Hubert Gough

General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough, GCB, GCMG, KCVO (12 August 1870 – 1963) was a British World War I general who commanded the British Fifth Army from 1916 to 1918.

Early career

After leaving Eton, Gough gained entrance to 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.

Immediately prior to the outbreak of World War I Gough was a leader of the Curragh Mutiny, in which a number of British Army officers refused to support Government plans to bring about Irish home rule.

World War I

At the outbreak of war in August 1914, Gough was commanding a 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 and, at the start of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, Gough was in charge of the Reserve Army, despite only being a lieutenant general.

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. 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 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. General Haig was critical of him for "playing the Irish card" [(Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson: "Passchendaele, the untold truth" (1997) pp 102-105)] .

pring 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 and stem the German advance led to his dismissal. 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 . . ." [(Andrew Roberts "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900" ((London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2006)), pp. 136-137).]

Later life

In 1919 he was the head of the Allied Military Mission to the Baltic States. 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.Sir Hubert was also the older brother of General John Gough VC.

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

Further reading

* Walker, Jonathan "The Blood Tub - General Gough and the Battle of Bullecourt 1917" Spellmount, 2000

References

External links

* [http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?search=ss&sText=Hubert+Gough&LinkID=mp01839 National Portrait Gallery]