Haig becomes field marshal

On 1 January 1917 General Douglas Haig, for more than a year commander of the British forces in France, received the highest rank in the British Army: he was made a field marshal. The appointment was announced in a supplement to the official London Gazette containing the New Year honours list “for distinguished service in the field”, issued by the War Office and dated 1 January 1917. Haig’s name stood at its head. The British chronology of the war records the promotion only under 3 January.

A New Year’s gift

Haig had known of the promotion a few days earlier. On 27 December 1916 King George V wrote to him in his own hand from Buckingham Palace. The letter is quoted by the general’s biographer Duff Cooper: “It gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to inform you that I have decided to appoint you a Field Marshal in my Army. By your distinguished services you have fully earned this high position. I know that it will be well received by the whole of the Army in France, whose confidence you have won. I hope you will look upon it as a New Year’s gift from myself and the country.”

The King and Haig had known each other for a long time, and from the start of the war the general had corresponded with the monarch and could count on his goodwill. The promotion came after a year in which Haig had commanded the greatest battle in the history of the British Army. The Battle of the Somme had brought the British Army the heaviest losses in its history, and the front had moved at its furthest point by about ten kilometres. For Haig’s supporters it was proof that the British Army, made up mostly of volunteers enlisted during the war, had learned to fight the Germans as an equal. For his critics it was a slaughter without a decision. The promotion showed which side of this dispute the King was on.

The same list rewarded many of Haig’s subordinates. The commander of the Fourth Army on the Somme, Henry Rawlinson, became a full general, and among those promoted to lieutenant-general were Haig’s chief of staff Launcelot Kiggell, the commander of the Fifth Army Hubert Gough and the commander of the First Army Henry Horne. Jan Smuts, in command in East Africa, was made an honorary lieutenant-general, and among those made major-general was the commander of the air service in France, Hugh Trenchard.

The field marshal and the prime minister

The appointment coincided with another. A week earlier, on 26 December, Joffre had been made a Marshal of France, but in his case the baton was a consolation prize for the command taken away from him. Haig received his while keeping his power. He spent the last day of 1916 at Chantilly with the new French commander-in-chief, General Robert Nivelle, who had already presented his plan for a spring breakthrough to him in December. Haig noted in his diary that he agreed with his principles and believed in his success, although Nivelle might not get as far as he expected. He promised to take over part of the front from the French, starting on 15 January. In the afternoon he talked in Paris with the new French war minister, General Hubert Lyautey, and argued firmly that as many troops as possible should be withdrawn from Salonika to France.

The promotion did not, however, strengthen Haig’s position with the new government in London. The prime minister, David Lloyd George, in office since 7 December, believed neither in Haig nor in the strategy of great offensives on the Western Front. Duff Cooper, although he wrote his biography with evident sympathy for the general, admitted that from then on the prime minister had no confidence in his own commander-in-chief and would have removed him if he could. Lloyd George himself wrote after the war in his memoirs that he was held back by his colleagues in the government, the press and public opinion. The King’s support was one of the assets that made Haig hard to move. Instead of dismissing him, the prime minister therefore looked for other ways: he wanted to shift the weight of the fighting to other fronts, and in February, at the conference in Calais, he tried to subordinate Haig to the French command. The dispute between the field marshal and the prime minister was to last until the end of the war.