When war broke out in 1914, Haig commanded I Corps, which he took to France, and at the end of that year he was promoted to command the newly formed 1st Army. He led a brilliant defence of Ypres in late 1914, where he repulsed the German attempt to reach the Channel coast. In late October 1915, after French’s fiasco at the Battle of Loos, Haig told King George V that French was ‘a source of great weakness to the army, and no-one had any faith in him anymore.’7 It was one of those unusual cases when he who wielded the dagger wore the crown, and Haig replaced French on 19 December 1915.

Haig was never short of enemies, especially amongst Liberal politicians in the British government. In his book Great Contemporaries, Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty when the war broke out, compares Haig to

a great surgeon before the days of anaesthetics, versed in every detail of such science as was known to him: sure of himself, steady of poise, knife in hand, intent upon the operation; entirely removed in his professional capacity from the agony of the patient, the anguish of relations, or the doctrines of rival schools, the devices of quacks, or the first-fruits of new learning… If the patient died, he would not reprove himself. It must be understood that I speak only of his professional actions. Once out of the theatre, his heart was as warm as any man’s.8

Churchill undermined any praise of Haig with waspish qualifications such as: ‘If Haig’s mind was conventional, his character also displayed the qualities of the average, decent man, concentrated and magnified… He was rarely capable of rising to great heights; he was always incapable of falling below his standards.’9*2 There had long been bad blood between the two men, partly because Haig refused Churchill command of a brigade which Sir John French had promised him, and gave him a mere battalion instead.

Haig was also criticized by later commentators, many of them serious figures such as the military historians Sir Basil Liddell Hart and Professor Sir Michael Howard. ‘The German General Staff used to divide army officers into four categories,’ the latter has written, ‘the clever and lazy, the clever and hard-working, the stupid and lazy and the stupid and hard-working. The clever and lazy made the best generals, the clever and hard-working the best staff-officers, the stupid and lazy could be fitted in as regimental officers; but the stupid and hard-working were a positive menace and had to be got rid of as quickly as possible. Douglas Haig belonged to the fourth group.’10

Haig was certainly hard-working, and almost obsessive about detail: in the 3rd Battle of Ypres he concerned himself with the cost of the stones that the French were supplying for road repairs. Yet he wasn’t a château-general either, preferring to live in spartan conditions and refusing to emulate Asquith’s recourse to brandy when the prime minister visited his headquarters. A devout Christian, Haig was interested in fundamentalist religion and spiritualism; as a young officer, he had been put in touch with Napoleon by a spiritualist, and on the Western Front a Presbyterian chaplain persuaded him that he was carrying out God’s will.12

Often depicted as heartless butcher, Haig was in fact anything but. Haig’s diaries are littered with references to him visiting hospitals of every description—once nine in one day, plus three veterinary hospitals, yet it took a tough commander to show the necessarily stern exterior to keep up morale during terrible losses. He can be criticized for over-optimism before and during the Somme Offensive, but excessive confidence was rife amongst his High Command, especially in the opening stages, and this can be partly blamed on the Intelligence team he gathered around himself, as we shall see.