Haig's failure
Sir: I am one of the dwindling generation whose fathers served in the Kaiser's war and I am conscious of a duty to protest against the view of Haig as blameless for the slaughter on the Western Front (Let- ters, 29 August). The ultimate test is that nothing he achieved justified for Britain the losses he inflicted on her (and I do not overlook the 1918 advance to Belgium which appears to have been a surprise to him). The history of the famous 29th Divi- sion records on average 100 per cent turn- over through losses of officers and men every six months. Intelligence is a matter of opinion, but a pass degree at Oxford, fail- ure in the Staff College examination and the written view that 'the bullet has no stopping power against the horse' are not encouraging.
My father, a professional man of calm and sound judgment who served at Pass- chendaele among other battles, had a spe- cial contempt for Haig, shared widely among his generation who fought. Nothing except the murderous and miscalculated belief that more Germans than Britons were being killed could justify the continua- tion of that atrocious and avoidable battle of attrition. It is pertinent that no British general in the second world war was so massively generous with the lives of his sol- diers. Haig's failure to see for himself the conditions in which, year after year, he sent men to die is not the measure of a great soldier of any generation. A gentle trot round from the Château de Montreuil, escorted by two lancers, was said to be his closest examination of the battlefields. To compare his losses with those of other gen- erals is to say that he was as bad as them. Nothing can justify the massive roll of killed and maimed which also saw the beginning of Britain's decline as a great power.
William Terrell
29 Astor Court, Maynard Close, London SW6
Previous page
