1-217-594 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Douglas Haig, British First World War general, 1914. Haig (1861-1928) was commander of the 1st Army Corps of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at the outbreak of the war. His troops fought with distinction at Mons and the First Battle of Ypres. In 1915 Haig was promoted to Commander in Chief of the BEF, a post he held until the end of the war. His conduct of the war on the Western Front was controversial. On the one hand, his pursuit of a strategy of attrition and planning of offensives which ultimately made minimal territorial gains at the cost of massive casualties, as at the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917), earned him the nickname 'Butcher Haig'. General John J Pershing, commander of the US army in France, described Haig as the man who won the war, however. He was made a Field Marshal in 1917, and after the war served as Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces until 1921.