General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough ( ; 12 August 1870 – 18 March 1963) was a senior officer in the British Army in the First World War. A controversial figure, he was a favourite of the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, and the youngest of Haig's field army commanders.
Gough was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before commissioning into the 16th Lancers in 1889. His early career included notable service in the Second Boer War, and a more controversial role in the Curragh incident, in which he was one of the leading officers who threatened to accept dismissal rather than deploy into Protestant Ulster.
Gough experienced a meteoric rise during the First World War, from command of a cavalry brigade in August 1914, to division command at the First Battle of Ypres that autumn, to a corps at the Battle of Loos a year later. From mid-1916 he commanded the Reserve Army (later renamed the Fifth Army) during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. His tenure was marked by controversy around his leadership style, his perceived reputation as "a thruster", and the efficiency of the organisation of his army, especially relative to the reputation for caution and efficiency of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. Fifth Army bore the initial brunt of the German spring offensive in March 1918, but Gough was scapegoated and relieved of his command.
After the war, he briefly held a command in the Baltic until retirement in 1922, and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. After a brief spell at farming, he made a new career for himself as a company director. Gough gradually re-emerged as an influential figure in military circles and public life, writing two volumes of memoirs. He was a senior commander in the London Home Guard in the Second World War and lived long enough to be interviewed on television in the early 1960s. Historians continue to study Gough's career as a case study of how the BEF coped with rapid expansion, with officers commanding forces far larger than during their peacetime experience, of the degree of initiative which should be granted to subordinates, and of the evolution of operational planning under stalemate conditions, from an initial emphasis on achieving breakthrough (with attrition regarded as preliminary "wearing out") to a stress on cautious advances under cover of massive, concentrated artillery fire.
Early life
Gough was born in London on 12 August 1870.Sheffield & Todman 2004, pp. 73–74.Beckett & Corvi 2006, p. 76. He was born into an Anglo-Irish military family, the eldest son of General Charles John Stanley GoughMosley, Charles. Burke's Landed Gentry, 'Gough of Corsley House', 1972. As an infant, Gough went to India with his family late in 1870, but Gough and his brother Johnny were sent to a boarding school in England, and Gough did not meet his father, who was on active service in the Second Afghan War, again until he was sixteen.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 5.
Early career
Gough was educated at Eton College then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was gazetted into the 16th Lancers as a second lieutenant on 5 March 1889. He distinguished himself as a rider, winning the Regimental Cup, and as a polo player with many of his horses provided for him by wealthier officers.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 16.
Gough was promoted to lieutenant on 23 July 1890, and set out for India that autumn.Farrar-Hockley 1974, pp. 17–18. He was promoted captain on 22 December 1894 at the relatively early age of 24.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 24. He served with the Tirah Field Force 1897–98 and on the Northwest Frontier.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 29.
Gough returned to England in June 1898, and sat the examination for entrance to the Staff College, Camberley. He married Margaret Louisa Nora Lewes (known as "Daisy") on 22 December 1898.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 33.
Boer War Gough started at Staff College, Camberley, on 9 January 1899 but did not complete the course. Instead he was ordered on special service to South Africa on 25 October 1899, reaching Cape Town on 15 November.Farrar-Hockley 1974, pp. 39–40. He was deployed to Natal as instructor to one of the Rifle Associations (locally raised units of volunteer mounted infantry or light cavalry).Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 41. Gough then served as ADC to Douglas Cochrane, 12th Earl of Dundonald, who was commanding mounted troops in Natal.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 43. In January 1900 he was promoted to brigade intelligence officer, a role which required a great deal of scouting.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 46.
On 1 February Gough was appointed, as a local unpaid major, CO of a Composite Regiment (a squadron of Imperial Light Horse, a squadron of Natal Carbineers and a company of 60th Rifles Mounted Infantry).Farrar-Hockley 1974, pp. 50–54. He led his regiment to assist Buller's third attempt (5–7 February) to cross the Tugela River, and in the fourth attempt (14–27 February). He defied written orders from Dundonald to lead the first British troops into Ladysmith (28 February), meeting his brother Johnnie who had been besieged inside the town. His meeting with George Stuart White was widely portrayed.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 56.
During the ensuing period of guerrilla warfare, Gough's Regiment was reinforced to a strength of 600 men. Along with Horace Smith-Dorrien and Edmund Allenby, he served under the overall command of Lieutenant-General John French.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 60. On 17 September 1901, after poor reconnaissance, he attacked near Blood River Poort, but was taken prisoner with his entire force by larger Boer forces which had been out of sight. He later escaped. Gough was invalided home with a wounded right hand in January 1902,Farrar-Hockley 1975, p. 69.
Edwardian era Gough returned as a Regular Army captain in the 16th Lancers on 23 August 1902, but the following month was appointed brigade major of the 1st Cavalry Brigade at Aldershot on 24 September 1902 with promotion to the substantive rank of major on 22 October 1902. His brevet rank of lieutenant colonel took effect the following day (23 October 1902).
Gough was appointed an instructor at the Staff College on 1 January 1904 and served there until 1906 under Colonel Sir Henry Rawlinson as the college's commandant. Gough was the first instructor to win the college point-to-point.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 74. Gough was promoted brevet colonel on 11 June 1906 and substantive lieutenant colonel on 18 July 1906, continuing to serve at the Staff College. He was appointed commanding officer (CO) of the 16th (Queen's) Lancers on 15 December 1907. He was still the youngest lieutenant colonel in the army.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 78.
After a fortnight on half-pay from 19 December 1910, Gough was promoted temporary brigadier general and appointed general officer commanding (GOC) of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade at the Curragh (1 January 1911). In June 1912 he was created a CB in the 1912 Birthday Honours.
Curragh incident With Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the Cabinet were contemplating some form of military action against the Ulster Volunteers who wanted no part of it. Gough was one of the leading officers who threatened to accept dismissal in the ensuing Curragh incident.
On the morning of Friday 20 March, Arthur Paget (Commander-in-Chief, Ireland) addressed senior officers at his headquarters in Dublin. By Gough's account (in his memoirs Soldiering On), he said that "active operations were to commence against Ulster", that officers who lived in Ulster would be permitted to "disappear" for the duration, but that other officers who refused to serve against Ulster would be dismissed rather than being permitted to resign, and that Gough – who had a family connection with Ulster but did not live there – could expect no mercy from his "old friend at the War Office" (Sir John French). French, Paget and Spencer Ewart had in fact (on 19 March) agreed to exclude officers with "direct family connections" to Ulster. In making an ultimatum, Paget was acting foolishly, as most might have obeyed a direct order. Paget ended the meeting by ordering his officers to speak to their subordinates and then report back. Gough also sent a telegram to his brother Johnnie, Douglas Haig's Chief of Staff at Aldershot. Gough did not attend the second meeting in the afternoon, at which Paget stated that the purpose of the move was to overawe Ulster rather than fight.Holmes 2004, pp. 178–179.
That evening Paget informed the War Office by telegram that 57 officers preferred to accept dismissal (it was actually 61 including GoughHolmes 2004, p. 386.). Gough was suspended from duty and he and two of his three colonels were summoned to the War Office to explain themselves.Holmes 2004, pp. 179–80.
"The peccant paragraphs" Gough sent a telegram to the elderly Field-Marshal Lord Roberts (who had been lobbying the King and arguing with John French (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) on the telephone), purporting to ask for advice, although possibly to goad him into further action.Holmes 2004, pp. 181–183. After being reassured by Roberts that the deployment into Ulster was purely precautionary, he confirmed to Spencer Ewart (on the morning of Sunday 22 March) that he would have obeyed a direct order.Holmes 2004, pp. 183–184.
In another meeting at the War Office (23 March), Gough, (possibly influenced by Major-General Henry Hughes Wilson), demanded a written guarantee from French and Ewart that the Army would not be used against Ulster. At another meeting Secretary of State for War John Seely accepted French's suggestion that a written document from the Army Council might help to convince Gough's officers. The Cabinet approved a text, stating that the Army Council were satisfied that the incident had been a misunderstanding, and that it was "the duty of all soldiers to obey lawful commands", to which Seely added two paragraphs, stating that the Government had the right to use the "forces of the Crown" in Ireland or elsewhere, but had no intention of using force "to crush opposition to the Home Rule Bill".Holmes 2004, pp. 184–188.
At another meeting after 4 pm Gough, on the advice of Henry Wilson (also present), demanded a further paragraph stating that the Army would not be used to enforce Home Rule on Ulster, with which French concurred in writing. When H. H. Asquith (Prime Minister) learned of this he demanded that Gough return the document, which he refused to do.Holmes 2004, pp. 188–189. Asquith publicly repudiated the "peccant paragraphs" (25 March). French and Seely both had to resign.Holmes 2004, pp. 190–192.
First World War
Early war Cavalry brigade: Mons to the Marne
At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Gough took the 3rd Cavalry Brigade to France, under the command of Allenby (GOC Cavalry Division).Beckett & Corvi 2006, p. 77. On 22 August one of Gough's artillery batteries was the first British battery to open fire on the Germans.Farrar-Hockley 1974, pp. 120–121. The brigade fought at the Battle of Mons (23 August).Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 122. During the following days Gough detached himself from Allenby's command and linked up with Haig's I Corps on the BEF right.Farrar-Hockley 1974, p. 125. Allenby publicly laughed this off as "only Gough's little way" but was privately furious at French (Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF)) and Haig's tolerance of Gough's behaviour; relations between Allenby and Gough were strained thereafter.James 1993, p. 61.