Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

Douglas Haig (1861–1928) rose from a Scottish whisky-merchant family to become Britain’s senior field commander on the Western Front in World War I. Educated at Clifton College, Brasenose College, Oxford, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he was commissioned into the 7th (Queen’s Own) Hussars in 1885. Early service in India, the Sudan (including Omdurman, 1898), and the Second Boer War honed his staff skills and introduced him to high command under Lords Roberts and Kitchener.

By 1914 Haig commanded I Corps of the British Expeditionary Force and soon the First Army. In December 1915 he succeeded Sir John French as Commander-in-Chief, BEF. The enormity of trench warfare forced him to rely on massed artillery, methodical set-piece attacks, and attrition—most notoriously at the Somme (1916), an offensive intended to relieve pressure on Verdun and wear down German strength, but which inflicted grievous casualties.

In 1917, Haig directed the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), aiming to seize the Belgian coast and destroy German U-boat bases. The operation achieved limited ground at immense cost, and it became a byword for the horrors of mud, shellfire, and stalemate. Haig’s reputation has often been defined by these battles, fueling a long-running historical debate over his strategic judgment and the human price of attrition.

When Germany launched the Spring Offensive in 1918, Haig issued his famous “backs to the wall” order, stiffening British resolve in crisis. With unified Allied command under Foch and the growing maturity of combined-arms warfare—coordinating artillery, infantry, tanks, and air power—the BEF helped spearhead the Hundred Days offensives that broke the German Army and forced the Armistice.

Legacy and Later Life After the war, Haig was created Earl Haig (1919) and devoted himself to veterans’ welfare. He helped found the British Legion (1921) and the Earl Haig Fund, championing the poppy appeal to support ex-servicemen and their families. He died in London in 1928 and was buried at Dryburgh Abbey in the Scottish Borders. Historians continue to reassess his record—balancing the brutal necessities and limitations of industrial warfare against the eventual Allied victory.

• Commander-in-Chief, British Expeditionary Force (1915–1918)
• Leadership during the Somme (1916), Third Ypres/Passchendaele (1917), and the Hundred Days (1918)
• Advocacy and development of artillery-centric, combined-arms methods as the war progressed
• Founder and first president of the British Legion; established the Earl Haig Fund (poppy appeal)