Hubert Gough

Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough
Lieutenant General Hubert Gough
Born	12 August 1870 Gurteen-Le-Poer, County Waterford
Died	18 March 1963 (aged 92) London
Buried	Camberley, Surrey
Allegiance	United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Service / branch	British Army
Years of service	1888 – 1922
Rank	General
Commands	Fifth Army I Corps 7th Division 3rd Cavalry Brigade 16th (Queen's) Lancers
Battles / wars	Tirah Campaign Second Boer War Siege of Ladysmith Relief of Ladysmith First World War Battle of Loos Battle of the Somme Third Battle of Ypres Operation Michael
Awards	Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Relations	Sir Charles John Stanley Gough VC, GCB (father) General Sir Hugh Henry Gough VC (uncle) Brigadier-General John Edmund Gough VC (brother)

General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough, GCB, GCMG, KCVO (12 August 1870 – 18 March 1963), was a senior officer in the British Army, who commanded the British Fifth Army from 1916 to 1918 during the First World War.

Family background

He was born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family in Gurteen, County Waterford, Ireland, the eldest son of General Sir Charles J.S. Gough, VC, GCB, nephew of General Sir Hugh H. Gough, VC, and brother of Brigadier General Sir John Edmund Gough, VC (the only family to ever win the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, three times). He married Harriette Anastasia de la Poer, daughter of John William Poer, styled 17th Baron de la Poer, of Gurteen, County Waterford, formerly MP for County Waterford. Their daughter Myrtle Eleanore Gough married Major Eric Adlhelm Torlogh Dutton, CMG, CBE, in 1936.

Early career

The Relief of Ladysmith. Sir George White greets Lord Douglas Hamilton on 28 February 1900. Painting by John Henry Frederick Bacon (1868-1914)

The relief column was lead by Major Hubert Gough. He attended Eton College, and according to his autobiography "Soldiering On" he was terrible at Latin. But he was good at sports such as football and rugby. After leaving Eton, Gough gained entrance to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1888. He joined the 16th Lancers in 1889 and served in the Tirah campaign. Gough first became widely known for his command of a relief column during the siege of Ladysmith in the Second Boer War. His meeting with George Stuart White was widely portrayed.

From 1904 to 1906 he was an instructor at the Staff College and from December 1906 he commanded the 16th (Queen's) Lancers. In 1911 he returned to Ireland as a brigadier-general commanding 3rd Cavalry Brigade, which included the 16th lancers, at the Curragh.

In March 1914 Gough was a leader in the Curragh Incident, in which a number of British Army officers said that they would rather resign rather than enforce the Government's plans to realise Irish home rule.

First World War

Early War

At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Gough was commanding the 3rd Cavalry Brigade and later commanded the 7th Division, known as "Gough's Mobile Army". A favourite of the British Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig, he experienced a meteoric rise through the ranks during the war. By the time of the Battle of Loos in September 1915, he was commanding I Corps.

After the Battle of Loos, with intrigues afoot to remove French from command of the BEF, Haig agreed with Gough (14 November) that on his visit to London he should tell Milner about the “faulty working of the military machine in France”.

Somme

At the start of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, Gough was in charge of the Reserve Army, despite only being a temporary lieutenant general. That autumn Douglas Loch told Wilson “Goughie is the best hated & most useless & most dangerous General we have got”.

At the end of October 1916, Gough's Reserve Army was renamed the Fifth Army. The 16th (Irish) Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division moved under his command. On 1 January 1917, he was promoted to permanent Lieutenant General "for distinguished service in the field".

Nivelle Offensive

Gough acquired a particular dislike of Wilson, who had been active in the Curragh incident and who had commanded IV Corps both alongside then under Gough in 1916. When Wilson was appointed (March 1917) to head Anglo-French liaison at French GQG, Gough wrote to Stamfordham (i.e. for the King to see) complaining of how Wilson had made little impact either as a staff officer in 1914 or in 1916 as a corps commander, but had a great reputation throughout the army for intrigue and for "talk".

When relations between Nivelle and the British generals were becoming particularly strained in March 1917, Nivelle asked the British government that Haig be sacked and replaced by Gough. Gough's own view of the Calais Scheme to place the BEF under Nivelle's command was that it would leave Britain a puppet of France as Serbia and Rumania were of Russia, and Austria-Hungary of Germany, and correspondingly likely to be cheated at the peace conference after the war.

Third Ypres

In July 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres although both divisions were exhausted after 13 days of moving heavy equipment under heavy shelling he ordered their battalions to advance to the east of Ypres through deep mud towards well fortified German positions left untouched by inadequate artillery preparation. By mid August, the 16th (Irish) had suffered over 4,200 casualties and the 36th (Ulster) had suffered almost 3,600 casualties, or more than 50% of their numbers. When he accused the troops in question of not being able to hold onto their gains because they “were Irish and did not like the enemy’s shelling”, Field Marshal Haig was critical of him for "playing the Irish card".

Spring offensive

It was Gough's Fifth Army that bore the brunt of the German Operation Michael offensive on 21 March 1918 and the assumed failure of his army to hold the line. Andrew Roberts offers a more favourable assessment of Gough's contribution:

. . . the offensive saw a great wrong perpetrated on a distinguished British commander that was not righted for many years. Gough's Fifth Army had been spread thin on a forty-two-mile front lately taken over from the exhausted and demoralised French. The reason why the Germans did not break through to Paris, as by all the laws of strategy they ought to have done, was the heroism of the Fifth Army and its utter refusal to break. They fought a thirty-eight-mile rearguard action, contesting every village, field and, on occasion, yard . . . With no reserves and no strongly defended line to its rear, and with eighty German divisions against fifteen British, the Fifth Army fought the Somme offensive to a standstill on the Ancre, not retreating beyond Villers-Bretonneux . . .

Other historians, such as Les Carlyon, concur in holding the opinion that Gough was unfairly dealt with following the Michael Offensive, but also regard Gough's performance during the Great War in generally unflattering terms, citing documented and repeated failings in planning, preparation, comprehension of the battle space, and a lack of empathy with the common soldier.

Brigadier-General Sandilands later recorded the chaos of the retreat in late March. Returning from leave, he was unable to locate his brigade (part of 35th Division), or even find out which corps it was currently part of. Making his way to Fifth Army Headquarters on 26 March by asking a lift from a man who knew him by sight, he found Gough having his teeth examined, but decided "discretion was the better part of valour" and beat a hasty retreat from the room. At about 11am a car drew up containing Lord Milner and Wilson, now CIGS, who asked whether it was safe to drive into Amiens. Sandilands pointed out that Gough was in the building, assuming that they would wish to speak to him, but Wilson replied "Oh he is here is he? Well good morning" and drove off. Sandilands thought "that's the end of Gough". He later realised that they had been on their way to the Doullens Conference at which Foch was appointed generalissimo.

Gough was dismissed early in April.

Later life

In 1919 he was the head of the Allied Military Mission to the Baltic States (see United Baltic Duchy). He was a signatory to joint statement issued with other officers and advisors who had served in Russia, who on February 23 1920 indicated their support of peace between the British and the Bolshevik Russia. He retired as a general in 1922.

From 1936 until 1943, he was honorary colonel of the 16th/5th The Queen's Royal Lancers, and President of the Irish Servicemen's Shamrock Club in Park Lane, London W.1.

His book, The Fifth Army, defended his record as commander in 1918.

Gough died in London on 18 March 1963, aged 92. He suffered from bronchial pneumonia for a month before he died, but it is unclear whether this was the cause of death.

Further reading

• Chapter 4, The operational role of British corps command on the Western Front, 1914-1918 by Andrew Simpson. (2001) http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do
• Jeffery, Keith (2006). Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820358-2.
• Travers, Tim The Killing Ground: The British Army, The Western Front and The Emergence of Modern War 1900–1918 (Allen & Unwin 1987)
• Walker, Jonathan The Blood Tub - General Gough and the Battle of Bullecourt 1917 Spellmount, 2000
• David R Woodward, "Field Marshal Sir William Robertson", Westport Connecticut & London: Praeger, 1998, ISBN 0-275-95422-6

External links

• National Portrait Gallery