Horace Smith-Dorrien


Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien, was a British Army General. One of the few British survivors of the Battle of Isandlwana as a young officer, he also distinguished himself in the Second Boer War.
Smith-Dorrien held senior commands in the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. He commanded II Corps at the Battle of Mons, the first major action fought by the BEF, and the Battle of Le Cateau, where he fought a vigorous and successful defensive action contrary to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief Sir John French, with whom he had had a personality clash dating back some years. In the spring of 1915 he commanded the Second Army at the Second Battle of Ypres. He was relieved of command by French for requesting permission to retreat from the Ypres Salient to a more defensible position.

Early life

Horace Smith-Dorrien was born at Haresfoot, a house near Berkhamsted, in the county of Hertfordshire to Colonel Robert Algernon Smith-Dorrien and Mary Ann Drever. He was the twelfth child of sixteen; his eldest brother was Thomas Algernon Smith-Dorrien-Smith, the Lord Proprietor of the Isles of Scilly from 1872 – 1918. He was educated at Harrow, and on 26 February 1876 entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

Career

On graduation from the Royal Military College in 1877 he had hoped to receive an infantry commission with the 95th Rifle Brigade, but instead received one with the 95th Regiment of Foot, later to become the Sherwood Foresters.

Zulu War

On 1 November 1878, he was posted to South Africa where he was employed as a Transport Officer. He was present at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War on 22 January 1879, serving with the British invasion force as a transport officer for a detachment of Royal Artillery. As the Zulu impis overwhelmed the British lines, destroying it in hand-to-hand fighting, Smith-Dorrien narrowly escaped on his transport pony over 20 miles of rough terrain with twenty Zulu warriors in running pursuit, crossing the Buffalo River, 80 yards wide and with a strong current, by holding the tail of a loose horse. Smith-Dorrien was one of fewer than fifty British survivors from the battle, and one of only five Imperial officers to escape it with his life. Because of his conduct in trying to help other soldiers escape from the battlefield, including a colonial commisariat officer named Hamer whose life he saved, he was recommended for the Victoria Cross, but it was not awarded. He took part in the rest of that war. His observations on the difficulty of opening ammunition boxes led to changes in British Army practice for the rest of the war.

Egypt, India and Sudan

Smith-Dorrien served in Egypt under Evelyn Wood. He was promoted captain on 1 April 1882, appointed assistant chief of police in Alexandria on 22 August 1882, then given command of Mounted Infantry in Egypt on 3 September 1882, and was seconded to the Egyptian army. During this time, he forged a lifelong friendship with the then Major Kitchener. He met Gordon more than once, but his bad knee kept him off the expedition to relieve Khartoum. He served on the Suakin Expedition. On 30 December 1885, he witnessed the Battle of Gennis, where the British Army fought in red coats for the last time. The next day he was given his first independent command, 150 men with fifty infantry in reserve. His task was to capture nine Arab river supply boats, in order to achieve which he had to exceed his orders by going beyond the village of Surda, making a 60-mile journey on horseback in 24 hours. For this, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1886.
Smith-Dorrien then left active command to go to the Staff College, Camberley. Staff College was not yet much respected, and he later recorded that he devoted much time to sport whilst there.
He was posted to India, and promoted major on 1 May 1892. He became Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General, Bengal, on 1 April 1893 and then Assistant Adjutant General, Bengal, on 27 October 1894. He returned to his regiment where he commanded troops during the Tirah Campaign of 1897–98.
In 1898, he transferred back to Egypt. He was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel on 20 May 1898 and appointed Commanding Officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion. He fought at the Battle of Omdurman, where his infantry fired at Devishes from entrenched positions. He commanded the British troops during the Fashoda incident. He was promoted brevet colonel 16 November 1898 and Commanding Officer of the Sherwood Foresters and substantive lieutenant-colonel.

South Africa

On 31 October 1899, he shipped to South Africa for the Second Boer War, arriving at Durban 13 December 1899, in the middle of "Black Week". On 2 February 1900, Lord Roberts put him in command of the 19th Brigade and, on 11 February, he was promoted to major general, making him one of youngest generals in the British Army at the time. He later commanded a division in South Africa.
He provided covering fire for French's Cavalry Division at Klipsdrift, and played an important role at the Battle of Paardeberg, where he was summoned by Lord Roberts and asked for his views in the presence of Lord Kitchener, French and Henry Colvile. He argued for the use of sapping and fire support, rather than attacking the entrenched enemy over open ground. Kitchener followed him to his horse to remonstrate that he would be "a made man" if he attacked as Kitchener wished, to which he replied he had given his views and would only attack if ordered to do so. A week later he took the laager after careful assault.
At Sanna's Post, Smith-Dorrien ignored inept orders from Colvile to leave wounded largely unprotected and managed an orderly retreat without further casualties. He took part in the Battle of Leliefontein. On 6 February 1901, Smith-Dorrien's troops were attacked in the Battle of Chrissiesmeer.
Smith-Dorrien's qualities as a commander meant he was one of few British commanders to enhance his reputation during this war. Smith-Dorrien was mentioned three times in despatches in the London Gazette, and Ian Hamilton later wrote highly of his performance and his grasp of the men's morale, whilst Roberts also thought highly of his South Africa performance. He was at the top of a list of eighteen successful commanders of columns or groups of columns, including Haig and Allenby, whom French commended to Lord Roberts.

India

On 22 April 1901, he received orders to return to India where he was made Adjutant-General under Kitchener. He was placed in command of the 4th Division in Baluchistan, a post he held from 30 June 1903 until 1907. He was raised to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1904 and promoted lieutenant general on 9 April 1906. He introduced the Staff Ride, erroneously attributed by Terraine to Haig. He also helped found the Staff College at Quetta in 1907.
In the dispute between Kitchener and Lord Curzon over the role of the Military Member, Smith-Dorrien stayed neutral, torn between his relations with Kitchener and with the Military Member himself, Sir Arthur Power Palmer, who was his wife's uncle.

Aldershot

Smith-Dorrien returned to England and, on 1 December 1907, became GOC of the Aldershot Command. During this time, he instituted a number of reforms designed to improve the lot of the ordinary soldier. One was to abandon the practice of posting pickets to police the soldiers when they were outside the base. Another was to improve sports facilities. His reforms earned many plaudits.
Unlike many senior generals of the era, Smith-Dorrien could speak to troops with ease and was greatly admired by regimental officers. In prewar training he wanted "individual initiative and intelligence" in British soldiers. He later wrote: "one could never become an up-to-date soldier in the prehistoric warfare to be met with against the Dervishes".
He improved the frequency and methods of training in marksmanship of all soldiers. During this period, the higher ranks of the army were divided on the best use of cavalry. Smith-Dorrien, along with Lord Roberts, Sir Ian Hamilton and others, doubted that cavalry could often be used as cavalry, i.e. that they should still be trained to charge with sword and lance, instead thinking they would be more often deployed as mounted infantry, i.e. using horses for mobility but dismounting to fight. To this end, he took steps to improve the marksmanship of the cavalry. This did not endear him to the arme blanche faction, which included French and Douglas Haig, and whose views prevailed after the retirement of Lord Roberts.
Aylmer Haldane recorded that at the 1909 manoeuvres French was "unfair" in summing up for Paget against Smith-Dorrien. Smith-Dorrien annoyed French – with whom he had still been on relatively cordial terms at the end of the South African War – by abolishing the pickets which trawled the streets for drunk soldiers, by more than doubling the number of playing fields available to the men, by cutting down trees, and by building new and better barracks. On 21 August 1909 he lectured all his cavalry officers – in the 16th Lancers’ mess – about the importance of improving their men's musketry. By 1910 the feud between French and Smith-Dorrien was common knowledge throughout the Army. Smith-Dorrien objected to French’s womanising, a fact which Richard Holmes attributes in part to Smith-Dorrien being happily married to a young and pretty wife, and French’s nephew later claimed to have overheard "a ferocious exchange" between them, in which Smith-Dorrien declared "Too many whores around your headquarters, Field-Marshal".
He also tried to get the army to replace the old Maxim gun with the new Vickers Maxim gun, which weighed less than half as much and had a better water-cooling system, but the War Office did not approve the expenditure.
In 1911, he was made Aide-de-Camp to King George V. He was part of the King's hunt in the Chitwan area of Nepal; on 19 December 1911, Smith-Dorrien killed a rhino and on the following day shot a bear.

Southern Command

On 1 March 1912, he was appointed GOC Southern Command. At Southern Command he had jurisdiction over twelve counties and many regimental depots. He had experience of dealing with Territorials for the first time and instigated training on fire-and-movement withdrawals which would also prove useful at Le Cateau.
He was promoted to full General and raised to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1913.
Although Smith-Dorrien was perfectly urbane and, by the standards of the day, kind-hearted towards his troops, he was notorious for furious outbursts of bad temper, which could last for hours before his equilibrium was restored. It has been suggested that the pain from a knee injury was one cause of his ill temper. It was rumoured that Smith-Dorrien's temper was caused by some kind of serious illness. Esher had dined with Smith-Dorrien to see if he was indeed "changed and weakened". Lord Crewe turned him down for the post of Commander-in-Chief India because of his foul temper.
Unlike French, he was politically astute enough to avoid becoming entangled in the Curragh Incident of 1914. Unlike a number of British generals of the era, Smith-Dorrien was not a political intriguer.

First World War

In 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Lord Kitchener was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war kept him elsewhere, and Smith-Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring "that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust – probably not more than one-quarter of us – learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it."
With the outbreak of the First World War, he was given command of the Home Defence Army, part of Ian Hamilton's Home Defence Central Force. However, following the sudden death of Sir James Grierson, he was placed in charge of the British Expeditionary Force II Corps, by Lord Kitchener, the new Secretary of State for War. Field Marshal Sir John French had wanted Sir Herbert Plumer but Kitchener chose Smith-Dorrien as he knew he could stand up to French, and in the full knowledge that French disliked him. Kitchener admitted to Smith-Dorrien that he had doubts about appointing him, but put them to one side.
Smith-Dorrien arrived at GHQ and formally asked French's permission to keep a special diary to report privately to the King as His Majesty had requested. French could hardly refuse, but this further worsened their relations. Smith-Dorrien later claimed in his memoirs that French had received him "pleasantly", but his diary at the time simply records matter-of-factly that he "motored into to Le Cateau and saw the Commander-in-Chief" which may be suspiciously brief in contrast to the diary's normally detailed description of other events. There was also personal friction between George Forestier-Walker and Johnnie Gough, the chiefs of staff of II Corps and I Corps respectively.

Mons (23 August 1914)

French still believed that there were only light German forces facing the BEF, but after hearing intelligence that German forces were stronger than thought and that the BEF had moved far ahead of Lanrezac's Fifth French Army on its right, Sir John cancelled the planned further advance. He told Lanrezac that he would hold his current position for another 24 hours.
French's and Smith-Dorrien's accounts differ about the conference at 5.30am on 23 August. French's account in his memoirs "1914" stated that he had become doubtful of the advance into Belgium and warned his officers to be ready to attack or retreat. This agrees largely with French's diary at the time, in which he wrote that he had warned Smith-Dorrien that the Mons position might not be tenable. When "1914" was published, Smith-Dorrien claimed that French had been "in excellent form" at the meeting and had still been planning to advance. However, in his own memoirs Smith-Dorrien admitted that French had talked of either attacking or retreating, although he claimed that it had been he who had warned that the Mons position was untenable. Edmonds in the "Official History" agreed that French had probably been prepared either to attack or to retreat. Edmonds – who was not an eyewitness – later claimed in his memoirs that French had instructed Smith-Dorrien to "give battle" on the line of the Conde Canal, and that when Smith-Dorrien queried whether he was to attack or defend he was simply told, after French had whispered with Murray, "Don’t ask questions, do as you are told".
Smith-Dorrien's II Corps took the brunt of a heavy assault by the German forces at Mons, with the Germans under von Kluck attempting a flanking manoeuvre. Forestier-Walker, Chief of Staff II Corps, was driven by Smith-Dorrien's foul temper to attempt to resign his post during the Battle of Mons but was told by the BEF Chief of Staff Murray "not to be an ass". During the battle of Mons Smith-Dorrien's car was almost struck by a German shell.

Le Cateau (26 August)

French ordered a general retreat, during which I Corps and II Corps became separated. French agreed to Haig's retreat east of the Forest of Mormal without, apparently, the knowledge of Smith-Dorrien. Murray noted in his diary that GHQ had moved back from Le Cateau to St Quentin and that I Corps was being heavily engaged by night – making no mention of II Corps's situation. Because the German plan was to envelop the BEF from the west, most of the pressure fell on II Corps, which suffered higher casualties in its fighting withdrawal on 24 August than at Mons the previous day.
French had a long discussion with Murray and Wilson as to whether the BEF should stand and fight at Le Cateau, a position which had been chosen for both I and II Corps to hold after they had retreated on either side of the Forest of Mormal. II Corps had been harried by German forces as it retreated west of the forest and Sir John wanted to fall back as agreed with Joffre, and hoped that the BEF could pull out of the fight altogether and refit behind the River Oise. Wilson issued orders to Smith-Dorrien to retreat from Le Cateau the next day.
On the evening of 25 August 1914 Smith-Dorrien was unable to locate 4th Division and Cavalry Division. Allenby reached him at 2am on 26 August 1914, and reported that his horses and men were "pretty well played out", and unless they retreated under cover of darkness there would be no choice but to fight in the morning. Allenby agreed to act under Smith-Dorrien's orders. Hamilton also reported that his men would be unable to get away before 9am, which also left little choice but to fight, lest isolated forces be overwhelmed piecemeal by the Germans. A French cavalry corps under Sordet also took part on the west flank.
French was awakened at 2am on 26 August 1914 with news that Haig's I Corps was under attack at Landrecies, and ordered Smith-Dorrien to assist him. Smith-Dorrien replied that he was "unable to move a man". This irritated French, as Haig was a protegé of his.
Smith-Dorrien finally managed to locate Snow, at 5am. He was not under Smith-Dorrien's orders but agreed to assist II Corps. Smith-Dorrien then cancelled his order to retreat, and decided to stand and fight at Le Cateau. He still hoped for assistance from I Corps, which did not reach its intended position to the immediate east of Le Cateau. This news reached French at 5am – woken from his sleep once again, and insisting that the exhausted Murray not be woken, he telegraphed back that he still wanted Smith-Dorrien to "make every endeavour" to fall back but that he had "a free hand as to the method", which Smith-Dorrien took as a handing him permission to make a stand. On waking properly, French ordered Wilson to telephone Smith-Dorrien and order him to break off as soon as possible. Wilson ended the conversation – by his own account – by saying "Good luck to you. Yours is the first cheerful voice I've heard in three days." Smith-Dorrien's slightly different recollection was that Wilson had warned him that he risked another Sedan.
Von Kluck believed that he was facing the entire BEF and hoped to envelop it on both flanks to its destruction, but lack of coordination among the German attacking forces thwarted this ambition.

After Le Cateau

Smith-Dorrien's decision to stand and fight enraged French, who accused him of jeopardising the whole BEF. French and his staff believed that II Corps had been destroyed at Le Cateau, although its units reappeared and reassembled after the retreat. Haig, despite believing French to be incompetent, wrote in his journal of Smith-Dorrien's "ill-considered decision" in electing to stand and fight at Le Cateau. Murray later called Smith-Dorrien "a straight honourable gentleman, most lovable, kind and generous" but thought he "did wrong to fight other than a strong rearguard action". However, the historian John Terraine praised Smith-Dorrien's decision, arguing that despite heavy casualties sustained by II Corps in the action, it materially slowed the German advance.
GHQ fell back to Noyon on 26 August 1914, and then and the next day Huguet and other French liaison officers attached to it gave Joffre a tale with their communications of shattered British forces falling back from Le Cateau in defeat. In fact Smith-Dorrien's staff had held II Corps' formation together, although at a meeting French accused him of being overly optimistic.
Smith-Dorrien recorded that his men were much fitter and had recovered their spirits after the Le Cateau engagement. Smith-Dorrien's II Corps lead the counter-attack upon the German advance at the subsequent First Battle of the Marne and the First Battle of the Aisne, Haig's I Corps to his right being delayed by forests in its path of advance.
II Corps, with its heavy casualties was effectively temporarily broken up in late October 1914 to reinforce I Corps, but Smith-Dorrien was given command of the newly formed British Second Army which it was reconstituted as 26 December 1914. His writings from the time show that he was fully aware of the importance of artillery, machine guns and aircraft working in close cooperation with the infantry.
Smith-Dorrien later recorded that General French inflicted "pin-pricks" on him from February 1915 onwards, including the removal of Forestier-Walker as his Chief of Staff. This was supposedly on the grounds that Forestier-Walker was needed to command a division training in England, although two months later he was still waiting to receive its command. French told Haig that Smith-Dorrien was "a weak spot". During the Battle of Neuve Chapelle he was dissatisfied at the apparent "lack of determination" of Smith-Dorrien's diversionary attacks. Smith-Dorrien was not always immune to the excessive optimism which British officers were expected to display throughout the war: Aylmer Haldane recorded in his diary on 15 March 1915 that prior to the battle Smith-Dorrien had been claiming that the war would be won in March 1915. French complained to Kitchener about him on 28 March 1915.

Second Battle of Ypres

At the Second Battle of Ypres, the British were defending a barely-tenable salient of ground, held at great cost at the First Battle of Ypres five months earlier. On 22 April 1915 the Germans used poison gas on the Western Front for the first time, and heavy casualties were sustained by the British and French troops.
On 27 April 1915, with a French counterattack to the north of the salient materializing later and on a smaller-scale than promised, Smith-Dorrien recommended withdrawal to the more defensible "GHQ Line". French privately agreed with this analysis, but was angered that the suggestion came from Smith-Dorrien. French wanted the situation kept quiet so as not to distract from the upcoming attack upon Aubers Ridge by Haig's First Army. Smith-Dorrien wrote a long letter on 27 April 1915 explaining the situation to Robertson. He received in response a curt telephone message telling him that, in French's view, he had adequate troops to defend the salient. A few hours later written orders arrived, directing Smith-Dorrien to turn command of the salient over to Herbert Plumer and to lend Plumer his chief of staff and such other staff officers as Plumer required.. Plumer immediately asked permission for a withdrawal almost identical to that proposed by Smith-Dorrien. After a delay whilst Foch conducted another counterattack, French consented to the action.
On 30 April 1915, Haig wrote in his diary:
After French refused permission to retreat, Smith-Dorrien noted that the planned counterattack was a complete failure with casualties higher than predicted by GHQ. Smith-Dorrien's offer to resign his command on 6 May 1915 was ignored, and on that same day French used the 'pessimism' of the withdrawal recommendation as an excuse to sack him from command of Second Army altogether. "Wully" Robertson is said to have broken the news to him with the words " 'Orace, yer for 'ome ", although by another account he might have said " 'Orace, yer thrown ".
The Official Historian Brigadier Edmonds later alleged that French had removed Smith-Dorrien as he was senior to Haig and stood in the way of Haig becoming Commander-in-Chief, and that Wilson had put the idea in French's mind, but this may be doubtful as their antipathy went back a long way, and French was later replaced by Douglas Haig as Commander-in-Chief of the BEF against his will.
Smith-Dorrien was raised to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George and was briefly appointed GOC First Home Army.

Remainder of the war

After a period in Britain commanding First Army of Central Force, Smith-Dorrien was appointed GOC East Africa to fight the Germans in German East Africa but pneumonia contracted during the voyage to South Africa prevented him from taking command. His former adversary, Jan Smuts, took on this command. Smith-Dorrien took no significant military part in the rest of the war. He returned to England in January 1916 and on 29 January 1917 was appointed lieutenant of the Tower of London.
He led a campaign in London for moral purity, calling for suppression of "suggestive or indecent" media.

French's memoirs

French, partly in response to criticism inspired by Smith-Dorrien, later wrote a partial and inaccurate account of the opening of the war in his book 1914, which attacked Smith-Dorrien. Smith-Dorrien, as a serving officer, was denied permission to reply in public.
French's official despatch after Le Cateau had praised Smith-Dorrien's "rare and unusual coolness, intrepidity and determination". In 1914 French wrote that this had been written before he knew the full facts, and that Smith-Dorrien had risked destruction of his corps and lost 14,000 men and 80 guns. Smith-Dorrien, in a private written statement, called 1914 "mostly a work of fiction and a foolish one too".

Last years

Smith-Dorrien's last position was as Governor of Gibraltar from 9 July 1918 – 26 May 1923, where he introduced an element of democracy and closed some brothels. According to Wyndham Childs in the summer of 1918, Smith-Dorrien tried, and nearly succeeded, in uniting the Comrades of the Great War, the National Association of Discharged Sailors and Soldiers, and the National Federation of Discharged and Demobilized Sailors and Soldiers into one organisation. The merger later took place in 1921 to form the British Legion, under the influence of Field Marshal Douglas Haig.
He retired in September 1923, living in Portugal and then England. He devoted much his time to the welfare and remembrance of Great War soldiers. He worked on his memoirs, which were published in 1925. As French was still alive at the time of writing, he still felt unable to rebut 1914. Despite his treatment by French, in 1925, he journeyed across Europe to act as a pallbearer at French's funeral, an act appreciated by French's son.
He played himself in the film The Battle of Mons, released in 1926. In June 1925, he unveiled the war memorial in Memorial Avenue, Worksop. On 4 August 1930, he unveiled the Pozières Memorial.

Death

Smith-Dorrien died on 12 August 1930 following injuries sustained in a car accident at Chippenham, in Wiltshire; he was 72 years old. His body was buried at the Three Close Lane Cemetery of St Peter's Church, Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire.

Family

On 3 September 1902, he married Olive Crofton Schneider at St Peter's, Eaton Square, London, in a ceremony performed by his brother Rev. Walter Smith-Dorrien. Olive was the eldest daughter of Colonel John Henry Augustus Schneider and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Schneider, of Oak Lea, Furness Abbey. Her brothers were Henry Crofton Schneider and Major Cyril Crofton Schneider. Olive's mother was the stepsister of Gen. Sir Arthur Power Palmer GCB, GCIE, who died in 1904.
The Smith-Dorriens had three sons:
Horace and Olive Smith-Dorrien informally adopted Power Palmer's two daughters, who were left homeless after his second wife's death in 1912.

Legacy

The following memorials have been established:
In 1931, after his death, the Smith-Dorrien Memorial was added to the Sherwood Foresters Memorial in Crich, Derbyshire, which Smith-Dorrien himself had opened on 6 August 1923.
John Betjeman, mentions Horace in Chapter III "Highgate" of his autobiographical blank-verse poem Summoned by Bells:
In late September, in the conker time,
When Poperinghe and Zillebeke and Mons
Boomed with five-nines, large sepia gravures
Of French, Smith-Dorrien and Haig were given
Gratis with each half-pound of Brooke Bond tea.

Horace also features in the poem "Canada to England" by Craven Langstroth Betts:
Lead out, lead out, Brave Mother, for the sake of sacked Louvain!
Give us our own Smith-Dorrien, yield us the van again!