lauded.
Apart perhaps from Oliver Cromwell, no figure in British Military History is the subject of such violently opposing views as Douglas Haig. But while Cromwell was loathed or loved in his lifetime, the hatred of Haig began after his death; and while eighty years after Cromwell’s death he had been largely forgotten, Haig’s name even today arouses powerful emotions. In 1998 the Daily Express mounted a campaign to remove Haig’s statue from Whitehall, on the grounds that he was an incompetent butcher of a million British soldiers. That we actually lost less than three quarters of a million and that they were not all in the army, and were not all lost on the Western Front, and that Haig was not in command there for the first year of the war, and that it was actually the Germans who killed all those British soldiers and sailors seems to have passed the tabloid journals by. Nevertheless the depth of feeling against Haig is enormous and has somehow come to be linked with the decision by politicians in 2006 to pardon those executed for military offences between 1914 and 1918. While professional historical opinion has at least partly changed, largely thanks to biographers such as Gary Sheffield, John Bourne, Gary Meade and Walter Reid, praise of Haig or defence of his command can still draw opposition, much of it vehement.
Montgomery, on the other hand, along with Churchill, is seen as the man who won the Second World War, while men like Alexander and Slim are largely forgotten. Partly this is because while Alamein in 1942 was only a partial victory, and far from decisive, it was the only British victory for a very long time, the British army having been humiliatingly defeated in France in 1940, in Norway, in Greece and in Crete. Alamein at least gave some room for hope that things were getting better, and Montgomery, as the commander Eighth Army got the credit, despite the plan being Auchinleck’s. Montgomery’s Eighth Army consisted of twelve divisions, five of them Empire divisions, taking on eleven under strength German and Italian divisions that were lacking in air power and had been written off by Berlin. There was much talk of the ‘end of the beginning’ and of Alamein being the turning point of the war, forgetting, or choosing to ignore, that at the same time on the Russian front twenty-one German and allied divisions were fighting sixty Russian divisions at Stalingrad – that was the real turning point. The British, having created a hero in the shape of Montgomery, were stuck with him, and by his clever management of public relations and the surrounding of himself with sycophants, he convinced a gullible public, desperate for any good news, that he was the infallible battle winner.
Both men attended the Royal Military College Sandhurst, Haig at the age of twenty-two having attended Oxford university first, and Montgomery at nineteen. At the end of their course Haig passed out top of the order of merit being awarded the equivalent of today’s sword of honour, and was commissioned into his first choice of regiment, the Seventh Hussars. Montgomery was demoted from Cadet Corporal and backtermed for bullying. His lifelong antipathy for the Indian Army stemmed from his failing to pass out high enough to get into it, being commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Haig as a junior officer saw active service in the Sudan and South Africa, and at the battle of Atbara in 1898 had he not been naturally somewhat reserved and had the soldier whose life he saved been British rather than Egyptian, he would probably have been awarded the Victoria Cross. As it was his brother officers thought he should have been recognised and commissioned a painting of the action. Montgomery saw action initially as a lieutenant platoon commander in his regiment’s first battalion on the Western Front. In the retreat from Mons he was fortunate in that his company became cut off from the rest of the battalion, so that he was untainted by the attempt to surrender Saint Quentin by his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Elkington, and the commanding office of the second battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, Lieutenant Colonel Mainwaring . He was wounded at Metern in the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914 and awarded the Distinguished Service Order, then a gallantry decoration for junior officers, replaced by the Military Cross in 1915 when the DSO became an award for leadership by, usually, lieutenant colonels and above. He spent the rest of the war on the staff, first in a New Army brigade, then in 33 Division, followed by 9 Corps and finally as chief of staff and an acting lieutenant colonel in 47 Division. Although fully recovered from his wounds he seems to have made no effort to return to regimental duty. He was well reported on as a staff officer, and does not appear to have had any personal contact with Haig.
Both attended the Staff College at Camberley, and we should here destroy the accusation that Haig only got there by undue influence exerted by his connections. One account even claimed that he got in due to his wife being a lady in waiting to the Queen. It is certainly true that Doris was indeed a maid of honour to Queen Alexandra and lady in waiting to Queen Mary, but Haig did not meet her until 1905, nine years after he went to Staff College! Admission to the Staff College then was by written examination in military history, tactics, administration, military law, mathematics and current affairs. Those who passed all papers with an overall mark of fifty percent were awarded what was known as a competitive vacancy. The other vacancies were filled by selection from those who had passed, but had not managed the fifty percent, or who had achieved that mark overall but had not passed all the papers. Haig got an overall fifty percent, but he ploughed the mathematics paper, and so was only eligible for a vacancy by selection, which he got. As selection depended upon annual confidential reports, which in Haig’s case consistently rated him highly, and on accomplishments (in Haig’s case the translation of French and cavalry manuals and the almost single handed writing of the British army’s cavalry manual), his vacancy was obtained perfectly properly, and Robertson was similarly selected the following year . Montgomery did not pass the entrance examination, and was not selected under the exemption which allowed for time on active service to compensate for failure, but he successfully lobbied ‘Wully’ Robertson, then commanding the British occupation army in post war Germany, at a tennis party, and got a vacancy. Both worked hard at Camberley, and the then commandant thought Haig would go to the very top. Montgomery was thoroughly unpopular with his fellow students, largely due to a pious and censorious disposition, and a student who transgressed his fellows was sentenced to sit next to Montgomery at breakfast for a week. Haig’s appointment after Staff College was in the Sudan, where he got to know Kitchener during the ‘River War’, and as the brigade major of the cavalry brigade in Aldershot commanded by John French, while Montgomery spent three years as a staff officer in three different headquarters, where on the one hand his administrative and instructional abilities were recognised, as were his inability to tolerate people whose views did not accord with his own. In 1926 Montgomery was appointed an instructor at the Staff College Camberley, as an acting lieutenant colonel, where one of his students was Captain Eric ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith MC, who had achieved 100 percent in the tactics paper of the entrance exam (an achievement never repeated to this day). Montgomery and Dorman-Smith did not get on, possible an early example of Montgomery’s antipathy towards anyone who just might be his equal or even his superior in matters military, and when the course ended Dorman-Smith took all of the Staff College precis and notes produced by Montgomery and very publicly burned them on the lawn in front of the College. Montgomery never forgot the slight, and fifteen years later Montgomery could hardly conceal his glee when Major General Dorman-Smith was reduced to his substantive rank of colonel and dismissed from his post as deputy chief of staff of Eighth Army. The vendetta was not to end there, for as a brigade commander in Italy in 1944 Dorman-Smith was again sacked, by a Montgomery sycophant.
Haig reached the substantive rank of lieutenant colonel after sixteen years commissioned service, of which he spent five years on the staff and the rest at regimental duty. Montgomery took twenty-three years to reach that rank (due to the very slow interwar promotions in a much reduced army) of which he spent fourteen years on the staff. Now we would say that Haig should have spent more time on the staff and Montgomery less, but the advantage is with Haig. As a lieutenant colonel aged forty Haig commanded the 17th Lancers, and was noted as being caring of his men and liked and respected by them, while maintaining the highest professional standards in action during the South African War. Montgomery commanded the first battalion of his regiment aged forty four, in Egypt and India, and was described as having brought them ‘to the verge of mutiny’. Nevertheless, perhaps surprisingly, his immediate superiors wrote well of him in his annual reports, although one added that ‘he must cultivate tact, tolerance and discretion’.
Both men married relatively late: Haig was forty-four and his wife twenty five, a happy and successful marriage in which he was unfailingly supported by Doris who continued to champion his reputation after his death. Montgomery was aged forty and married a widow of the same age, who contracted septicaemia and died ten years later. Perhaps had she lived she could have ameliorated some of Montgomery’s more unpleasant traits.
After command Haig was a major general at the very early age of forty-two when Kitchener as Commander in Chief India asked for him as Inspector General of Cavalry, where the pair were largely responsible for turning the Indian army from a colonial gendarmerie into a modern army capable of operating anywhere in the world. On return to England Haig was still the youngest major general in the army, and in 1907 was specifically asked for by Richard Haldane, Secretary for War in Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal government. Between then and 1909, with Haldane providing the political impetus and Haig the military, the pair created the General Staff, the Territorial Force, the Expeditionary Force and Field Service Regulations. It was the most far reaching reform of the army since the Duke of York’s a century earlier. After the War Office Haig, knighted and promoted to lieutenant general, went back to India as chief of the general staff of the Indian Army (effectively its commander in chief), and despite the opposition of the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, who was concerned as to the cost of equipping the Indian army to British standards, he went a long way towards preparing the Indian army for deployment to Europe in the event of war with Germany. Back in England from 1911 Haig was appointed general officer commanding Aldershot Command, where most of his troops were allocated to the Expeditionary Force. When war broke out in August 1914 the British Expeditionary Force, organised as two corps (two of its divisions were retained at home), commanded by Field Marshal Sir John French, well known to Haig from his days in the cavalry brigade and South Africa, crossed to France and took post in Belgium with Haig as commander of 1 Corps.
Montgomery did not achieve the rank of major general until he was 51, in October 1938. Montgomery’s slow promotion was of course partly due to stagnation between the wars but also, despite his undoubted abilities as a trainer, in understanding the importance of logistics, in attention to detail and in the ability to reduce complicate matters to their essentials, perhaps because he was ‘difficult’, lacking tact and discretion, as had been said of him many years before. Certainly although he was recommended for promotion, successive selection boards always found someone else to fill a vacancy. That he was not then regarded as being in the top flight of officers is demonstrated by Harold Alexander, who was four years younger than Montgomery, being promoted to major general a year before him, in October 1937. Montgomery’s initial appointment was as general officer commanding (GOC) 8 Division in Palestine where he railed at the uselessness of the senior staff officers at Force HQ and at the incompetence of the inspector general of police – all at least partially true, but which could have been expressed with some concern for the feelings of men who were doing their best in the teeth of an Arab rebellion.