who commanded the british expeditionary force in world war one
British Expeditionary Force (World War I) The force was commanded by Field Marshal Sir John French until December 1915,[5] when he was replaced by General Sir Douglas Haig.[6] The BEF's Chief of Staff on mobilisation was General Archibald Murray.[7] He was replaced in January 1915 by General William Robertson.[8] Lieutenant-General Launcelot Kiggell then served as Chief of Staff from December 1915 to January 1917 when he was succeeded by Lieutenant-General Herbert Lawrence. The two initial Army Corps were commanded by Douglas Haig (I Corps) and Horace Smith-Dorrien (II Corps).[3]
British Expeditionary Force (World War II) The BEF (General Lord Gort) began moving to France in September 1939. The British assembled along the Belgian–French border on the left of the French First Army as part of the French 1er groupe d'armées (1st Army Group) of the Front du Nord-est (North-Eastern Front). Most of the BEF spent the Phoney War digging field defences on the French–Belgian border, before the Battle of France (Fall Gelb) began on 10 May 1940. The BEF constituted 10 percent of the Allied forces on the Western Front. The BEF participated in the Dyle Plan, a rapid advance into Belgium to the line of the river Dyle but had to retreat through Belgium and north-western France with the rest of the 1er groupe d'armées, after the German breakthrough further south at the Battle of Sedan. The BEF, French and Belgian forces cut off north of the Somme river were evacuated from the French North Sea coast through port and beaches of Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo.
Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig Although he had gained a favourable reputation during the immediate post-war years, with his funeral becoming a day of national mourning, Haig has since the 1960s become an object of criticism for his leadership during the First World War.[7][8][9] He was nicknamed "Butcher Haig" for the two million British casualties endured under his command.[7] The Canadian War Museum comments, "His epic but costly offensives at the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917) have become nearly synonymous with the carnage and futility of First World War battles."[10]
Battle of Passchendaele In a German General Staff publication, it was written that "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the Flanders battle of 1917".[145] In his Memoirs of 1938, Lloyd George wrote, "Passchendaele was indeed one of the greatest disasters of the war ... No soldier of any intelligence now defends this senseless campaign ...".[146] In 1939, G. C. Wynne wrote that the British had eventually reached Passchendaele Ridge and captured Flandern I Stellung; beyond them were Flandern II and Flandern III (which was nearing completion). The German submarine bases on the coast had not been captured but the objective of diverting the Germans from the French further south, while they recovered from the Nivelle Offensive in April, had succeeded.[147] In 1997, Griffith wrote that the bite and hold system kept moving until November, because the BEF had developed a workable system of offensive tactics, against which the Germans ultimately had no answer.[148] A decade later, Sheldon wrote that relative casualty figures were irrelevant, because the German army could not afford great numbers of losses or to lose the initiative by being compelled to fight another defensive battle, on ground of the Allies' choosing. The Third Battle of Ypres pinned the German army to Flanders and caused unsustainable casualties.[149]