David Lloyd George access to the Cabinet so as to bypass Kitchener. However, he did succeed in securing the appointment of Sir Eric Geddes to take charge of military railways behind British lines in France, with the honorary rank of major-general. Lloyd George told a journalist, Roy W. Howard, in late September that "the fight must be to a finish – to a knockout", a rejection of President Wilson's offer to mediate. Lloyd George was increasingly frustrated at the limited gains of the Somme Offensive, criticising General Haig to Ferdinand Foch on a visit to the Western Front in September (British casualty ratios
Owen Lloyd George, 3rd Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who determined that all four of his old friend's grandsons in the services should be brought home to attend the funeral in north Wales. One was firing his guns across the Rhine, another was flying a bomber, a third was serving in HMS "Enterprise" in the North Sea and the fourth, Lloyd-George, was fighting in Italy. Lloyd-George was at once dispatched to Naples by fighter plane, given a bed in Field Marshal Alexander's villa, flown by bomber to England the next morning, whisked up to north Wales in a Spitfire (flown by a Polish pilot