Murray leaves the BEF staff

On 24 January 1915 Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Murray ceased to head the staff of the British Expeditionary Force. That day the commander-in-chief, Field Marshal John French, sent him on a month’s sick leave, and the next day demanded his resignation. Murray insisted that a few days’ rest would be enough, but the decision had already been taken. So ended the service of the man who had been French’s chief of staff since the first day of the war.

French’s old colleague

Murray was born in 1860. In the Boer War he was a staff officer in Natal, went through the siege of Ladysmith and earned a reputation as an able staff officer. Before the war he had worked with French at the War Office. Under pre-war plans he was to become the force’s Quartermaster-General in the event of war, but in August 1914 he took the post of chief of staff, while supply fell to General William Robertson.

The very first weeks of the war damaged his position. During the retreat from Mons Murray suffered something like a physical collapse, although the accounts of witnesses differ in detail. The sub-chief of staff, General Henry Wilson, recorded that on the morning of 26 August, on hearing of Smith-Dorrien’s decision to stand and fight at Le Cateau, Murray fainted. According to General Nevil Macready, Murray fainted at his desk in Noyon, where General Headquarters stood on 27 August. According to the historian Richard Holmes, Murray had not yet fully recovered from a stomach wound received in South Africa.

A chief of staff without authority

In the autumn of 1914 relations at General Headquarters were bad. Murray could not control his subordinates, especially Wilson, who had his own access to French and friends in the French high command. He complained that staff officers bypassed him and even altered his orders, and several times spoke of resigning. General Henry Rawlinson noted at the end of November that Murray had become a “cipher” at headquarters. Murray himself wrote years later that he had stayed with French because he knew him as no one else did and wanted to support him despite his difficult character.

At the end of November and in mid-December French told Wilson that he was thinking of moving Murray to command a corps and giving his place to Wilson himself. The Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, and the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, refused, however, to accept that candidate. The matter dragged on for several weeks until French decided to part with Murray. Wilson was widely suspected of intriguing against his superior, although there is little concrete evidence of it.

Later career

Murray returned to London. French wrote to him on 29 January that he hoped soon to see him in France again as an army commander. It turned out otherwise. On 10 February 1915 Murray became Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff and dealt with the training of Kitchener’s New Armies. In September 1915 he succeeded General James Wolfe Murray as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and from 1916 he commanded the British forces in Egypt, from where he led the first advance into Palestine.