Resignation of Archibald Murray

The British chronology of the war records under 22 December 1915 that Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Murray resigned as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The next day he was succeeded by General William Robertson. Some studies give 23 December, the day his successor took office, as the date of Murray’s departure. Murray had headed the general staff in London since 26 September 1915, that is, for less than three months. He did not leave because of a failure. He fell victim to the great reshuffle at the top of the army that the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, had prepared in the autumn.

When it was decided at the beginning of December that Field Marshal John French would hand over command in France to General Douglas Haig, and that his chief of staff, William Robertson, would take over the general staff in London, there was no place left for Murray. The Secretary of State for War, Lord Herbert Kitchener, proposed that he return to France as chief of staff of the British Expeditionary Force, the post he had held in 1914. Haig would not agree to this. Robertson, for his part, made it a condition that as Chief of the Imperial General Staff he would be the government’s sole adviser on strategy, something Murray had never obtained.

The last weeks

Murray devoted the last weeks of his tenure to plans for 1916. From 6 to 8 December, together with French, Robertson and General Henry Wilson, he represented Britain at the conference of the Allied general staffs at Chantilly, at the headquarters of General Joseph Joffre. The conference concluded that in 1916 all the Allies should attack simultaneously on the main fronts, keeping only the necessary forces on the secondary fronts. It came out in favour of the immediate evacuation of Gallipoli.

After his return, on 16 December, Murray submitted to the government’s War Committee a long General Staff memorandum on the future conduct of the war. The British official history regards it as probably the first study of its kind by the general staff in London. Murray argued that in the spring of 1916 every division, fully brought up to strength and equipped, must be sent to France, because only there could German resistance be broken. He proposed withdrawing the troops from Salonika and reducing commitments on other fronts to a minimum. Murray’s successor, Robertson, declared as early as 23 December, at his first meeting of the committee, that he fully agreed with the memorandum, and demanded a decision on the principles it contained.

A new assignment

Murray was not left without a post. He was appointed to succeed General Charles Monro as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. After the evacuation of Gallipoli, this force was to assemble and refit in Egypt. According to the British official history, Murray received instructions from Kitchener to establish his headquarters in Egypt, to command the troops gathering there and to be responsible for the defence of the Suez Canal, while the British troops on the Salonika front were to come under his general supervision. He arrived in Egypt on 9 January 1916 and took over command from Monro the next day. In March 1916 he also took over the troops defending Egypt itself and became head of all British forces in that country.