Sir John French & the Great War "Donkeys"
Just for something a little different; Sir John French, original commander of the BEF-in-France during 1914, subsequently sent to Ireland to crack heads after reforming quite a bit of the internal workings of the British army administration. Took the BEF to France to crack German heads to start with though, it was intended to be the pinnacle of his career as a fighting general - he was made Field Marshal (some wags have it that he was made so only to out-rank his French allies, because the War Office was like that in those days), and sent with a small but highly trained, and for him, very 'romantic' almost, fighting force.
French was a cavalry general first and foremost - he had learned his trade fighting the Boers in South Africa, and had done so very well - he was the only general to continually score victories during the early fighting under Sir Redvers Buller, and the only general to consistently perform well under Kitchener's later 'grouse-field' tactics. There was then a bit of a lull in decent wars, so General French was sent home, picked up a pile of orders, a pair of Knighthoods, and a chest full of tinware, and proceeded to refuse to get rid of lances in cavalry training, regardless of what machine guns might have to say about the matter.
(He actually reckoned that the lance, aswel as the sword, were essential for maintaining the 'fighting spirit, the elan' of his cavalry troops. It's a part of the reason he never really thought too much of infantry as an attacking arm).
Fast forwards past the boring bits, and French and his old friends from the Boer War - Generals Haig and Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien (Kitchener is at the war office, Lord Roberts turns up briefly to die), are off in France with a shiny new army, ready to defeat the Germans and be in Berlin for tea and cake within a week. The myth of the Donkeys is born - "Lions Led By Donkeys" and other such drivel.
I'll lay out a few ideas, see if people have any firm opinion on the matter, though if we could possibly avoid "OMG THE AMERICANS SO DID NOT WIN THAT WAR", and other such drama, it'd be rather nice ?
I'm also trying for objectivity - having watched Blackadder IV and All Quiet on the Western Front does not a scholar make.
Anyway, the chaps up before the firing squad of historical opinion aaare;
Field Marshal Sir John French, especially, after "by force of personality" holding the BEF together after the Battle of Mons, and by holding together awkward Anglo-French relations (through Joffre mainly, French never spoke French well enough to actually like his allies) long enough to fight the Battles of Loos & Ypres and stabilise what would soon become the western front.
Donkey like behaviour ? It cost men, but then so did sitting at home in barracks, and the germans had all kinds of nasty ways to kill people, so some damage must be expected, even if eighty thousand men does seem rather a lot to modern eyes. (It did impair his ability to command - he was watching his entire world being destroyed, and it triggered a form of chronic depression in the old general)
Lieutenant-General Sir Douglas Haig - A better case here, he was never even a decent cavalry officer, despite how good he looked dressed up as Colonel of the 17th Lancers. His idea was to bludgeon his way through the German lines with mass waves of men - rather reminiescent of what the Russians were failing at on their front - and hoping that the French would be able to do something sneaky on a flank and create the longed for breakthrough.
Donkey like behaviour ? It wasn't the most imaginitve strategy, but then this is 1914, static warfare involving millions of soldiers and thousands of guns is a very new experience - the last big European land war was the Franco-Prussian war, and that didn't match this for scale. Certainly chasing Boers around the Transvaal hadn't prepared Haig. Odd that it got him promoted from his start rank of Lt. General, all the way to Field Marshal and an Earldom.
General Joffre & General Lanrezac - Because it wouldn't be fair to heap the blame for the mass-slaughter of the early Great War battles entirely onto British soldiers. Lanzerac did a lot of running away, or did a lot of sneaky retreating leaving the BEF and Belgian armies to "get stuck in" all by themsleves. He did eventually fight a decent defensive battle at St Quentin, saving Paris and stopping the German advance in that direction. He was eventually bowler hatted off somewhere quiet.
Joffre was frankly a little insane - his idea of war [admittedly the overall French idea was "get on with it"] was to attack All Of The Time. His infantry still wore bright blue, his cavalry had turned up in armour, but old Joffre wanted his army and that of the British to attack with him, regardless of costs. (Loos was fought for Joffre). Certainly a competent lunatic, but also certainly very dangerous with the lives of his soldiers, and those of his allies.
Can French generals qualify for Donkeydom, or is it limited to ageing British generals ?
General Pershing - This chap, fantastically dressed though he always was, gets an honourable mention for managing to turn up to the war, with his fresh army, and ignoring the experienced British, French and assorted colonial generals around him, proceeds to send his men walking into by now seasoned German machine gunners' sights. The American expeditionary army wouldn't have taken quite so many casualties if someone had thought to sit the good general down and staple cold reality onto his head, though it's likely he'd not have listened anyway. He also almost managed to get his own army to [almost] shoot itself up whilst being shot at by the French AND Germans. Quite an achievement when the enemy tended to be infront of you in 1918.
Donkey like behaviour, late in the day, or just sheer obstinance ?
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I've taken most of this from a paper I wrote a while back, and the sources included;
Richard Holmes "The Little Field Marshal", being a Life of Sir John French
The Official History of the 1914-1919 War
The memoirs of Foch, Joffre, Haig & Gerald French (son of the Field Marshal).
There were also papers from Von Kluck and another spiky brass hat who slips my memory at the moment.
A detailed history of the Life Guards, Dragoon Guards, Royal Horse Guards etc, called "Horse Guards"
aaaand the last few chapters of Lawrence James' "The Rise and Fall of the British Empire" were rather useful.
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