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THE LIFE OF
SIR STANLEY MAUDE
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.
BY MAJOR-GENERAL
SIR C. E. CALLWELL, K.C.B.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1 920

Printed in Great Britain

PREFACE
The author wishes to express gratitude to many old friends
of the subject of this biography, as also to officers and others
who were associated with him in the course of his military
career, for the assistance which they have so willingly lent in
its compilation. In many cases it has been possible to give
their estimations of Sir Stanley Maude in their own words.
In particular are acknowledgments due to Major-General Vesey
Dawson, Major-General the Hon. Sir W. Lambton, Major-
General F. F. Ready, Lieut.-Colonel J. K. Dick-Cunyngham,
and Dr. W. H. Willcox for going through the proofs of
portions of the book while it was in preparation.

LIST OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS
Origin of the Maude family — The Irish Maudes— General Sir F. F.
Maude, V.C., G.C.B., the father of Sir Stanley Maude — His
services in the Mahratta, Crimean and Afghan Wars — The boy
hood of Maude — His bent for soldiering — His life at Eton-
Cornish's House — Athletic and boating successes — Tributes
from old schoolfellows — His preparation for the Service — His
time at Sandhurst .......

CHAPTER II
FROM 1884 TO 1899
Joins the 1st Coldstream — His first year with the regiment in London
— The investment of Khartum and its fall — The 1st Coldstream
proceed on active service to Suakin — Arrival at Suakin— Noctur
nal annoyance — Hashin— The Tofrek Zeriba — The attack on
the convoy. The advance to Tamai — Pushing forward the rail
way — The campaign abandoned — The Guards proceed to Egypt
and to Cyprus — Maude returns with the Coldstream to L«ndon —
Windsor — Maude appointed Adjutant — His record in that capacity
— His marriage — He joins the Staff College — His time at Camber-
ley and his fellow-students — Becomes Brigade-Major of the
Brigade of Guards — The Diamond Jubilee — Birth of his son —
Maude's record as Brigade-Major — The outbreak of the South
African War — He vacates the Brigade-Majorship . . .12

CHAPTER III
THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR
Maude sails for Cape Town — Joins the 2nd Coldstream on the Modder
River — The situation — Brigade-Major of the Guards Brigade —
Lord Roberts' great offensive just about to begin — Cronje dis
appears from in front of Lord Methuen — Pole-Carew's recon
naissance — The Guards move to Klip Drift — Guards called up to
the front after Paardeberg — Poplar Grove — Driefontein — Maude
seriously injured by horse falling — Guards reach Bloemfontein —

viii SIR STANLEY MAUDE
PAOE
The Expedition towards Norval's Pont — Situation at Bloemfon
tein — Guards Brigade included in the 11th Division, and Pole-
Carew replaced by Inigo Jones in command of Brigade — Relief of
Wepener — Lord Roberts' plans for advancing on Pretoria —
Advance to Kroonstad — Occupation of Johannesburg — Occupa
tion of Pretoria — Situation after capture of Pretoria — The action
of Diamond Hill — Maude offered and accepts appointment of
Military Secretary in Canada — The advance to Middelburg — The
advance to Belfast — Guards' march north of Belfast — Bergendal
— Its consequences — Arrangements for the advance to Komati
Poort — March of Guards Brigade from Waterval Onder to
Komati Poort — Maude's services as Brigade-Major— Guards re
turn to Pretoria — Idea that they were about to be sent, home —
11th Division broken up— Brigade-staff and Guards proceed south
— They hold line of Orange River — Boers cross the river into
Cape Colony — Maude's responsibilities — Command areas formed
— Inigo Jones' headquarters at Naauwpoort — Maude's heavy
duties at first — Haig takes charge of local mobile columns — De
Wet's invasion and its collapse — Maude proceeds home — His
record in the campaign — His action in accepting the post in
Canada ........ 34

CHAPTER IV
THE TIME IN CANADA
The Maudes proceed to Canada — Nature of the appointment of
Military Secretary— The Viceroy's position— The military situa
tion in the Dominion— The Royal Tour— Criticisms of Maude's
detailed arrangements— The Tour a complete success— Maude on
Canadian defence— Arrival of Lord Dundonald— Maude's views on
the local military system— His life at Ottawa— Trip to the United
SUtes— The difficulty about the Alaskan frontier— The Dun
donald controversy— Lord Dundonald's appreciation of Maude—
The close of Lord Minto's viceroy alty— They return home . 70

CHAPTER V .
FROM 1906 TO 1914
Second-in-Command of the 1st Battalion— Maude's anxiety to get out
side employment— His work with the Coldstream in 1906—
Becomes Private Secretary to Mr. Arnold Forster for a short
time— Aldershot-On the Command Staff during the 1906 Exer
cises-Becomes D.A.A. and Q.M.G. of Coast Defences at Ply
mouth—Disappointment at the nature of the post— His efforts
to improve the machine-Promoted a Half-pay Lieutenant-Colonel
—Takes up the appointment of General Staff Officer with the 2nd

CONTENTS ix
PAOK
London Territorial Division — Early experiences with the Terri
torials — On the Directing Staff of the Aldershot Command for
the Manoeuvres in 1909 — Becomes Assistant Director of the
Territorial Forces at the War Office — The Annual Camps — The
Army Manoeuvres in 1910 — Life at Carshalton — Declines the
offer of Assistant ControUership in the Lord Chamberlain's office
— Sir H. Mackinnon's appreciation of Maude — The work at the
War Office — Views regarding the Territorials — Attends the Swiss
Manoeuvres in 1911 — Views as to compulsory training — Appointed
G. S.O.I of the 6th Division at the Curragh — Lord Haldane on
Maude's work at the War Office — Appreciation of Maude at
Carshalton, by the Rev. G. Vaux — 1912 at the Curragh — Tours
and inspections — 1913 — The Manoeuvres in Ireland — Sir C.
Fergusson's appreciation of Maude — Joins the Directorate of
Military Training at the War Office under Sir W. Robertson —
Preparation for the Annual Manoeuvres — Outbreak of the Great
War — Appreciation of Maude by Lord Rawlinson — Maude's
position in the army at the time of general mobilisation .

CHAPTER VI
1914-ON THE STAFF OF THE 3rd CORPS IN FRANCE
Maude learns that he is to be G.S.0.1 on the staff of the 3rd Corps—
His alarm at the apparent vacillation of the Government — Mobil
isation — Constitution of the 3rd Corps— The staff proceed to
France — Arrive during the retreat — The order to advance —
Position of the Corps — The advance to the Aisne and its im
mediate passage by the 11th Brigade — The Battle of the Aisne—
Arrival of the 6th Division — Maude's dissatisfaction at the
sedentary operations — The plan for moving to the north— The
3rd Corps moves to St. Omer — Advance beyond the Lys— Heavy
fighting — Maude posted to the 14th Brigade— His record with the
3rd Corps ....••••

CHAPTER VII
IN COMMAND OF THE 14th INFANTRY BRIGADE
He j oins the 14th Brigade near La Basse'e— General situation at the time
—Position of the Brigade— Given charge of a special operation
near Neuve Chapelle— The Brigade temporarily attached to the
Indian Corps— Move to near Wulverghem— Brigade inspected by
the King  Weather troubles in the trenches— Indirect share in
offensive taking place further north— Changes in organisation at
tke end of the year— Brigade takes over trenches near Neuve
Eglise permanently— Maude awarded the C.B. —Brigade moves to
Kemmel and on to St. Eloi— Maude wounded and goes home for

115

X SIR STANLEY MAUDE
PAGE
some days — Heavy fighting after his return — Gas attack on 28th
Division — Maude ordered home to take up command of a
division, and promoted Major-General — His farewell order to
the 14th Brigade — His record as a Brigade Commander . 132

CHAPTER VIII
THE DARDANELLES
Given command of the 33rd ' New Army ' Division at home — Receives
instructions to proceed immediately to the Dardanelles — His
departure — Reasons for his being sent out — Recent events on the
Gallipoli Peninsula — Arrives and takes over command of the 13th
Division in the Anzac area — Its record — Moves to Suvla — De
parture of the 10th Division — Sir I. Hamilton succeeded by Sir C.
Monro in command of the army — Sir I. Hamilton's appreciation
of Maude — Maude's disappointment on finding that there was to
be no offensive — Progress of events at Suvla — Evacuation in the
air — The great storm — Delay in arriving at a decision at home —
Orders to evacuate received — Maude's views — His written com
munications with Corps Headquarters — The plan of the with
drawal — Preparations made by Maude — The evacuation of Suvla
— The 13th Division proceeds to Mudros and thence to Helles —
The position at Helles — Orders received from home for the
evacuation of Helles — Maude's disappointment at finding the
amount of material that would have to be destroyed — The general
plan— Withdrawal fixed for the night of the 8th-9th January —
Turkish attack on the 7th effectually repulsed by the 13th
Division — The scheme of embarkation on the la^t night — The
difficulties of the rearmost portion of the 13th Division at Gully
Beach— The adventures of Maude and his Headquarters at the
last— Success of the evacuation— He and his division arrive in
%ypt— His services in the Dardanelles Campaign . . 168

CHAPTER IX
THE MOVE FROM EGYPT TO THE FRONT IN MESOPOTAMIA
The 13th Division proceeds to Port Said-Joins the 16th Corps under
General Home— Events in Mesopotemia— Maude learns that his
division is to proceed thither-Its re-equipment-Maude sails
for Basrah— The problem that had arisen in Mesopotamia at this
time-Difficulties in the way of relieving Kut-The forces avail
able for the purpose-The difficulty about small-arms ammunition
in the 13th Division-The move up the Tigris— Failure of the
qI^^I/c" the Dujaila Redoubt-The 13th Division assembles at
Sheikh Saad— Maude on the censorship in Mesopotamia . . 189

CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER X
THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT
pAeE
Maude's preparations to attack the Haanah position — His task — The
13th Division capture the Hannah and Felahieh trenches —
Character of the success — The 7th Division attack Sannaiyat and
are repulsed — The 13th Division attack Sannaiyat and are re
pulsed — Maude's bearing after the failure — The problem set the
relieving force — The 3rd Division capture Turkish trenches at
Beit Aiessa — The eaemy's counter-attack at night — The 13th
Division come to the aid of the 3rd — Failure of the 13th Division
to improve upon the advance at Beit Aiessa — The 7th Division
try again at Sannaiyat, aided by Maude's guns and machine guns
from the opposite bank, but fail — Maude's theory as to the best
line to have taken — The attempt of the Julrmr to run the gauntlet
— Maude agrees that no more can be done — Fall of Kut — The
doubt as to the last date up to which the place could hold out . 204

CHAPTER XI
FROM DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER
Condition of the army after the failure to relieve Kut — Maude and the
13th Division— The Turks fall back on the right bank of the Tigris
— The strategical situation created by this withdrawal — Maude's
criticisms of staff work during the war— His description of the
life at the front — The light railway forward from Sheikh Saad
commenced — Maude appointed to command the Tigris Army
Corps— His record with the 13th Division — Appreciation of him
as Divisional Commander — Composition and distribution of the
Tigris Army Corps— Steps taken by its new chief— Inspection by
Sir P. Lake — Maude's description of his new conditions^His
bent for an active defensive — Appreciation of him by Sir P. Lake
¦ —Appointed Army Commander— Reason for this — He takes over
command at Basrah ..... 220

CHAPTER XII
PREPARATIONS FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN
Maude's principal staff officers— The distribution of the army— His
views concerning his task— His recognition of the need of a
thoroughly efficient organisation at the base— His instructions
to the force at the front— His work at Basrah— His relations with
the War Office — Development of various services in rear of the
fighting troops— He finds it necessary to remain longer at the base
than he had anticipated— Visit of Sir C. Monro— Maude inspects

xii SIR STANLEY MAUDE
PAGE
the Karun line— He inspects the Euphrates front, and then pro
ceeds up the Tigris— The main army divided into two Corps
under Generals Marshall and Cobbe respectively— The state of
affairs at the front at the beginning of December . . . 238
CHAPTER XIII
THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD
The position of the opposing forces — Maude's plan of operations-
Sudden advance across the Hai — Maude's description of this
operation — The position consolidated — The clearing of the
Khaidiri Bend— The capture of the Hai bridgehead— The opera
tions in the Dahra Bend — Maude's account — The situation in the
middle of February — Maude's Order of the Day of the 16th —
General Cobbe's operation against Sannaiyat — The passage of the
Tigris at Shumran — The lines of Sannaiyat captured — The gun
boats come up to the extreme front — Comments on Maude's
triumph in the Kut area — Hurried retreat of the Turks —
Maude's account of the pursuit — A pause at Azizieh — The com
munications of the army — Fresh advance — Fight at Lajj — The
Turks evacuate the Ctesiphon position — Maude's anticipations —
The cavalry and the 1st Corps cross the Tigris — The forcing of
the Diala — The capture of Baghdad — Maude's undramatic entry
into the city — The enemy followed up — The combat of Mushai-
dieh — Comments on the second phase of the campaign — Maude
receives many messages of congratulation — Promoted Lieutenant-
General ........ 253
CHAPTER XIV
CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST
Necessary steps to be taken after the capture of Baghdad — Possi
bilities of effective Russian co-operation — Operations on the Diala
— Advance along the right bank of the Tigris — General Marshall's
operations on the Shatt-el-Adhaim — Capture of Samarra — Final
defeat of the Turkish 13th Corps — Maude's work in Baghdad —
His attention to the well-being of his troops — The 16th Division
ordered up from Nasirieh — Visits to Samarra and the Diala front —
His visit by aeroplane to the 7th Division— Close touch kept be
tween him and his troops — His attention to medical arrange
ments—The Chaplains — Unsuccessful attempt on Ramadi in
July— Maude's view as regards leave when on active service —
Kut to Baghdad railway completed — The enemy's preparations to
retrieve the position in Mesopotamia— Advance on the Diala front
in August— Maude's disappointment at the whole of his despatch
not appearing in the newspapers — Improvements effected in
Baghdad— His relations with his personal staff— Occupation of
Mendali— General Brooking's capture of Ramadi— Clearing the

CONTENTS xiii
_ PAGE
Jebel Hamrin — Reports of plots against Maude's life— His plans
for the cold season — The occupation of Tikrit — The position in
Mesopotamia assured at the time of Maude's death — Sir W.
Robertson's appreciation of Maude — His personal influence with
his army — Sir A. Cobbe's and Sir G. MacMunn's appreciations —
The Indian troops — Sir C. Monro's tribute to him — His influence
on the administrative services — General F. F. Ready and Sir
W. Gillman on this point — General Marshall's reference to
Maude's work in his despatch of the 29th of August 1918— Maude's
insistence on always giving credit to his subordinates for what was
accomplished in Mesopotamia ..... 279

CHAPTER XV
THE DEATH OF MAUDE
His good health in spite of heat and hard work — The visit of Mrs.
Egan — Maude taken ill — Cholera — His death — Grief throughout
the Empire — The feeling in Mesopotamia — Tributes in Parlia
ment — Maude's funeral — 'Ave atque Vale ' — His place of burial . 308

CHAPTER XVI
AN APPRECIATION
Maude's tenacity — His work in offices — His disposition to centralise,
his weakest point as a soldier — The dangers of such methods —
His close attention to detail — Comparison of Maude with Napoleon
— Their remarkable similarity in many respects as soldiers — The
inspiriting effect of Maude's personality among his troops— His
grit in times of adversity — His campaign in Mesopotamia a master
piece — His determination to make the most of victory — His
premonition of the coming of the Great War — A man distin
guished by his piety — His popularity amongst intimate friends —
His keenness as a sportsman — His family life — Conclusion . 320
INDEX  337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Sir Stanley Maude ..... Frontispiece

FAOINO PAGE

F. S. Maude, Eton ... . . &
Lieutenant F. S. Maude, Coldstream Guards . . 24^
Major F. S. Maude, C.M.G., D.S.O. : Military Secretary,
Ottawa ....... 84.
Brig. -General F. S. Maude, C.B., C.M.G. : in Hospital,
Carlton House Terrace . .15a
The Army Commander with his A.D.C.'s moving to Ad
vanced G.H.Q., 13th December 1916 . . . 254?
The Army Commander riding in Baghdad . 304?

MAPS

South Africa —
General Map
The Advance to Bloemfontein
Eastern Transvaal .

PAdE 35
3535

Western Front —
La Bassee — Ypres

127

Dardanelles —
Anzac and Suvla
The Helles Area

16117S

Mesopotamia —
Mesopotamia and Syria
Lower Mesopotamia
Turkish Positions, April 191t)
Rut, December I916 to February 1917
Environs of Baghdad

191191 195195
266

CHAPTER I
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS
The Maude family trace their origin in this country back to
an Italian warrior, Eustacius de Monte Alto, who came over
at the Conquest, and who was in due course rewarded with
the manors of Hawarden and Montalt — ^the latter presumably
named after himself — for his services in the affrays during
which the Welsh territories immediately beyond the Dee fell
into Norman hands. He and his senior descendants in the
male line became Barons de Montalt of Hawarden Castle and
took the surname of Montalt, which has become corrupted
into Maude ; the name also occurs in another form in Mold,
the town in Flint which has risen on the site of the ancient
manor of Montalt. The barons who were heads of the family
played an important part in the country for several genera
tions in early Plantagenet days, acquiring great territorial
possessions in the east and south to recompense them for their
somewhat precarious hold upon their estates in the Welsh
marches ; and in the reign of Henry ii., Andomar, the youngest
son of the fourth baron, proved himself a doughty soldier, and
is said to have been the capturer of William the Lion of Scot
land when that monarch was taken prisoner in the borderland.
It was probably in recognition of this signal service that
Andomar Maude became possessor of extensive lands in
Yorkshire, enabhng him to found the Yorkshire branch of
the Maudes as territorial magnates.
The Barony of Montalt died out during the minority of
Edward ni., when its estates under a special arrangement
reverted to the acquisitive and unscrupulous Queen Mother,
Isabella, and the family was thenceforward during Plantagenet
days represented by the Yorkshire branch, of which there
came to be several ramifications, all inheriting landed property.
It was in 1640 that a Robert Maude of West Riddlesden and
Ripon, head of the senior ramification, sold his estates, re
paired to Ireland and there purchased valuable lands in

2 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Tipperary and Kilkenny. His descendants during the succeed
ing hundred and thirty years took a prominent share in the
political activities of the, Emerald Isle, and his grandson was
given a baronetcy. The Barony de Montalt was revived in
the Irish peerage in 1786 in favour of Sir Cornwallis Maude,
third baronet, who was advanced to the dignity of Viscount
Hawarden in 1791. His youngest son, John Charles, Rector
of Enniskillen, had six sons, of whom the second, George
Ashley, joined the Royal Artillery, reached the rank of colonel,
was Crown Equerry to Queen Victoria, and died a K.C.B.
The fourth, Frederick Francis, father of the Conqueror of
Baghdad, likewise joined the army and rose to high rank,
and a brief account of the career of a distinguished soldier,
who was so closely related to the subject of this Memoir, will
not be out of place.
General Sir F. F. Maude, V.C., G.C.B., was born in 1821,
and in 1840 proceeded to India as an ensign to join the Buffs,
then a single-battaUon regiment. Within three years he had
obtained the adjutancy of the regiment, in which capacity
he served through the Gwalior campaign of 1843-44, having
his horse shot at Punniar, and receiving the bronze star
which was awarded for that memorable victory over the
Mahrattas. The Buffs returned to England in 1845, but
started on a fresh tour of foreign service in 1851, when they
took ship to Malta. Here Maude, now a captain, became,
first, aide-de-camp and afterwards military secretary to the
Governor and Commander-in-Chief. This staff service lasted
till 1855, but Captain Maude was at home for several months
in 1853, and he then married Catherine Mary, daughter of
the Very Rev. Sir G. Bisshopp ; two sons, the elder of whom
died in infancy, and three daughters were born to them in
due course. The Buffs had proceeded to Greece in 1854, in
the early part of the Crimean War, but they joined Lord
Raglan's forces before Sevastopol early in the summer of
1855, and there Maude, now a major, rejoined them.
He was in command of the regiment for some weeks in
August and September, and on the Sth of the latter month
he led 260 of his men, who formed the ladder party of the
2nd Division, in the second assault on the Redan The
Buffs forced their way into the work and maintained them
selves m the mterior in spite of heavy losses for some time •

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 3
but for want of support they were eventually driven out
again, Major Maude being dangerously wounded, and his
gallantry being subsequently rewarded with the Victoria
Cross for services, described as follows in the Gazette :
For his conspicuous bravery during the final attack on the
almost inpregnable Redan on the Sth of September 1855, when
he was in command of the ladder covering party of the 2nd Divi
sion. Placing himself well in front of all, exposed to round shot,
shell, and death-dealing canister, he led his men right into the
Redan. On looking round he only found nine or ten men there to
support him, all the rest having fallen before the enemy's fire.
Nothing daunted he dashed for a traverse, which he held although
dangerously wounded, and only retired when all hope of support
was at an end.
At the conclusion of the war, after the taking of Sevastopol,
he was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel and given the C.B.
in recognition of his brilliant record. He was furthermore
nominated Khight of the Legion of Honour, was awarded the
5th Class of the Medjidieh, and received the Crimean medal
with Sevastopol clasp and the Turkish medal.
A second battahon of the Buffs was raised in 1857 and Maude
was given command, taking it out to Malta in the following
year, and from thence on to Gibraltar. There he was given
the appointment of assistant adjutant-general which he held
for five years, and it was while quartered on the Rock that,
on 24th June 1864, was born his youngest child, Frederick
Stanley, who, half a century later, was to help so materially
in the extrication of the British forces from the Gallipoli
Peninsula and was then to win such imperishable renown on
the plains of Mesopotamia. From 1867 to 1873 Colonel Maude
was stationed in Ireland, where he held the positions of
Inspector-General of Disembodied MiHtia and Inspector-
General of AuxiUary Forces, and in the following year he was
promoted major-general. Then in 1875 he was offered a
command in India, which he accepted, and on arrival he found
himself in charge of the Allahabad District.
The outbreak of the Afghan War in 1878 afforded the general,
who was now approaching his sixtieth year, an opportunity of
adding to the laurels that he had won a quarter of a century
before amid the outworks of Sevastopol, for he was selected
to lead the 2nd Division of the Peshawar Valley Force.
Shortly after taking up this command in the field he was

4 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
promoted lieutenant-general. The 2nd Division moved into
the enemy's territory in rear of the 1st, commanded by General
Sam Browne, and it was consequently engaged mainly in
protecting the lengthy and exposed communications of the
troops which had advanced to beyond Jellalabad ; but General
Maude took personal charge of two important punitive ex
peditions directed against the turbulent Zakka Khel Afridis,
which effected their purpose; and after the Peace of Gandamak
his services were recognised by the award of the K.C.B., and
he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. During
the later phase of the Afghan War, after the destruction of
Cavagnari and his mission at Kabul, Sir F. Maude was in
charge of the Rawal Pindi District, and there he completed
his five years' tenure of Indian command. Lady Maude and
he returned to England in 1880, and they took up their abode
first, for a year, in St. George's Road, S.W., and then in Eccles
ton Square, so as to be near their son Stanley, now a lad at
Eton intended for the Guards. Sir Frederick was not again
actively employed, and he retired in 1885 with the rank of
general, shortly afterwards receiving the G.C.B. Lady Maude
died in 1892, and during the closing years of his hfe the general
resided at Torquay. There he passed away in 1897, two days
before the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.
Little Frederick Stanley arrived in England with his
parents from Gibraltar in 1866, and the family then stayed
for some months in London while his father, temporarily on
half-pay, awaited fresh employment. On his getting the post
in Ireland, Colonel Maude took a house in Upper Pembroke
Street in Dubhn, and the family lived there until 1873, Stanley
in the interval developing from infancy into a sturdy httle
boy, who even at that early age took a precocious interest in
all things mihtary. Son of a distinguished warrior, and in
tended for the army, he used to astonish officers visiting the
house by the eagerness and inteUigence he displayed when
manoeuvring the tin soldiers that were his especial dehght
He was nine years old when Colonel Maude gave up the Irish
appointment and returned with the family to England to
live for the following two years in Upper Cromwell Road.
Then there came the great break in home Ufe caused by his
father accepting the Indian command in 1875 General
Maude idoUsed his Uttle son and had set his heart on sending

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 5
the boy to Eton ; he was however by no means well oft, and he
was to some extent influenced by the difficulties involved in
keeping Stanley at an expensive school when he decided to
proceed on a five years' tour of foreign service, leaving the boy
at home. General and Mrs. Maude took their two eldest girls
with them to India, but the second returned home after a few
months in the East. Before they sailed, Stanley had begun
his school Ufe, being sent to St. Michael's School, Aldis House,
the Rev. John Hawtrey's preparatory school at Slough, in
September of that year.
During the absence of his parents in India, young Maude
was latterly under charge of his sister Alice, and he generally
spent his holidays at Debden Hall, Saffron Walden, with the
Raymond Cely-TreviUans, cousins. But while at Hawtrey's
he went abroad at Easter and in the summer of 1876 with his
two sisters and their governess, going to Paris the first time
and visiting Germany in summer. While there, they spent
some time at Coblentz, the headquarters of the German Vlllth
Army Corps and an important garrison town. There the little
twelve-year-old lad enjoyed a rare opportunity of indulging
his bent for things military. For he succeeded somehow in
making friends with German officers stationed in the place,
and these gave him special assistance and encouragement in
respect to witnessing the summer exercises of the troops then
in progress, enabled him to see what Kriegspiel — a pastime
then almost unknown in England — ^looked like, and obtained
for him access to the historic stronghold of Ehrenbreitstein,
a fastness where foreigners were not in those days apt to meet
with a cordial welcome. He had already contracted the habit
of studying records of battles and wars ; but he had enjoyed
few opportunities when in Dubhn and in London of seeing
troops at work. So that the spectacle of considerable miUtary
forces, carrying out manoeuvres in the broken ground around
the beautifully situated city at the meeting-place of the MoseUe
with the Rhine, no doubt remained a precious memory to him
in the years to follow when the schoolboy was preparing for
a soldier's career.
' I remember him as a thin, leggy boy with a high colour
and a quiet smile,' the Hon. Gilbert Johnstone, who was at
Hawtrey's and afterwards at Eton with him, describes Maude
at this time. He joined eagerly in aU games, and always

6 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
received exceUent reports, but he gave no great promise in
respect to scholarship. During the hoUdays he learnt to fish
and to shoot, and was quite a respectable shot at the age of
fourteen when he went to Eton after the Easter hoUdays
in 1878.
At Eton he was in Mr. Cornish's House, where his first fag-
master was the Hon. M. B. Hawke, now Lord Hawke, who
has played so prominent a part in the world of cricket and of
sport ever since, and who describes him as ' one of the best
little sportsmen ever entered at my Tutor's and a most
attentive fag.' As fag he was associated with H. S. Rawlinson,
now General Lord Rawlinson, with whom he was later to
serve in the Coldstream, and was to be frequently associated
in future years ; and it is surely something of a coincidence
that these two small boys, contemporaries in Cornish's House,
should many years afterwards have come to be simultaneously
commanding huge British armies in war, the one in France,
the other far away in the Cradle of the World. ' Your brother
is going on very well and seems in good spirits and to get on
with everybody ; his work also is satisfactory, and I am glad
to have him in my House,' his tutor wrote to Miss Alice Maude
a few weeks after her brother went to Eton. Another con
temporary of Maude's at Cornish's was J. McNeile, who was
somewhat older but, going to Oxford, joined the Coldstream
after him ; Major McNeile was recalled from retirement, and
was killed while commanding a battalion of the K.O.S.B. in
the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. Colonel Le Roy Lewis, who
was Maude's fagmaster for some time, writes of him :
I well remember Maude when he was my fag. He was one of
the nicest small boys I ever had to deal with. The relations
between a fagmaster and his fag may sometimes be difficult ; but
in our case our dealings were free from any unpleasant or dis
agreeable trait. I liked Maude and I think he Hked me as we
remained firm friends all our time  His was a sunny and
cheerful disposition, which made for peace and comradeship
amongst those with whom he was associated. At ' my Tutor's '
he was popular with aU hands, swells and scugs hked him, and as
for his old fagmaster, all I can say is that the day on which I
heard of his death was indeed a dreary one for me.
If the world were only entirely peopled by men Kke Joe Maude
it would be a charming place, for he had the rare gift of sympathy
and kindness, which is not so often found as it might be.

F. S. MAUDE, Eton.
(1879.)

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 7
He was already noted for his athletic prowess when at
Hawtrey's, and at Eton he at once took to the river, although
he played in the final at cricket for the Lower Boy Cup his
first year. All his old schoolfeUows testify to his popularity
from the outset, to his infectious cheeriness, his good temper
and his quiet determination in whatever he undertook. From
a very early date he came to be known as ' Joe ' Maude, which
in reaUty speaks for itself — for when a boy or a man, whose
name is not Joseph, is known as Joe it generaUy means that
his company is sought for and his personality is attractive —
and he carried the nickname on to Sandhurst with him, and
from Sandhurst into the Guards. Although Ms scholastic
achievements as a boy were merely respectable and never
distinguished, he satisfied his masters ; and when the time
approached for him to go up for the Royal Mihtary CoUege
he worked with a will. Still, it was as a runner and in the
boats that he chiefly made his mark, although he was also in
his House Football Eleven from 1880 onwards.
He ran third in the Junior Mile in 1879, and in the following
year ran third in the Junior Steeplechase. In 1881 he was
second in the School Mile, and that year he won the School
Steeplechase. ' Maude deserves much credit for his careful
training before and judgment in the race,' the Eton College
Chronicle remarked in its report of the event — and his per
formances that year singled him out as a fine athlete. In
1882 he won the School Mile in the excellent time, for a school
boy, of 4 minutes 45 1 seconds, when considerably handicapped
in respect to special training for the distance owing to his being
whip to the beagles. ' I have a vivid recollection of him
finishing up the Dorney Road with a long stride and as fresh
as could be,' writes Lieutenant-General Sir C. Fergusson (with
whom Maude was to be much associated in later life in peace
and in war), adding that ' he kept up his running very late
in life, and used to run at the Curragh in 1913, looking exactly
as he did at Eton thirty-one years before.' All his Eton
contemporaries testify to his extreme modesty about his
performances. He also became a fine oarsman and he took part successfully
in many exciting events, rowing and as a sculler, from an early
stage in his school career. Then in his last year he was reserve
man in the Eight and was for a time included in it, and he fully

8 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
expected to be one of the crew entered for the Ladies' Plate.
His not rowing at Henley was a bitter disappointment, as he
had looked forward to representing Eton from the time when
he first went on the river ; his losing his place at the end was
due to the return of one of the crew shortly before the race,
who had met with an accident and had not been expected to
be fit. ' The incident most fresh in my memory with regard
to him,' writes the Hon. G. Johnstone, ' was the wonderful
quiet pluck with which he accepted losing his place within a
fortnight of Henley. It was my misfortune to teU him, " You
are not down to row to-night," and he took it with a quiet
smile and no sort of complaint,' Eton had not won the
Ladies' Plate for a dozen years, their triumph on this occasion
naturally aroused great enthusiasm in the school, and it was
Maude who sent off the telegram from the river-side announ
cing the success of the Eight. Mr. F. I. Pitman, who was a
contemporary of his in Cornish's, who stroked Cambridge
home to victory in 1885 in one of the most exciting races ever
rowed from Putney to Mortlake, who won the Diamond Sculls
in the foUowing year, and who is accepted as one of the
finest oarsmen of his time, draws a very attractive picture of
the great soldier as a schoolboy sportsman :
At this length of time it is not easy to record with any great
accuracy one's recoUections of old school friends, but Stanley
Maude was so boyish in spirit right up to the end that one's
memory seems to take one back to Lower Boy days.
I remember him very weU in ' my Tutor's ' Lower Boy Football
Eleven, and later in the House Football Eleven, with great long legs
which never seemed to be quite under control but which got over
the ground at a rare pace. His great length won him the School
Mile, and I have a painful recollection of running, more or less
untrained, in the House Handicap Mile with Maude at scratch ;
he was just beaten after a great race by my younger brother.
As an oar he was very nearly first class, and I always thought
him rather unlucky not to get into the Eight. Probably the
greatest race he ever rowed was House Fours in 1882. Our four
had two ' Lower Boats ' in the bows, with Maude at three and
myself stroke. In the final we were up against Carter's, with
three in the Eight and one in the ' Victory.' They rowed over
forty aU the way. We with our ' Lower Boats ' never got over
thirty-five. We were behind a few hundred yards from the end,
but managed to get our nose in front at Windsor Bridge, and won
by a yard. Even in those days you could depend on Maude to
keep his head.

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 9
Like most of us, I don't think he ever bothered himself too
much with books — he certainly was not a ' sap.' He always had
a cheery, joUy laugh, and was generally singing about the House
the songs from comic operas of the day.
There are few of whom one has more pleasant memories.
As was only to be expected in view of the passion for
soldiering which he had been displaying ever since he had been
able to toddle about, Maude joined the Volunteer Corps and
did his utmost to excel at drill and on the range. Those were
before the days of the Officers' Training Corps, and the cadet
system was not taken so seriously at Eton, nor at other educa
tional estabhshments, as it is now. Many of the most pro
minent members of the school — those whom the Lower Boy
naturaUy looks up to — ^were not enrolled on the books of the
Eton Volunteers, although the corps enjoyed certain especial
advantages, notably in respect to having a regular ofiicer as
adjutant ; but Maude took this early soldiering very seriously
from the start, and he was promoted sergeant in 1881. It was
towards the end of the Christmas hohdays at the beginning of
that year that Sir Frederick and Lady Maude, whom young
Stanley had not seen for more than five years, came home
from India, to their son's great joy. Many of the family had
entered the army at different times, but not one had gained
such a reputation as had the leader of the Buffs on the occasion
of the second attack on the Redan, and the Etonian was justly
proud of this distinguished father of his, come back from the
Afghan War. It may be mentioned here that, very soon after
this pleasant family reunion, a cousin. Captain the Hon.
ComwalUs Maude, who was heir to the Hawarden peerage,
was kiUed on Majuba Hill by the side of Sir G, CoUey, The
then Lord Hawarden, after this and for some years subse
quently, often asked Maude to stay for shooting at the family
place, Dundrum in Tipperary, visits which Maude always
greatly enjoyed.
The future army commander in Mesopotamia was now a taU,
sUm lad, rising seventeen, and the time for his competing for
Sandhurst was already coming into sight. If he was to pass,
it was indispensable for him to take up seriously certain sub
jects not included in the ordinary school curriculum. 'We
were in the Army Class together in 1881-82, up to Walter
Durnford,' writes Sir C. Fergusson. 'Maude worked hard

10 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
and very earnestly, and he never took advantage (as most of
us did) of easy-going French and German masters,' Although
possessing, marked abihty and plenty of determination, he
would not seem to have possessed the knack of propitiating
examiners or of shining at bookwork in its schoolroom sense,
resembUng in this respect many other youths who have come
to the front in after Ufe. Neither passing in, nor passing out
of, Sandhurst did he, so to speak, run quite up to his form ;
and it was the same at a later date when he went up for the
Staff College.
The year 1882 was his last at Eton and he was elected to ' Pop '
— ^the CoUege debating society and an exclusive body. After
a short period of special tuition at Mr. Northcote's estabhsh
ment, Rochester House, at Eahng, he passed for Sandhurst
that autumn and he left the school, which to the end of his
life he always loved even more possibly than the majority of
Etonians, in December. His name is carved in Upper School,
among a small batch of 1882 names, at the end of the desks on
the left-hand side leading from Upper School into CoUege
Chapel. In the triumphs that were to come to him in later
life, at moments when his name was in every mouth through
out the British Empire, when he was figuring at once as a
conqueror and a liberator of the land that claims the most
ancient of histories, Maude's first thought after each new
achievement ever was that it would please them at Eton and
in the Regiment.
He joined the Royal Military CoUege early in 1883. The
Governor of Sandhurst at this time was General Sir Richard
Taylor, a veteran who had held many important posts in the
army, and had acted as locum tenens for Sir. G. Wolseley as
adjutant-general while Sir Garnet was absent from the War
Office at the time of Tel-el-Kebir, and who was uncle, as it
happened, of the lady whom Maude was to marry some years
later. The place was run on genuine military lines, the in
struction, although necessarily partly theoretical, was also very
largely thoroughly practical, and to a youngster bent on fitting
himself in every respect for the soldier's career there was much
in the year's course that particularly appealed. Maude
speedily made his mark amongst his fellow-cadets. He be
came under-officer of No. 1 Division, and is described by one
of his contemporaries as ' one of the show cadets of the year.

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 11
first rate on parade, in gymnasium and in the riding school.'
Sir R. Taylor particularly noted him at the time and predicted
a great career for him. The intimate association with officers
who formed the staff, and the strict miUtary discipUne that
was maintained during official hours, delighted him. Quite
apart from the ordinary studies that were necessary, he
managed to read works on the art and history of war at hours
which his fellows were disposed to devote to other indoor
pursuits. At the same time he bore his fuU share in all outdoor sports.
He played Association football hard during the season, and
when the date came for the Annual Sports he fully sustained
the reputation which he had brought with him from the Eton
playing fields as a long-distance runner. He moreover proved
a terror to the Woolwich cadets on the occasion of the usual
yearly competition between the two great military institutions,
for he won every event that he started for with compara
tive ease. As had been the case at school, he was extremely
popular with his brother-cadets, who appreciated his blithe
disposition and good fellowship while they respected his grit
and admired his feats as a sportsman.
He passed out of Sandhurst 38th on the list at the end of
the year. H. S. Rawlinson was just a little way ahead.
Another cadet, now Major-General Sir H. T. Brooking, who
was a few places in front of him and who in due course went
into the Indian Army, was, later on, to gain high distinction
under his command at the head of a division in Mesopotamia.
Three other cadets passing out at the same time had, as will
be seen in the next chapter, received nominations for the
Coldstream Guards besides himself. His early days were at
an end.

CHAPTER II
FROM 1884 TO 1899
Four yoimg officers from the Royal MiUtary CoUege joined the
Coldstream Guards on the 6th of February 1884. Of these
J. A. G. (now Colonel) Drummond-Hay, R. GrenfeU, and
F. S. Maude went to the 1st Battahon, stationed at Chelsea
Barracks, while the Hon. W. (now Major-General Sir W.)
Lambton joined the 2nd Battahon. The Coldstream at this
time, it should be mentioned, only consisted of two battalions.
Owing to their respective positions on the Sandhurst hst,
Maude was junior to both Lambton and Drummond Hay —
a circumstance which in years to come was to affect his
regimental promotion somewhat adversely, especially in
respect to his prospects of obtaining a battalion command,
although, as it turned out, he might not have been able to
accept this.
The 1st Battalion was at this time commanded by Colonel
A. Lambton, who had Lieutenant the Hon. H. (now Sir Harry)
Legge for adjutant. Amongst officers then belonging to it
who have since come markedly to the front in the Service
were Captain and Lieut.-Colonel (now Lieut.-General Sir R.)
Pole - Carew,^ and Lieutenant (now Lieut. - General Sir
A. E.) Codrington. Two brother subalterns of Maude's then
quartered at Chelsea were also to enjoy distinguished careers
in future life outside of the army ; these were Lieutenant
(now Colonel Sir J.) Ross of Bladensburg, the historian of the
regiment and for many years Chief Commissioner of the
Dublin MetropoUtan Police, and Lieutenant George Wyndham,
who after a few years in the army turned his attention to
pohtics and Uterature, and who was to win a great place for
himself in the public life of his country before his premature
death in 1913. Joining his regiment with an enviable repu-
1 The arrangement under whicli officers of the Brigade of Guards held
special army rank, superior to their regimental rank, was drawing to a close
at this time. 12

FROM 1884 TO 1899 18
tation as an athlete and oarsman, Maude at once became ex
tremely popular with all ranks, and he showed indefatigable
zeal in perfecting himself in the duties which a regimental
offlcer has to perform. He speedily came to be known
throughout the Brigade of Guards, as he had been known at
Eton and Sandhurst, as ' Joe ' Maude. ' I remember looking
upon him as a " good recruit," over six feet high,' writes Sir
H. Legge, ' having won " school " races at Eton and been first
choice out of the " Eight." I can recoUect no occasion on
which fault could be found with him or his duty, for he was
from the first a keen smart soldier thoroughly to be trusted,
and with a love of the regiment.'
Whenever he was quartered in London during the opening
years of his service Maude had his home with his parents in
Eccleston Square. The battalion moved to Aldershot for a
couple of months to undergo musketry a few weeks after he
joined, and he then made his first acquaintance with a station
where he always found himself in his element in later years.
The 1st Coldstream returned to Chelsea in May and moved
into Wellington Barracks in July. This was practically his
first experience of a London season, and although he had little
taste for society entertainments he enjoyed the life, attending
closely to his duties and always keeping himself in the pink
of condition by lawn tennis and going on the river when
possible.. He was a favourite wherever he went, but he never
cared much about dancing, and he was not a particularly good
performer at it ; as quite a young man he was however noted
for his good nature in coming to the rescue of girls who were
not getting their fair share of partners ; he had no liking for
tuming night into day, and all his Ufe long was an early riser.
It was probably largely due to his determination always to
keep thoroughly fit and to his predilection for rowing that he
never smoked, either as a youngster or later on in his career.
Lieut.-General Sir W. Pulteney, with whom he was to be
closely associated years afterwards in South Africa, and again
in France in 1914, writes : ' The first time I came against
Maude as an athlete was at Burton's Court at the Brigade of
Guards Sports. It was in the Quarter Mile, which I remember
he won very easily although many of us fancied ourselves on
the start he had to give us.'
The year 1884i was signalised by the formidable spreading

14 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
of the Mahdist movement throughout the Sudan and the
investment of Gordon in Khartum. An expedition dis
patched to Suakin early in the year gained some successes
in the field, but it exerted no appreciable influence over the
situation as a whole. Mr. Gladstone's Government vacillated
for a season, but eventually they decided that an expedition
should advance up the Nile to succour Gordon, and in Sep
tember Lord Wolseley proceeded to Egypt to take up command.
Shortly after assuming charge of the operations he requested
that detachments from the Guards and from the cavalry
regiments stationed at home should be sent out to him to be
formed into camel corps, and it was thereupon decided to form
a composite Guards Camel Regiment under command of
Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. E. Boscawen (afterwards Lord Fal
mouth) of the Coldstream, to which the Coldstream contri
buted four officers and its quota of other ranks. There was
naturally much competition for the very few places available,
and a recently joined officer like Maude had no chance of being
selected ; amongst those chosen was Lieutenant (now Major-
General) Vesey Dawson, then in the 2nd Battahon, on whose
staff he was to serve in a Territorial Division a quarter of a
century afterwards. But the expedition up the Nile started
too late, the sands were running out in Khartum by the
closing weeks of the year, and the original plan of foUowing
the great river right up to the beleaguered city with the entire
force had to be abandoned. The Camel troops had to be
thrust across the Bayuda Desert from Korti to Metemmeh.
They started on the 30th of December, more or less as a forlorn
hope, and they were late. For a few weeks the eyes of the
world were upon the slender column, hard beset in a region
where the existence of the force depended upon a few scattered
wells, and then the news arrived that Khartum had fallen
and that Gordon was dead.
This catastrophe aroused the nation. The Government
reahsed that something must be done, without their having
any very clear idea as to what course it was best to pursue,
nor what was to be the objective of such further operations as
should be undertaken. But they came to the conclusion that
a force ought to be sent to Suakin, and that a railway from that
place to Berber ought to be constructed under its wing ; and
amongst the troops whom it was decided to gather together

FROM 1884 TO 1899 15
on the Red Sea littoral, a Guards Brigade was detailed and
orders for its mobilisation and embarkation for the scene of
action were issued. This brigade, which was to be under
command of Major-General Lyon Fremantle, who was already
on the spot, was composed of the 3rd Grenadiers, the 1st
Coldstream and the 2nd Scots Guards, so that Maude within
a year of his obtaining his commission found himself, to his
great delight, under orders to proceed on active service. He
and the other two subalterns of the battalion of only a year's
service were very nearly left behind as being too young ; but
Colonel Lambton insisted on their going, saying that the boys
would be bitterly disappointed were they to be excluded, and
would regret missing the campaign all their lives.
The battalion marched out of Wellington Barracks early on
the morning of the 19th of February, get;ting an enthusiastic
send-off from the public, and embarked on river steamers at
Westminster Steps for Gravesend, where it was transferred to
the Manorah. The transport reached Suakin on the 8th of
March, when the Coldstream straightway disembarked and
went into camp hard by, the Grenadiers and Scots Guards
arriving on the following day. Even so early as March the
cUmate of the Red Sea littoral is trying to Europeans who are
unaccustomed to the tropics, and the troops speedily dis
covered that campaigning in this theatre of war involved
drawbacks, quite apart from such inconveniences as the
Dervishes might cause by their combatant activities. The
Hadendowa of this region proved themselves doughty and
vexatious opponents from the outset, particularly during the
night watches. Cut-throats would succeed in evading the
sentries in the darkness and would create havoc, kilhng and
wounding quite an appreciable number of soldiers during their
nocturnal forays. The firing that took place on such occasions
moreover disturbed the rest of the troops who were not imme
diately concerned. There were constant alarms ; and the
searchlights of the warships did not prove an unmixed blessing,
seeing that they illuminated the encampments as well as the
ground in their neighbourhood where the enemy were supposed
to be lurking. It is interesting to note in this connection that
Maude, who was at this time junior subaltern in the late
Lieut.-Colonel C. Fortescue's company, retained a vivid re
collection of this form of naval enterprise many years after-

16 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
wards when he was concerned in the evacuation of Helles in
the GalUpoU Peninsula ; for his diary indicates that he felt
somewhat nervous lest the sister service should start employ
ing its projectors at an inappropriate jimcture.
Although the nocturnal scares were a serious nuisance to
the Guards, as they were to the rest of the force, their encamp
ments suffered scarcely at all from the hostile depredations.
Their camps were nevertheless moved back into a safer position
after a few days, and zeribas were constructed to render them
more secure against Arab intrusion. Sir Gerald Graham, who
was to command the expeditionary force, arrived on the 13th
of March, and he at once prepared to set in motion the offen
sive operations which the situation demanded.
This was in some respects a perplexing one. The bulk of
the enemy forces were known to be mustered in a direction
south-westerly from Suakin, about Tamai, some dozen miles
or so from the port ; that place had been the scene of a homeric
encoimter during the campaign of the previous year. There
was also a lesser hostile gathering in the direction of Hashin,
situated about six miles to the north-west of the port, and it
was the Hadendowa assembled in that vicinity who, it was
beheved, produced the nocturnal marauders who kept prowl
ing about the encampments of the expeditionary-force. The
country was covered in many places with extensive areas of
thick scrub, which must necessarily impede the movements of
any considerable body of troops, and which at the same time
provided admirable cover for the type of foemen with whom
the army was about to deal. Everything in a measure hinged
upon water. On the one hand, the enemy's dispositions were
to a large extent governed by the siting of the groups of wells.
On the other hand. Sir G. Graham's force was obhged to carry
its water with it as soon as it quitted its base, an obUgation
which greatly added to the difficulties of the transport pro
blem and which tended to transform the army, when on the
move, into a mere escort for its own impedimenta. FinaUy,
the strategical objective to be aimed at was that of protecting
the construction of a railway through the heart of the enemy's
coimtry, a railway which, for some reason that has always
been a puzzle to those concerned in the campaign, was to be a
broad-gauge one involving very heavy labour.
General Graham started his combinations with a reconnais-

FROM 1884 TO 1899 17
sance made on the 19th in the direction of Hashin, in which
the Guards Brigade took part; the enemy's presence was
detected, but there was only some httle slrirmishing on the
part of the advanced troops. Next day he moved out again
at the head of two brigades, the Guards in reserve, leaving
Suakin about 6 a.m. and he advanced to Hashin. A pro
minent hill beyond that place was carried by troops of the
leading brigade, and it was then decided to withdraw to the
base, leaving one battahon in a zeriba to be constructed on a
hillock dominating Hashin. It was then that Maude under
went his first experience of an engagement. The Guards
covered the retirement when the prominent hill had been
evacuated, and — as is usual in a fight with antagonists such as
the Hadendowa — ^the retirement of the troops served as a
signal for the enemy to foUow up promptly and to act with
vigour. FalUng back, formed as a big square, the Guards
Brigade provided an excellent target for the not very efficient
marksmen to be found in the Dervish ranks, and some httle
loss was sustained. But the steady volleys from the square
kept the tribesmen at a distance, and they did not venture
upon the charge of spearmen which was generally deUvered
by these daring fanatics when they saw the sUghtest prospect
of achieving a success. After retiring slowly a mile or two,
the force ceased to be troubled by hostile activity and it got
back to Suakin before dark, after a very fatiguing twelve
hours. One result of the day's work was that from that time
forward nocturnal annoyance practicaUy ceased in the im
mediate neighbourhood of the base. The estabhshment of
a strong post at Hashin moreover reUeved General Graham of
anxiety with regard to his right flank when embarking on
his next operation, that of trying conclusions with the main
body of the enemy in a south-westerly direction.
The other brigade, under Sir J. McNeill, moved out on the
22nd with the purpose of estabhshing an advanced post and
supply magazine about half-way to Tamai. It reached its
destination, a spot known as Tofrek, without incident, and
the troops were for the most part busily engaged in construct
ing an extensive zeriba, when they were very suddenly assailed
by a large force of Dervishes that advanced rapidly through
the surrounding scrub, and a desperate fight ensued. The
position of affairs was for a short time critical enough ; but
B

18 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
the enemy was eventually beaten off, although not until after
many casualties had occurred amongst the British and Indian
troops engaged in the furious affray, and not without very
serious confusion having been occasioned amongst the camel
transport with the force. The zeriba was then completed.
The Guards moved out from Suakin next day in charge of
a convoy for Tofrek, which got through without difficulty ;
the Coldstream remained at the zeriba while the other two
battalions returned to the port. Then, on the 24th, the
Coldstream and a battalion of Marines marched back half-way
from Tofrek to meet a convoy coming out from Suakin, which
they were to shepherd on to the zeriba. After taking charge
they formed a square round the camels, and on the way
they were assailed boldly by considerable bodies of the enemy ;
it was the severest encounter which the Coldstream experi
enced during the campaign, for the Hadendowa delivered
their onset with unmistakable resolution. ' They came on
in Une, guided by flags on each flank, in a most gallant manner,'
writes Sir J. Ross of Bladensburg in his history of the regi
ment, ' and directed their attack mainly at the left face of
the square. But, unable to stand our fire, they were soon
defeated and most of them killed, though one or two did
actually succeed in getting as far as our bayonets before they
fell. After this event they left us alone, and we got back to
the zeriba without further trouble.' The escort of the convoy
on this occasion could fairly claim to have gained a substantial
success which was earned cheaply, although the Coldstream
had about twenty casualties. The Dervishes indeed never
showed much stomach for fight during the few weeks that the
campaign was still to last, after the very rough handUng they
had met with in their assault on the troops when they were
constructing the zeriba, and after the rebuff they met with
on the 24th.
The Coldstream marched back to Suakin on the 26th, and
Maude was glad to resume the habit of ablutions after being
out in the desert for several days Avith no water available
except for drinking. One of his first acts after getting back
to the base indeed was to expend half-a-crown on a bottle
of soda water for tooth-brushing purposes. Owing to being
at Suakin for a few days, the Coldstream were on the spot
when a New South Wales contingent landed on the 29th— a

FROM 1884 TO 1899 19
historic event which heralded the support that the Overseas
Dominions were to afford the Mother Country on an incom
parably greater scale in wars which were unthought of at
the time.
All was ready for an advance to Tamai by the beginning of
April, abundant supplies and a goodly store of water having
been got together at Tofrek, so the bulk of Sir G. Graham's
forces moved out from Suakin on the 2nd under his personal
command and, having halted for the night at the zeriba,
advanced next day to Tamai which was occupied with little
trouble. It was evident that the Hadendowa were to a great
extent cowed, that the first phase of the campaign was at an
end, and that the railway, the terminus portion of which had
already been begun, could now be extended beyond the im
mediate environs of Suakin. The weather, it should be men
tioned, had grown much hotter since the date of the landing of
the Coldstream three weeks earher, and there was already some
sickness amongst the troops. The bulk of the force returned to
the base from the Tamai direction on the 4th ; and from that
time forward the operations as long as they lasted were prac
ticaUy confined to pushing forward slowly along the line which
the railway was to follow, and to establishing and holding a
string of posts.
A force in which the Coldstream were included moved out
some distance along the line on the 6th, and in two days later
the regiment occupied Handub in company with the New
South Wales contingent, without fighting. Maude's battahon
was distributed between that place and a post a few miles on
named Otao for more than a month, and it was not an alto
gether pleasurable experience. The troops were mainly
engaged on fatigue work during these weeks, clearing away
scrub, improving communications, constructing zeribas for
animals, and so on. The enemy seldom showed up by day,
but there was a certain liveliness by night owing to smaU
parties of Dervishes creeping up, tearing up the sleepers and
burning them, and causing as much mischief as they could.
The heat grew greater from day to day, and the proportion of
officers and men on the sick list or sent home invahded began
to moimt up somewhat ominously ; it is generally the younger
members of a force who break down when campaigning in a
torrid cUmate, but Maude contrived to keep fit throughout.

20 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
As wiU be readily understood he as a junior subaltern had few
opportunities of making his mark during these somewhat drab
days ; but he won golden opinions from his seniors, as always
being dependable under aU circumstances, and Colonel Follett,
who commanded one of the companies and who at a later
date conunanded the battahon for part of the time that Maude
was adjutant, remembers their agreeing that the regiment
had acquired two uncommonly clever young officers in George
Wyndham and Joe Maude.
The Government had in the meantime gradually been
making up its mind that the attempt to re-conquer the Sudan
was not to be proceeded with, and that the force which had
advanced up the Nile before the faU of Khartum was to be
withdrawn to the neighbourhood of the Second Cataract.
The decision had to some extent been accelerated by events
on the Afghan frontier, where a somewhat awkward encounter
between detachments of the Ameer's and of Russian troops
had taken place. Under the circumstances, the project
of constructing a railway from Sualdn to Berber naturally
feU to the ground, just at the moment when the line was
beginning to make some way. Early in May Lord Wolseley
arrived at Suakin and paid a visit to the front, where it soon
transpired that the operations on the Red Sea littoral were
to be wound up.
The Coldstream moved back from Handub to the base on
the 14th and they embarked on the Deccan two days later.
The vessel arrived at Alexandria on the 23rd, and the regiment
then spent nearly a fortnight on board ship in the harbour
before landing and encamping on the beach at Ramleh, a
pleasant enough place at that time of the year in spite of the
heat. It was however decided after a good deal of delay that
the Guards Brigade was to be transferred to Cyprus, and that
it was to remain in that island for the present. So the Cold
stream took ship afresh, this time on board the Orontes, and
proceeded to Limasol, from which place they marched up to
Troodos and encamped there with the rest of the brigade for
some six weeks. Then, orders having come that the Guards
were to be brought home, the Coldstream marched down to
Limasol and embarked on the Orontes on the 26th of August,
and Maude arrived in London on the 11th of September after
an absence of nearly eight months. He in due course received

FROM 1884 TO 1899 21
the Egyptian medal for the campaign with the Suakin clasp,
as well as the Khedive's Star.
On their return from the Mediterranean, the 1st Coldstream
found themselves allotted to Chelsea Barracks, and Maude
resumed the life that he had been leading when the battahon
had been suddenly ordered on active service, making his
father' s house his headquarters. The usual period of musketry
was passed at Pirbright in the early summer of 1886, and in
the autumn the battalion, now under command of the late
Colonel R. S. Hall, moved to Windsor. During this summer
Maude began to take an interest in racing, and he soon became
a particularly good judge. His remarkable memory helped
him in this ; but he also possessed a natural gift for noting the
points of a racehorse, and this he developed by a careful study
of the subject and by attending many of the more important
meetings when his military duties permitted of it. He had
excellent eyesight, and although he never carried race-glasses
he could tell the colours at the furthest off point of any course.
It remained a hobby of his for many years, and his attendance
at racing centres often represented practically the only leave
that he would take in a year ; they occupied only short
periods, and he was always uneasy if away from his regimental
duties for any length of time. His reputation as a particularly
smart and efficient officer was spreading through the Brigade
of Guards, in which he was becoming a well-known figure.
In July of this year, 1886, his eldest sister, married to Major
(now Major-General) F. W. Hemming, who had been his
father's aide-de-camp, died in India.
With the facilities which it provided him for the exer
cise for which he always craved, Windsor was in many
respects more agreeable to him as a station than had been the
Metropolis. To an oarsman such as he was, the proximity
of the Thames was naturally a great attraction, and he also
liked being near to his old school. It may be mentioned here
that he stroked the Coldstream Eight in brigade regattas for a
period covering, with intervals, seventeen years, and he always
got every ounce that was available out of his colleagues behind
him. ' I well remember,' writes Sir W. Lambton, ' how the
rest of us used to groan when he began one of his spurts at a
very quick rate — ^usuaUy at the beginning of the race.' He
also generally rowed and sculled in other events on the occasion

22 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
of the annual regatta. He was naturally often at the Guards
Club at Maidenhead during the summer of 1887, and it may
be mentioned that it was on the river in that year that he
first met Miss Taylor, whom he married some time later. He
was unable to afford to keep a horse at this time, so used to
run regularly with the Eton and Stoke beagles during the
winter of 1886-87.
The 1st Coldstream returned to town in the autumn of
1887 to be stationed in WelUngton Barracks, and while the
battalion was there he was, in March 1888, appointed to fill
the adjutancy. Battalion adjutants at that time, it should
be remarked, were subalterns, alike in the Guards and in the
Line. It should moreover be added that an adjutant in those
days was in many respects a more important figure, in spite of
his junior rank, than he is at the present time ; and this was
perhaps even more the case in the Guards than in the Line.
Company commanders were allowed far less independence
than came to be the practice a few years later, even before the
introduction of the ' double company ' system. Maude ever
since he joined had singled himself out by his intense keenness
in respect to matters regimental and matters military, by his
assiduity at company duties, by his smartness as a parade
soldier, by the familiarity with administrative detail which
he had managed to acquire, and by his study of the art of
war in its more theoretical aspects. His selection for the
post of adjutant when he had only four years' service was a
recognition of this.
He did not take long to win a, in some respects, very
enviable reputation throughout the Brigade of Guards, thanks
to the manner in which he was filling the place. By nature
disposed to grasp control into his own hands in any work he
had to do in concert with others, the 1st Coldstream while he
held the appointment was perhaps even more of an ' adjutant's
regiment ' than most battalions were. All brother officers
who were in touch with him in those days testify to his devo
tion to his task. He was strict to the extent of being some
thing of a martinet, and he may not at first have been popular
with the rank and file — he would naturaUy be disUked by the
few indifferent characters who are to be found in every unit.
But aU ranks graduaUy came to acknowledge his zeal and
efficiency, his perfect knowledge of driU in all its forms, and

FROM 1884 TO 1899 23
his invariable fairness. The non-commissioned officers and
men appreciated his kindUness when oft duty, they were
aware of his deep interest in the regiment, they admired his
prowess as an athlete, and they took to him in the end.
' We were both adjutants, he of the 1st and I of the 2nd Bat
tahon from 1888 to 1892,' writes Sir W. Lambton, ' and I had many
deaUngs with him. As an adjutant he was a great discipUnarian,
but very popular with aU. Even in those days he showed rare
aptitude for administration and was a great writer of memos ;
we used to have friendly passages of arms over his fondness for
paper and for initiating reforms which were not much favoured
at the time.'
Sir W. Lambton's reference to Maude's addiction to paper
work caUs for some further observations. All through his
service he was a Uttle inclined to expand office labours.
He spent long hours in the orderly room when adjutant, and
he may possibly have sometimes made work unnecessarily.
During the four years that he held the appointment he
took no leave, except for a day or two at a time, and he
was always up and busy by 6 a.m. As has been observed
above, the adjutant of a battalion in those days was a more
important person than he is now, and had more to occupy
himself with ; still one can imagine that battalions in excellent
order existed at that time whose adjutants did not find it
imperative to spend such long hours at their official duties as
Maude did.
But for the usual trip to Pirbright, the 1st Coldstream spent
the whole of 1889 at Wellington Barracks ; after that they
were stationed for some months at the Tower. In July 1890
they moved to Chelsea, and Colonel Follett shortly afterwards
succeeded to the command. Then, in the autumn of the
foUowing year, the battalion was transferred to Dublin, which
in those days was a station of the Guards, and Maude renewed
his acquaintance with a country of which, but for occasional
short visits, he had seen very little since he was a small boy.
He hunted from Dublin during the winter and went well.
Had he not been so wrapped up in his work as adjutant he
would probably have paid visits to his many relatives dwelhng
in different parts of the Emerald Isle. But during the winter
he suffered a great bereavement, for his mother. Lady Maude,
died in January 1892, and his appointment was moreover now

24 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
drawing to a close. On its expiration in March he found
himself posted to the 2nd Battahon under command of Colonel
the Hon. H. W. Corry, stationed at WeUington Barracks.
The late Lord Falmouth succeeded to the command in the
autumn, Maude continuing, as previously when quartered in
London, to make his home in Eccleston Square.
He had made up his mind to go up for the Staff College on
giving up the adjutancy, and he set himself to work hard for
the examination to be held in the coming summer. Before
the time for it came, however, a very important event in his
life took place, for he became engaged in May to Miss Cecil
Taylor, daughter of the Right Hon. Colonel Thomas Edward
Taylor of Ardgillan Castle in County Dublin, who had died in
1883 ; her twin sister had married Lieutenant Skeffington
Smyth of the Coldstream four years before. Her father,
elder brother of Sir R. Taylor who had been Governor of
Sandhurst when Maude was there, had been a very prominent
figure in the Carlton Club and in the ranks of the Conservative
Party in his day. He had represented County Dublin for
over forty years, defeating Parnell in 1865 and 1868, had been
Conservative Whip for seventeen years, and at the time of
his death was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Disraeli
had in 1868 declared him to be the real author of household
suffrage, the measure introducing that extension of the fran
chise having been passed mainly owing to Colonel Taylor's
energy as a Whip.
The marriage took place on the 1st of November 1893 at
St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, from Sir R. Taylor's house. Events
of this kind were not unfamiliar to Maude, although this was
the first occasion on which he took the title r61e. He had
been best man to a number of his brother officers during the
past few years, his popularity in the regiment making his
selection for the post almost a foregone conclusion, and his
handsome presence sustaining the bridegroom during a cere
monial to which the principal actor generaUy looks forward
to with apprehension. Maude had not been in the habit of
taking long leave in the past and had taken no leave at
all while adjutant ; but on this occasion he was away from
his miUtary duties for nearly three months. The honey
moon was spent, first at Arnport, Lord Winchester's (a Cold-
streamer's) place, and afterwards abroad. The newly-married

Lieutenant F, S. MAUDE.
Coldstream Guards, ( 1894.^

FROM 1884 TO 1899 25
pair afterwards went visiting relatives in Ireland, after which
they settled down in Sloane Street in February 1894.
Maude had gone up for the Staff College in the previous
summer ; but although he had passed he had not been high
enough on the list to obtain one of the vacancies. This had
been a great disappointment ; but shortly after being notified
of his ill-success he was given a special nomination by the
Duke of Cambridge, then Commander-in-Chief, under the rule
introduced shortly before which made special provision for
successful adjutants. The nomination could not however
take effect for a year owing to lack of room at Camberley —
that is to say, he was not to join the institution until the
beginning of 1895.
The 2nd Coldstream remained at Chelsea till the summer,
when they took part in manoeuvres about Aldershot, and the
Maudes then had a house for a short time at Frensham. The
battahon moved to Dubhn in the autumn, and Maude spent a
few weeks with it in Ireland before proceeding to the Staff
CoUege ; his elder daughter, Stella, was born in October.
Seeing that his going to Camberley interrupted his regimental
service for a period which was to last nine years. Lord Raw
linson's opinion of him during his early days in the Coldstream
may be appropriately quoted here : ' As a boy and young
man Maude was a particularly attractive fellow and deservedly
popular with all who met him — a very keen soldier, a first-rate
adjutant and, good at all games, he made his personaUty
strongly felt in the regiment and always for good.' Rawlin
son when he left Sandhurst had in the first place joined the
King's Royal Rifle Corps ; but on promotion he had exchanged
into the Coldstream, coming in just above Maude on the hst ;
and they were for some months in the same company. General
Sir George Higginson, who was in charge of the Home District
during part of the time that Maude was serving as a regi
mental officer in the Coldstream, pays the foUowing tribute to
the memory of an old Guardsman friend :
' My acquaintance with his early career was necessarily slight as
I was a long way his senior, and although we were both Guardsmen
we were not in the same regiment. But I often heard from his
brother officers, and subsequently from officers of my staff when
I was General Ofiicer in Command of the Home District, of Maude's
high promise both as a company officer and as adjutant. His
marriage to a dear friend of my wife's afforded me more frequent

26 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
opportunities for observation, and I then foresaw that, given the
chance, a brilliant career was hkely to foUow. To the historian
is reserved the duty of recording his merits as a soldier. To me
there remains a memory of him which I shaU always cherish.'
The Staff College was at this time under charge of Brigadier-
General (the late General Sir H. J. T.) Hildyard. Since
assuming control, the commandant had striven to modernise
the course of study, to render it a thoroughly practical one
from the point of view of furnishing the military forces of the
Crown with a corps of officers who could be trusted to acquit
themselves creditably on the staff in peace and in war, and to
devise means for testing the students under his orders ex
haustively in respect to their fitness for the work which they
would in future be called upon to carry out. The batches who
passed through the institution about the time that Maude was
at Camberley enjoyed moreover the privilege of finding,
amongst those set over them to watch their progress and to
instruct them in their future duties, the famous author of
Stonewall Jackson, Colonel George Henderson.
The Maudes settled down for the two years to be spent at
Camberley in Osnaburgh House. Several of the officers who
joined the Staff CoUege with Maude at the beginning of 1895
were to become well known in the Service in later years.
Captain (now General the Hon. Sir H. A.) Lawrence became
a particular friend of his, and they were to be closely associated
many years afterwards at the time of the evacuation of HeUes
in the GalUpoU Peninsula. Captain (now Lieut.-General
Sir G. M.) Kirkpatrick, Maude also came frequently into
contact with in later years — ^in South Africa, in Canada, and
during a visit which General Kirkpatrick, as Chief of the
General Staff in India, paid to Baghdad in 1917. Another
of this year at the college who has since made his mark was
Captain (now Major-General Sir E. E.) Carter. Maude also
saw a great deal of Captain (the late Brigadier-General H. J.)
' Sandy ' Du Cane, both at Camberley and afterwards.
Amongst the officers who were already in their second year
of the course in 1895 were Captain (now Lieut.-General
Sir D.) Henderson, who was to perform such valuable service
during the South African War on the Intelhgence Staff under
Sir R. BuUer and Lord Kitchener, and who later on played so
great a part in developing the military air service before, and

FROM 1884 TO 1899 27
during, the Great War. Captain (now Lieut.-General Sir
E. A.) Alderson also belonged to that year.
From the outset Maude was immensely interested in the
course. He appreciated the lectures dehvered by the staff —
although anybody who did not appreciate a lecture from Colonel
Henderson would have been hard to please. The outdoor
work suited him down to the ground, both on account of its
practical nature and from the fact of its being carried on in the
open, while from his point of view it had the additional advan
tage of affording plenty of exercise. The country life suited him,
and when not at work he was always walking and riding about,
or playing hard at lawn tennis, or out with the drag-hounds.
As had been his way before joining the institution (except
just at the time of his marriage) he took no leave of any length
of time while at Camberley, except in September 1895, when
Mrs. Maude and he were away for a short time paying visits
in Scotland — this although the regulations provided for
certain definite periods annually. He preferred to remain at
Osnaburgh House, studjdng and entering into the local life
of his place of residence. He was promoted captain in his
regiment in August, having then over eleven years' service ;
his contemporaries at Eton and Sandhurst, RawUnson and
Lambton, had gone up long before him — Rawlinson had been
promoted (in the K.R.R.C.) in 1891 and Lambton in 1892.
The batch of new officers who joined the college at the be
ginning of 1896 included some aspirants for staff honours who
were to go far in years to come — ^the names of two of them have
indeed become household words throughout the British
Empire. Captain (the late Major-General Sir T.) Capper, for
whom Maude's diary shows him to have entertained a great
admiration, was killed when commanding a division at Loos.
Captain R. C. Haking is now a Lieut.-General and K.C.B.
and proved himself a most successful divisional and army
corps commander on the Western Front from 1915 to 1918.
Then there were also included in the score or so of new arrivals
Captain Edmund AUenby and Captain Douglas Haig. The
work of this second year was even more to Maude's taste than
had been that of 1895, involving as it did more outdoor opera
tions and a good deal of making acquaintance with new scenes
in Hants, Surrey and Berkshire. Reconnaissance, bivouac
schemes, staff rides, were the order of the day. Framing an

28 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
appreciation of a military situation, real or imaginary, always
had a fascination for him, and he developed a great aptitude
in the art. When on the war-path in later years, the attention
which he had given to this subject at the Staff CoUege indeed
frequently stood him in good stead ; while campaigning in
France, at the Dardanelles, and later on in Mesopotamia, he
made it a habit frequently to draw up an appreciation of the
situation in the theatre where his command was operating,
as it presented itself to him at the moment. This practice
made it the easier for him to produce one at short notice if
called upon by superior authority, and it enabled him when
in responsible charge to envisage the position of affairs at any
moment himself. His second daughter. Beryl, was born at
Osnaburgh House in July of this year.
' My recollection of Stanley Maude takes me back to the time
when we were fellow-students at the Staff College in 1895-96,'
writes Sir E. Carter. ' It was ^t that period that I saw most of
him, although we met frequently at intervals afterwards. He
was my senior by some years, but our individual work often threw
us together when working in " syndicates." I remember even in
those days having an admiration for his keenness and for his
extraordinary capacity for work, backed as it always was by
soundness of judgment and by fertihty of resource. One reaUsed
that these would show themselves fully whenever a real oppor
tunity should offer. But behind it all was his distinctive and
outstanding personality. In the highest sense of the word he was
a British officer and gentleman, invariably courteous and at the
same time gifted with a sense of humour which kept him cheerful
and made him attractive to those with whom he was thrown in
contact. ' When I heard of his earlier personal successes in the late war
I felt strongly that none would deserve advancement to a position
of prime responsibility better than he did. To sum up his personal
characteristics in a word, Stanley Maude was essentially "human." '
The appointment of brigade-major to the Brigade of Guards
in the Home District happened to fall vacant at the end of
1896, just as Maude completed the course at the Staff College.
He was given the post — always a coveted one amongst com
paratively junior officers of the Guards who are qualified for
staff service — and he took up his duties from the 1st of January
1897. The commander of the Home District at this time was
Lord Methuen, the Assistant Adjutant-General and chief staff
officer was Colonel (now General Sir Henry) Mackinnon of the

FROM 1884 TO 1899 29
Grenadier Guards, and amongst others on the District staff
was Major the Hon. A. Henniker-Major of the Coldstream.
They formed a happy family. Lord Methuen's period of
command properly expired in April ; but he was given a
special extension in view of the military responsibihties that
would be thrown upon the Horse Guards estabhshment by
the celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, which
was to take place in June.
The Maudes took up their residence in Lower Sloane Street,
in a house of which Maude had bought the lease, and they hved
there during the three years that he held his appointment.
The work of the brigade-major of the Brigade of Guards was
in the nature of things largely concerned with office routine ;
but matters in connection with the Diamond Jubilee caused
Maude much extra anxiety and extra labour during the first
few months of his stay in the Horse Guards. All arrangements
for this had to be drawn up with forethought and with the
utmost exactitude, and the brigade-major's mastery of detail
and his diUgence were of the utmost assistance to Lord Methuen
— outside of the army it is scarcely realised what elaborate
organisation is required to ensure that some great ceremonial
in which troops are involved shall be carried into execution
without a hitch. The programme was to be on a considerably
more ambitious scale in 1897 than it had been ten years before
on the occasion of the Queen's Jubilee. Detachments from
overseas which represented the fighting forces of Dominions
and Colonies, placed especially under the command of Lord
Roberts, were to participate. The route which the Royal
Procession was to follow extended through a considerable area
of the East End, and it traversed portions of the Metropolis
situated south of the Thames. Lining the streets, marshalUng
the procession, calculating the time at which every incident
in the programme would take place — problems such as these
only represented a fraction of the preparations that had to be
thought out. Troops drawn from various quarters were to
assemble in and about London, and arrangements had to be
made for their accommodation and for their comfort. Close
touch had to be kept with the railway companies in connection
with the mihtary movements. Negotiations had to be carried
out with various municipal authorities. It is not suggested
that aU, or even most of, this work feU to the lot of Maude ;

30 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
but Lord Methuen and his chief staff officer. Colonel Mackinnon,
had reason to congratulate themselves upon having so efficient
and hardworking a brigade-major to help them in their
troublesome task.
The actual celebration of the Diamond Jubilee on the 22nd
of June proved a triumph of masterly organisation and of
feUcitous stage-management, but Maude played his part in
the great pageant under circumstances somewhat distressing
to himself. For his father, who had been in declining health
for some time before and who was now seventy-six years of
age, fell ill and died on the morning of the 20th of June at
' Sutherland Towers,' the house where he had been living at
Torquay for the previous five years. Maude had therefore
to hurry off to the funeral as soon as the great day of thanks
giving was at an end. He had always been not merely very
fond, but had also been very proud, of this father of his, who
years before had fought in the Mahratta War and who had
been one of the first to win the Victoria Cross, and he felt the
old man's loss keenly. In his diary many years afterwards
one 20th of June there appears an entry noting the anniver
sary, with the remark : ' I shall never cease to think of him
as the best of fathers and as a brave, loyal, retiring EngUshman.'
A great parade was held at Aldershot in honour of the Queen
on the 1st of July, at which Lord Methuen commanded the
1st Division composed of the Guards, with Maude on his staff ;
all seven Guards battaUons were present on this occasion, and
it appears to have been the first instance of the whole brigade
appearing on parade as one body for a great number of years.
Shortly afterwards Lord Methuen vacated command of the
Home District and was succeeded by the late Major-General
H. Trotter, and events in the military world in London then
graduaUy settled down into their usual groove after the up
heaval caused by the Diamond Jubilee. To Maude's great
joy a son was born to him in October, and was baptised as
Edward Frederick, after his two grandfathers of whom he
was then the only grandson ; but he has always been caUed
' Eric ' as standing for both names. A change of considerable
personal interest to the brigade-major took place in the
Coldstream shortly afterwards, for a 3rd Battahon was formed,
although its completion took several months. This neces
sarily accelerated promotion throughout the regiment, and

FROM 1884 TO 1899 31
Maude, in common with a number of his brother-officers,
benefited considerably — so much so indeed that, although he
had been behind-hand in arriving at the rank of cajjtain, he
reached field rank quite as soon as is usual in the army.
The work that he had to perform as brigade-major was not
of a character to be especially interesting to the average staff
officer. But he always took pleasure in detail, and he was
always ready to immerse himself in the most trivial questions
if they increased the very remarkable knowledge of things
miUtary which he had already acquired. He had displayed
an unusual addiction to paper work when holding the position
of adjutant, and he displayed this at least equally as brigade-
major, his methods not meeting by any means with the un
qualified approval of commanding officers in the Brigade of
Guards. They noted a disposition on his part to get control
into his own grip, besides being unable to regard some of the
lengthy memoranda emanating from the Horse Guards with
gratification. The practice of quartering a Guards battalion
in DubUn had ceased, and at this time there always was a
battalion at Gibraltar instead. Maude endeavoured to main
tain a control over this isolated unit in respect to furnishing
retums, and so forth, which was quite contrary to the spirit
of army regulations, even allowing for the somewhat abnormal
organisation of the Brigade of Guards ; and this brought
him to loggerheads with the commanding officer. In such
a matter he was bound to have the War Office and the superior
miUtary authorities on the Rock against him, and the incident
shows that his two years' course at the Staff College had not
influenced — ^much less eradicated — a proclivity for centraUsa
tion which, speaking in a military sense, was Maude's besetting
sin. He still loved parade work, it should be added, and he
still loved ceremonial for their own sakes, as he had loved
them when a young adjutant ten years before. The term
' parade soldier ' has sometimes been used as a term of re
proach, but only by those who do not reahse that, whereas
a parade soldier does not necessarily make an efficient com
mander in the field, an efficient commander in the field has
generaUy been a parade soldier in his day — as was the case
with Maude.
In connection with his private affairs the year 1898 was an
untoward one for him. Never a wealthy man, and by no

32 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
means so well oft as the majority of his brother officers in the
Brigade of Guards, he sustained serious financial losses which
caused him grave anxiety at the time, and which hampered
him in his military career 'for several years afterwards, as will
be seen in later chapters. Colonel Mackinnon's time at the
Horse Guards came to an end during the summer, and he
was succeeded by Colonel Ivor Herbert (now Lord Treowen),
a Grenadier. This year, 1898, it should be noted, was the
year of Lord Kitchener's conquest of Khartum and of the
downfall of Mahdism in the Sudan, and several of Maude's
contemporaries at the Staff College and in the Guards gained
advancement for their services during that eminently success
ful campaign — Rawlinson, Douglas Haig, and Capper amongst
their number. He was however himself promoted major in
the Coldstream early in 1899.
That year will ever be rendered memorable throughout the
British Empire by the outbreak of hostilities between this
country and the Boer Republics. From a comparatively early
date in the year most military men perceived that a campaign
was certain to take place sooner or later, and during the ordin
ary summer trainings the news from Cape Town and Pretoria
was being eagerly scanned in every officers' mess throughout
the Service. It was an open secret that if the disputes of long
standing between the Home Government and that of the
Transvaal were to lead to actual war, very large forces would
be placed in the field for the purpose of settling the question of
supremacy in South Africa for good and all. That a Guards
Brigade would form part of the expeditionary army was
assumed almost as a matter of course. It therefore evoked
no surprise in the Home District when, on events reaching a
climax early in October and orders for mobilisation being
issued, such a brigade was included in the 1st Division under
orders of Lord Methuen.
Command of the brigade was aUotted to Major-General
Sir H. E. Colvile, and it was made up of the 3rd Grenadiers
from Chelsea Barracks, the 2nd Coldstream from WelUngton
Barracks, the 1st Scots Guards from Chelsea Barracks, and
the 1st Coldstream from Gibraltar, the latter battahon pro
ceeding straight from the Rock to the Cape. Maude had fully
expected to go out as brigade-major, and he was bitterly dis
appointed to find himself excluded. His existing appoint-

FROM 1884 TO 1899 33
ment would seem to have given him a good claim to be chosen
— ^the more so seeing that it expired in any case within three
months. He had necessarily enjoyed particularly close associa
tion with the three battalions that were going from England
as they were all stationed actually in London, and his being
passed over amounted almost to a shght. The fact that two
of the four battaUons happened to belong to his own regiment
made the blow all the more painful to him personally, and he
probably underwent few more trying experiences in his career
than when he had to go down one October morning to Nine
Elms to see the 2nd Coldstream off, and when as the train
steamed out the rank and fUe expressed their regret vocifer
ously that he was not coming with them.
Amongst the many officers who proceeded to South Africa
on special service was Colonel Herbert, who was succeeded
temporarily by Colonel Mackinnon. As it turned out, Maude
was not long in following. He sent in an official appUcation
asking to be permitted to resign the post of brigade-major,
with a view to his rejoining his regiment, and a letter came
to hand from the War Office on the 8th of December assenting
to this. He found on inquiry in Pall Mall that he was to
proceed to South Africa as soon as possible. He vacated the
brigade-majorship on the 12th, and a few days later left for
Southampton to take part in his second campaign.

CHAPTER III
THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR
Maude sailed for Cape Town in the s.s. Avoca on the 16th
of December in command of the troops, which consisted of
drafts for various regiments, spent Christmas at St. Vincent
where the ship coaled, and arrived, after a somewhat stormy
voyage, in Table Bay on the 7th of January. He landed
next day and arranged with Lieut.-Colonel ' Sandy ' Du Cane
of the staff at the base, who had been in his year at the Staff
College, that he should go straight up and join his regiment
at Modder River — ^it had at first been intended that he should
continue the voyage to Natal in the Avoca in charge of drafts
that were proceeding to join Sir R. BuUer's army. He pro
ceeded up country with a small draft and, arriving at the front
late on the evening of the 11th, joined the 2nd Battalion.
The Guards Brigade consisted, as we have seen on p. 32, of the
3rd Grenadiers, the 1st and 2nd Coldstream and the 1st Scots
Guards, under command of General Colvile, and formed part
of the 1st Division under Lord Methuen. The maps on p. 35
illustrate the operations in South Africa in which Maude
was concerned.
Since its disembarkation in South Africa three months
before. Lord Methuen's Division had experienced a somewhat
strenuous time. Its task had been to attempt the relief of
Kimberley, which was closely blockaded by the Boers, and
in its advance along the railway that ran from De Aar across
the Orange and Modder Rivers to the diamond city, and on
from thence to Mafeking and Buluwayo, it had met with
determined resistance at several points. In the first struggle
with the burghers, at Belmont, the Guards Brigade had played
a prominent part in the capture of what was a very strong
position. The brigade had been practically in reserve on the
occasion of the next encounter, the combat of Enshn ; but
it had been fuUy engaged in the weU-contested action of the
Modder River, where the troops had suffered much from heat
84

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

85

36 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
and thirst during a protracted day of confUct. The Guards
had been in reserve during the critical opening hours of the
unsuccessful attack upon the hostile position at Magersfontein
on the 10th of December, and had consequently only been very
partially engaged on that day of discomfiture. During the
month which had elapsed since that reverse. Lord Methuen's
troops had remained virtually inactive, facing General Cronje's
well-entrenched hne, which presented a most formidable
barrier athwart the road leading from Modder River to Kim
berley at a point about six miles from the former. They had
confined themselves to occupying the attention of the enemy
by means of occasional feints and bombardments.
Maude found himself in charge of a company for the first
few days, the battalion being under command of Lieut.-
Colonel the Hon. A. Henniker-Major ; but owing to the
second-in-command having to go to hospital on the 17th he
assumed that position. In common with several of his
brother-officers, his health suffered somewhat from the trying
condition of heat, damp and indifferent water under sedentary
conditions ; but he was not obliged to report himself ill and did
not allow sickness to interfere with his duties. He was from
time to time in charge of the outpost line. The operations
on the Modder remained for two or three weeks virtually at
a standstill; news however arrived on the 31st that large
British forces were about to assemble in this area, and the
enemy began to show greater signs of Ufe about the same time.
' Went on outpost duty at 3 a.m.,' he noted in his diary of the Sth
of February, ' tuming out divisional, brigade and battahon guards
before doing so. Very dark morning and, so, difficult to find one's
way about. Rode round the remaining outposts at 10 a.m.
Spent some time at 2 a, whence I could see great activity among the
Boers. They were busy making a work between Magersfontein
and the River Modder. Also they were patrolUng the river bank
in large numbers. As I left the work snipers landed two buHets
within twenty yards of me, but they were almost spent.
There are about 30,000 men in camp here now. The 6th Divi
sion, 10th Hussars, 12th Lancers, 16th Lancers, and 7 batteries
R.H.A. having come, besides the Household Cavalry.'
The battahon was for two days busily engaged in pitching
Lord Roberts' headquarters camp, and the commander-in-
chief and Lord Kitchener arrived on the Sth. Two days later
a new division, the 9th, was formed under command of General

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 37
Colvile, whose place at the head of the Guards Brigade was
taken by Major-General Pole-Carew ; and, as the brigade-
major of the brigade went with Colvile on the new divisional
staff, Maude to his great dehght was nominated to fill the place.
These arrangements came into force on the 11th. The Cold
stream were now very strongly represented in the Guards
Brigade, for, besides two of the four battahons belonging to
the regiment, the brigade-commander and brigade-major were
Coldstreamers, and the general had moreover taken another
of the regiment. Lieutenant F. Farquhar (who was killed in
Flanders in the winter of 1914-15 in command of Princess
Patricia's Canadian Regiment) as A.D.C.
Lord Roberts' great offensive against the Orange Free
State from behind the Riet River was about to materialise.
The army which was destined to carry into execution this
memorable combination of war had been silently gathering
for some days past, concealed by Lord Methuen's troops.
Part of it had been moved round from about Colesberg on
the other line of railway that connected Port EUzabeth with
Norval's Pont on the Orange River, and ran on thence from
Bloemfontein and Pretoria. (The general map on p. 35 shows
the railways.) Other contingents had come from intermediate
positions. Some of the army, composed of the newest arrivals
in the theatre of war, had been railed up straight from Cape
Town. The commander-in-chief had gathered together the
Cavalry Division under General French, the 6th Division
under General Kelly-Kenny, Colvile' s newly-formed 9th
Division, and the 7th Division under General Tucker, besides
various mounted corps and special units, preparatory to
launching them on a boldly conceived plan of campaign which
hinged upon mobility. The design was that French's mounted
force should make a wide detour, should pass by the left of
Cronje's position and should make for Ejmberley, while the
infantry divisions would move in a generally easterly direction
along the hne of the Modder valley, cutting — or at all events
threatening — ^the communications of the Boer force which was
barring the way to Kimberley, with Bloemfontein and the
main Une of railway connecting the Free State and the Trans
vaal. That railway was Lord Roberts' ultimate objective,
and he hoped to make it his main line of communication in
due course when advancing on Pretoria, Methuen was to

38 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
remain for the time being facing Cronje, his force acting as
a curtain to conceal the development of the opening phases of
the plan of offensive campaign.
The Cavalry Division started at 3 a.m. on the 11th, the same
day as Maude took up the appointment of brigade-major to
the Guards Brigade, and headed at first south-eastwards and
therefore away from Kimberley, previous to wheehng round
to the north and making for Khp Drift {vide the map ' The
Advance to Bloemfontein ' on p. 35). The 6th and 7th Divi
sions moved off on the next day passing near Jacobsdal. The
9th Division followed suit on the 13th. A careful watch was
kept on Cronje's lines by the Guards and the rest of the force
under Methuen ; as far as could be observed, however, all
remained as usual in the Boer position, and there was no
sign that the enemy realised the nature of Lord Roberts*
scheme of operations. The news that French had that
afternoon arrived at Kimberley with part of his cavalry, that
the siege was raised, and that the first act of the drama
had thereby been brought to a highly successful conclusion,
reached the troops on the Modder shortly after nightfall on
the 15th.
At a very early hour next morning Maude repaired to the
outposts and remained for an hour at a coign of vantage,
closely watching the position which the Boers had been occupy
ing for the previous two months. There was no sign of move
ments nor of smoke, and it became apparent to him that the
enemy lines were deserted. He reported this at once, and
news to the same effect was brought in by a native scout.
So a force under General Pole-Carew, Maude accompanying
it as staff officer, moved out to make a reconnaissance in force
in case the Boers should be preparing a trap, as they had
done on former occasions ; but the trenches were found to
be vacated, and there were unmistakable signs moreover of
Cronje's retreat having been an extremely hurried one. That
commander had been very slow in detecting the nature of his
formidable antagonist's plan. Only after French had passed
by his left flank and was already practically in Kimberley,
had the Boer leader begun to realise that a great hostile move
ment was in progress, designed to cut him off from Bloemfon
tein and to intercept his line of retreat, and that British
mounted troops were already behind him. But he had at

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 39
last become aware of his critical situation on the afternoon
of the 15th, had thereupon decided to retreat up the Modder
vaUey towards Bloemfontein, and so the huge caravan created
by his burghers and his ox-wagons and other vehicles got
under way at sundown and were streaming eastwards aU
that night.
The Guards Brigade remained in front of the vacated
Magersfontein position with Methuen for two days longer,
while the rest of the army with its impedimenta was surging
after Cronje, and while French's troopers, making heavy calls
upon their weary horses, succeeded at last on the 17th in
cutting across the Boer line of retreat beyond Paardeberg.
That night however orders came to hand from Army Head
quarters directing the brigade to follow the rest of the force
immediately. It marched off at 2 a.m. on the 18th and halted
at lOip Drift, fifteen miles forward. A warning had come from
Lord Roberts that it might have to hurry on in support of the
troops ahead, bu ^ this proved a false alarm and eventuaUy
half the brigade remained at Klip Drift while the other half
moved on six miles ; the Guards then for some days consti
tuted a detached force occupying an important point on the hne
of communications, while the bulk of the army was encircUng
Cronje in his laager. They consequently took no part in the
sharp fighting that took place at Paardeberg before the trapped
Boers surrendered. There was however plenty of work to be
done in the matter of pushing food convoys forward and in
regulating the convoys of wounded which passed through on
their way to the railway in rear. Maude especially busied
himself with the problems of sanitation of the encampments,
as the brigade was occupying ground which had been traversed
by successive divisions, leaving dead and dying transport
animals and the jetsam that is shuffled off in course of rapid
progress, behind them. Regimental offlcers at that time were
hardly so well acquainted with this subject as they have come
to be since ; but it was one to which he always paid great atten
tion, not only then but also in later days — ^in Flanders, on
the shores of the ^Egean, and in Mesopotamia. On the 27th,
Majuba day, news arrived that Cronje had surrendered. That
evening the vanquished general and his party arrived ; they
were put up for the night and were sent on next day, on which
the captured force passed through on the way to the intern-

40 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
ment camps, the 8rd Grenadiers furnishing the necessary escort
as far as Modder River Station.
Although the enemy force which so long had kept Lord
Methuen at bay, and which had so effectuaUy protected the
commandos that were beleaguering Kimberley against interfer
ence from the south, had now been disposed of, the position of
the army was by no means without anxiety. The active and
resolute Boer leader, De Wet, had, on discovering — ^too late —
how critical was the situation of Cronje, made great efforts
to come to that commander's rescue with forces gathered from
various quarters. He had failed in this object, but he was
now drawn up about Poplar Grove, facing the victorious
British and with his troops extended athwart the route that
they must follow in advancing to Bloemfontein and in gaining
possession of the railway which Lord Roberts proposed to
depend upon as his main line of supply. Considerable dis
appointment had already been experienced in bringing up
ammunition and supplies by ox-wagon from the railway in
rear — one very important convoy had indeed been captured •
by the enemy — and the further east the army moved the longer
would be its line of communications, the greater would grow
the perplexities of protecting it against the raiding of mobile
antagonists, and the worse would become the difflculty of
getting the transport along at all. The commander-in-chief
therefore decided to cast the army adrift from its previous
communications, and to move on Bloemfontein, carrying
sufflcient supphes with him to cover the time that would
elapse in reaching the Free State capital and in opening up
the railway hne back from there to Cape Colony. This in
volved defeating De Wet and any other hostile forces that
might endeavour to bar the way, it necessitated cutting down
rations for men and animals, and it was bound to throw a
great strain upon cavalry and artillery horses which had
already been highly tried, and upon transport animals which
were already in poor condition. In pursuance of the plan, the
Guards were summoned to join the main army. They marched
on the 5th of March and, arriving at the front on the evening
of the 6th after considerable difflculties in connection with
their transport, became part of the ' Corps Troops ' attached
to headquarters, and they found that the advance was to begin
next morning.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 41
As De Wet's force was in position facing Lord Roberts only
a very few miles oft, the advance on the morning of the 7th
of March meant a general action, and an elaborate plan,
designed with the idea of surrounding the bulk of the hostile
army, had been drawn up. It miscarried however, for the
Boers effected their retreat from Poplar Grove without suffer
ing a disaster, and the Guards Brigade took no active part in
the somewhat desultory engagements. A halt of three days
followed, while arrangements in connection with supplies,
transport, and so forth, were perfected. Then the army
advanced afresh on the 10th, to find itself somewhat unex
pectedly opposed by a considerable force of Boers under De la
Rey, who was holding a strong position at Driefontein. The
action that foUowed was fought almost entirely by the mounted
troops and by the Oth Division, which was in advance. The
Guards coming up in the afternoon were ordered to support
that division in its attack on some high ground that the enemy
was still clinging to, but it achieved its purpose after some
sharp encounters without their assistance.
• As we approached Driefontein in the evening,' Maude wrote in
his diary for that day, ' we could see shells bursting everywhere,
Kelly-Kenny being heavily engaged. Got into camp about 5.80
P.M., having ridden forward to ascertain from Grierson where
brigade was to bivouac. Soon after the brigade were settled
down a message came from Lord Roberts to say that we were
to attack a kopje about three miles off. I was gaUoping to find
the general when my horse came down, tuming a complete somer
sault. He landed with his hindquarters on my spine, cmshing
me severely. Great pain all night in hospital. Nothing broken.'
He got a very bad fall, spectators fearing that his neck had
been broken, and as a consequence of this accident he was ob
hged to travel for the next four days by ambulance on the
sick hst, and he suffered greatly from the jolting on the rough
roads, remaining however with the Guards Brigade. The
advance was continued on the 11th, and that evening news
reached Lord Roberts that the Boers who were gathered
together to defend the capital were about to be strongly rein
forced by commandos coining from the north, and by others
which had been in Cape Colony between Colesberg and Norval's
Pont that were expected from the south. He therefore
decided that a dash must be made by the mounted troops,
with the twofold object of gaining possession of the town

42 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
before these additional enemy forces should arrive, and of
cutting the railway so as to secure possession of such loco
motives and other forms of rolhng stock as might be left south
of the point of severance. General French consequently
pushed on on the 12th, and portions of his force reached the
railway both north and south of Bloemfontein before nightfall.
The Guards had been led to hope that the commander-in-chief
would march into the Free State capital at their head, and with
that in view they started off on the afternoon of the 12th,
reached bivouacs at 2.30 a.m., and started off again three hours
later and marched nearly all day. They arrived that evening
at the town, but learnt that the enemy had evacuated it
during the previous night and that Lord Roberts had made
his entry into the captured city about midday. They had
covered thirty-six miles in the last twenty-six hours.
' Returned to my work as brigade-major this morning,' wrote
Maude in his diary on the 14th. ' Arm still bound in a sling, rather
painful, but could not stand being on the sick hst any longer.
Lord Roberts inspected the brigade at 1 p.m. and made a nice
speech, after which we marched past him in column on our way
back to camp. He said that he regretted that through a mistake
he had not been able to lead the brigade through the streets of
Bloemfontein, but that he hoped to lead them through Pretoria
instead.' After twenty-four hours' rest a portion of the Guards Brigade
was called upon for a fresh effort, which however turned out
to be merely an easy and interesting excursion. The com
mander-in-chief was determined to open up communication
without delay with General Gatacre's force, which was moving
up from the south, and to secure possession of the railway
line back to Cape Colony. So a force composed of the Grena
diers and Scots Guards, with four guns and details, under
General Pole-Carew, Maude acting as staff offlcer, was dis
patched early on the 15th in four trains which were made up
of roUing stock intercepted three days before by the cavalry,
with orders to proceed southwards towards the Norval's Pont
bridge over the Orange River. This operation, it may be
observed, in certain respects constituted a somewhat daring
move, for it involved the movement of troops by rail through
a district that had not yet been otherwise occupied. But
Lord Roberts calculated upon the moral effect which his

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 43
victorious march across the Free State and his capture of
Bloemfontein was bound to exert, and his confidence was fully
justifled by the event. For Pole-Carew met with no opposi
tion. On the contrary, the commandant of the district, the
field comets and the leading inhabitants met him at various
stations along the line to tender their submission and to pro
mise the yielding up of arms in due course. Information
came to hand during the move that some 3000 Boers, with a
train of wagons, in retreat before the British troops that were
moving up from the south, had crossed the Une, going north
eastwards, late on the 14th ; so the general sent a message
to headquarters suggesting that a force should be sent out
to try and intercept this hostile contingent. This was not
however considered feasible at Army Headquarters.
The staff, travelhng in the leading train, did not meet
General Gatacre next morning until they were within a very
few miles of Norval's Pont. After a discussion it was then
decided to turn the force from Bloemfontein back, while
Gatacre continued his advance ; but Pole-Carew and Maude
went on in a breakdown train to the bridge to see the position.
' 3.25 p.m. Reached Norval's Pont,' Maude writes in the staff
diary. 'Three large girders broken down and one pier blown
down. Fine broad river, about eighty yards wide with steep
banks thickly covered with trees. Commanding ground on both
sides of the river.'
Pole-Carew's force remained at Edenberg, situated about
half-way between Norval's Pont and Bloemfontein, that night,
and returned to headquarters next day, having in reality
placed the coping-stone on the strategical structure designed
by Lord Roberts six weeks earlier. The mobile army which
under the commander-in-chief's personal orders had advanced
from the other railway, and which had cast itself entirely loose
from its communications after Paardeberg, was now definitely
linked up again with Cape Colony by the hne of railway that
connected the Free State capital with East London, with
Port Elizabeth, and with Cape Town, the three maritime bases
of the British forces apart from the divisions in Natal under
Sir R. Buller. The main army was placed in a position to
reorganise its administrative services after the month of hard
campaigning that it had gone through, and to prepare under
comparatively favourable conditions for a resumption of the

44 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
offensive should the enemy, in spite of the discomfitures
recently met with, decide to continue the struggle.
A somewhat prolonged pause in respect to vertebrate
offensive operations nevertheless took place, although the
attitude of the Boers soon made it apparent that they had
no desire to abandon resistance. This lull in the proceed
ings was mainly due to the imperative necessity of amassing
great stores of food, of forage, and of mimitions before starting
upon the march to Pretoria which the commander-in-chief
contemplated. Time was however also required to bring up
the drafts intended to ffll up gaps in units at the front, and to
rail forward the substantial reinforcements that were now
arriving from home at the southem ports. Then there was
furthermore the question of making good the hospital re
quirements, which for some little time gave grounds for dis
quiet. The expediency of placing the medical service on a
thoroughly satisfactory footing was indeed clearly demon
strated by the outbreak of an epidemic of sickness amongst
the troops almost as soon as they came to a halt at Bloem
fontein — an epidemic traceable to drinking tainted water and
to halting under insanitary surroundings during the opera
tions which had carried them across the Free State during the
previous few weeks. Moreover, the assembling of troops, of
supphes, and of war material of all kinds was seriously retarded
by the awkward break in the railway line where this crossed
the Orange River ; the necessary deviation and temporary
bridge at Norval's Pont were not completed until the end of
March. In the meantime the headquarters of the Guards Brigade
remained in Bloemfontein, a comfortable house on high ground
having been secured. Maude still suffered much from his
shoulder owing to his accident at Driefontein ; it indeed never
fully recovered, and it gave him trouble throughout the cam
paign. It may be mentioned here that he was in due course
awarded a pension of £100 for the year owing to the injury,
that this was repeated during the following five years, and
that it was eventually granted him for hfe. Had he taken
greater care of the injured shoulder at first, and had he made
greater efforts to recover full use of it by constant exercises,
in accordance with medical advice, it might possibly have
been completely restored; but he was hardworked and he

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 45
never spared himself. As wiU be seen, he had to undergo an
operation on getting home a year later, and he suffered from
a stiff shoulder for life.
The Boers lost httle time in indicating^that they had no
intention whatever of abandoning the struggle, and so early
as the 19th a bridge on the railway a short way north of the
town was blown up at night. The consequence was that two
battalions of the Guards had to be sent out to guard this point,
and another was sent south to Edenberg for the same purpose,
leaving only one in Bloemfontein. Other troops moved in a
northerly direction later, and on the 29th Pole-Carew and Maude
rode out to see an attack carried out by the 7th Division and
a cavalry brigade upon a position which the enemy had taken
up at Karee Siding, about twenty-five miles north of Bloem
fontein, returning by train in the evening. The enemy was
also beginning to show a great deal of activity to the east, and
on the 1st of April there occurred the unfortunate affair of
Sannah's Post ; the two Guards battalions which had been
out protecting the railway to the north returned to the capital
that day. On the Sth the brigade moved south by rail to
protect the line at a point about twenty-five miles from
Bloemfontein, and that day General Pole-Carew heard that
he was to command the 11th Division which was about to be
formed, including the Guards Brigade. He asked that Maude
should be appointed his A.A.G. ; but this Army Headquarters
would not approve, much to Maude's disappointment. Major-
General Inigo Jones arrived to take over command of the
brigade on the 12th.
There was much rain during the next few days and the troops
bivouacking in the open had a very impleasant time. On
the night of the 20th-21st the brigade was moved back nearer
to Bloemfontein, and two days later it started off eastwards
with the rest of the 11th Division (which included the 18th
Brigade, besides artiUery and the usual divisional troops).
The enemy had been giving a good deal of trouble to the
south-east of the capital, and had succeeded in surrounding
a British force at Wepener on the Basuto border ; and they
were gathering in considerable force at Dewetsdorp, on the
way from Bloemfontein to Wepener. During the next few
days the 11th Division co-operated with General French and
General Ian Hamilton in an endeavour to trap the burgher

46 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
contingents. These however were under the ever active and
wary De Wet, and the project failed; for they slipped off
to the north, and Wepener was relieved easily enough. Such
fighting as there was fell almost entirely upon the mounted
troops, and the Guards were never engaged although they had
to cover a considerable amount of ground. The 11th Division
returned to Bloemfontein on the 29th, bringing in large
captures of sheep, cattle, and horses, which the mounted
troops had managed to round up during the preceding days.
The general result of these operations was that the country
to the south and south-east of the capital was to a great extent
cleared of the roving bands of Boers which had been infesting
it latterly, and that, as abundant supplies had now been col
lected and the administrative services were ready, the com
mander-in-chief was able to fix a date for the great move
northwards to begin. The Guards marched to Karee Siding
with the rest of the 11th Division on the 1st of May, as a
preliminary. In his contemplated advance Lord Roberts proposed to
keep the 11th Division with himself in the centre, following
the hne of railway by Kroonstad to the Vaal, and thence to
Pretoria. As it turned out, the centre force, which included
the 7th Division and certain contingents representing Overseas
Dominions and Colonies, had little excitement during the
triumphant progress through the Orange Free State. Its
experience was mostly that of a succession of long marches
foUowed by halts. To belong to it had, however, been intended
as a privilege.
' Here then,' says the Times History of the War in South Africa,
' was the place of honour in the soldier's eye, and here Lord Roberts
took care to have every part of the Empire and almost every branch
of the service represented. To the backbone of infantry, composed
of Guards, battahons from the North Country, the East Coast,
the South and the Midlands of England, from Wales and from the
Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, he added the battahon of
Militia from Canada and London's picked Volunteers. The New
South Wales Lancers and the AustraUan Horse shared in the
dangers of the cavalry, where Ireland, imrepresented in the in
fantry, found her place. In the Mounted Infantry the Regular
companies, drawn from EngUsh, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish regi
ments, were brigaded with representatives from Canada, New
South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South AustraUa, West Aus
tralia, and Tasmania, from New Zealand, from South Africa,

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 47
from India, Burmah and Ceylon ; three companies of the Imperial
Yeomanry and a company of the City Imperial Mounted Volun
teers were attached to headquarters. The Navy also sent guns
with their complement of bluejackets to take their share in the
advance.' Although some of the troops that were destined to advance
well away on the flanks were on the move a day or two earlier,
it was on the 3rd of May that the central force started from
Karee Siding, and the small town of Brandfort was occupied
that evening after a little skirmishing. The enemy had been
reported to be gathered in some force and prepared to offer
resistance, so the Guards had anticipated an action, but in
this they were disappointed, as the burgher forces withdrew
as soon as the mounted troops approached.
' Among the lasting impressions made upon me by Joe Maude
was on the advance from Bloemfontein in May 1900,' writes
Lieut.-General Sir W. Pulteney, who was commanding the 3rd
Scots Guards at the time ; ' the Boers were reported to be holding
Brandfort in strength, and Pole-Carew, preceded by Pilkington's
mounted detachments, was the central column marching on that
place. Orders for the attack were issued and dictated to us com
manding officers by Maude. They were the most lucid orders
that we had had up to that time. Perhaps his orders sometimes
had a little too much detail, but I well remember they were far
in front of anything we had had before, and reflected the greatest
credit on his own and on his Staff College training. Although
the Boers did not wait for our attack to develop at Brandfort,
the confidence in his staff work remained until the 11th Division
reached Komati Poort.'
The 11th Division halted next day, but advanced again on
the 5th, reaching the neighbourhood of the Vet River, where the
Boers offered some opposition. There were affrays on the
flanks that day, and Pole-Carew got his guns into action, but
the Guards were not engaged, and the enemy withdrew during
the night, falling back to take up a strong position on the Zand
River some twenty miles further north. Considerable enemy
reinforcements congregated there to help their comrades who
had retreated along the railway, and on the 10th, when the in
fantry of the central column drew near, there appeared to be
every prospect of a stiff flght. But the cavalry forces which
were pressing forward steadily well away to the left, managed
to swing right round the burgher's right flank and compeUed
these to evacuate their position, although they left a few snipers

48 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
to impede the advance of the British centre. The 11th Divi
sion were to have assailed the enemy's centre had the Boers
stood, and owing to the outflanking operations of the mounted
troops the Guards were disappointed of what at one time
looked like the prospect of a serious trial of strength.
' Brigade marched at 6.15 a.m., crossing in rear of the 18th
Brigade which had started at 3.15 a.m.,' wrote Maude in his diary.
' Tucker's division heavily engaged on our right, and our cavalry
and mounted infantry in front. After crossing the drift the
brigade deployed for attack, 1st Coldstream and 1st Scots in
first and second hne, and 2nd Coldstream and 3rd Grenadiers in
third hne; 1st North Stafford (attached to brigade) in reserve.
Fighting all afternoon tiU we bivouacked at about 3 p.m. just
beyond Riet Spruit. Cavalry and mounted infantry still pursuing
the retreating Boers. Transport, guns, etc., much delayed by
drift over Zand River.'
For some httle time next day it still looked as if Lord
Roberts would be called upon to fight a general action before
he got to Kroonstad, because the hostile commandos had occu
pied and had prepared elaborately a position in a broken region
which barred the way to the town. But, just as had been the
case on the Zand River, the outflanking operations of the
British horse decided the enemy chiefs to hurry their men away
north out of harm's way, and on the 12th the commander-in-
chief made his entry into the place, riding at the head of the
Guards Brigade. The centre force had covered 130 miles in
ten days' marching ; but it was now autunm in South Africa,
and although the troops were much inconvenienced by the
dust they no longer suffered much from heat.
It may be mentioned appropriately here that Maude makes
frequent uncomplimentary references in his diary to the
character of the staff work which came to his notice from time
to time. This according to him often caused the troops un
necessary fatigue and inconvenience. The fact of the matter
was that, with the exception of a comparatively few offlcers
who had studied the subject, who had practised themselves
in the issuing of full and inteUigible orders, and who reahsed
the importance of method and system in this matter, the
staff of the British army in South Africa did not know how
to translate the intentions of the commander-in-chief and of
his superior subordinates into the words that would convey
their intentions to the troops who had to carry those intentions

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 49
out. The fault in this respect lay rather in a misapprehension
of their duties and responsibilities on the part of the superior
staff offlcers than of the juniors, who had been properly trained
of very late years at the Staff College. Some contemporaries
of Maude at Camberley, like Major D. Haig with the Cavalry
Division, and Major T. Capper who was with the Sth Division
in Natal, had practicaUy nothing to leam in this respect ; but
many of their seniors were versed in the theory of staff work
rather than in its practice, and the results were most un
satisfactory. The whole staff organisation was moreover
wrong from the point of view of carrying on operations in the
field, as there was no General Staff.
Lord Roberts halted for ten days at Kroonstad, while the
various breaks that had been effected by the Boers on the
railway were overcome by making low-level deviations at the
river crossings, and while mounted troops, working forward
by wide sweeps on the flanks, cleared the country to a great
extent on either side of the line that was to be foUowed by
the central force when it moved forward again. This ad
vanced afresh on the 22nd, and in five days, marching about
sixteen miles a day, reached the Vaal, which was crossed on
the morrow practically unopposed. The main Boer force,
which was now under command of General Louis Botha, had
fallen back to a strong position along a line of hills thirty miles
north of the river covering Johannesburg from the south.
Lord Roberts advanced on the 28th with his main infantry
force, and on the 29th the 11th Division reached Germiston,
the junction eight miles east of Johannesburg where the branch
hne to that city turns off from the main hne of railway.
' Brigade marched at 6.45 a.m.,' Maude notes in his diary. ' The
railway bridge over the Klip River delayed our crossing for some
time as theiead of the column had to be halted.
The 1st Line Transport started, luckily enough, at 6.30, as most
of it got over the main bridge before the naval guns broke through
it, causing a long delay. Brigade pushed forward, as the cavalry,
mounted infantry and Hamilton were fighting in front and on
the left fiank. Reached Germiston at 3.30 p.m. As I rode for
ward to find camping place, found the Boers in occupation of the
town and was fired at. Saw three trains start for Pretoria filled
with Boers. Selected camping ground. Brigade deployed for
attack but Boers bolted.'
Some sharp fighting had been taking place on the 28th and

50 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
29th on the left of the central army. Generals French and
Hamilton attacked and outflanked Botha in the rugged high
ground to the south-west of Johannesburg and by their
determined action obliged him, after offering a stout resistance,
to abandon his position. This greatly facilitated the forward
movement of the 11th and 7th Divisions from the Vaal to
Germiston {vitie * Eastern Transvaal ' on p. 35). The Guards
halted at Germiston on the 30th, and Maude that day rode into
Johannesburg. The commander-in-chief made his trium
phant entry into the gold reef city on the morrow, and, after
the Union Jack had been run up at the court-house in place of
the Vierkleur, the 11th and 7th Divisions marched past him,
the Guards later proceeding to a camp six miles outside.
Lord Roberts only halted two days at Johannesburg. On
the 3rd of June he moved northwards, heading for Pretoria.
Two despatch riders from Botha came in that day, whom
Maude personally conducted to Lord Kitchener. For a short
time next day it looked as if the Boers might try seriously to
contest the approach of the invaders to the Transvaal capital ;
but they were not in strong force, and, although the 11th and
7th Divisions had partially to deploy for attack, the burghers
quietly abandoned the strong position which they occupied
to the south of the place. Some of the mounted troops
reached the outskirts in the evening and the victorious
field-marshal made his solemn entry on the Sth at the head
of contingents of his troops, a fitting climax to what in
many respects had been a signally successful operation of
war. ' At 2 P.M. the brigade arrived in rear of the naval guns in action,'
Maude wrote in his diary for the 4th. ' General and I rode forward
and came under fairly heavy fire on the reverse side of the slope
from bullets just clearing the crest. Orderly's horse shot within
five or six yards of me. Brigade formed for attack, 1st Coldstream
in first and second hne, 2nd Coldstream and 3rd Grenadiers in
third line ; 2nd Coldstream ultimately pushed up into firing hne to
take a couple of smaU kopjes. Under fire tiU dark, 5.30 p.m., when
troops bivouacked where they stood. . . .'
Next day he writes : ' Brigade advanced on Pretoria at 6.30 a.m.
At 8.30 a.m. the 2nd Coldstream rushed the station after an inter
change of a few shots, capturing a good deal of roUing stock, and
prisoners with arms and ammimition. I pushed on into the town
with Skeff's (Captain Skeffington Smyth) company and Gwynne
(Renter's correspondent), and placed guards on the Raadzaal,

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 51
law courts, government offices and stores, post and telegraph
offices and banks, and then went to the Presidency where I found
Mrs. Kruger. Made Eloff a prisoner, disarmed the guard, picketted
the streets and mounted an English guard. We received a great
reception from the townspeople. Made arrangements for the
march past on the market square. Grenadiers lined the square
and furnished the guard of honour. Guards Brigade led the
march past. Prisoners all safe. Brigade bivouacked west of
the town.'
But the advance from Bloemfontein to Pretoria had been a
somewhat disappointing experience for the Guards and for
their brigade-major. There had seemed to be promise of an
infantry engagement in the centre of the moving front on
more than one occasion ; but, either under pressure of out
flanking movement of horse, or else owing to a not unreason
able indisposition to accept combat on the part of the Boers,
the enemy had invariably slipped away at the last moment.
The brigade had marched 299 miles in thirty-four days, ten
of them spent at Kroonstad during the long halt in that town ;
but not once had it been really in action. Imbued with those
instincts of the fighter which he was so often to display as a
commander some years afterwards, Maude was not wholly
content with the course that the operations had taken, quite
apart from his natural regret at taking no part personally in a
serious combat. The Boers had never once been brought tp
book — ^they had been outmanoeuvred, not outfought except
in a few petty affairs. They had been defeated in no deter
minate conffict, as they had been defeated at Belmont —
mainly by the Guards — and as they had been defeated in the
end on the Tugela. Most educated soldiers subscribe in
theory to the principle that the destruction of the opposing
forces in combat is the true objective to be sought after in war,
and not the occupation of territories and of places, but not
all of them act up to that principle in practice, or try to act up
to it, so unyieldingly as did Maude.
A pause in active movements, in so far as the 11th Division
was concerned, ensued for a few days after the entry into
Pretoria. The Boer Executive of the Transvaal had a few
days before moved off by the railway which led eastwards
from the capital to Delagoa Bay, and had established Macha-
dodorp, half-way to the Portuguese frontier, as the seat of
government {vide ' Eastern Transvaal ' on p. 35). Botha, after

52 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
abandoning the attempt to save Pretoria, had withdrawn his
burghers in the same direction, and he was now in position
some twenty miles from the capital. Negotiations were
proceeding with the enemy commander-in-chief with a view
to a settlement, although Lord Roberts in the meantime was
in no way relaxing preparations for actively continuing his
operations. Reorganisation of the supply and transport
services was proceeding after the heavy strain of the great
advance from Bloemfontein — a work that was complicated
by the energetic action of the Free State Boers, for De Wet
just at this time actually cut the communications for a few
hours by seizing three points on the railway between Kroon
stad and the Vaal. However, on the Sth of June the 11th
Division, together with large part of the troops assembled
round Pretoria, moved out eastwards with the object of oper
ating against Botha, who was now holding a long line of hills
athwart the Une to Machadodorp and Delagoa Bay. Maude's
horse came down with him on the Oth and rolled on him,
injuring his chest. On the following evening Lord Roberts
issued his instructions for certain highly important operations
to be undertaken next day with the object of compelling
the Boer commander to abandon his position.
His plan followed the lines that had been adopted in similar
cases on the way up from Bloemfontein. His desire was to
turn both hostile fianks and to hold his centre back tiU these
eccentric operations should have effected their purpose.
French was to make a wide sweeping movement north of the
railway, mounted troops supported by infantry under Ian
Hamilton were to act similarly south of the railway, Pole-
Carew's division, with most of the artillery, was in the centre
to await the success of the flanking forces. But, as it turned
out, Botha had foreseen that his opponent was hkely to pursue
his accustomed plan of battle, and had made dispositions
accordingly. The Boer position covered some thirty miles
and extended beyond the hnes of advance on either hand
which had been indicated to French and Hamilton. The
burghers also were on this occasion in comparatively strong
force on the two flanks and relatively weak in the centre. The
consequence was that Lord Roberts' tactical scheme in the flrst
instance practically miscarried. French was entirely unable
to carry out the task aUotted to his comparatively small force ;

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 53
he indeed found his troops in a somewhat uncomfortable
position at nightfall. Hamilton was somewhat more success
ful, but was also brought to a standstill without carrying out
the task assigned to him. The 11th Division in the centre
was not engaged. Such was the position on the evening of
the first day of the affair of Diamond HiU.
Lord Roberts decided during the night that the 11th Divi
sion should dehver a more or less frontal attack upon the Boer
left centre next day in conjunction with part of Hamilton's
force, and he issued orders to that effect which reached divi
sional headquarters at 8 a.m. Pole-Carew at once set the
Guards Brigade, with some of his artillery, in motion to move
to their right front towards Hamilton's left ; but he retained
the ISth Brigade in the centre, in accordance with the com
mander-in-chief's explicit instructions. The task of the
Guards and of Hamilton's infantry was to be the capture of
some seven miles of ridge known as Diamond Hill, of which
the northern end was about five miles south of the railway.
The Guards had a troublesome march through boggy country
before they reached their rendezvous.
Maude's account of the day's fighting in his diary runs as
follows :
Brigade marched at 8 a.m. to support Ian Hamilton's division.
Moved due east at first, but at 10.15 a.m. orders were issued to
move in attack formation against Kleinfontein ; 1st and 2nd
Coldstream in first and second Hne, and Brd Grenadiers in third
hne. First Scots remained stationary with the 5-inch guns at first.
The naval guns and a battery accompanied our advance. At
1 P.M. I saw Balfour, late 11th Hussars, galloping past and asked
what he wanted. He said that Ian Hamilton wanted reinforce
ments. As my general had remained behind with the 5-inch guns
about two miles away, I took upon myself the responsibihty to
act and told Surtees to take the 1st Coldstream and reinforce
Hamilton. Second Coldstream occupied Kleinfontein Kopje at 1.30 p.m.
and enemy opened shell fire upon us. Got up naval guns and field
battery, who rephed. At 2.30 p.m. the 2nd Coldstream under
cover of artillery fire moved against the main Donkerhoek ridge
(Diamond Hill) and occupied the same at 3.15 p.m. I went up
with the firing line, as Arthur Henniker had just hurt his thumb
and Shute was with the hospital. Under very heavy fire until
5.30 P.M., but luckily under good cover. I saw that we could not
advance further as we were on the edge of a big ravine commanded
from the other side by the Boers. Two guns of 83rd Battery

54 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
came up into our firing hne and engaged the Boers at 800 yards
with good effect.
At dusk, in the absence of the general who had not come up, I
arranged to take up outpost hne on the hne we held, making our
left secure and communicating with Hamilton's force on our right.
Second Coldstream bivouacked on the ridge and the remaining
battahons below it. First Scots and baggage did not come up
tiU very late. First Coldstream bivouacked with Hamilton's force.
Went over to see Hamilton who had been hit by a spent shrapnel.
Four companies on outpost duty. Fine, cool day. South wind.
Casualties in brigade one officer and eleven men. Very seedy all
day from the severe crushing I had had, and felt quite helpless.
It is clear from the above extract from his private diary
that on this day Maude was carrjdng out his duties under very
serious disabilities. On the previous day it had taken two
men to get him into his saddle at all, he was so stiff and bruised
from his accident on the Oth. Nevertheless he went through
an exhausting day in the field, accepted considerable responsi
bihty in diverting one battalion to the right in the absence of
his chief, and, when it came to the actual advance against the
formidable ridge, moved forward with the firing line of the
leading battalion. Actually the Guards only captured part
of the long ridge of Diamond Hill, portions of the heights more
to the right being won by contingents of General Ian Hamil
ton's troops. The end of the heights on the extreme right of
the assailants, furthest from the railway, was moreover not
taken until late, for the Boers were still holding on grimly in
that quarter, and they showed no disposition to abandon the
position altogether; just before dusk, however, an attack
delivered by some of the mounted troops secured the end of
the ridge, and Botha quietly withdrew his forces during the
night, uninterrupted by his opponents. In this action of
Diamond Hill the Guards had contributed largely to such suc
cess as had been achieved ; they had not suffered many
casualties, in spite of the difflculties involved in delivering
what was virtually a frontal attack upon a strong position ;
their lightly purchased success had been largely due to skilful
handling coupled with effective artillery support.
They were withdrawn towards Pretoria two days later, but
eventually passed most of the next six weeks in the neighbour
hood of the position they had helped to win. Lord Roberts'
intention was to move eastwards and to gain possession of the

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 55
railway hne down to Komati Poort on the Portuguese frontier ;
but the accomplishment of this design had for various reasons
to be deferred for a considerable time, during which a number
of sets of operations were carried out in different parts of the
theatre of war in which the Guards took no part. These opera
tions involved the advance of the leading troops of the Natal
army along the railway coming up from the Natal frontier
to Germiston so as to estabhsh a fresh line of railway com
munications between Pretoria and the coast. They included
some very successful work in the Orange Free State in which
a large Boer force was eventually to be surrounded and cap
tured. There was also a good deal of marching and fighting
in the Western Transvaal during the month of June and the
early part of July.
From the ISth to the 21st of June the Guards
Brigade were outside Pretoria, and the brigade staff occupied
a house. Maude dishked the plan of living under cover while
the troops bivouacked, but it enabled him to have his shoulder
massaged daily, as this had been giving him a good deal of
trouble ; the effects of the fall on the day before the opening
of the Diamond Hill fight he soon got over, but the old trouble
from the accident at Driefontein was ever present, causing
him pain and annoyance besides making writing difficult.
The brigade then moved back to near Diamond Hill, and for
some time to come the brigade staff occupied a farm in that
neighbourhood. Operations further to the front were con
stantly in progress, but were carried out mainly by mounted
troops. There were occasional scares of Boer attacks however,
constant vigilance was required at the outposts, and parties
of the enemy were seen from time to time not far from the
section under charge of the Guards, In the meantime Maude
and the staff had come to be on quite friendly terms with the
farmer and his family ; but, after nearly a month's stay under
their roof, his suspicions were aroused and he had the garden
of the house searched, when £8000 in gold was found buried,
together with twenty-two rifles and a number of incriminating
papers. So the family were sent into Pretoria ; they had been
in communication with the Boers out on commando the whole
time. Three days after making this haul, on the 20th of July, Maude
received a telegraphic message from Lord Minto, the Governor-

56 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
General of Canada, offering him the position of Mihtary Sec
retary. He telegraphed home to consult Mrs. Maude, and
in due course he accepted the offer, subject to his being
permitted by the mihtary authorities to take the appointment
up when the operations then imminent for clearing the railway
to Komati Poort should be concluded, which, it was hoped,
would bring the war to an end. Further reference to his
decision in this matter will be made at a later stage, but it
may be observed here that the general impression throughout
the army in South Africa at the time was that the campaign
was drawing to a conclusion, and that there consequently
appeared to be every reason to suppose that the Guards would
shortly be proceeding home.
Lord Roberts' preparations for a further advance towards
Middelburg and Machadodorp were now completed, and on
the 23rd of July the 11th Division moved forward eastwards
from the position that it had occupied for some weeks near
Diamond Hill. Pole-Carew's troops were to form part of the
army which Lord Roberts proposed in due course to unite with
portions of the Natal forces that were to move north under
Sir R. Buller, and then to use for clearing the railway as far
as the Portuguese frontier. The advanced troops coming
from the west, under Generals French and Hutton, occupied
the town of Middelburg on the railway on the 27th, and then
there occurred a fresh pause to permit of several important
railway crossings being repaired between Diamond Hill and
Middelburg, and to allow the necessary time for BuUer's
anticipated movement up from the south. The general
situation in the theatre of war as a whole was greatly improved
on the 29th by the surrender of upwards of 4000 Boers and
three guns, together with much ammunition, to General Hunter
in the Brandwater Basin in the Orange River Colony, as the
Free State now was called, the most important victory that
had been won since the capitulation of Cronje at Paardeberg.
For nearly a month, during which the mounted troops were
kept active on the front and the flanks, the 11th Division was
occupied in guarding the railway and constructing local de
fences at important points, so that the Guards had an ex
perience of a class ot work which the infantry were largely
to be engaged upon during the later stages of the war. During
the first half of August, however, they were gradually pushed

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 57
forward towards Middelburg, as troops came up from the rear
to reheve them, and then, on the 21st, the 11th Division began
moving eastwards from that place. BuUer was now approach
ing and renewed active operations, which promised to achieve
decisive results, were weU in sight.
General Botha was now occupying an extensive stretch of
country athwart the railway, with his centre posted near the
small town of Belfast. His front more or less coincided with
the general line where the very rugged, broken country of
which the extreme eastern regions of the Transvaal consist
may be said to commence as one moves eastwards from about
Middelburg. General French with most of the cavalry was
operating to the south of the railway and in touch with General
Buller. The 11th Division now came up on their left, and on
the 2Sth Pole-Carew occupied Belfast after encountering a
certain amount of opposition, while some of his troops also
worked off to the north.
' The division marched at 6.45 a.m.,' Maude records in his diary,
' the Guards moving on the south side of the railway with onebattery.
At noon we came in sight of Belfast, and, reinforced by the siege
guns, advanced to the attack. We secured the hill south of Bel
fast without difficulty, but further advance was difficult owing
to our coming under a hot shell and musketry fire. So we held
on whilst Henry (General St. G. Henry, commanding a brigade of
mounted infantry) turned the Boer right. Bivouacked at 4.30 p.m.
just south of the railway station. Eighteenth Brigade held
Monument HiU. Quiet night. Casualties fourteen.'
' Boers began sheUing 18th Brigade bivouacs at 7 a.m.,' he writes
in his diary of the following day, ' and sheUed all our bivouacs with
high velocity sheUs at intervals during the day. Not much
damage done.'
On that day Lord Roberts, who had been back at Pretoria
for some time superintending the general course of operations
all over the vast theatre of war, arrived to take personal
command. He soon satisfied himself that the Boers were
covering a wide stretch of difflcult country on both sides of
the railway and were at many points holding prepared posi
tions in terrain that was generally very suitable for defence.
He moreover found that the three main groups constituting
his own army, under command respectively of Buller, French,
and Pole-Carew, were in a cramped situation and by no means
satisfactorily placed for dealing effectively with so elastic, so

58 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
mobile and so elusive an enemy as the burgher forces opposed
to them. He therefore arranged to take French out of his
present central position next day and to transfer him to the
extreme left, north of the raUway, his troops making a detour
to the rear. He further ordered Pole-Carew to move the
Guards Brigade to the north so as to link up with French's
mounted troops when these should come up into line. This
left only BuUer south of the railway hne, which as it happens
turns south-eastwards for about five miles beyond Belfast.
But the troops from the Natal side represented a strong in
fantry force and they were well supplied with guns, besides
including an adequate proportion of mounted men, so that
they could be depended upon to give a good account of them
selves. The consequence of these new dispositions was that
the Guards had on the 26th to make an uncomfortable flank
march, more or less along the front of part of the Boer general
position and well within artillery range of it.
' Brigade marched at 6.30 a.m.,' Maude wrote in his diary on the
26th, ' with orders to make a reconnaissance in force, in conjunction
with French, towards DuUstroom. Orders changed twice, and
although we were in position to start at 7.30 a.m. we did not ad
vance tiU 2.30 P.M., as French was busy on the left. His advance
was very pretty and rapid as he drove the Boers from kopje to
kopje. Henry covered our advance and did splendidly. I had
the working of siege guns, naval 12-prs. and a field battery and had
rather fun. Terrific fire during our advance and after dark.
Brigade fired 32,000 rounds and drove the Boers back splendidly.
Three men killed and twenty-two wounded. Two battalions
on outpost.'
The general result of the movements of French's mounted
troops and the Guards, however, was to press back the extreme
right of the enemy to some extent, and to pave the way for
the action of the morrow. The 27th was ta prove a day of
victory, but neither French nor Pole-Carew were for practical
purposes employed in making the most of it. Only a compara
tively small portion even of the Natal force was indeed actuaUy
engaged. General Buller delivered an attack with two bat
talions supported by many guns upon the ground about the
farm of Bergendal which lay near the railway some four miles
beyond Belfast, and the troops employed gained a complete
local success. This threatened the whole of Botha's left wing,
which hurried from the ground, and the Boers north of the

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 59
railway who were facing Pole-Carew and French followed suit
late in the day. The burghers made oft through difflcult hiUy
country, proceeding in various directions ; but the bulk of
them under Botha himself took the route that leads north
eastwards to Lydenburg.
This combat of Bergendal marked one of the tuming points
of the war, not merely in that it opened the way along the
railway to Komati Poort and the Portuguese frontier, but
because from that day forward the Boer commander-in-chief
showed more and more disinclination to keep any large part
of the burgher forces together as an army, and began to devote
his attention rather to the guerilla form of warfare which
De Wet and other Free State commandants were already
employing to exceUent advantage for their side. President
Steyne of the Free State had joined Mr. Kruger, the Transvaal
President, at Machadodorp (which is about twenty miles by
rail beyond Belfast) two days before the fight of Bergendal
after an adventurous journey. The two Presidents then pro
ceeded east by rail for some distance, and after the defeat
of Botha's army it was decided that Kruger should repair
to Europe, for it had become apparent that the Transvaal
Executive would henceforward have to pursue a nomadic
career. It may not be out of place here to comment on Maude's
description of the flank march of the Guards on the 26th, as
iUustrating military opinion in the British army at that date.
A particularly level-headed soldier, who had studied his pro
fession assiduously ever since he joined and who was in close
touch with the ablest officers in the service, we find him using
the expression ' terrific fire ' with reference to the shelling and
the musketry experienced by a whole brigade of infantry,
moving under somewhat disadvantageous circumstances,
which only suffered twenty-five casualties during several
hours spent in comparatively close touch with the enemy.
Describing that same day's work, or a similar day's work, the
majority of British staff officers would have probably used
a similar expression. The numerous campaigns which had
been undertaken against irregular warriors in various parts
of the world during the last quarter of the nineteenth century
had taught the mihtary forces of the Crown numbers of lessons
calculated to be of use in warfare of any form. But they had

60 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
not tended to impress upon those who had taken part in them
that serious fighting is a sanguinary business, and that, when
opposed to a resolute and well-armed enemy, you cannot make
omelets without breaking eggs.
On ascertaining that the burgher forces were retreating
eccentrically through the mountainous region in front of him.
Lord Roberts decided to dispose liis troops for the pursuit
on corresponding lines. Buller was to go oft north-eastwards
to Lydenburg and beyond. French was directed to take a
wide sweep south and then east, heading for Barberton, an
important place with a branch line leading to it from a junc
tion on the main railway at a point forty miles short of Komati
Poort. Pole-Carew was to take a central line, moving more
or less along the railway, but he was to allow the two forces on
the flanks to get well ahead. In pursuance of these instruc
tions the Guards Brigade was moved forward to a place called
Waterval Onder, about ten miles beyond Machadodorp, on
the 30th of August, and it remained there until the 12th of
September. At Machadodorp, it should be observed, the
railway begins descending what soon becomes a deep valley
which leads right down to the low veldt bordering Portuguese
territory. Any advance down this valley must be somewhat
hazardous so long as the high ground on either flank was not
cleared of the enemy, and it was partly owing to these condi
tions that Pole-Carew's force was to wait until BuUer's and
French's operations had developed satisfactorily on either hand.
Barberton was captured by surprise by some of French's
mounted troops on the 13th of September, great quantities of
stores being secured as well as much invaluable rolUng stock.
Buller also had made good progress beyond Lydenburg in
very difficult country. The consequence was that when Pole-
Carew, with the Guards and some mounted troops, advanced
from Waterval Onder on the 12th they were troubled only by
topographical difficulties. After proceeding along the line
for about fifteen miles, the force on the 14th turned off by a
httle used track across the hills. The route taken involved an
ascent of 2400 feet, and the Guards that day had to cut a path
for a long distance through a tangled wilderness. ' Roads
terrible and ascent very steep,' Maude wrote in the brigade
staff diary. Next day there was a descent, and on the 16th
and 17th the troops were obliged to traverse nearly twenty

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 61
miles of waterless waste before they hit oft the branch hne to
Barberton and estabhshed connection with French's force.
After that Pole-Carew followed the railway with the Mounted
Infantry, the Guards and some artillery, making for Komati
Poort, which involved some hard marching in hot weather,
the force being now down on the low veldt. Then, on the
20th, a special request came from Lord Roberts for an effort
to reach the frontier as soon as possible.
' Force marched for Broken Bridge at 5 a.m.,' Maude wrote in his
diary for the 21st. ' Divisional staff could not teU us which road
to take, so we had to find it ourselves. Merely a track and very
much up and down hill. Engineers had to work hard aU day
assisted by our men. Also large fatigue parties required to push
the wagons along. Made most of Guards Brigade march on the
railway line, as the marching was easier there. Arrived at our
bivouac at 5 p.m. No water reported nearer than two miles off,
so went to look for some. Found some at last and arranged
bivouac accordingly. Baggage got in very late.'
Of the arrival at Komati Poort on the 24th, he writes : ' Force
marched at 5 a.m. for Komati Poort. Mounted Infantry in front,
followed by Guards Brigade, guns, etc. Boers reported to be in
position ahead. At 6.30 a.m. we had a long halt whilst the M.I.
reconnoitred Komati Poort. Kruger and 1000 men reported to
be waiting at bridge to surrender, but this was only a story as usual.
Brigade reached Komati Poort station at 9.45 a.m. where it
halted and watered. At noon, brigade moved into bivouac at the
junction of the Crocodile and Komati Rivers. Charming bivouac,
excellent bathing, good water and plenty of wood. No outposts.
Immense masses of rolhng stock on Selati-Delagoa railways.
Boers had tried to bum most of it. A Long Tom and some
ammunition foimd. Plenty of stores.'
His staff work during this advance into the extreme east of
the Transvaal was invaluable to the brigade, his inexhaustible
vigour and physical strength helping him to overcome ob
stacles of aU kinds in defiance of the heat. General Pulteney
pays the following fine tribute to his services at the time :
' Maude never spared himself, and if he had a fault it was
expecting his clerks to display the same energy and lasting
power, without sleep, as he possessed himself. The way he
looked after the interior economy of the troops on this very
trying march from Waterval Onder to Komati Poort in Sep
tember 1900 was superb, and all who took part in it owe him
a debt of gratitude.'
The attempt to give a coup de grace to the Boer forces in

62 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
this region had failed, even if most valuable captures had been
made at both Barberton and Komati Poort, especially in
respect to railway material. Although broken up as an army
since the combat of Bergendal, large bodies of the enemy had
retreated to the Portuguese border ; but they had dispersed
outwards as the forces under Buller, French and Pole-Carew
worked eastwards through the mountain country, the greater
part eventuaUy proceeding north and evading Buller. There
was consequently no object in keeping any large force at
Komati Poort, and two battalions of the Guards were sent
off to Pretoria by rail on the 27th. On the 28th there was a
ceremonial parade in honour of the King of Portugal's birth
day ; next day the other two Guards battalions entrained ; and
the brigade staff followed on the 30th. Owing to the steep
gradients leading up to Machadodorp and to congestion on
the line, it took the staff three days to reach that place, and
they only arrived at Pretoria on the 4th of October. Tents
were now available, so that the Guards, after many months
of bivouacking, found themselves temporarily under canvas,
and it was generally understood that they would shortly embark
for home.
Maude had a quiet time at Pretoria for several days awaiting
developments, considerable doubt prevailing as to the future.
A telegram arrived from the War Office on the 17th to say that
he was to go home as soon as he could be spared, as Lord
Minto had need of his services ; but General Inigo Jones was
unwiUing to release him, although Lord Roberts was quite
ready to assent to his departure. He had recently been suffer
ing a good deal from his shoulder and arm, and Colonel MagiU,
the medical officer of the Guards Brigade, was anxious that
he should go into hospital for a time and have them properly
attended to. ' So am I,' he wrote in his diary, ' but duty
comes first, and I don't see that I can have it done yet as we are
not sure that we shall not have to move.' This indeed
happened almost immediately afterwards, as two Guards
battahons with cavalry and guns were sent out hurriedly to
the west of Pretoria on the 20th, in view of an alarm that Boers
were going to break through from the south on that side.
Maude acted as staff officer to the force. Nothing happened
however, and the colunm returned to the capital on the 24th.
' A good deal of talk about our going home,' he wrote in the

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 63
diary on the 27th, ' but I fear that it is'aU talk. We have
heard so much of this sort of thing that we do not beheve in
it much.' In the meantime the divisional organisation was
being broken up generally throughout the theatre of war, as
it was no longer suitable to the conditions as these were under
stood at Army Headquarters. This affected the 11th Division,
and it will not be out of place to quote here an appreciation
of Maude's work from his old brigade and divisional com
mander in South Africa :
' I have known Joe Maude ever since he joined the Coldstream,'
writes Lieut.-General Sir R. Pole-Carew. ' To know him was to
love him and respect him.
He was a first-rate adjutant of the 1st Battalion. When I
commanded the Guards Brigade in South Africa he was my brigade-
major, and when I afterwards was given command of the 11th
Division I tried hard to get him appointed chief staff officer of the
division. This however was not permitted, but, as the Guards
formed a brigade of the 11th Division, Maude was with me in
the advance from Modder to Bloemfontein and to Komati Poort
and back to Pretoria. I do not think it would be easy to find a
better staff officer — active, energetic, full of common sense, and
beloved by officers and men.'
On the 29th news came that the 3rd Grenadiers were to go
home, but this proved to be a false alarm. Prince Christian
Victor died that day at Pretoria, and he was buried there on
the 1st of November, Maude making the arrangements for the
funeral parade of the troops. That afternoon orders came
which definitely put an end to any idea of the Grenadiers or
any of the Guards shortly proceeding to England, for the staff,
with two battalions, were directed to entrain for Bloemfontein
with the object of forming a flying column to act in ^that
vicinity. The fact was that it was already becoming apparent
that the war was by no means over. It was taking a purely
guerilla character — a character which it however had been
maintaining in the Orange River Colony for the previous seven
months. They arrived at Bloemfontein on the 5th, where General
Hunter took up general command a day or two later. It
speedily transpired that there was but little prospect of the
Guards being formed into a flying colunm — ^it was indeed
already becoming apparent that the proper functions of in
fantry in the guerilla warfare that was now in progress con-

64 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
sisted in guarding railways, in securing communications,
watching important strategical points such as drifts over big
rivers, and in forming pivots to act as bases for really mobile
columns composed of guns and mounted troops to hinge them
selves upon. Under the circumstances, Maude became very
anxious to go home with a view to having his shoulder seen
to and to then proceeding to Canada, and he communicated
with the staff at Pretoria on the subject. ' I have nothing
to do here,' he wrote in his diary on the Oth. On the 15th,
however, news arrived that the Boers were certainly going
to invade Cape Colony, and this at once threw important
responsibihties on his shoulders ; for it was decided that the
Guards should be distributed along the Orange River to hold
the drifts, and their disposition for this purpose, and the ad
ministrative arrangements connected therewith, practically
devolved upon him. It took a few days to make the necessary
arrangements and to get the detachments into position.
General Jones' headquarters being at Springfontein on the
16th and moving on to Norval's Pont on the 20th. The other
two Guards battalions were in due course brought down from
the Transvaal.
A somewhat anxious time followed. The force available
to hold the long line of the Orange River between Aliwal North
and the railway bridge over the river between De Aar and
Kimberley was manifestly insufficient for the purpose. Maude
not unnaturally felt anxious, as a hostile irruption into Cape
Colony was bound to create an awkward military situation
and might prove a signal for a rebeUion. ' Applied to Hunter
for two more battaUons to hold this line ; posts are terribly
weak and must be cut oft if Boers cross in any force ; river is
very low and fordable almost anywhere,' Maude wrote in his
diary on the 28th. ' Great talk of a rising in Cape Colony,
but I rather doubt it ; martial law should be proclaimed
everywhere,' is an entry on the 2nd of December. Lord
Roberts, it should be mentioned, had handed over command
to Lord Kitchener at Pretoria on the 29th of November
preparatory to going home.
A fortnight of considerable suspense ensued for the wardens
of the marches of the ' Old Colony,' small bodies of the enemy
being seen from time to time on the north side of the Orange
River, and the ever-active De Wet manifesting a threatening

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 65
activity in the south-eastern regions of the Orange River
Colony. At last inteUigence reached Norval's Pont to the
effect that 700 Boers had crossed between Bethulie and Aliwal
North on the previous night, and on the morrow tidings came
to hand that another hostile force was over the river at a
point considerably to the west of Norval's Pont. Cape Colony
had in fact been invaded by two hostile forces, which were
respectively under Kritzinger and Hertzog, operating a long
way apart. The effort to prevent the anticipated offensive
stroke on the part of the Boers by holding the drifts — or
several of them — had failed, as Maude had indeed fully foreseen
would happen if the enemy really meant business. A new
situation had arisen calling for prompt and vigorous measures.
Mobile columns had to be created without a moment's delay
to grapple with the hostile commandos which had overflowed
the barrier. Instructions had to be sent in all directions. And
an immense amount of organising work was imposed upon
Maude, as he was for the moment virtually in the position
of chief staff officer on the Cape Colony frontier, called upon
to make proposals to Lord Kitchener and General Hunter
as to how this new situation was to be met. His proposals
were approved. Then on the 19th, northern Cape Colony
was broken up into ' command areas ' ; all its western part
was placed under the orders of General Inigo Jones, and
the organisation and spheres of responsibihty were thereby
regularised. During the next two days troops which were hurried down
from the north by rail came pouring through Norval's Pont,
and on the 24th General Jones' headquarters moved to Naauw
poort and hved in a train. A number of moMle columns
were already in full cry after the intruders and within a few
days were hunting Kritzinger and Hertzog hither and thither
through the difficult hilly country of which northern Cape
Colony for the most part consists. The districts involved
were all placed under martial law, all the troops whether
sedentary or nomadic in the western area were controUed
from Naauwpoort, and the general management and the
switching about of the columns was for aU practical purposes
in the hands of Maude.
Although his personal inclinations were for active work in
the field such as the numerous column commanders were
E

66 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
carrying on, rather than for the duty of pulling the strings
from an offlce, he certainly could not now complain of having
nothing to do. But the work, if not in aU respects congenial,
was remarkably interesting and of the highest importance.
Endeavouring to outwit the extremely agile Boer com
mandants working under Kritzinger and Hertzog by foUowing
up their movements and those of the pursuing force on the
map, gave ample scope alike for ingenuity and for foresight.
Dealing with the innumerable administrative problems that'
were involved, and sending the requisite orders by telegram
to large numbers of different military authorities scattered
about the area, many of them perpetually on the move, taxed
Maude's memory, involved heavy labour and demanded con
stant concentration of thought. But in spite of all efforts of
the staff and of the active and energetic column commanders,
the enemy detachments could never be brought properly to
book. They raided townships and farms, they turned up
at unexpected points, and, worst of all, they were ever man
aging to work further and further southwards into the heart
of Cape Colony. ' Went for a short walk,' Maude notes in
his diary on the 4th of January ; ' flrst time I have stirred
out of the railway carriage for four days.' To a man of his
exceptionally active habits such a life must have been par
ticularly trying. Colonel D. Haig however arrived a day or
two later to take over general charge of the mobile columns
in this part of the theatre of war, and this lightened Maude's
responsibihties. Thenceforward General Inigo Jones was in
command only of the sedentary troops, although for practical
purposes it was impossible sometimes to draw a hard and
fast line between what were mobile troops and what were
sedentary troops.
During the next three weeks the hunting of Kritzinger's
and Hertzog's commandos continued without any very satis
factory results ; but the work was considerably less exacting
for Maude than it had been during recent weeks, owing to
the mobile columns that were pursuing and trying to destroy
the roving hostile bands being now under an independent
command. The nomadic parties of Boers that were wandering
about in Cape Colony at this time were, however, merely the
forerunners of what was intended to be a much more serious
invasion — an invasion for which they were preparing the way

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 67
by drawing the British mounted forces in the colony away to
the south. At an important Boer gathering that took place
in the centre of the Orange River Colony on the 2Sth, it was
decided that De Wet should undertake this, and he at once
gathered forces together and proceeded southwards. Lord
Kitchener speedily heard of what was brewing. He immedi
ately set all the forces that could be spared from the Orange
River Colony and from the Transvaal in motion to try and
head De Wet off. They poured towards the Orange River
by rail, some of them moved on into Cape Colony, and General
N. G. Lyttelton was given a general superintendence over the
operations. General Lyttelton arrived at Naauwpoort on the 4th of
February, and his forces assembled rapidly from various
quarters. But in spite of their efforts they were unable to
prevent De Wet either from reaching the Orange River, or
from crossing it — ^which he did on the 10th about forty miles
west of Norval's Pont. There followed what has come to be
called the ' Great De Wet Hunt.' The invaders were headed
oft from the east and south and were herded across the De Aar-
Kimberley railway into north-western Cape Colony, and
they thus moved out of the area for which General Inigo Jones
was especially responsible, while Lyttelton moved to De Aar.
A special letter had been addressed to Pretoria with regard
to Maude's going to Canada on the day before De Wet's
incursion, but the situation created by the invasion prevented
Lord Kitchener from entertaining the request for the moment.
For although the activities of De Wet's force hardly in
creased the responsibilities of the staff at Naauwpoort after
he had once been turned away westwards, the commandos
which had crossed the border some weeks before were still in
the field and giving a great deal of trouble. Armoured trains
were proving of considerable use at times in dealing with
these, and that there was plenty to think about at Naauw
poort is shown by the foUowing entries in Maude's diary at
this time :
22.2.1. Wire between Hanover and Richmond cut. Rosmead
heard heavy firing towards Cephanjespoort, and so Donald with
his mounted men moved out from Rosmead to Middelburg at
2 P.M. Firing had ceased by then. No. 3 train sent to watch
hne near Bangor and to go on to Cradock if aU clear in the
morning. . . .

68 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
23.2.1. Fish River attacked at 4 A.M. Sent armoured train
from Rosmead which soon scattered Boers. Roodehoogte occu
pied by Boers at 9 a.m. and station bumt. Sent 150 of 7th
Fusihers to occupy it. Gorringe and Herbert drove Boers
towards Spitzkop. Henniker's armoured train engaged, but gun
broke down. . . .
28.3.1. Heard at 11.30 a.m. that 300 Boers were at Blauw-
krans. As these were practically outside the mobile columns,
directed Nerval's Pont and Colesberg to send at once every
available man to try and drive them back from heading south
or east. . . .
(Most of the names do not appear on the General Map ;
the passages are merely quoted in illustration.)
De Wet was in due course hunted back again from the north
western region over the De Aar-Kimberley railway and,
under pressure of Colonel Plumer and other active column
commanders, was driven eastwards along the south side of
the Orange River trjdng to escape into the Orange River
Colony, having been very roughly handled. The river was
in flood in the early days of March and his position a very
anxious one, but he succeeded at last in getting across not far
from Norval's Pont on the night of the 28th of February.
This greatly eased Lord Kitchener's anxieties as regards Cape
Colony, and on the Oth of February he telegraphed to intimate
that Maude might now go home. Maude consequently left
Naauwpoort for Cape Town on the Oth, sailed in the Dunvegan
Castle on the 13th, and landed at Southampton on the 30th,
a little more than fifteen months after quitting England.
His record during the South African War was a good one,
and he was perhaps somewhat unfortunate in not getting
better opportunities of displaying his merits in responsible
positions. As brigade-major he made a reputation for him
self ; but the scope was necessarily somewhat limited, and he
missed the severest fighting that the Guards Brigade was
engaged in, owing to not arriving at the front until January
1900. Had Army Headquarters assented to his taking up
the post of chief staff offlcer with the 11th Division, as
General Pole-Carew wished, it might well have made a con
siderable difference in his career in the immediately succeeding
years. Perhaps the most valuable service that he performed
during the campaign was at the time when the Boers crossed
the Orange River into Cape Colony in December 1900 and

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 69
during the immediately succeeding weeks, work for which
he got little credit and gained no reward, because Lord
Kitchener could hardly be expected to help an offleer whom
the War Offlce were at the time trying to withdraw from him.
From the point of view of his prospects in the service, his
leaving the theatre of war at the very time when there was
such an opening for a man of his capacity, his vigour and his
standing in the army, could hardly be otherwise than detri
mental to his interests. But, having once accepted the appoint
ment on Lord Minto's staff, he had no option in the matter.
He received the D.S.O. for his services under Lord Roberts,
and he appears to have preferred this to receiving a brevet-
lieutenant-colonelcy which, considering that he was a com
paratively junior major in the army, would have been of
great help to him in future years.

CHAPTER IV
THE TIME IN CANADA
A DAY or two after arriving in London and reporting himself
Maude went to Miss Keyser's Hospital to have his shoulder
attended to, and he remained there under treatment during
the early part of April. After this there were various arrange
ments to make before he could proceed to assume his new post.
But he sailed with Mrs Maude and his three chUdren and
household on the 16th of May in the Lusitania of the AUan
Line, reached Montreal on the 27th, where Lord Minto's
private railway car was ready to meet them, and they
went on to Ottawa that night, settling shortly afterwards at
Rideau Cottage, two miles from that pleasant city, in the
groimds of Government House. During the voyage home
from Cape Town and the interval before arriving at the
Dominion capital, he had read all books about Canada that
he could lay hands on.
The appointment which Maude was taking up was a military
one in name rather than in reality. The Military Secretary
of a Viceroy, be the Viceroy the Sovereign's representative in
a self-governing Dominion or in the East Indies, holds what
is virtuaUy a household position and is concerned only in very
limited degree with questions affecting fighting forces. He
is responsible for many matters in connection with vice-regal
ceremonial and with vice-regal exercise of hospitality, and the
management and administration of vice-regal tours falls
mainly to his lot. The post is one which calls for organis
ing powers, for the exercise of tact not uncombined with
uncompromising firmness at times, and for the possession
of engaging social quahfications. But the occupant of
the appointment has no executive military responsibihties,
although questions may from time to time arise in connection
with the local army or with the local mihtia, as the case may
be, in regard to which his chief may be glad of the counsel of
a soldier with whom he is in intimate personal relations,
70

THE TIME IN CANADA 71
Quitting South Africa to take up a post such as this, at a time
when young and active offlcers of nerve and experience were
badly wanted for commanding columns and for carrjdng on
staff work in connection with the puzzling situations that arise
in partisan warfare, could not be expected to forward Maude's
prospects in the service. But he had committed himself to
the post many months before, at a juncture when no one
foresaw that the struggle with the Boers would last so long
or would take such a peculiar form as it eventually did.
As Viceroy of the Dominion of Canada, Lord Minto was in
a position on all fours with that of a constitutional monarch.
He was head of the State, but he was ruler merely in name.
Executive power rested for all practical purposes absolutely
in the hands of the representatively chosen Government, and
whatever might be his own opinion as to the expediency or
otherwise of the proceedings and decisions of that body, he
was virtually bound to endorse them.
In so far as the mihtary position in Canada at this time was
concerned, a somewhat divided form of responsibihty in the
matter of defence existed. A small Imperial Force of British
Regular Troops, under command of a British general officer
and administered and controlled by the War Office, provided
the garrisons for the naval stations of Halifax and Esquimault.
There was also a local force, comprising an exiguous nucleus
of permanent troops maintained mainly for instructional
purposes, and a considerable body of very loosely organised
and almost wholly untrained non-permanent troops or militia,
the whole usually under command of a British general officer
lent to the local Government by the War Office. This latter
post was held in 1901 by Major-General R. H. O'Grady Haly,
who was no longer on the active list, largely as a consequence
of the abnormal condition which had been created throughout
the Empire by the South African War.
The new Military Secretary speedily discovered that there
was a task before him which would tax his capabilities of
methodical organisation. Their Royal Highnesses the Duke
and Duchess of York (now Their Majesties King George and
Queen Mary) were to make a progress in state through Canada
in the autumn, arriving in September. The programme for
the visit had to be drawn up, all the multifarious arrangements
involvedin connection with it had to be elaborated, and Maude's

72 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
experience of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 had
taught him — ^had his own keen perception of the fitness of
things not assured him of it in any case — that this prospective
Royal Tour must be prepared for systematicaUy, presciently,
and with meticulous care. The whole business was in practice
handed over to him to deal with, and the effect upon local
opinion of his attitude in regard to the matter and of his
methods of proceeding, and particularly their effect upon local
opinion as this was reflected in the columns of the local Press,
afforded him an interesting and an instructive insight into the
habits of mind that are apt to prevail in a State of somewhat
recent origin.
The painstaking care with which details of the programme
were being formulated, the systematic manner in which
seeming trifles were being provided for, the exhaustive in
structions which were being issued to everybody who was in
any way connected with the ceremonial that was to be ob
served under various conditions and in different localities,
furnished the Fourth Estate with material for uninformed
criticism and derisive comment, which was directed at the
vice-regal entourage as a whole, but of which Maude was the
principal butt. Nor did the invariable courtesy shown by
the Mihtary Secretary to young and enterprising journalists,
combined as it was with an obvious capacity for keeping them
in their place, make these penmen any the less disposed to
exercise their wits at his expense in the newspapers whose
staffs they adorned. The very fact that he completely ignored
all attacks made upon him, and that he took the pleasantries of
which he was the object in disconcerting and even irritating
good part, served as a stimulus to their literary activities.
' Maude, Minto and Co., with their fuss, feathers and red tape,'
was quite a common heading in the newspapers ; the
better-class Canadians deplored such conduct and they could
not understand his being amused instead of feehng hurt by
such attacks. Still, it is but just to place on record that
when the progress of Their Royal Highnesses through the wide
expanse of the great Dominion had become an accomplished
fact, when it had become patent to all and sundry that the
whole programme had been gone through without the sUghtest
hitch, when the people of Canada (including the journahstic
world) reahsed that the unquahfled success of the entire pro-

THE TIME IN CANADA 73
ceedings was reflecting credit on ^heir country and themselves
— ^whoever it might be who had pulled the strings — ^the Press
admitted in a most sportsmanhke manner that it had made a
mistake, and praises were showered by it directly and in
directly upon Maude. The Military Secretary had taught
this new country that the practices of the old were not wholly
without merit. Even the youngest amongst us at times has
something to learn.
An untoward event, the murder of Mr. McKinley the Presi
dent of the United States, occurred two or three days before
the eagerly awaited visitors arrived in Canada. The Ottawa
Government were with good reason seriously perturbed ; it
was even debated whether the tour ought not to be abandoned,
or at all events be much abridged, so as to reduce any risks
that might be run by the distinguished guests. Maude was
much concerned when he heard of this, realising what an un
fortunate effect the adoption of counsels of excessive prudence
might have upon public opinion ; but the Government
speedily came to the conclusion that the proper course was to
carry out the programme as already drawn up. Special steps
were however taken to safeguard the Duke and Duchess and
to keep watch on the huge stretches of railroad which were
to be traversed, and the pohce authorities of the Dominion
spent some weeks of great anxiety.
The Royal Party arrived at Quebec in the specially com
missioned Ophir on the 16th of September ; two days were
spent in the historic capital of the French Canadians, and a
full programme was carried out, after which the Royal Train
proceeded to Montreal. In addition to the suite of the Duke
and Duchess of York, Their Royal Highnesses were accom
panied during their tour by the Governor-General and Lady
Minto, with representatives of their household and staff, the
party requiring two trains, one besides the actual Royal Train
for the Viceroy's household, the Press, etc. Two more days
were passed at Montreal and the distinguished visitors reached
Ottawa on the 20th, where four days were spent. Then the
Royal Train proceeded westwards by the Canadian Pacific
Railway to Vancouver, where it arrived on the 30th, a stay
of some hours having been made at the three principal places
on the route, Winnipeg, Regina, and Calgary. From Van
couver the tour was, continued by the s.s. Empress of India

74 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
to Victoria in Vancouver's Island, and back. On the return
journey eastwards a special halt was made at Banff in the
Rockies, to permit the Duke, with Lord Minto and portions
of the suites, to proceed on a shooting trip, while the Duchess
with Lady Minto and the ladies remained at Banff. The
Royal Train arrived at Toronto on the 10th of October, and
a four days' stay was made there admitting of a visit to Niagara.
On the way from Toronto to Halifax the Royal Party paid
visits of a few hours to Hamilton, Kingston, Sherbrook and
St, John's, arriving at the port of departure on the 19th, and
H.M.S. Ophir sailed east at daybreak on the 21st.
In connection with every place where a stay was made
during this Royal Progress — except at Bamft where the halt
partook of an unofficial character — a programme had been
drawn up in advance, fixing the exact hour when presentations
of addresses, military reviews, special processions, acceptances
of honorary degrees by His Royal Highness at abodes of
learning, presentations of colours to regiments and of decora
tions and medals to individuals for the South African War,
social functions, visits to places of particular interest, and so
forth, were to take place. Full instructions concerning salutes
and escorts had been issued well in advance. Everybody con
cerned in the ceremonies and receptions, and in the movement
by railway and by road and by ship, knew exactly what they
had to do. Nothing had been overlooked, the whole trans
action amounted to a triumph of foresight and of organisa
tion, and practicaUy all this was the work of Maude. From
the point of view of control and management, it was in fact
a one-man show. Lord Minto's staff sometimes wondered
what would b'ppen if the Military Secretary were by some
mischance to become hors de comhat. ' On the principle of
" if you want a thing well done, do it yourself" Joe worked
out everything personaUy and kept the details in his own
hands,' writes Major A. C. Morrison-Bell, who was one of the
A.D.C.'s. In connection with this Royal Tour Maude incurred a certain
amount of personal unpopularity in locahties which time did
not permit of the Duke and Duchess visiting, and amongst
individuals who for various reasons could not be presented
or who were not taken quite so seriously as they took them
selves. This was inevitable, as the Mihtary Secretary well

THE TIME IN CANADA 75
knew. He remained undisturbed, satisfied that he had done
his best and that the conduct and management of the Pro
gress had met the requirements of the case. The journey
to Victoria and back had moreover made him acquainted
with a region previously unknown to him, and in this respect
Mrs. Maude, who had accompanied Lady Minto, had enjoyed
a hke experience. He received the C.M.G. in recognition of
his services.
The whole question of Canadian defence and of the possible
development of the fighting resources of the Dominion in the
interests of the Empire as a whole, was beginning to engage
the attention of the Home Government and of the War Office
in the latter part of 1901, although interest in military
matters was naturally in the main riveted upon the progress
of the South African War. Maude had however been asked
by the War Office to take note of the position of affairs in the
part of the Empire that he was going to, and to communicate
his views on the subject privately from time to time.
' Ever since I landed in Canada,' he wrote to Colonel (now Lieut.-
General Sir E. A.) Altham on the 31st of October, ' I have had my
hands absolutely full with the organisation of the preparations for
the Royal Visit. Knowing as you do the extent of this country,
you wUl readily reahse that it has been almost more than one person
could do, and of course the fact that I have never been in Canada
before made it aU the more difficult for me. However, owing to
the great assistance and the hearty co-operation of the various
officials throughout the country, we have managed to make a
fairly good job of it, and now that H.M.S. Ophir has sailed for
England, I hope that I shaU have a httle more time to give to
other matters.
. . . At present owing to the short time I have been in the
country and to the causes above mentioned, I can scarcely say
that I have grasped fully the details of the whole system ; and,
as you know, it is difficult in this country to pick up information
quickly, owing to the fact that if Imperial officers are too eager in
trying to find out about such matters, their action is hable to be
misunderstood and resented as unnecessary interference.'
The attitude of the Dominion Government in connection
with projects for common defence within the Empire was not
marked by much enthusiasm for the cause at this time. Sir
W. Laurier, the Premier, maintained reserve, and he had given
but scanty encouragement to the desire of large portions of
the community to provide contingents of troops for the opera-

76 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
tions against the Boers on a scale analogous to that adopted by
AustraUa, New Zealand, and some of the Crown Colonies.
The Canadian Executive moreover was not prepared to make
any contribution to the Imperial Navy, although wilUng to
enjoy the benefit of its protection. Maude however was not
unduly discouraged, he continued to communicate his views
from time to time privately to the War Office, and he studied
the problems connected with the local military organisation
with assiduity. He speedily discovered that a special com
mittee of military experts had been sent out from home at
the request of the Canadian Government so far back as 1898,
and that this body had submitted a full and illuminating
report on the subject. But, as is not unusual in like cases in
the United Kingdom, the document had been pigeon-holed,
and it did not take the Military Secretary long to perceive that,
for a country with some five and a half million inhabitants, a
vast land frontier, and a lengthy coastline, the means existing
for self-defence were deplorably backward. However, in July
of 1902, the South African War being at an end, Major-General
the Earl of Dundonald arrived to take up the appointment of
Commandant of the Militia.
Lord Dundonald had interested himself in the problems
involved in the constitution of a citizen army, had commanded
mounted forces under Sir R. Buller in South Africa that were
largely composed of contingents from Dominions and Colonies,
and had been specially chosen by Lord Roberts as an officer
who, owing to his varied experience and to his reputation as
a leader in the field, as also owing to the attention that he had
devoted to the subject of making the most of the martial in
stincts of a population indisposed to undergo miUtary training
of an exacting kind, seemed particularly well fitted for the post.
This appointment, it may be observed, had never proved to
be a bed of roses for any soldier bent on improving the system
in the past, although there were plenty of officers and men
within the Militia itself who were fully alive to the short
comings of the organisation to which they belonged. The
fact that certain improvised units had proved themselves
under the peculiar conditions attending hostihties on the
veldt as efficient combatants as had British regular regiments
during the South African War, was moreover at this time
fostering the notion that the importance attributed by pro-

THE TIME IN CANADA 77
fessional soldiers to training was the mere outcome of pre
judice. The Dominion Government also was, excusably
enough, very jealous of Imperial interference in any shape,
a circumstance for which the uninformed condition of public
bpinion in the United Kingdom concerning States that were
then — and indeed sometimes are still — characterised as ' col
onies,' was in no small degree to blame. The incoming Com
mandant of the Militia was in fact taking up an appointment
which was, in the nature of things, hedged around with pitfalls.
This Maude, who had made himself thoroughly acquainted
with the Militia organisation, such as it was, by the summer of
1902, realised from the first.
Still, the arrival of the new commandant was greeted with
unmistakable satisfaction by the country and by the Mihtia,
and marked progress was made during the remainder of 1902
and during 1903 in respect to the training, and also to certain
points in connection with the organisation of the local forces.
Public opinion in Canada was a good deal concerned with
regard to the subject as a whole in 1903. The progressive
action of Australia and New Zealand in respect to accepting
a reasonable share of responsibility for their own security,
was not without its effect in bringing home to the people of
the Dominion the somewhat ignominious position in which
they stood, and the question of defence was taken up with an
interest that had not previously been displayed in Government
circles. A new Canadian Mihtia Act was drafted; in his
endeavours to improve the training and to develop the fighting
efficiency of the local forces. Lord Dundonald for the time being
received a gratifying support from the Ministry ; the completion
of a local rifle factory at Quebec just about this time gave
promise that the crying need of an adequate reserve of smaU
arms would shortly diminish ; and contracts were entered into
for the supply of a number of the 18-pounder guns which the
Home Government had decided to adopt.
Maude watched these proceedings with interest, from time
to time he gave the War Office the benefit of his views privately,
and he kept the InteUigence Department in London weU
acquainted with any changes worth noting that were taking
place. Sir F. Borden, the Minister of Mihtia, proceeded to
England in the autumn of 1903 with the draft of the new
Militia Act for discussion with the home authorities, and Lord

78 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Minto's Mihtary Secretary then wrote a letter on the subject to
the private secretary of Mr. Arnold-Forster, the Secretary of
State for War, some passages from which deserve quoting :
I do not beheve that it would be necessary or even advis
able to have a number of Imperial officers on the headquarters
staff in Canada, provided that there were Canadian officers fit to
undertake such duties. There are many excellent officers in the
Canadian Mihtia, some of whom, such as  , are well known in
England. The drawback is that they have had no opportunity
of getting a thorough staff training, and I cannot help thinking
that if some system could be introduced offering inducements to
a certain number of the smartest Canadian officers to attend the
Staff College annuaUy in England, Canada would soon produce
staff officers fitted in every way for the important duties of the
headquarters staff. ... I have mentioned the headquarters staff
primarily as being of first importance, but the lack of staff training
of course permeates the whole of the Militia district staffs through
out Canada.
As regard the new Militia Act, I should like to mention three
points : (a) The position of the Governor-General as Commander-
in-Chief, representing His Majesty; {b) The command of the
Canadian Militia; (c) The relative rank of Imperial officers
serving in Canada.
As regards the first point, it is most important that the Gover
nor-General, as His Majesty's representative, should be recognised
as the Commander-in-Chief. In the draft of the Act which I saw
some time ago, this was not clearly brought out and I feel sure
that occasions may arise in the future, as they have done in the
past, where the knowledge that he holds this position may be of
great value to the Governor-General. I have never understood
why it is that, whereas the Governor-General of AustraUa is shown
in the Army List as Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief,
the Governor-General of Canada is shown as the Governor- General
of the Dominion of Canada, and Commander-in-Chief in Prince
Edward Island only ; but I suppose that there is some reason
for this.
The second point, namely the command of the Mihtia, is one that
I know wiU be raised. Sir F. Borden holding that the chief command
of the same should be thrown open to Canadian officers. There
is a certain strong feeling that this should be done, but I do not
beheve that this extends to the more thoughtful and best officers
of the Militia. Personally I think that there are many reasons
which would make such a scheme undesirable. I know that Sir
F. Borden's idea is that the appointment of a Canadian should
only be made permissible, and he by no means intends to appoint
a Canadian himself forthwith ; but if the Mihtia Act made such a
thing possible a situation might easily arise where a weak Ministry
or a weak Minister of Mihtia might be unwiUingly forced into

THE TIME IN CANADA 79
appointing a Canadian. Not only is there at present no officer
fitted by staff training to assume chief command, but, even if
there were, such an offlcer would find himself in a position embrac
ing many difficulties from which an Imperial officer would be free.
The chief of these is the question of pohtical patronage, which
permeates pubhc life here and wliich does much to stunt the
growth and efficiency of the Mihtia. An Imperial offlcer has no
ties with Canada and can resist this to a certain extent, but a
Canadian officer in chief command would find the pressure brought
to bear on him pohticaUy from without absolutely irresistible. . . .
[Maude went on to discuss the question of uniting the appoint
ment of Commandant of the Mihtia with that of General Officer
commanding the Imperial troops ; but as the Imperial troops
were withdrawn about two years later, this matter is of no interest
now. The third point was one of detail. It may be mentioned that
under the Mihtia Act, as finally passed, the Governor-General
was given the position of Commander-in-Chief, that Maude's
suggestion as to Canadian officers going to the Staff College was
adopted some little time afterwards, and that the creation of a
Mihtia Council in the following year put an end to the appoint
ment of Commandant of the Militia.]
It will thus be seen that although Maude's position was in
the main not a military one, he contrived to keep himself
closely in touch with mihtary matters in the part of the world
where he now found himself, and was able to afford useful
assistance to his military superiors at home. Still, questions
of this kind only represented a small part of the subjects which
he was called upon to deal with in his official capacity, sec
retarial duties being his main concern. One of the most
important and the most exacting functions which the entour
age of a Governor-General is called upon to fulfil is that of
acting, so to speak, as a buffer between the Sovereign's Repre
sentative and pohticians or others who, if accorded interviews
or audiences, may be placed in a position to quote some opinion
expressed by His Excellency when off his guard, the publica
tion of which would be inappropriate. For a duty of this kind
Maude, having girded on his armour of breeding, discrimina
tion, candour, and firmness, was particularly well fitted. ' If
he was at all open to criticism,' writes Sir Joseph Pope, who
was Under Secretary of State at the time, ' it was for a quality
in which I specially delighted, that is, his spirit of sincerity
and frankness.' He made some enemies,2no doubt, from time
to time, but by his management of matters of this kind he

80 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
contributed to no small degree towards ensuring the success
of Lord Minto's viceroyalty.
He also had to figure prominently in the social gatherings
at Government House, and although he had no special liking
for such entertainments he played his part so conscientiously
and effectively that he conveyed to His Excellency's guests
the impression that he delighted in the occupation. At the
balls he always made a point of dancing with those who seemed
not to be enjoying their fair share, just as he had done thirty
years before as a youngster in London. All the arrangements
when his chief was performing some State ceremonial or some
public act he kept in his hands. In accordance with his bent
for centralisation he managed all the most trivial details in
respect to the Viceroy's numerous tours through different
portions of the Dominion himself. Everything on such
occasions invariably went like clockwork, thanks to his genius
for organisation and to his mastery of detail. He could
always carry the programmes for several different transactions
of this kind in his head at one time. ' Just send this wire to
Winnipeg about detraining the horses and carriages to-morrow
night,' he would say to one of the A.D.C.'s while he was in
the act of putting the finishing touch to, say, a medal presenta
tion at Toronto.
' I was always immensely attracted by his great personal charm,'
writes Captain Harry Graham, an old Coldstreamer who was
A.D.C. to Lord Minto for some part of the time that Maude was
in Canada, ' by the constant unselfishness he displayed in little
everyday matters which greatly endeared him to his colleagues,
by his wonderful industry and devotion to his work, and by his
unfaihng cheerfulness and good humour. He was rather quiet
and reserved, but this did not conceal the strength and self-con
fidence that underlay a somewhat shy and diffident manner.
Even in those days he had opportunities of displaying the re
markable talents as an organiser which were afterwards to stand
him in such good stead, and that swiftness of decision which made
him an ideal leader. I never met so conscientious a worker. No
detail was too unimportant for him to trouble himself about ; and
he possessed a capacity for taking pains which certainly amounted
to genius. Besides all this, his strong sense of humour, his love
of children, and his keenness as a sportsman made him an ideal
companion, while his devotion and loyalty to his cMef and his
subordinates never failed.'
The mode of life obtaining in the country afforded him

THE TIME IN CANADA 81
plenty of opportunity for exercise and for keeping himself in
training, as was his wont. In the winter time he made a
practice of running with the Ottawa Harriers once a week,
which meant a paper-chase. Sometimes he ran as hare and
sometimes with the pack, and when acting as hare he constantly
gave evidence of possessing a wonderful eye for country,
seeming to know by instinct where he would run risk of being
viewed and where he was sure to travel concealed. Ice sports
he enjoyed and took part in, but especially in their more active
forms of ski-ing and tobogganing — circling in a posture of
rigid discomfort around an orange according to the tenets of
the English school of skating did not appeal to him.
' Joe used to tum out regularly for the hockey matches played on
the private rink between the House and the Stables,' Major
Morrison-Bell writes, ^and he certainly pulled his full weight in a
team of amateurs more noticeable for their zeal than for their
science. Some of the stable lads— Canadian boys brought up on
the ice from their cradles — could make rings round us all, and a
thrilhng rush down the rink by the Mihtary Secretary generally
ended in two of these little mosquitoes saiUng in and taking away
the " puck " out of the very mouth of the goal.'
In the summer he spent many spare hours on the Ottawa
River and, being an old ' wet bob,' he could manage a canoe
on its water like a native. Moreover, Mrs. Maude and he often
went prolonged trips in a small naphtha launch through the
network of channels and lakes which form such a feature of
Eastern Ontario, cooking on the banks and putting up for the
night at village inns. In this pleasant fashion they were able
to traverse the Rideau Lakes and the Rideau Canal, to pass
in and out amongst the Thousand Islands where the lowest of
the great inland seas merges gradually into the channel of the
St. Lawrence, and to make a voyage down the artificial chan
nels with their chain of locks by which great vessels from the
West find their way down to Montreal. In their last year in
the country they were accompanied on some of these excur
sions by Mrs. Maude's sister, who was with them on a visit
from England, and by their eldest daughter Stella, now ten
years old. In connection with the children it may be mentioned
that while in Canada Maude instituted a plan, which he con
tinued for years after, of drilUng the trio for a quarter of an
hour before breakfast every morning, out of doors if possible,
F

82 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
and that he was just as strict during the observance as if they
had been soldiers, although ' off parade ' the most affectionate
of fathers. Members of the local social clubs did not for a long
time altogether appreciate his disinchnation to make free use
of those institutions ; they were somewhat disposed to attri
bute this attitude to an aloofness which was altogether foreign
to Maude's character. But when they learnt that the reason
for it was that he dishked the constant whiskies and sodas,
and that he hesitated to hurt the feelings of hospitable mem
bers by refusing — ^it is a difficulty which others from the Old
Country also feel at times when visiting the Empire overseas
— ^they were perfectly satisfied.
He found time in the summer of 1903 to make a trip to the
United States, in the course of which he visited a number of
the more important of the battlefields of the War of Secession,
in the annals of which he was greatly interested and with the
story of which he was familiar. He likewise explored the
earlier history of the States, especially in connection with the
War of Independence. The time devoted to these studies
did not however prevent his mastering available literature
concerning the Dominion itself. Thanks to his application,
to his excellent memory, and to the facility with which he
could absorb the contents of unexliilarating official documents,
his knowledge of the country that was his temporary home was
almost encyclopaedical before he left it. They used to say
of him that he must in some former state have been a dweller
in Canada, so fully was he acquainted with its past, its physical
features, its products and its forms of administration.
When he took up his appointment Lord Minto had already
been two and a half years at Ottawa, and the Governor-
General was due to give way to a successor in the latter part
of 1903 ; but he was asked to remain on another year, and his
staff naturaUy remained on with him. As it happened, some
awkward questions arose during the last year of his extended
viceroyalty. It had been agreed early in the year 1903 that
a difference of opinion which had developed between the
Canadian Government and the United States concerning the
boundary of Alaska should be referred to a specially con
stituted tribunal in London composed of representatives of
the Empire and of the United States, and on this the Lord
Chief Justice of England was the principal Commissioner on

THE TIME IN CANADA 83
the side of the Empire, having two Canadian representatives
associated with him. The verdict was given against Canada
on some of the more important points, owing to the Lord Chief
Justice concurring in the American point of view. This caused
some commotion in the Dominion, and Sir W. Laurier publicly
hinted that Ottawa ought to possess treaty-making powers
— overlooking the obvious connection that exists between
treaty-making powers and the power to enforce treaties when
made. The matter blew over in due course ; but a more
serious trouble came about in connection with Lord Dundonald
in the summer of 1904.
On the 7th June the Commandant of the Militia, in the
course of a speech made at a private gathering of officers,
uttered some caustic criticisms of the action of the Minister
who happened to be acting at the moment for the Minister
of Militia, in allowing political considerations to govern the
giving of commissions in a newly formed unit of horse. The
speech was however reported in a newspaper, and the result
was that Lord Dundonald was dismissed from his appointment
by a local Order in Council. The affair aroused strong feeling
throughout the Dominion. After his dismissal he repeated
his charges in a public speech at Toronto, and much sympathy
was felt for him — particularly so in the Militia itself. On
the occasion of his departure from Ottawa for home he was
made the subject of a remarkable ovation in the streets.
Whatever the private views on the subject of the Governor-
General may have been, he had no power to interfere with the
action of the Executive ; and, the Executive having decided
to support the Minister especially concerned, it was clearly
impossible that the Commandant should retain his position.
As it happened, it was already practicaUy decided to institute
a Militia Council, on lines analogous to those of the Army
Council in London. Under this reconstitution of the central
military administration, an Imperial officer (Brigadier-General
P. Lake, whom Maude was to be closely associated with a
dozen years later in Mesopotamia) became Chief of the General
Staff, the appointment of Commandant was abolished, and
an Inspector-General was set up ; the arrangement however
only came into force just about the time that Lord Minto
quitted the country.
• I saw a good deal of Major Maude, as he then was, when I

84 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
commanded the Canadian Mihtia,' writes Lord Dundonald. «I
was always impressed with his devotion to duty, the soundness
of his judgment, and his high standard of honour.
In 1904 I felt it my duty to warn the people of Canada pubUcly
of the danger of pohtical interference in the selection of soldiers,
in other words of a system which gave to officers with what was
called a " pohtical puU," advantages over those who had no such
backing, necessarily to the destruction of mihtary efficiency and
of the preparation of Canada for the world war, the imminence
of which was apparent to the well-informed.
It was at this time, when I was summarily dismissed by the
Laurier Government for my utterance, that I fully reahsed the
manner of man that Maude was. For, whilst some of the officers
who were reaUy friendly to me came to bid me good-bye — ^but after
dark ; in order, as they told me openly, not to be black-marked —
Maude came in the day, and several times, and what appealed to me
most was his sohcitude for my future career in the Army, for he
understood the power of those whom I had offended, with their
Press and their many alhes in Great Britain.
Major Maude of the Coldstream Guards was of the type that has
made the British officer respected and loved by men alien to him in
race, and by others differing from him in social degree and in
political ideals. I have met in the course of my hfe more than
the average of such men in the Coldstream Guards, and I do not
attribute it to chance.'
Lord Minto carried out an extensive farewell tour during
the last summer of his viceroyalty in what, but a few years
before, had been aptly described as the Great Lone Land of
the west. All the arrangements were as usual made by Maude :
the large party dwelt for a time under canvas on the prairies,
they covered wide stretches of country in the course of their
wanderings, and the Governor-General, with his Military Secre
tary and one or two others, at one time travelled five hundred
miles on horseback. As the time for departure approached,
later on, the out-going Viceroy received assurances of popular
good- will by every form of demonstration on the part of those
amongst whom he had for six years represented the Sovereign.
A succession of banquets, of presentations of addresses from
municipalities and other public bodies, of gatherings in which
great crowds took part, testified to the esteem in which he
and his staff were held throughout the Dominion. Lord and
Lady Minto, with their household, which included the Maude
family, sailed on the 19th of November on board the Tunisian
from Quebec after two days there of farewell festivities,
arriving in London, via Liverpool, on the 28th November.

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Major F. S. MAUDE, C.M.G., D.S.O.
Military Secretary, Ottawa, (1904.)
CHAPTER V
FROM 1905 TO 1914
On arrival in England, Maude found himself second-in-com
mand of the 1st Battalion of his regiment, stationed at the
moment in Wellington Barracks under Colonel Pleydell-
Bouverie. After an absence from regimental work ever since
the end of 1894, he was very glad to take up afresh duties
which had always greatly interested him. He thoroughly
enjoyed direct contact with the rank and ffle, and he main
tained his enthusiasm for drill while at the same time fully
alive to the importance of more advanced forms of military
training for an infantry unit. His family spent much of the
winter at a house lent to them at Henley, and on visits, and
for a time he made Henley his personal headquarters, going
up and down daily ; he was for several weeks in command
of the battalion during the first two or three months, while
the colonel was away on leave.
Returning home and reverting to regimental duty in the
Guards, with the expenses of a family to meet, he however
found his financial position somewhat difficult, and he was
obliged to look around for other military employment. Hear
ing that the command of the Transvaal Volunteers was vacant
he tried to obtain the appointment, but learnt that he was
ineligible owing to not being a cavalry officer. His prolonged
absence from regimental duty, and the fact of his having held
a virtually non-military appointment in Canada, no doubt
stood in the way of his obtaining a staff appointment for the
time being, in spite of his excellent record in South Africa.
The popularity which the Maudes enjoyed, coupled with the
anxiety of the Coldstream to keep one of their foremost
members with the regiment, helped to some extent to smooth
over troubles in respect to money matters, accommodation
being lent at a time when the family had no house of their own
vacant. But insufficient means were for several years to
handicap a soldier whose exceptional gifts for command were
86

86 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
not recognised even by his most intimate friends till the
opportunity provided by a great Continental war enabled
him to make apparent to them and to his country the stuff
that he was made of.
His family were at Oakham for a long time in the summer of
1905, and he frequently managed to spend week-ends there. He
astonished neighbours in that country district at this time by
the knowledge which he contrived to absorb of the minutest
topographical details of the region. They found that he
knew more about it than they did after having lived there all
their lives. It was a species of instinct with him, when bi-
cychng about the highways and byways, to note such matters.
Just as he made it a habit, as it were, instinctively to draw up
appreciations of the situation when he was on the warpath,
so also was he ever carrying out reconnaissance work in his
head when walking, or riding, or bicycling, or motoring about
any region with which he was not previously acquainted ; and
thanks to his remarkable memory he kept all the details in
his mind. This habit was due no doubt in great measure to
a recognition that it was his duty to be ever preparing himself
for the duties of a staff officer in the field, but he was also
naturally of a very observant character and was gifted with
a particularly good eye for country.
He conducted a regimental tour about Basingstoke in
Hampshire early in the year. Apart from this his experiences
in the Coldstream were necessarily of a somewhat humdrum
character, and he did not take long to make himself thoroughly
conversant with the various changes which had been intro
duced into the training and the organisation of the army while
he had been on the further side of the Atlantic, as a result of
the teachings of the Boer War. But when the battalion moved
to Pirbright in July regimental work took on a more interesting
form than was possible in London, and he often managed
during the weeks spent under canvas there to pass some hours
watching the advanced exercises of other troops around
Aldershot. While he was at Pirbright he heard that his late chief. Lord
Minto, was to be the new Governor-General of India ; so he
asked to be taken as Mihtary Secretary. Somewhat to his
disappointment, he was not however chosen. He proceeded
to North Wales shortly after the retum to WelUngton Barracks

FROM 1905 TO 1914 87
to take part in a special staff ride that was conducted under
the aegis of the War Office, with General Sir N. Lyttelton as
Director. It was to be an exercise in hill warfare as practised
against warriors of the Pathan type, to be carried out amongst
the crags and ravines of the Snowdon region, and the work was
after Maude's own heart, involving as it did plenty of walking
amidst glorious scenery, and participation in a form of military
training which was quite new to him. Three parties, of wliich
he was with the centre one under Colonel (now Major-General
Sir Colin) Mackenzie, advanced into the heart of the mountains,
and the staff duties were carried out on the assumption that
the columns were operating against Afridi tribesmen swarming
in the hills. ^ ' It has been a most interesting staff ride,' he
wrote in his diary on the day after it came to an end, ' and I
feel that I have learnt a tremendous lot about frontier fighting.'
It was a few weeks after this, just at the time when the bat
talion was about to move to Aldershot for a year, that he
received a letter from Mr. Arnold-Forster, the Secretary of
State for War, offering him the appointment of private
secretary in place of (the late) Major Marker of the Coldstream,
who was about to proceed to India on Lord Kitchener's staff.
Maude accepted the appointment gladly and he took up the
duties at once, although he contrived to combine them to a
certain extent with those of second-in-command of his battahon.
The family was moving to Aldershot to occupy the Com
manding Officer's quarters in RamiUies Barracks, and he was
hving there while at work under Mr. Forster, although he
often had to remain in London. This was his first experience
of the War Office, and it initiated him to some extent into
the routine of that institution, with which he was to become
better acquainted a few years later. He does not find fault
with this in his diary — ^which is interesting seeing that he was
an acute critic in respect to questions of administration, and
never hesitated in his own private record to reprobate what
he considered unsatisfactory. He was particularly dehghted at
finding so voluminous and so well managed a library in White
hall, of which he made free use during the few weeks that he
held the appointment — ^for his association with Mr. Forster
was of short duration. On the 4th of December the foUowing
1 The author, who was in charge of the right party, met Maude for the
first time on this occasion.

88 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
entry appears in the diary : ' Mr. A. F. said good-bye to me,
as he is off to Ireland and will not return to the War Office.
Mr. Balfour resigns to-morrow.' The out-going Secretary of
State had not been seeing eye to eye with the Military Members
of the Army Council, and the situation had not been an alto
gether comfortable one. Maude hoped to have been taken
on by his successor ; but Mr. Haldane (as he then was) did not
at the moment wish to be associated closely Avith his pre
decessor's entourage. For the next few days Maude was busy
clearing up papers in the late Secretary of State's office — no
light task — and he then settled down again to regimental life
at Aldershot. In his diary while on leave for a few days after
Christmas he made an entry which well deserves quoting, for
it has almost a prophetic ring :
I work about six or seven hours a day at mihtary subjects,
although I am on leave. Some day this may be of use not only
to my small self but I hope, perhaps only in a minor way, to
England. At all events it is right to try to do the very best one can.
Early in January he for a time had under consideration the
question of applying for the command of the Macedonian
Gendarmerie, which carried good pay with it and offered
prospects of active duties owing to the disturbances which
were perpetually breaking out in the Balkan storm-centre in
those days ; but he gave up the idea. He conducted a regi
mental tour about Winchester in March, and was greatly
pleased with the style in which the work was carried out ; he
had the gift of making such exercises interesting, he always
took the utmost trouble to make them a success and he
enjoyed the full confidence of those under him ; for they
realised that he knew what he was about, that his criticisms
were thoroughly to the point, and that his expositions were
well worth listening to. Then in May he was on the directing
staff .of a brigade staff ride conducted about Cirencester by
Brigadier-General (now Lieut.-General Sir Francis) Lloyd,
who was in command of the 1st Brigade to which Maude's
battahon belonged and who was much struck with his aptitude
at exercises of this kind. All this time he was, when at Aider-
shot, constantly occupied with regimental duties, supervising
training and busy with the interior economy qf the battahon.
In June he motored down to Okehampton and spent some

FROM 1905 TO 1914 89
days at the artUlery camp, which greatly interested him. In
view of his experiences at a later date, it is worthy of note that,
while sensible of the efficiency of the batteries and of the
excellence of the arrangements for conducting the firing on
the ranges on Dartmoor, he was not greatly impressed with the
resultant effects of gun-fire. ' Watched artiUery practice
from the target end,' he wrote in his diary on the last day.
' Very interesting, but my respect for artiUery fire is in no way
increased although excellent practice was made. Its effect
is, as I have always thought, mostly noise.'
In July he acted as chief umpire at the brigade training
under General Lloyd which took place in the Longmoor
direction, and later on he commanded a skeleton force, found
by the 1st Division, during Sir J. French's inspection of the
2nd Division in the field about Frensham. The 1st Division
training followed. He was keeping himself thoroughly fit
as usual by riding and bicycling whenever any pause in the
drill season took place, and he rowed in two races at Windsor
towards the end of the month. At the end of August he on
one occasion rode from Aldershot to see cavalry exercises on
the Berkshire Downs, starting at 4 a.m. one day and getting
back at 10 p.m. on the next. ' Very dark the latter part of
the ride,' he wrote in his diary, ' but horse quite fresh, although
we must have done nearly ninety miles in the two days.'
But all this time he was doubtful about his future, for he
recognised that he would hardly be able to afford to take
command of a battahon of the regiment when his turn came,
and he was becoming very anxious to obtain staff employment,
with a half-pay lieutenant-colonelcy ; he was much encouraged
by finding himself selected to act on Sir J. French's staff during
the extensive command exercises which took place in the
latter part of September, covering a wide tract of country
reaching from Sussex to Dorsetshire. He arrived home from
this outing late on the day on which his son Eric, now nine
years old, had gone off to ' Cordwalles,' a private school near
Maidenhead, for the first time.
A few days later he received an offer of the appointment of
D.A.A. and Q.M.G. of Coast Defences at Plymouth, a post
which was about to fall vacant. It was not a particularly
attractive position for a soldier of his standing and experience ;
but, after consulting with a number of friends who all advised

90 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
him to go, he wrote an acceptance. ¦¦ On the whole it seems
best, although it is difficult to say,' he wrote in the diary.
' The only way is to do one's level best, and perhaps then I
may become a useful soldier some day.' He evidently was
disappointed and hurt at not having been chosen for work of
a somewhat higher class ; he had indeed been anxious to get
a place on the General Staff at the War Office, and had enter
tained some hope of being selected for something of the kind.
' We never served in the same battahon together until he became
second in command to me when I had the 1st Battalion,' writes
Sir W. Lambton of him ; ' in that position he was of the utmost
value, organising regimental funds, institutes, and so forth ; but
there was not in reality sufficient scope for his activities in such a
position, and he reluctantly went on the staff, thus foregoing his
prospects of command. I know that he felt this very deeply,
for he consulted me. But his financial position, added to the
fact that he would have to wait a couple of years or so before a
battalion command would be vacant, decided the question.'
The 1st Coldstream moved from Aldershot to Chelsea
Barracks in October ; but Maude remained on for a few days
at Aldershot, as he was to take up the Plymouth appointment
in the middle of November, when he proceeded to his new
station. ' Work not very interesting, I fear,' he wrote after
a couple of days taking stock, ' but must make the best of it
and perhaps something will turn up later ; but I feel I am
rather wasting my best days when I could do so much more.
Naval things wdll however be interesting.' He was on the
other hand very glad to find himself so near Sir R. Pole-Carew,
and during his stay in the West Country, and particularly
during the first months while he was still looking out for a
house, he spent many pleasant week-ends at Antony, his
former chief's and brother-officer's place on the further side
of the Hamoaze.
The general in command of the coast defences, which in
cluded the fortress of Falmouth as weU as that of Plymouth,
was Sir J. Leach, an artUlery officer, and Maude found much
to interest him in connection with the armaments and training,
although, as his work was that of administrative staff, his
duties were concerned mainly with other matters. For the
first three months of his term in the appointment he lived in
the Rifle Brigade barracks and he made great friends with the
regiment. It took some time to find a house that was suitable,

FROM 1905 TO 1914 91
seeing that he was anxious to have some little ground and a
garden, and that he wished to be in a quiet neighbourhood if
possible. Military conditions at Plymouth struck him as dull
and the tone somewhat apathetic, after Aldershot. ' I never
saw a more sleepy and dead-alive command,' he wrote. The
amount of correspondence passing daily through the office
seemed to him to be out of all proportion to the results which
it brought about, and he set himself to work to introduce more
life into the proceedings and to reduce mere ineffectual paper
work as far as was practicable, although addicted to paper
work himself. He was, on the other hand, greatly impressed
with what he saw from day to day of the Senior Service in
and about the great naval station ; its vigorous methods and
the zest with which its operations were conducted appealed
to him. ' It is a pleasure to see them and to see everything
so well done,' he commented in his diary; his boy was in
tended for the Royal Navy. He covered a great deal of
ground on his bicycle in the afternoons, both for the sake of
the exercise, and also with the object of famiharising himself
with the country around Plymouth and Devonport, meeting
with an accident on one occasion which incapacitated him
for some days, although not sufficiently to obhge him to go
on the sick list. He directed a staff ride near Sherborne in
March, and shortly afterwards settled down with his family at
' Stone HaU,' a house in the Stonehouse area of the ' Three
Towns,' belonging to Lord Mount Edgcumbe, with a garden
in which he found plenty of occupation in spare times, assisted
enthusiasticaUy if not very effectuaUy by his small girls.
It was now more than a year since the fall of Mr. Balfour's
Government, and, as it was known that Mr. Haldane had ever
since been maturing a new organisation for the Second Line,
his statement in the House of Commons when introducing
the Army Estimates was awaited with some impatience in
mihtary circles. Maude's comment in his diary on the day
when he read the War Minister's speech is of particular
interest, seeing how closely he was to be identified with the
Territorial Forces before long. It runs as foUows :
Mr. Haldane brought out his new scheme, and it is of course
much criticised. Its worst point seems to be that it contemplates
driU and training for six months after the outbreak of war before the
troops can take the field. This time no enemy worthy of the name

92 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
will give us. To-morrow there is to be a great debate in the House
of Lords on the subject ; but they are apparently only going to
treat it from a ' Mihtia ' point of view, instead of taking up the
broader question of the defence of the Empire, and considering
whether the scheme will give us an adequate force for that purpose.
It looks as if Mr. Haldane was convinced that Conscription was
necessary, and as if he was riding for a fall in that direction. It
certainly seems almost impossible to go on as we are now, and if
something is not done soon we may be beaten by Germany or
some other Continental Power, and then it will be too late to set
our house in order. We are as a nation too sanguine and cocksure
of our own abiUties. It has always been the same story since the
days of the American rebellion.
Soon after this Maude made up his mind to apply for a half-
pay lieutenant-colonelcy, being satisfied that he could not
well for financial reasons command a battalion of the Cold
stream; he would have to wait some time before obtaining
command in any case, owing to his position on the list of the
regiment, and he could not but remember that, under the bad
old system of the adjutant being all powerful, he had virtuaUy
commanded a battalion more than a dozen years earlier. His
Staff College contemporaries with a good record were moreover
all going ahead of him in respect to army promotion, on which
the prospects of his ever rising high in the military world
seemed to depend. He consulted many military friends of
experience before doing so, and they one and all recommended
him to take a step which was likely to help him on in the
service, however much he might regret severing ties with his
regiment. In due course he therefore sent forward the
request officially.
In the meantime he was busying himself with re-drafting the
Plymouth Defence Scheme, a work to which he devoted great
attention for several months, and which his liking for detaU
made him especially well fitted to carry out. He flattered
himself that he had considerably improved offlce procedure ;
but he found it hard to make any effectual impression on the
inertia existing in what he regarded as a back-water station.
Moreover, although this was his flrst experience of an ad
ministrative staff appointment, he was so well acquainted
with army regulations and departmental procedure that the
duties which he was performing from day to day could not
teach him much that he did not know before.

FROM 1905 TO 1914 93
The West Country is almost proverbial for hospitality, and
the Maudes were during their stay in this part of the world
made welcome on all hands ; but although the girls throve
exceedingly, the enervating climate of South Devon did not
suit Mrs. Maude, who was not at the time in very good health.
This made Maude all the more anxious to get employment
which would at once be more in consonance with his abilities
and experience, and would be more congenial to an enthusiast
for field training than an administrative offlce job ever could be.
He heard privately from the War Offlce on the 16th of June
that he had been chosen for a half-pay lieutenant-colonelcy
by the Selection Board and received the tidings with mixed
feelings. ' Delighted with the step, for there were only four
vacancies in the whole army,' he wrote in his diary, ' but more
sad than I can say at the prospect of leaving the regiment. . . .
Ever since I have left school, for twenty-three years in fair
and foul weather, the regiment has been my home, and I
cannot help feeling the parting sorely.'
He was enabled to pay a visit to the artillery practice camp
on Salisbury Plain in July, and he went on to witness some
siege manoeuvres at Chatham which greatly interested him,
while next month he was for two days at the cavalry man
oeuvres about Marlborough. 'I run a half to three-quarters of
a mile every morning directly I get up, and this does me a lot of
good and keeps me fit,' he wrote one day in August. Then in
September he was selected for the umpire staff at the Southern
Command manoeuvres about Sahsbury. He was afterwards on
the directing staff of the Aldershot Command exercises in the
Aylesbury country, and was much encouraged as regards his
chances of getting a more suitable appointment before long,
rather expecting to go to Aldershot. 'I am so keen about
soldiering,' he wrote in his diary in November, ' and feel that
I could do something big if I had the chance.' He occasion
aUy went out with the harriers during the autumn and vrinter,
was invited to several shoots, and, as the Defence Scheme had
been got into shape and the offlce work for which he was
responsible had been revolutionised, he felt more at liberty
at the end of the year to devote time to private pursuits than,
with his strong sense of duty and his bent for counsels of
perfection, he had felt twelve months before.
Early in January Maude went to hear a series of lectures

94 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
by Mr. JuUan Corbett at the Naval Barracks on ' Invasions,'
and a comment in his diary is worthy of note : 'Very good and
interesting, as they always are ; but I think he is a little too
sure that England cannot be invaded without the sea being
permanently in the hands of the enemy.' A few weeks later
he learnt privately from General Mackinnon at the War Office
that he was to receive the offer of a General Staff appointment
in one of the Territorial Divisions about to be constituted.
He was somewhat sorry to leave his house, as Mrs. Maude had
latterly been in much better health there, and he also felt
doubt as to whether the appointment was in itself a good one
from the professional point of view and likely to help him on
in the service ; but on this latter point he received most
satisfactory assurances from Headquarters. Therefore, when
formally offered the post with the Midland Division and head
quarters at Warwick, he accepted. ' I think it best to see
soldiering under every form and condition,' he wrote in the
diary, ' and the work ought to be interesting if I have a good
general and a keen County Association.' Shortly afterwards,
however, he was asked whether he would accept the same
appointment in one of the London divisions instead — an
arrangement which he accepted gladly — and at the end of
. March he bid good-bye to his many friends at Plymouth and
went up to London so as to start work on the 1st of April,
when the new Territorial organisation came into force. His
division was the 2nd London, under command of his old
brother - officer in the Coldstream, Major-General Vesey
Dawson, and he must have regarded the date of taking up
his new post as somewhat appropriate, for he records in his
diary that there were ' no office, no stationery, no pens, ink
or paper, and no clerks.'
Personally I am very keen on the scheme, and mean to work my
best to make it a success. I do not in the least see why it should
not succeed. But its success or failure of course depend largely
upon the keenness and exertions of those composing the force.
I go up every morning to 28 Lancaster Gate (General Dawson's
house), and there we have a temporary office, but everything is
very difficult, for we have veritably to make bricks without straw.
It is nice to be with old Vesey again.
Maude was however the sort of man who does make bricks
without straw, and in a very short space of time had succeeded

FROM 1905 TO 1914 95
in getting the Territorial Association to agree to the hire of an
offlce in Craig's Court, and was installed in it and working at
high pressure. He had to think of a home for himself as well
as of accommodation for divisional headquarters and, after
seeing two or three houses, Mrs. Maude and he chose ' Green-
gates ' at Carshalton, where the number of rooms was limited,
but where this drawback was compensated for by an extensive
garden. He resided there with his family for four years, longer
than in any other house that he occupied during his married
life. ' We are -setthng down gradually into our office,' he wrote on the
21st of April, ' and are very comfortable. But one has to do every
thing for oneself and organise all from the very start.
No doubt the scheme is a great advance on anything we have
had previously, for at least the divisions will be properly organised
and on a sound mihtary footing ; but the questions as to the number
of men that will come forward and as to the amount of training
are critical ones for the Empire, and time alone will prove what will
be the result. Possibly we may work up to the fuU numbers
ultimately, but only at the expense of training ; for the tendency
now very clearly is to sacrifice the amount of training to be done
in order that more men may be attracted to the colours.'
Although there was an immense amount of office work to
be got through in the early days, Maude and his chief had also
to carry out a certain amount of inspection work from the
start, and early in May he was already preparing for an officers'
tactical exercise. Towards the end of that month he definitely
settled down at Carshalton, going up to town usually by the
8.28 train and getting back in the evening. Always looking
ahead, he was already pressing upon the Territorial Associa
tion the need for making all arrangements for the annual camps
to take place at the end of July and beginning of August, and
he found some difficulty in getting that body to move in the
matter. His tactical exercises for officers were a great success
from the outset, and they were highly appreciated by those
attending them. Maude was particularly expert in conduct
ing work of this kind ; he did not look for, nor expect, to find
knowledge, but he did look for keenness on the part of those
participating, and there was no lack of this. That being so
he was always prepared to take an infinite amount of pains, as
was apparent to the officers of his division, and they therefore
invariably worked their very best when in contact with him on

96 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
such occasions. He was by nature somewhat intolerant of
ignorance ; but, competent craftsman as he was, he could
always bring himself down to the level of his audience so long
as this clearly showed that it was foUowing his expositions
with intelhgence and interest, and his lectures were much
valued by those under instruction.
His general and he had a very busy time, involving a great
deal of traveUing, towards the end of July. The division,
as it happened, when out for this, its first annual training
under the new organisation, was a good deal scattered. They
were twice at Lydd and twice on Salisbury Plain. Maude was
much pleased with the progress noticed amongst the artillery
on the second visit to Lydd. The work of the infantry on
Salisbury Plain was perhaps a little too far advanced, because
after some nocturnal work he writes in his diary : ' Very poor,
and I have learnt this week never to embark on night opera
tions with Territorials if we go to war.' The troops were very
fortunate in their weather this first year, for it was hot and
sunny throughout — ' Vesey's face quite raw and mine be
ginning to peel ' — and the period on the Plain ended with a
big field day on the 12th of August in which Regulars took part.
Our division, which was only 1700 strong, charged by the whole
Cavalry Division and the fight given against us. It is doubtful
what would have happened on service. Territorials looked at
charging cavalry but never fired !
In September this year Maude joined the Directing Staff
of the Aldershot Command, which was now under Sir H. Smith-
Dorrien, for the manoeuvres ; they took place about Winches
ter, although they included an elaborate strategical scheme
beforehand. Brigadier-General (now General Sir W. R.)
Robertson was Smith-Dorrien' s Chief of the General Staff at
Aldershot at this time, and it was the first occasion that Maude
had much to do with two officers with whom he was to be closely
connected in later and more stirring times. ' I enjoyed the
manoeuvres immensely,' he wrote ; ' they were very instructive.'
After this Maude settled down to the usual office routine in
town in connection with the 2nd London Division. He always
seems at this time to have had an inordinate amount of paper
work to dispose of ; General Vesey Dawson indeed declares
that he never at this time succeeded in getting to Craig's Court
before his General Staff Officer or in outstaying him there.

FROM 1905 TO 1914 97
It is however somewhat significant that when Maude came to
compare notes at conferences and meetings with officers
holding the same appointment as he did in other Territorial
Divisions, he was puzzled to find that they did not complain
of their office duties being very onerous. It has to be remem
bered that these officers were, like Maude himself, experienced
in staff work and that they had been especially selected for
their appointments, to which much importance was attached
at the War Office. Is it to be supposed that they neglected
their responsibihties ? Surely not. One gets the impression,
although it may be quite a mistaken one, that Maude was
— ^to borrow a sailor's expression — a little disposed to make
heavy weather of office transactions.
The routine at Craig's Court was however frequently
interrupted by the carrying out of special exercises with officers
of the division. One particular set of these which had Hatfield
for its scene lasted nearly a week in the month of October.
Soon after completing it Maude passed a time of great anxiety
for several weeks owing to Mrs. Maude becoming dangerously
ill and having to undergo a serious operation ; the operation
proved quite successful, but for some months afterwards she
was in dehcate health which caused him alarm at times. He
attended the General Staff Conference held by General Sir
W. Nicholson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, at the Staff
College in January — a gathering which came to be an annual
institution from about that time. ' I had five days' leave at
Christmas, which is all I usuaUy have now as work is incessant,'
he wrote in his diary at this time ; ' there is no limit to the
amount of work that one can do with the Territorials with a
Uttle exertion ' — evidently referring to their training and to
special exercises of officers. Mrs. Maude started off for a two
months' tour in the Mediterranean for the sake of her health
in February ; and, very shortly after she had left, he was asked
by General Mackinnon to take up the appointment of Assistant
Director of the Territorial Forces from the 1st of April, an
offer which he gladly accepted, as it carried with it the rank of
Colonel, with a rise in pay. StiU, when the time of parting
arrived he wrote : ' Very sorry to leave old Vesey and the 2nd
Division, where I have made many friends.'
' I knew Maude as w^U as most people,' writes General Vesey
Dawson, ' for we served together for many years in the Coldstream,
G

98 SIR STANLEY MAUD^
and he was afterwards on the staff of the 2nd London Division T,F.
when I commanded it.
His chief characteristic was devotion to duty, but he was also
extraordinarily energetic, and he never thought of, or spared, himself
when there was work to be done. He was also exceptionaUy
modest. By nature very impatient of ignorance or slowness in
others, he managed to conquer this feeling when deahng Avith the
Territorial officers, and nothing could have exceeded the trouble
that he took to educate them, although many were completely
ignorant of mihtary duties.'
He was not favourably impressed with War Office methods
on joining the staff of that institution definitely for the flrst
time. In connection with the administration of the Terri
torials much of the correspondence was necessarily with the
civil side ; he found their ways unduly deliberate, and he wrote
in his diary that ' people seem to think nothing of keeping
papers for days at a time, and doing nothing with them.'
The office hours proved even longer than he had found them
when on the staff of the 2nd Division, and there were few of
those breaks caused by inspections, tactical exercises, and so
forth which he had always enjoyed ; but he felt that much
could be accomplished to effect improvements in the force
which Mr. Haldane had done so much to develop. Still, he
lost heart somewhat at times. ' The War Offlce gives one the
idea of a buUding in which all the offlcials have gone to sleep
for twenty years, and then wake up and carry on their work on
lines which have been long out of date,' he wrote. Although
General Mackinnon had agreed to his dividing the branch
up into three sub-sections, each with its particular functions
clearly laid down, his tendency to centralise made itself felt
very plainly now that he had several junior staff offlcers under
him. This tendency remained with him to the end of his
career, and when he had risen very high in the service.
Outspoken references to the matter wiU have to be made
later in the volume, seeing that it at times created a certain
amount of difflculty and that it was criticised even by those
under him and those over him who had the greatest admira
tion for his qualities of heart and head.
A pleasant interlude came for him in July at the time of
the annual camps of the Territorial Forces. He visited the
divisions at work on Sahsbury Plain, in Wales, and in Lanca
shire, covering a great deal of country and travelling con-

FROM 1905 TO 1914 99
siderable distances, and on his retum he wrote full reports for
the information of his chief. He was disposed to think that
in some cases the training was too far advanced, and that these
non-permanent troops were being taught to run before they
could walk. Sir C. Fergusson, who was Inspector of Infantry
at this time, mentions having had many dealings with him
in connection with the training of the Territorials and always
finding him ' most helpful and accessible.' In September he
went on the umpire staff to the Army Manoeuvres held under
Sir J. French, an outing which he greatly enjoyed ; he was
attached to the Royal Irish Fusiliers-, to whose efflciency and
good fellowship he pays a handsome tribute in his diary, and
returned full of zest to the offlce routine of Whitehall.
But there he found much to deplore. ' The Finance Branch
are doing the Territorial Scheme grave damage by their grinding
economy,' he wrote in his diary. ' They save little by it and
are putting up the backs of all the County Associations and
of leading men connected with business who will not stand
such interference ; they will be compelled to give way ulti
mately, which will only make us look foolish after the harm has
been done.' StiU, it is only fair to the Finance Department
offlcials of the War Offlce to observe in this connection that
they are not exactly free agents in such matters as are here
referred to. Only a certain amount of money is available in
any case, and the Treasury — at all events in peace time —
keeps a very tight hold over disbursements, besides being by
no means precipitate in arriving at its conclusions. The
result is that, if war supervenes, the country suffers grievously
from the point of view of economy and from every other point
of view, the Finance Department is shouldered out of the way
by other War Offlce departments under dire stress of circum
stances, and the Treasury, swept oft its legs by the flood of
urgent expenditure on imperative naval and mihtary require
ments, fails to recover flnancial control until long after
hostilities have been brought to a conclusion.
The Maude family had in the meantime settled down very
comfortably at Carshalton and Maude hked the place, taking
much trouble with his garden and interesting himself unob
trusively, in so far as his hmited leism-e from military duties
permitted, in local affairs. In the winter of 1909-10 he made
a practice of going out on Saturday afternoons with the

100 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Worcester Park beagles, and he continued to do so during
succeeding winters ; they generaUy met within five miles of
' Greengates,' and he used to bicycle or walk out to the rendez
vous according to the state of the weather, although he some
times used the railway. His friend and medical attendant.
Doctor A. T. Peathng, in a letter regarding him at this time
throws an illuminating sideUght upon Maude's invariable
practice of keeping himself in good condition ; it shows that
he had an object in aU this, quite apart from the healthy
instincts of an active man who happens by force of circum
stances to spend much time at the offlce desk.
One Saturday he came to me just before dinner complaining of
a discomfort in' his chest. I found that he had been running with
the beagles hard all the afternoon, and then had a three or four mUes
walk to the station. He had overdone it, and his heart was ' jib
bing ' at the extra strain. I expostulated with him and told him
I thought a man of his age was too old to run for any length of
time. ' But I must keep fit,' he said. ' But why on earth do you
want to keep in the condition of a prize-fighter ? ' was my reply.
I remember so well how he leant forward towards me and said im
pressively : ' Because any day we soldiers may be wanted badly ;
any day we may be plunged into a huge war which one can't
grasp the extent of. I shall see it, and you will live to see it.
That is why I feel it my duty to keep myself in top-hole condition.'
This occurred for.r or five years before the Great War. It made a
great impression upon my mind at the time, and I have often re
called his words since.
He was churchwarden here (Dr. Peatling goes on to say) and I
met him at several parish and church meetings ; he always took
a very common-sense view of things, entirely free from sentiment.
I envied very much his temerity in wearing white ducks at church
during the summer. I have never, before nor since, seen a church
warden taking the bag round dressed so coolly. He was one of
the most courteous men I ever met ; I should think that it took
a little time to gain his confidence, but when once obtained he would
give his trust freely.
As will also be seen from the Rev. G. Vaux's apprecia
tion which is quoted further on, Maude took a somewhat
prominent part in questions connected with the parish and
with Carshalton Church, this in spite of the long hours which
he passed daily in London and of generally carrying papers
home with him to deal with after dinner. He was in fact
spending a somewhat strenuous existence. All through his
mihtary career, however, he seemed to thrive upon hard work,

FROM 1905 TO 1914 loi
nor did he ever grudge time and labour if he saw the shghtest
prospect of his efforts leading to some tangible result. But
with regard to the newly formed category of the fighting forces
with which he was so closely concerned, he sometimes almost
lost heart.
' Delays and procrastination stiU rife at the War Office,' he wrote
in March 1910 ; ' incalculable damage being consequently done to
the Territorial scheme. We have however got some improvements
through. Instead of ex-regular officers, we are to have regular
officers in the higher commands and a certain proportion of staff
officers, but it has been a fierce struggle to get it through. StiU it
is a great triumph and I feel amply repaid, for the consequences
will be far-reaching.'
He had attended the General Staff Conference at Camberley
in January, and Mrs. Maude again went abroad for two months
in the spring of 1910. King Edward died in May, and at the
funeral Maude was in attendance on Queen Mary and Queen
Alexandra, going from place to place in a motor to meet them,
first at Westminster Hall, then at Paddington, and finaUy at
Windsor. During the summer he spent a considerable time
visiting Territorial camps and manoeuvres. He was on
Salisbury Plain in June, he went to the exercises in Scotland in
the foUowing month, and in August he attended the Eastern
Command manoeuvres in which Territorials took part with
Regulars. He was fairly well satisfied with what he saw,
noticing considerable advance since the early days. ' Terri
torial troops did fairly well, and no blame attaches to the men
themselves who are wonderfully good considering the ex
perience that they get,' he wrote in his diary ; but he was
troubled with regard to their numbers and to their discipline
in the field. ' The great trouble is that we do not sufficiently
formulate our military requirements and then work on those
lines,' he remarked. He was shortly afterwards offered the
Assistant ControUership in the Lord Chamberlain's office.
This meant a settled business practically for life and an im
proved financial outlook ; but he decided to refuse. ' I am
not a courtier,' he wrote in his diary, ' but wish to give my life
and best days to the military service of my country. Some
day I may be of use to her if I keep pegging away at the hum
drum work and drudgery of peace soldiering — as I mean to
do.' At the end of October General Mackinnon, to Maude's

102 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
great regret on personal grounds and as it meant a break in
old associations, gave up the appointment of Director-General
of the Territorial Forces, taking up charge of the Western
Command at Chester. He was succeeded by Major-General
Cowans. Writing of his old subordinate in the Home District
and in the War Office, in 1919, General Sir H. Mackinnon
pays the following tribute to his memory :
I was a very intimate friend of Maude's almost from the time he
joined the brigade in 1884. He showed signs of his future powers
when he became adjutant, which was in a surprisingly short time
of his first appointment to the Coldstream., But my closest in
timacy with him was when we worked together for six years, firstly
on Lord Methuen's staff in the Home District, and then under
Lord Haldane in the War Office during the preparation and the
launching of the Territorial Force.
Although one cannot say that Maude laid himself out to make
hfe easy and comfortable for himself or for those he worked with,
and although I have frequently known him refuse to join in sport
or amusement when work was waiting, still I look back on him as
the very best of colleagues, and for two reasons — firstly, because of
his great knowledge of the army and of its regulations and customs,
and, secondly, owing to his untiring energy. The six years we had
together were pretty strenuous ones, especially those connected
with the Territorial Force, and I can never remember his leaving
work undone which he could finish. The heavy bag that he always
took home with him testified to a great deal of night work to be got
through. His judgment too was very sound, and one knew that
any opinion that he gave was founded on the deep-down knowledge
he possessed of all arms of the service. He had a great love of
exercise, and even in his hardest periods of work he would always
have a morning run to keep himself fit.
His regiment and the whole Brigade of Guards mourn his loss,
and I am confident that all who knew him in the army will benefit
by the splendid example he set as an officer and a gentleman.
The subject of this Memoir was now to serve under a chief
who brought vdth him to the War Office a genius for
organisation that was unvitiated by any overpowering en
thusiasm for the desk. To a man hke Maude, whose bent
for punctuahty and for the systematic conduct of office duties
amounted almost to a passion, the somewhat mercurial exits
and entrances of the new Director-General of the Territorial
Forces in connection with the buildings in WhitehaU were
anathema for a time. But, as he became famihar with his

FROM 1905 TO 1914 103
superior's ways and was able to judge of the results, he had
to acknowledge to himself — and it is characteristic of him
that he should do so freely in his diary — that General Cowans
did somehow get things done. Nor is it wholly unlikely that
association with a successful administrator, who arrived at the
same goal as he did but by a wholly different route, may have
been an illuminating experience for a keen and zealous staff
officer who, in spite of having subordinates with their duties
definitely told off to them at his beck and call, always
seemed to have almost more paper-work to get through than
he could dispose of within the time at his disposal.
All this time Maude practically never took any leave, except
for a day or two, although* each year he allowed himself a
holiday of five days at Christmas ; these latterly were gener
ally spent at Carshalton and not at Henley. He was often
on visits to Territorial centres with Mr. Haldane (who was
raised to the peerage in 1911), but, except during the season
of the annual trainings in the summer, he enjoyed little re
laxation from indoor work such as he had experienced at
tactical exercises when on the staff of the 2nd London Division.
He attended the General Staff Conference as usual in January
1911, and on this occasion questions in connection with the
Territorials were particularly brought forward and discussed.
Little of interest is recorded in the diary during the early
part of 1911. Maude and Mrs. Maude were present in West
minster Abbey at the 'Coronation, which he describes as a
most interesting and beautiful sight. ' Directly the Abbey
ceremony was over, I changed my things and went down for
two days to the Boat Club at Maidenhead, where I had two
delightful days' rest.' He was shortly afterwards asked if
he would like his name considered for the appointment of
Military Secretary in India — Military Secretary to the Com
mander-in-Chief, that is to say, not a virtually civilian appoint
ment like that of MiUtary Secretary to a Viceroy — and he
replied hoping that his name would be put forward, as it was ;
but the post went to a considerably senior officer. In August
he visited General Byng's Territorial Division in Norfolk at
their annual training, and afterwards the two Yorkshire
Divisions under Generals Bullock and Hubert Hamilton. He
was not much impressed with what he saw on this occasion,
and he wrote in his diary, ' It makes me shudder to think how

104 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
these troops would fare in a European war.' Major Morrison-
Bell mentions having once about this time discussed the
Territorial Force with him, and his saying that in the event
of war they would all have to go abroad, and that they ought
to be told so.
' This was in the hey-day of Haldanism,' writes Major Morrison-
Bell, ' and I rephed that they were only enlisted for home service.
Maude's reply was very forcible and to the point ; for he was one
of that comparatively small band who really did clearly foresee
what was coming to pass.'
Like the majority of soldiers he had never been able to
reconcile himself to the idea that the Territorial Forces were
to have six months' grace after mobilisation before they were
to be actively employed ; he pictured them to himself as
meeting Continental regulars on the outbreak of war. He
observed that the ' real criminals ' were those who would not
realise that ' you can both support the Territorial movement
till we got something better, and yet advocate compulsory
training.' He afterwards went on an offlcial visit to the
Swiss Manoeuvres.
'Had a dehghtful time in Switzerland,' he wrote in his diary.
' Went first to Berne, but we were accommodated most of the time
at a charming hotel in Lausanne. There were about thirty foreign
officers and we were most hospitably entertained. Start out usually
about 3 A.M., and most officers got home by noon ; but I liked to
stay out later, and generaUy got home only about six or seven in
time for dinner. We were beautifully mounted and the weather
was lovely, if a Uttle hot.
Not much to learn from the manoeuvres (as the troops are
practicaUy imtrained hke our Territorials), except the wonderful
patriotism of the people and the popularity of the mihtary service,
their system of billeting, and the use made of cooking wagons
generally throughout the force.'
In a letter written about this time he expressed the opinion
that it was perfectly feasible to devise a system of compulsory
training which would not be incompatible with voluntary
recruiting for the regular army, and which would not appreci
ably dislocate economic conditions. He always reahsed the
advantages of the Territorial Forces organisation in so far as
its furnishing a framework was concerned ; but he entertained
no illusions as to its efflciency on the outbreak of war, and it
was obvious to him — as to all other experienced soldiers — ^that

FROM 1905 TO 1914 105
"the numbers on the rolls were entirely inadequate for the
purpose of immediate mobihsation in the event of a national
emergency arising. He was moreover convinced that far
larger numbers would have to be placed in the field in the
event of a European war, than were contemplated under the
scheme of organisation for the mihtary forces of the country
which held good. He thought much with regard to these
subjects. He clearly foresaw the coming of a great inter
national crisis, in which his country would have to play a
prominent part if it was to retain its position in the world.
His son Eric, who had been for five years at school near
Maidenhead, and who was now fourteen, was sent to Lancing
College (where he had obtained a scholarship) after the summer
holidays ; after passing satisfactorily for Osborne, the lad
had been rejected on account of colour blindness. In the
winter the family spent some time at Klosters in Switzerland
enjoying winter sports, and after the General Staff Conference
Maude took a very short period of leave and went out to join
his eldest girl there while the others came home. Shortly
after his return from abroad he received the offer of the ap
pointment of General Staff Officer, 1st Grade, with the Sth
Division in Ireland, headquarters at the Curragh. This he
accepted at once, overjoyed to find himself once more identi
fied with regular troops, and after three years at the War
Office to be employed again on thoroughly congenial tasks
involving much work in the open air. The appointment fell
vacant at the beginning of April, and his departure from the
War Office to take it up brought his close and especial con
nection with the Territorial Forces to an end, although he was
destined to have imits belonging to this category of the army
under his command in the field in later years. Under the
circumstances it will not be inappropriate to quote here the
tribute paid by Lord Haldane, in the House of Lords on the
Oth of March 1918, to Maude's services in connection with the
Territorial scheme, on the occasion of the discussion with
regard to the special grant made by Parliament to Lady Maude.
After a reference to Lord Curzon's remark that war is a supreme
discoverer of merit. Lord Haldane proceeded : ' To me I can
scarcely say he was a discovery, because I had an opportunity of
seeing those quahties very early in his career. At the time when
the Territorial Forces Act passed, and when it was very doubtful
whether officers and men could be got to come forward, it was

106 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
necessary to make personal efforts, and night after night, afternoon
after afternoon. General Maude — ^who was the General Staff Officer
attached to the Territorial Forces organisation at the War Office —
used to set off with me, sometimes to distant parts, to stir up en
thusiasm. Mine was the ornamental part ; but his was the diffi
cult business of explaining away all difficulties and of showing
how the things could be accomplished. This he did with supreme
abihty. He then showed the great quahty, which I think was
distinctive of him afterwards, of visuahsing clearly and distinctly
what was the object which he had in view, and at the same time
of being conscious almost by intuition of the means by which to
attain that object. That was a distinctive characteristic of him
and the secret of his success in those much humbler days of his hfe.
Later when he became the commander of a brigade, and again
of a division, and again of a corps, and finaUy when he became
commander-in-chief, he always visuahsed with the utmost dis
tinctness what he was aiming at, and he always knew how to get
at his object. Shortly before his death I had a long letter from
him, in which he told me that he had turned himself completely
into an administrator. He knew what he meant to do, and was
concentrating upon that the very necessary grasp of the material
facts and resources which a great general always has and always
insists upon in himself before he sets out to the attainment of a new
object. From the personal experience and intimacy which I was
privileged at one time to have, I am able to testify, as noble Lords
who have already spoken have done, to General Maude's great
qualities, to his personal charm, and to his supreme combination
of the two kinds of military gifts.'
This staff appointment at the Curragh meant leaving Car
shalton and seeking a residence on the further side of St.
George's Channel, and, apart from considerations affecting
his professional duties, Maude was inclined to regret leaving
' Greengates,' where he had made himself very comfortable
and had greatly enjoyed developing the garden with the assist
ance of his children. He was sorry to bid good-bye to a
place with which he had identified himself during a stay of
four years, and where he had made many friends in all classes
of society. Nor was the regret entirely on his side. That he
was liked and honoured by those amongst whom he lived in
this temporary Surrey home of his is shown by the following
striking appreciation of him, written by his friend and neigh
bour of those days, the Rev. G. Vaux :
Like the ' daily breaders ' of these suburban districts who only
dine and sleep and breakfast, watch in hand, in their homes. Colonel
Maude, as we then knew him, started each morning by an early

FROM 1905 TO 1914 107
train and only returned late in the afternoon. But Carshalton
was to him no mere dormitory. He threw himself with character
istic energy into the social hfe and the Church life of the place.
An agreeable companion, a courteous gentleman, he was to aU of
us an excellent neighbour and to many a valued friend. Those
who knew him best discerned the great quahties which foimd scope
in larger fields. With a handsome and dignified presence he coupled
entire simphcity of character. He put on no ' side,' and he was
at home with all sorts and conditions of people — ^but no one ever
thought of taking liberties with him. He was a welcome guest
at any parish function — a supper to choir-men or altar-servers
was incomplete without him. When he was wanted to give the
prizes to the Church Lads Brigade he would appear in his war paint,
and this in no spirit of vainglory but just to show respect to those
who, in their small way, were aspiring to some measure of mihtary
discipline. His industry never flagged. After a hard day's work in town,
when most men claim the indulgence of a novel or a rubber of
bridge, one would find Maude buried in arrears of papers or deep
in a volume of mUitary history. And this was only part of that
rigid self-discipline which kept him alert and fit in mind and
body. When offered a cigarette he would say, ' No, since I rowed
in the boats at Eton I have always been in training.' Hard worker
as he was, he made time for necessary exercise. In summer he
was up betimes, playing a set of lawn tennis with his children,
and in winter striding across country as fast as his long legs would
carry him ; and on Saturday afternoons, the half holiday of the
British working man, he would run with the beagles.
A tender and affectionate father, his children were devoted to
him, and when the hfe of his wife was hanging in the balance,
those who were admitted to share his anxiety admired the Christian
fortitude and forgetfulness of self which mastered his grief. For,
above all things, Stanley Maude was a man of God, a practising
Christian. He never missed the early celebration on a Sunday, and
he was rarely absent from the other services. To him a ' lajrman '
was no mere negative title — one not in holy orders, an individual
who may be relied on for an occasional sovereign or half-crown ;
on the contrary, he reahsed the true meaning of that honourable
word. A layman was to his thinking one of the A.ads, the people
of God, and he acted on that conviction.
Colonel Maude accepted office as churchwarden, not without
misgivings. He doubted if he would have time to do justice to the
task. As a matter of fact he did thorough justice to it, and this
thoroughness was the hall-mark of everything that he undertook.
After attending the three hours' service on Good Friday, he would
take his part bareheaded in a -perambulation of clergy, choir and
people round the poorer districts, and listen to some poor singing
and indifferent preaching. This is not a thing which a distinguished
officer would do just for fun. He would take infinite trouble to
help young men in their plans and prospects.

108 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
So it was that we greatly missed him when he left Carshalton
for the Curragh in 1912. We followed with keen interest the steps
of his great career. We rejoiced over each distinction conferred
upon him. And when the news came of his imtimely death, we
assembled in large numbers at the parish altar to remember before
God in solemn requiem the soul of his servant.
Maude's new chief was Major-General W. P. Campbell, who
had already been in command of the Sth Division for more than
three years. The division was distributed to some extent
over central and northern Ireland, although the greater part
of it was collected fairly near to the headquarters. The 13th
Infantry Brigade, which was at this time under the late
Brigadier-General T. Capper, was quartered in Dublin, the
14th Infantry Brigade was quartered at the Curragh, the 15th
Infantry Brigade, which was under Brigadier-General Count
Gleichen, was stationed at Belfast and in the north of Ireland.
The artillery was for the most part gathered together in
County Kildare ; but one of its brigades was at Dundalk. In
the nature of things, the fact that the troops were somewhat
scattered inevitably involved a certain amount of travelling
about the country for the divisional commander and his chief
staff officer, especiaUy during the long days and fine weather.
On joining at the Curragh, Maude in the first instance lived
for some time with the 4th Hussars, who were quartered there
forming part of Brigadier-General Hubert Gough's 3rd Cavalry
Brigade. He made great friends with the Hussars, although
a good deal older and much senior in the service to the
majority of the members of the mess ; his keenness in respect to
all matters of sport naturally commended itself to the younger
officers of the regiment, even if they stood somewhat in awe of
a fuU colonel. The Curragh dehghted him ; and even if he
was necessarily much occupied in his office, his habit of early
rising enabled him to be about, looking on with the utmost
interest at units of the various arms at their drills and exercises,
before the hour came for setthng down to paper- work. He had
always taken the utmost pleasure in aU questions connected
with the training of troops, and his position as chief of the
general staff of a regular division afforded him ample scope for
turning his bent for such subjects, and the knowledge which
he had acquired by study and experience in connection with
them, to good account. The quarters attached to his appoint-

FROM 1905 TO 1914 109
ment were small and inconvenient, and eventually, in October,
the Maudes settled down at Moorefield Lodge, just outside
Newbridge. Inter-divisional manoeuvres between the Sth Division and
the 6th Division, which was quartered in the south of Ireland,
were in contemplation this year, but Maude's preparations
for annual training had rather to do with the purely divisional
programme. He paid a visit with General Campbell to the
north of Ireland early in the summer to inspect the 15th
Brigade, and they covered a great deal of ground by motor,
proceeding as far as Rosapena in Donegal, as one of the
battahons was quartered in Londonderry ; they returned by
way of Mulhngar, where another battalion was stationed.
Later on they were present at the brigade training of the 13th
Brigade, which took place on the Boyne. Unfortunately, the
inter-divisional manoeuvres, which were to have taken place
in Carlow, had to be abandoned at the last moment owing
to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and a proposal to
shift the venue to Glen Imaal had to be given up owing to ob
jections raised by local farmers. However in the autumn a
divisional staff ride was held at Clonmel in which Maude acted
as assistant-director under his general, and on this occasion he
greatly impressed the officers taking part in it by his masterly
summing-up of different situations, holding his own in this
respect with so accomplished and practised a manager of
staff rides as General Capper, who had been on the staff of the
Camberley Staff College and had afterwards been commandant
of the rival establishment at Quetta.
Nevertheless, in spite of much hard work which "was often
interrupted by traveUing on inspection duty with his chief,
Maude played much lawn tennis, and he bicycled and rode
aU over County Kildare. Sir W. Pitcairn CampbeU describes
him as the best general staff officer he ever came across,
and he won a great reputation for himself amongst the many
zealous officers in the Sth Division by his thorough knowledge
of his profession, by the lucidity of his expositions, and by the
skill he displayed in the framing of all orders in connection
with training that were issued from divisional headquarters.
General Campbell's period in command came to an end early
in February 1913, and he was succeeded by Sir C. Fergusson,
whom Maude had known intimately since early days at Eton.

110 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
During the winter time Maude hunted occasionally with the
Kildare, but as the drill season approached he became wrapped
up in the preparations for the various trainings, and in issuing
detailed instructions concerning them. As in the previous
year he covered a good deal of ground with his chief, inspecting
the units included in the division at different times. The
brigade trainings took place in three separate localities ; but
towards the end of August the division assembled complete
for a week of divisional training about Nenagh, which lasted
from the 1st to the 6th of September. This was followed by
inter-divisional manoeuvres between the Sth Division and the
6th Division, which were carried out in the country lying to
the south of the Slieve Bloom mountains not far from the
Shannon, and which were attended by General Sir C. Douglas,
the Inspector-General of the Forces, although under the direc
tion of Sir A. Paget, the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland. The
operations passed off very successfully.
Towards the end of the year Maude received a communica
tion offering him the position of General Staff Officer, 1st Grade,
in the Training Directorate of the War Office. He was in the
first instance much disposed to dechne the offer. He had al
ready laboured long in Whitehall. He had no love for service
in the War Office, whereas he was thoroughly content with
his work in the Sth Division, work that was most congenial,
and he moreover hked the life near the Curragh. But he
reahsed that his selection for an appointment in the training
branch at Headquarters was a comphment, and that a refusal
to take it up would not be welcome in high places ; he moreover
had always entertained the view strongly that it was an officer's
business to go where he was sent and to faU in with the wishes
of superiors, whatever these might be. He therefore wrote an
acceptance, and his connection with the Sth Division in peace
time came to an end early in 1914. Of his work with the
Division, Sir C. Fergusson writes as follows :
In February 1913 1 went to command the 5th Division in Ireland,
where I found Maude G.S.0.1. of the division, and we were to
gether until January 1914 when he went again to the War Office.
During this year we were of course intimately associated, and it
is difficult to describe his work without appearing to exaggerate.
To say he was thorough is not enough, he was a very highly trained
staff officer who had mastered his profession and every detail of it.
His capacity for work was unhmited. His judgment was very

FROM 1905 TO 1914 111
sound. He never would give an opinion in a hurry, and would
lapse into silence when tuming a matter over in his mind ; when
he did speak he put the pros and cons clearly and concisely and
gave a decided opinion, from which nothing would tum him.
He was most helpful to every one, but may have seemed to those
who did not know him well somewhat stiff and reserved in manner
when discussing official details. I have at least heard that said—
but it does not describe him. His preoccupied manner was not in
the least due to boredom or to want of sympathy — ^no man was
more sympathetic — ^but to intense concentration on the business
in hand. When at work he was entirely absorbed, and he wasted
no time. He was strict and unbending in working hours, and was
very severe on any departure from the rules and customs in office
work or routine which he laid down. Once work was over, he
threw oft every care, was as bright and sunny as any boy, and
enjoyed hfe to the fuU. He was a dehghtful companion to every
one, entering wholeheartedly into games and sports and the interests
of the moment. He was very active and athletic, a fine rider and
always in the very pink of condition.
As an instructor and a staff officer in the field he was at his
very best. In staff and regimental exercises his schemes were
always clear, interesting, and instructive, and his criticisms sound
and helpful. He took an immense amount of trouble with them.
A httle intolerant of stupidity, he was sympathetic and painstaking
to a degree with those whom he was instructing, and he spared no
trouble to make the work interesting to officers taking part. He
had a wonderful capacity for drafting clear and good orders. Given
the scheme or plan, he would in a few moments call a clerk and dic
tate without hesitation the longest and most compHcated orders,
in which not a word had to be changed and which could hardly
have been improved. He was impatient of interruption or inter
ference on these occasions.
A more pleasant or loyal staff offlcer never existed. He was the
hfe and soul of the division, and no one who served with him could
fail to appreciate his quahties.
On joining at the War Office at the beginning of February
Maude found himself for the first time associated for a season
with Sir W. Robertson, although, as already mentioned, he
had been for a few days in close touch with his new chief during
the manoeuvres of the Aldershot Command in 1908. He at
once devoted himself wholeheartedly to a task which greatly
interested him — too wholeheartedly some of his subordinates
were disposed to think. His tendency to centralise has already
been touched upon, and in this case he was coming in from
outside to take up charge of a section of the General Staff in
Whitehall which was a going concern, a section administered

112 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
by an existing staff of specially selected officers, most of
whom had already been serving in it for some time and who
consequently were well acquainted with the scope and the
details of their duties. These found it somewhat trying to be
to a great extent deprived of the responsibilities that had been
entrusted to them as a matter of course by Maude's pre
decessor, responsibilities which corresponded more or less in
respect to importance to those undertaken by staff offlcers of
analogous grading in the various other War Offlce departments
and branches. Still, all speedily recognised the striking
ability, the heartening enthusiasm, and the exhaustive know
ledge of the subjects to be dealt with, which their new section
chief brought with him, and as they got to know him better
they became to a great extent propitiated by his unfaihng
kindhness and courtesy.
The annual Army Manoeuvres were to have been held this
year on the borders of South Wales, the area chosen being the
intersected and hilly country beyond the lower Severn. It was
a part of the country that, in so far as troops were concerned,
was almost virgin soil, although it had been a field for numerous
staff rides in recent years, and Maude was a good deal concerned
in the preparations necessary for the contemplated exercises
from an early date after taking up his appointment at the War
Offlce. That question of residence, which is generally so
troublesome a one for married officers whenever they change
their mihtary station, had also to be considered ; but after
some house-hunting a suitable abode, ' Mardale,' was found at
Watford, within easy distance of Whitehall. There the family
settled down in the spring. It may be mentioned here that
owing to his departure from Ireland at the end of January,
Maude was saved from the unpleasantness involved in being
at the Curragh on the occasion of the acute problem connected
with Ulster that arose soon after he left, in which the 4th
Hussars, with whom he had lived when first he went to Kildare,
as well as General Gough and the 16th Lancers, figured some
what prominently — events which aroused strong feeling
throughout the Sth Division and its 15th Brigade quartered
in the north. The month of April in 1914 was, on the other
hand, also a somewhat ruffled one at the headquarters of the
army, as a consequence of that remarkable Hibernian imbroglio;
nor was the Directorate of Military Training wholly uncon-

FROM 1905 TO 1914 113
cerned in the matter. The sequel was that the Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, Sir J. French, resigned, together with
the Secretary of State and the Adjutant-General, and he was
succeeded by Sir C. Douglas. Mr. Asquith became War Minister.
During the remainder of the spring and the early summer
Maude spent long hours daily at the War Office, going up and
down from Watford by train. Everything in connection with
the September Army Manoeuvres was already in train, and he
had thoroughly settled down to his work in the Training
Directorate at Headquarters when this country and Europe
in general were startled by the news of the assassination of
the Archduke Ferdinand at Serajevo. There is no need to
tell the story here of the gradual development of the acute
international differences that followed. By the end of July
the Continent was in a blaze, a few days later the British
Empire was at war, and, as the great conflict which followed
was to afford Maude the opportunity that he needed to prove
himself the great soldier that he was, this will be an appro
priate place in a record of his life to indicate what was his
position in the military forces at the time, and what were his
prospects of mounting the ladder, before he proceeded to
France on the staff of the Expeditionary Force in August 1914.
' His career as a staff officer may be said to have commenced
when he graduated at the Staff College in 1895-96,' writes
Lord Rawlinson. ' Though I never served in really close
touch with him on the staff, he was well known for his clear
ness of vision and for his indefatigable energy. The vigour
with which he attacked every problem that was presented to
him was quite remarkable, and, whether as a brigade-major
at the Horse Guards or, later on, holding that position during
the South African War, he proved himself to be possessed of
outstanding abilities as a staff officer. Except in charge of a
company, he held no executive command until in October
1914 he was given a brigade in France. Had he been able
to accept the command of a battahon of the Coldstream (which
for flnancial reasons he was unable to do) I think that he would
have risen more rapidly. His enforced service on the staff
failed to bring to light those great qualities as a commander
in the field which became so conspicuous in his case in his last
years. One is seldom as a staff officer called upon to accept
heavy responsibilities, it is the commander of the formation
I H

114 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
on whom all responsibihty rests, so that long continued
service on the staff is liable to dim, if not to stultify, the powers
of a born leader of men such as Maude undoubtedly was.'
When the army mobilised for war Maude was just over fifty
years of age and he figured as a full colonel, about a quarter
of the way up the roll of officers holding that rank. A glance
at the statistics given in the Offlcial Army List of that time
shows him to have been rather ahead of the majority of men
of his own length of service, but not very much ahead. Many
who had joined after him had moreover passed him by. In
the ordinary course of things he might fairly have counted
upon finding himself a major-general by the time he was fifty-
two or fifty-three years of age. If his prospects, in a word,
might be regarded as satisfactory, they could not have been
called brilliant. Had he remained on active service in South
Africa, instead of going to Canada at a time when he was doing
very important work on the staff in Cape Colony, and when he
would very hkely before long have been chosen after Lord
Kitchener assumed control for the command of an independent
column operating against the scattered burgher forces, he
might well have secured by brevet so early as 1902 that pro
motion which he actually only secured on the half-pay hst
five years later. He might then already have been a general
offlcer in the summer of 1914 when the Great War came.
But, as we have seen, he had been handicapped by lack of
means throughout ; and the consequence was that, even if his
merits were realised throughout the Brigade of Guards, and
if they had latterly become at least partially known to the
highest military authorities, he was to the army at large to all
intents and purposes an unknown quantity. That he suffered
from disappointment himself during those somewhat lean
years which intervened between his return from Ottawa and
his transfer from London to the Curragh, is apparent from his
diaries. Some passages from them have been quoted. But
he never showed discouragement outwardly ; nor did he ever
permit any mortification that he may have felt to abate his
ardour in carrying out such military duties as fell to his lot,
to weaken his love for the profession that he had chosen, or
to deprive him of that confidence of possessing a capacity for
great things which he carried with him from the days of boy
hood till he had accomplished his task in Mesopotamia.

CHAPTER VI
ON THE STAFF OF THE 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE
As a member of the General Staff at the War Office and holding
a responsible position on it, Maude was naturally much better
informed as to the critical development of affairs on the Con
tinent during July than the general public. As soon as it
became apparent that Austria-Hungary in her outrageous
demands upon Serbia was acting with the full support of
Germany, it was obvious to well-informed soldiers that a
European War was in sight. The General Staff entertained
no illusions as to the intention of the Central Powers to enter
upon an aggressive campaign should it suit them to strike.
The military preparations of Germany were too exhaustive,
the elaborate extension of her railway systems towards the
Belgian and French frontiers for purely strategical purposes
too flagrant, to justify any doubt on the subject. All such
steps as it had been possible to obtain sanction for had been
taken by the War Office months before, and Maude was in
due course informed that the organisation of the Expeditionary
Force, should it be sent to -the Continent, would be in three
' Armies ' — ^the more appropriate title ' Army Corps ' was
substituted after hostihties had actually broken out — and
that he was to be General Staff Officer, 1st Grade, of the 3rd
Army. This was to be under General Pulteney, with Brigadier-
General J. P. Du Cane as chief of the staff. Pulteney was an
old Guardsman friend with whom he had already once been
associated on active service at the time of the South African
War, as has been mentioned in the chapter deaUng with that
campaign. The 1st and 2nd Armies were respectively to be
under Sir D. Haig and Sir J. Grierson.
' Normally,' he wrote in his diary, ' I ought, in virtue of the
appointment wliich I am holding in the Training Directorate
at the War Offlce, to remain there.' He was too level-headed
and clear-sighted not to realise that his absorption into the
Expeditionary Force under the circumstances was inapprop- 115

116 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
riate. He could not but perceive that the plan of withdrawing
a considerable number of the officers who were holding the
most important posts in Whitehall, just at the moment when
the country was about to embark upon a great continental war,
was open to many objections ; but he was naturally pleased
that he should be one of those selected to go. By the 1st of
August all hopes of an accommodation as between the Central
Powers and the Franco-Russian allies was at an end, and during
the next four days he, in common with a good many other
soldiers who were more or less behind the scenes, was in a
state of acute irritation at the attitude of the Cabinet.
' It looks to-night as if we were going to stand aside and not to
help France,' he wrote on the 1st. ' What a disgrace ! No wonder
we are caUed a nation of shopkeepers, perfidious Albion, etc., on
the Continent. I believe that many, such as  say openly
that we ought not to fight. I could understand their point of
view if there had been no entente cordiale, but surely as it is we
have a debt of honour to France to pay. And, apart from the
present, what of the future ? Surely no nation will trust an
Enghshman's word again, and we shaU revert to our position of
isolation which existed at the time of the Boer War. That wiU
scarcely do nowadays, and we shall be an easy prey to any con
tinental combination that chooses to attack us. StiU our pre
parations at the War Office are going forward. ... I have started
getting our staff together, which, as it consists of nineteen officers,
takes some gathering together.'
' Every moment's delay on our part seems criminal,' he wrote
next day, ' and yet the Cabinet appear to do nothing but pro
crastinate. . . . The Cabinet meeting lasted this moming from two
to three hours, but the only points so far apparent are the stopping
of some Territorial trainings and the estabhshment of the censor
ship, both of which ought to have been done before.'
However, Germany's deliberate violation of her pledges in
regard to Belgian neutrality, coupled with the unmistakable
feehng of the nation and the attitude taken up by the Opposi
tion leaders, decided the Government to send the ultimatum
to Berlin which made a rupture practicaUy certain, and war
was declared on the night of the 4th-5th.
Mobihsation began on the Sth, the rank and ffle of the 3rd
Army headquarters staff assembling at Southampton ; but
General Pulteney and most of the staff officers remained in
London. The comprehensive plans for the transfer of the
Expeditionary Force to France, which had been prepared in
the fuUest detail many months before, together with the time-

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 117
tables and schedules in connection with transportation by
land and sea, contemplated the immediate departure of the
1st and 2nd Armies. They were to be closely foUowed by
the 6th Division, which was stationed (all but one of its
brigades) in Ireland, and which was to embark for the most
part at Queenstown, foUowing the Sth Division of the 2nd
Army from that country. The 4th Division was to await
events. But the plans were upset by an absurd scare about
an impending German invasion — ^which incidentally very
nearly caused portions of the 1st Army to be switched off to
the North Country and the whole transportation scheme to
be upset. This delayed the start of the Expeditionary Force
for two days, and it caused the Oth Division to be brought
over to England from Ireland, creating great inconvenience.
The 4th Division under General Snow, stationed in peace time
in the south-east of England, concentrated after mobilisation
at Harrow. The 6th Division under General Keir, as it
arrived in England, gradually concentrated at Cambridge,
and eventually the 4th Division was allowed to follow the
1st and 2nd Armies without any delay, while the 6th Division,
which took several days to arrive at its destination, remained
where it was.
Maude accompanied Generals Pulteney and Du Cane to
Harrow on the 20th to see the 4th Division, which was to begin
moving over to France on the next day, and on the 24th orders
arrived for the corps staff to follow. They embarked at
Southampton on the 26th in the Braemar Castle, which also
carried some 2500 troops, and proceeded to Havre, where they
stayed until the 29th. That night they proceeded via Paris
to General Headquarters at Compi^gne, arriving on the
following day, and General Pulteney then definitely took up
command of his corps. This at the time only consisted of
the 4th Division, which had been heavily engaged at Le Cateau
and while faUing back, and the 19th Brigade, a new formation
composed of four battalions which under the original scheme
had been told off as ' line of communication troops.'
It must be understood that at this time the Expeditionary
Forc^ was still in full retreat, with the enemy pressing after
it. The 3rd Corps was on the left (facing the enemy) with
the 2nd Corps (which was under Sir H. Smith-Dorrien, who
had taken the place of General Grierson on his death) next

118 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
on its right, and the 1st Corps beyond that again. All the next
day General Pulteney's troops were withdrawing through
the Forest of Compi^gne, and the retirement continued again
on the 1st of September and during the foUowing night.
' Exciting times sometimes,' Maude wrote home on the 2nd, ' as
we have no protective troops for our headquarters, and Uhlans
are plentiful and strong on the wing ! Yesterday they were aU
round us, and we had to get together any stragglers we could find
to help us. We accounted for three out of one lot of five.'
Continuing the retirement on the 2nd and 3rd, after a rear
guard action on the 2nd which somewhat delayed the 4th
Division, the corps reached and crossed the Marne by the 4th,
and that day it enjoyed a welcome rest. Maude wrote home
that the men were in excellent spirits although tired, and that
the German prisoners that were being taken were quite worn
out. In his diary at this time he expressed some doubts as
to the expediency of blowing up all the bridges during the
retreat, as he foresaw that there must shortly be an advance ;
he presumed that the French plan of falling back was the right
one, but greatly disliked it. While the corps was resting on
the Marne on the 4th the gradual movement of the enemy in a
south-easterly direction across the front was observed. On
the following day this became still more noticeable, and Maude
learnt that the French Oth Army had formed up in the country
to the north-west of where the 3rd Corps was halted, and was
preparing to move against the enemy's outer flank. That
evening the welcome orders arrived for advance to take the
place of retreat.
The order to advance was not confined to Pulteney's corps,
nor to the British forces under Sir J. French. The entire
AUied host was turning upon its pursuers, and was about to
inffict upon them a very serious defeat. Now that formidable
reserves called up from the extreme right of his far-fiung
hne were ready to play their part, that the 6th Army under
Maunoury was driving its attack home against Von Kluck
on the German right, and that the enemy was manifestly ex
hausted by a tremendous effort. General Joffre was ready for
the counter-stroke which created what by common consent of
victors and vanquished has come to be called the Battle of
the Marne. Pulteney's corps on the British left was at the
moment placed almost at the elbow which was created by

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 119
Maunoury striking in as he did, practically across the front
of the Alhes' forces, from the left. Consequent on Maunoury's
general line of advance and on the movement south-eastwards
of the German right under Von Kluck which had been proceed
ing on the 4th and Sth, the direction taken by Sir J. French's
army for the first three days was not northwards but almost
eastwards, with a little north in it ; the 3rd Corps was prac
ticaUy foUowing the 2nd Corps, but with its left flank some
what exposed to hostile sheU fire. During those days Maude
first received reliable tidings of the casualties that had occurred
in other corps than his own during the great retreat from
Mons ; news of that kind had previously been arriving rather
in the form of vague rumours, some of which fortunately
turned out to be incorrect. He learnt that he had lost many
friends, that the Coldstream had suffered hke most other
regiments, and that amongst their killed was his cousin,
Viscount Hawarden.
' After our long retirement it is dehghtful to be once more advan
cing,' he wrote from La Ferte sous Jouarre on the Marne on the 9th,
' and this we have been doing for some days now. Yesterday we
drove the Germans opposed to us across the River Marne, and
sheUed them till late at night as they were trying to get away.
One of our brigades got across the Petit Morin River just before
dark, and I went down to see how they were getting on. They were
in a very difficult bit of country, for the Germans were above them
in some woods and were firing down on them. At the end of the
viUage thirty Germans had been cut off, but they would not
surrender and prepared to resist till dark. They were most
resolute and killed a very good officer. ... It was late when I
got back, and long after dark.'
Pulteney's troops had not found it by any means easy to
force a passage over the Marne on the 9th, in face of the skil
fully emplaced machine guns which the enemy brought to
bear upon the points of passage. Lord French, who visited
the corps headquarters early in the morning, refers particu
larly to its fight at La Ferte sous Jouarre in his book 1914-
Maude was anxious to find some place on the river where
advance would be unopposed and to try and get a few men
across by surprise, but the project was not entertained. All
attempts by the 4th Division to ynn a way over the channel
direct at La Ferte during the daytime were brought to a stand
still by the machine gun and artillery fire from the further side.

120 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
and it was not until after dark that the 11th Brigade found it
possible actually to reach the near bank. There they managed
to seize a number of boats. In these a battalion of the 11th
Brigade and three battalions of the 12th Brigade succeeded in
effecting a crossing, whereupon the Engineers constructed a
pontoon bridge under very heavy fire — ' R. E. did excellently,'
Maude notes in his diary of the lOth — and the greater part
of the Brd Corps passed over the river by this bridge at a
very early hour on the lOth.
When Pulteney's troops resumed advance on that day it
at once became manifest that the Germans were in full retreat.
Many prisoners were taken, wounded were discovered in a
number of houses, and the roads were found to be littered with
abandoned vehicles of all kinds, with munitions and with
impedimenta. The infantry were jubilant, realising that the
British Regular had proved himself the superior of the vaunted
foot soldier from the Fatherland at all points, and they made
light of long marches that followed routes which were in in
different condition, for heavy rains had set in. During the
next day or two the 3rd Corps was moreover uncomfortably
sandwiched in between the French and the 2nd Corps, there
were misunderstandings as to the allotment of the communica
tions, and Pulteney's force rather suffered in consequence.
Although the staff enjoyed the advantage of horses and motor
cars, and also of usually passing the night in comfortable
quarters, they were very hardworked during these strenuous
days. On the 11th Maude notes in his diary that, owing to
orders generaUy not coming to hand before 11 p.m., to being
called up frequently during the night, and to moving off daily
between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m., they did not on the average get
more than three hours' sleep in the twenty-four.
The advanced troops of the corps reached the River Aisne
at a point a httle to the east of Soissons late on the 12th, to
find all the bridges along their front demolished and the enemy
on the further side, well posted and readyto contest thepassage.
The 11th Brigade however managed to work its way across
the remains of a broken-down girder bridge during the night
and to make good some important high ground beyond, a feat
which prepared the way for pontoon bridges to be thrown
and for other troops of the corps to pass the formidable
obstacle. The arrival of the Franco-British forces on the

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 121
Aisne, it may be observed, for practical purposes brought the
prolonged Battle of the Marne and the ensuing pursuit to an
end. The Germans had been worsted all along the front.
They had suffered heavy losses in men and material ; and they
had suffered even more in morale, for they had encountered
no such defeat as this for a hundred years. The distance
which the 3rd Corps had covered between the Marne and the
Aisne at their heels had been upwards of thirty miles.
The passage of the river by the 11th Brigade on the night
of the 12th-13th may be said to have inaugurated, in so far as
the 3rd Corps was concerned, that long-drawn-out combat,
which eventually merged into stagnant, unprofitable, trench
warfare and which has come to be known as the Battle of the
Aisne. Pulteney's infantry, his gunners and his sappers per
formed a valuable service to the rest of the British Expedi
tionary Force on their right, as also to the French on their left,
because, by securing a footing on the far side of the formidable
obstacle, they in a measure paved the way for comrades on
either hand to force a passage likewise. Some doubt existed
for a day or two as to whether the opposition put up by the
Germans on the line of the river merely meant delaying action
in a naturally favourable position, while the bulk of the hostile
legions pursued their way north-eastwards, or whether the
enemy had resolved to make a definite stand. But it soon
became apparent that the hostile retreat was at an end. The
2nd and 3rd British Corps had a severe struggle to get across
the Aisne, and the French likewise only advanced on the left
of the 3rd Corps under considerable difficulty. The 3rd
Corps itself was brought to a standstill almost on the ground
won within the first few hours, and it spent the next three weeks
in that situation, ' hanging on by our eyelids to the edge of
the plateau, with a river with broken bridges behind us,' as
Maude expressed it.
The 6th Division from England arrived near the front on the
16th, and should have completed General Pulteney's Corps,
to which it properly belonged ; Sir J. French however felt
himself obhged to keep it as a general reserve for the time being.
The troops in contact with the enemy gradually dug themselves
in. But this did not prevent them from suffering somewhat
heavy losses daily owing to the German sheU fire, which was
accurate and almost incessant, and the heavy howitzers

122 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
which had been brought up by the opposing side caused many
casualties. Maude comments in his diary and in his letters
on the tremendous expenditure of artillery ammunition that
was taking place, and on the great advantage enjoyed by the
enemy in being much the better supphed.
' They (the enemy) are very strongly entrenched,' he wrote home
on the 19th, • and we are unable to make much impression against
them ; so we are just holding on to our positions, and the French
are collecting a fresh army to out-manoeuvre them and tum their
flank. It has been a hard week for the troops, for they have had to
be in the trenches practically day and night, and it has been pelting
rain almost without cessation. The shell fire has been stupendous
all the week, for the Germans have 8-inch guns which throw an
enormous shell, the explosion of which is ahnost deafening if you
are anywhere near. . . . We are getting lots of reinforcements,
so can keep merrily at it. One thousand five hundred men arrived
to-day to reinforce the corps, so that replaces our casualties of
the week, and leaves something to spare. . . .
The Germans are evidently very nervous, for last night they
opened a fusiUade at apparently nothing I I am very keen to get
them to move forward by night attacks, for the Germans hate that
sort of warfare, and we have practised it thoroughly. The other
night an officer's patrol got right into the enemy's trenches and
found them aU asleep ! So I feel that we could do a big thing that
way ; but I cannot quite get them to accept my suggestion, as it is
thought too risky. StiU, one cannot make war without taking some
risks. I expect that we shall be here for another week or so, till
the French movement develops. We have got a charming chateau
for our headquarters, and I feel rather mean when it rains, thinking
of aU the troops who have got to be out in the wet ; but I suppose
we must be under cover to get our work done.'
' Their infantry are not much good, except for disciphne,' he
wrote two days later, ' and not a patch on ours. Their artillery are
exceUent and very effective, but their cavalry are not very re
doubtable, and we have seen httle of the latter since we began
to advance.'
The trials undergone by the troops on the Aisne were, as it
was to turn out, merely a foretaste of experiences which would
last for months and months to come. It is doubtful if many
of the tacticians on the German side had foreseen that the cam
paign on the Western front — and indeed on all fronts — was to
degenerate into a stalemate form of trench warfare. The
British Army at aU events was wholly unprepared for such a
development. Maude's hopes that the intervention of a new
French army, coming up into hne on the left and tuming the

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 123
enemy's flank, would compel the hostile legions to give way,
were destined to be disappointed ; for the Germans were able
to meet and to neutralise this combination, of which great
things were for a time expected both by General Joffre and
by Sir J. French. The army was under command of General
Castelnau and it assembled on the left of the 6th French Army
under General Maunoury, which hke the British Expeditionary
Force had been deflnitely brought to a standstiU. Although
Castehiau failed to roU up the German right as had been
hoped, and thus to enable the Alhes' forces on the Aisne to
advance, his intervention had within a short space of time
in reality the effect of changing the main line of battle
from one running east and west to one running north and
south. This influence on the general situation was however gradual.
Heavy fighting continued from time to time along the front
that was in occupation of the British Expeditionary Force
during the next ten days. The brunt of this however feU
rather upon Sir D. Haig's and Sir H. Smith-Dorrien's troops
than upon those of Pulteney, and in consequence of this the
6th Division, instead of remaining under the orders of its own
corps commander, had to be distributed with the object of
relieving or of assisting such units in the other two corps as
had especially suffered or as were particularly heavily engaged.
During the sedentary operations on the Aisne, Maude kept
himself fit, in spite of heavy office work and of moving about
"chiefly by motor, by, a run of a mile or so every moming.
' This continued inaction is very unsatisfactory,' he wrote home
on the 2nd of October, ' for one feels that it is opposed to the true
spirit in which war must be made, in order to bring about decisive
results. Wide tuming movements as in South Africa are useful
to manoeuvre an enemy out of a position, but they will never bring
us nearer to the end of a campaign, which can only be effected by
sledge-hammer blows against the enemy's field army. As it is,
we seem to be losing our grip on the enemy here, whilst he is
moving away available men to meet the French tuming movement.
There is still hard fighting all along the front daily ; but we are
merely on the passive defensive, and though we repel every attack
handsomely we do not prevent them from detaching troops to the
north. However there are indications that we may be on the move
again before long, which is splendid. I should much Uke to get
further forward, and feel one was doing more active work in con
nection with the fighting.'

124 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
The move very vaguely hinted at in the above quoted letter
had in the case of the 2nd Corps actually begun on the pre
vious night. Maude was careful to give no indications as to
the nature of the delicate operation to which Sir J. French's
army was being committed. The two commanders-in-chief
had agreed that the British forces were to be extracted from
their present position on the Aisne in the middle of the French
host and were, together with some French troops, to be trans
ported round to the north, so as to extend the front in the
direction of Lille and beyond. This very important transfer
of fighting resources was being undertaken, partly with the
idea of outflanking the enemy, and partly with the object of
establishing an army in an entirely new area which would be
in a position to forestall and to confront any hostile effort that
might be made to advance towards Calais and Boulogne,
menacing the Straits of Dover. Both sides were, as a matter
of fact, turning their attention simultaneously to the same
point without either of them realising what the other was
contemplating. But the result was to transfer the centre
of strategical interest from the undulating, wooded country
about the Aisne, to Flanders and to the low-lying country
bordering on the western fringes of the French industrial and
mining area of wliich Lille is the centre.
In pursuance of the project, the 2nd Corps, which had been
flghting in the middle of the British front, was quietly picked
up out of the line by night, and its place was taken partly by
troops of the 1st Corps on its right and partly by troops of
the 3rd Corps on its left, these extending their flanks inwards
so as to fill up the gap. The 2nd Corps moved off to the south
west, and in due course it entrained for the north. Most of
the cavalry started oft on the 2nd and 3rd, moving by march
route in the same direction behind the French front. Then,
on the night of the 6th-7th, the 3rd Corps was deftly with
drawn out of front line and relieved by French troops. It
moved south-westwards by road to the neighbourhood of
Compi^gne and began entraining in that neighbourhood on
the afternoon of the Sth. This operation, which was executed
most successfully and without the enemy learning for some time
what was actually afoot, threw very heavy work upon General
Pulteney's staff. The orders necessarily dealt with a very
complicated problem, the more so as during the struggle on

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 125
the Aisne some units of the corps had become inconveniently
intermingled with those of the 1st and 2nd Corps.
' After being a month here aU but four days,' Maude wrote on the
Sth, ' we are off this afternoon to give the Germans a surprise in
another direction, and as we shall be constantly on the move now
you must not expect many letters. The troops, although the time
has been a trying one in the trenches owing to constant shell fire,
sniping and persistent attacks by the Germans, are in splendid
fettle and capital spirits, and ready and anxious to take on the
Germans in another direction. . . . The French did well yesterday
and are very pleased with themselves to-day in consequence, so
we start on the new phase under the best auspices.'
Maude himself motored on ahead to St. Omer on the 10th.
Most of the 3rd Corps were to detrain there and were to move
up outside {i.e. on the left) of the 2nd Corps, which had already
arrived in the new area and was pushing eastwards. Arrange
ments had to be madje for the immediate distribution of the
3rd Corps on its detraining and for its subsequent advance.
' AU the people seem to be delighted at our arrival,' he wrote on
the 11th, ' and I have had some very comphmentary remarks made
to me about the men and their behaviour. One old lady said to
me, " How can you possibly be anything except on the winning
side with such troops as yours ! " . . . Antwerp, as you will see, has
faUen and the Belgian Army has evacuated it. They did not try
to defend it. Our 4th Corps, recently formed under Harry Raw
linson, is covering their retirement, and we hope to get them away.
I am glad in a way, although sorry for the Belgians, for there was
great danger that some of our troops might have got locked up in
the town, and that would have been the worst thing that could
happen. It is of the greatest importance that all our field troops
should keep the field and be available to manoeuvre and to fight
according to circumstances. If they were to be shut up in a
garrison it would probably be only a matter of time before they were
captured and destroyed.'
The view here expressed as to Antwerp would assuredly be
endorsed by most soldiers. Maude would not seem to have
been aware at the time that some British troops had actually
been sent to the city, that a somewhat half-hearted attempt to
defend it had been made instead of evacuating it in good time,
and that the Anglo-Belgian troops concerned had suffered ap
preciable losses and were perhaps fortunate in escaping at all.
The infantry of the 3rd Corps began arriving at St. Omer
by train on the 11th. The 2nd Corps, which had already

126 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
moved a considerable distance in the direction of Lille,
was in the meantime finding itself more and more strongly
opposed, and it was making but slow progress ; the enemy
forces in this northem area were apparently growing in num
bers. The fall of Antwerp moreover seemed likely to liberate
formidable German contingents which, it could safely be
assumed, would hurry westwards and either try to prevent
the junction of the retreating Belgian Army with the newly
arrived 4th Corps, or else endeavour to intervene between
the Allied forces that were now coming up from the south, and
the 4th Corps and Belgian troops who were trying to form
a junction with these. Orders for the infantry of the 3rd
Corps to hurry forward and to come up in line with the 2nd
Corps were therefore issued by Sir J. French, and arrangements
were made to transport them from St. Omer by motor-bus —
a plan which on this occasion did not prove an unquahfled
success. ' Motor-buses rather a fiasco,' Maude wrote in his diary on the
13th. ' It was only a short march, that we could have done easily,
but we waited for the buses according to orders and they were five
to seven hours late, and consequently the advanced guard and
mounted troops and first line transport moved at daybreak, but the
two brigades of infantry moving by motors were not able to get there
tiU 4 P.M., instead of 10 a.m. The first two brigades and the last
two brigades had to start marching at 4 p.m. and were only picked
up en route, except 1200 of the 10th and 900 of the 11th Brigades
who were able to get away in motor-buses at 6 p.m. They all got
scattered in the darkness, and were not able to rejoin the division
until next moming. Luckily the enemy did not interfere.'
This move was to near Hazebrouck, which Pulteney made
his headquarters for the moment ; its position relative to
St. Omer and to the region which was about to form the battle
ground of the 3rd Corps is shown on the inset map on p. 127.
Beyond Hazebrouck the corps was advancing on to the low-
lying plains of Flanders, and it was to begin operating over a
terrain very different to the chalk uplands which overlook the
Aisne. There was sharp fighting on the 13th with somewhat
inferior German forces, composed mainly of mounted troops
but with infantry support ; these stuck obstinately to their
groimd, as mist and fog interfered with the use of artiUery and
made offensive operations difficult. But Meteren — a name
to become very famiUar to the British Army during the next

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 127

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128 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
three years — ^was occupied, the combat continuing far into
the night. Pulteney's divisions were constantly moving for
ward during the next two days, Bailleul being taken on the
14th ; but progress was slow owing to the nature of the country
and to the stubborn opposition offered by the hostile detach
ments, which were as usual well supplied vnth machine guns,
and Maude chafed at the deliberation of the advance across the
flats towards the Lys, realising the importance of securing
the passage of that sluggish stream. He felt sure that the
enemy would not be striving so hard to maintain a hold of
this ground with inferior forces, unless there was some definite
object in view. The left of the corps reached the river near
Estaires late at night on the ISth, and the Engineers at once
started throwing bridges across. Some of the 1st Corps were
passing through Hazebrouck at this time, and Maude had
opportunities of meeting the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream and of
exchanging notes with them.
Part of the 4th Division and the 6th Division crossed the Lys
during the 16th, and Armenti^res was occupied on the 17th ;
the greater part of the 4th Division however worked along the
left bank of the river, that being intended as its general line
in the contemplated advance. Corps headquarters had re
mained at Hazebrouck till the Tuesday, but were now pushed
on to the little town of Bailleul, which, having been in German
occupation, was in a semi-ruinous condition — pillaged ac
cording to the usual practice of the brutal enemy. The 2nd
Corps was advancing simultaneously on the right of the 3rd,
but was separated from it by a gap which was partially filled
up by French detachments. The 1st Corps was gradually
detraining in rear and prepared to come up on the left, while
communication had been established by the cavalry on the left
with General Rawlinson's 4th Corps that was moving south
wards from about Ostend and Bruges, beyond which again
were the Belgians. But the whole of the front that was more
or less in occupation of the British was much extended, and
as they moved eastwards they were constantly meeting with
more and more determined resistance ; for strong bodies of
infantry were being hurried up to support the German
mounted troops.
The 3rd Corps continued to press slowly forward beyond
the Lys from the 17th to the 20th, but by the latter day it

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 129
found itself confronted by at least equal hostile forces and
almost thrown on the defensive. ' Our line is very much strung
out and we have no reserves, which reacts on the nerves of the
troops,' Maude wrote in his diary. That day the 19th Brigade,
which was helping to fill the interval between the 3rd and
the 2nd Corps, was driven back by a resolute hostile attack,
and a somewhat awkward gap was created ; but the situation
was to a great extent retrieved during the night. Corps
headquarters had been pushed forward from Bailleul to Armen-
ti^res on the 19th ; but that town was constantly under shell
fire, two of the staff were wounded on the 20th, and, somewhat
to Maude's disappointment, Pulteney consequently decided
to withdraw headquarters to Bailleul.
The position, in so far as the 3rd Corps was concerned,
had become for the time being one of stalemate, and all along
the British front the enemy was showing up in strong force.
Lord French states in his book that he abandoned all hope of
an immediate offensive on the 21st.
' We have been having hard fighting for the last few days,' Maude
wrote home on the 23rd, ' and we are still hard at it. The Germans
are making a determined effort to roll us back, and have brought
up every man that they can scrape together ; consequently we
have our hands pretty full, but we are doing well and giving the
enemy plenty of punishment whenever he attacks. But we have
for the time to suspend the forward movement. The 18th, 20th
and 21st were particularly heavy days for us and we had in our
corps about 4000 casualties on the three days. To-day our 6th
Division is being strongly attacked, but all is going well. . . .
An officer from General Headquarters has just come in, 3 p.m.,
and has brought the news that I am to command the 14th Infantry
Brigade. This will give me the rank of brigadier-general. Of
course I am dehghted at getting so good a command and think
myself very lucky, though naturally I wish it could have been
one of the Guards Brigades.
The Indian troops arrived up here yesterday, and will probably
be in action in a day or two. They look very fit and weU, but the
infantry do not hke the paved roads ; they hurt their feet.'
Maude left to take command of the 14th Brigade that
evening, and his connection with Pulteney's Corps thus
came to an end, for the 14th Brigade formed part of the Sth
Division in the 2nd Corps. ' His greatest asset in South
Africa and afterwards in the European War,' writes Sir
W. Pulteney, ' was the way he would see everything for him-
I

130 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
self where any doubt existed ; in fact he gave one so much
confidence in this respect that it prevented one as a com
mander from going oneself on §ome occasions.'
Although he had spent less than two months as a pro
minent member of the corps staff in the field, he had acquired
much valuable experience during that strenuous period.
The very fact that the 8rd Corps had been somewhat un
lucky, first of all in being the last to take the field and after
wards in being so long shorn of one of its divisions, had perhaps
made actual staff work all the more difficult to carry out,
and had caused the lessons to be learnt from it in some
respects all the more valuable. In studjdng Maude's diaries
and letters of these few weeks, certain of his qualities as a
staff officer and as a soldier are made very apparent. As a
staff officer he had the well-being of the inferior staffs and
of the troops constantly in mind. He frequently complains
of the late arrival of orders from above, not because of the
inconvenience which this caused to himself and to his im
mediate associates, but because of the still greater incon
venience that it necessarily caused to divisional and brigade
staffs to whom, after some unavoidable further delay, these
orders had to be communicated. He attached great im
portance to orders being issued with the utmost possible
promptitude on all occasions, and was by no means tolerant
of laxity in this respect. Still, in these matters he was merely
voicing what are generally accepted principles (even if those
principles are not always followed by their advocates in
practice) ; he was giving expression to views that are not
unusual in a highly-trained officer of wide and very varied
experience, such as Maude was when he went to the front in
1914. But what is even more noticeable, alike in his diary and in
the numerous letters that he managed to write home during
this anxious time, is the unmistakable evidence that they
afford of the qualities which make the natural leader of men,
concealed though these were behind the mask of the genial,
courteous, well-informed, capable, methodical administrator
and office man. Maude's delight when orders came to hand
that the army, which had day after day for nearly a fortnight
been falUng back before the rising tide of German invasion,
was to turn upon his pursuers, was shared by the whole force.

ON STAFF OF 3RD CORPS IN FRANCE 131
But few belonging to it were perhaps more thoroughly dis
contented than he when that force, after being brought up
short on the Aisne, found the situation developing almost im
perceptibly into sedentary warfare after its short sharp spell
of exceedingly mobile operations. Then, when the British
contingent came to be transported round to fresh fields and
pastures new in the north, he was straining at the leash, im
patient to press restlessly forward, bent on brushing the not
very formidable opposition met with during the first two or
three days unceremoniously aside if possible ; he realised
that even if fighting meant losses at the moment, it would
probably effect an important purpose and might perad
venture save lives in the end.
Even that small matter of the retirement of corps head
quarters from Armenti^res to Bailleul illustrates the character
of the man as a soldier in the field. From Bailleul to Armen-
ti^res does not mean more than a quarter of an hour's run by
motor. Dealing with delicate operations, solving problems on
paper and wrestling with complicated administrative questions,
can never be so easy a task when carried out under shell fire
as when dealt with in quieter conditions. But the instincts of
the fighter induced this member of an army corps staff to
ignore the inconvenience involved, in his eagerness to be as
near as possible to the thick of the fray. There are few officers
whose hearts when the enemy is in the gate will not be glad
dened by an intimation that they are to take up an active
command. But, of the many gallant British soldiers who
found themselves called upon to assume charge of brigades
in the field between 1914 and 1918, not one probably received
the news with greater pleasure than did Stanley Maude.

CHAPTER VII
IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH INFANTRY BRIGADE
The 14th Brigade to which Maude had been appointed was,
as it happened, one vnth which he was already familiar, for
it formed part of the Sth Division which he had only left a
few months before. It moreover happened to be the brigade
that had been quartered at the Curragh when he was there.
Sir C. Fergusson no longer commanded the division, although
he had brought it out to France in August ; he had been
promoted lieutenant-general in the meantime, and had been
replaced by Major-General T. L. N. Morland. The division
still formed part of the 2nd Corps under Sir H. Smith-Dorrien,
and it was placed at the moment on the right of the British
line, with the 3rd Division on its left. The 14th Brigade
was the left brigade of the division, so that Maude's command
was next to the 3rd Division, and it was at the time of his
joining occupying trenches about Richebourg, a little to the
north-west of La Bassee. The map ' La Bassee — Ypres ' on
p. 127 illustrates the movements of the brigade while he was
its chief.
Maude motored over to take up command on the afternoon
of the 23rd, and he reported himself on the way to Generals
Smith-Dorrien and Morland at their respective headquarters,
arriving at his own near Richebourg long after dark, and
finding Lieut.-Colonel J. R. Longley of the East Surreys tem
porarily in charge. The brigade at the moment consisted of
the 2nd K.O.S.B., the 3rd Worcester, the 1st East Surrey, the
1st D.C.L.I., and the 2nd K.O.Y.L.I. Of these only the East
Surreys and the D.C.L.I. properly formed part of it as it
had originally arrived in France ; the 2nd Manchesters were
temporarily detached. During his eight months in command
Maude often had outside battalions temporarily under his
orders, and was from time to time called upon to send off his
own to be attached for the moment to other brigades ; but
the battalions properly forming his brigade throughout were
132

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 133
the 1st Devons, besides the East Surreys, D.C.L.I., and Man
chesters ; the Sth Cheshire was added in February 1915.
He found that the strength of the flve battahons under him
when he joined was 78 officers and 3209 other ranks ; so that
his force was considerably below war establishment. Besides
the five battalions, he had for the time being under his orders
a brigade of field artillery, a field howitzer battery, a company
of field engineers, and a field ambulance. Captain Dick-
Cunyngham of the Gordons was brigade-major.
' Dirty headquarters in an estaminet,' he wrote in his diary next
day, ' but there seems to be nothing better available, and it was under
continuous shell fire all day, though luckily they never quite got
the range. Plenty of Black Marias falling, and the road we walked
up in the afternoon was strewed with fragments. Heavy attack
in the moming on the 13th Brigade on our right, and in the evening
and during the night on the 7th Infantry Brigade on Our left, but
both repulsed.'
The general situation at the Flanders end of the Western
Front was at this time a singularly interesting one. The
AlUes under Sir J. French and General Foch had been making
a great effort to outflank their opponents, simultaneously
with joining up with the Belgian Army coming from Antwerp ;
but the associated chiefs had only just begun to realise the
formidable strength of the forces gathering against them. Nor
would the Germans appear to have been well posted in the dis
position of the armies that were opposed to them in Flanders.
In so far as the British Expeditionary Force was concerned,
the 1st Corps, the 4th Corps (it only included at the moment
the 7th Division), and the bulk of the cavalry, were still being
pushed forward on the left; but the 2nd and 3rd Corps
further to the south had already been brought to a standstill
and they were holding entrenched positions along most of
their front. The Indian Corps was coining up from the centre
of France, and the (3rd) Lahore Division began to arrive at
Estaires in rear of the 2nd and 3rd Corps on the 22nd.
The Germans were about to make a determined effort to
roll up the Allies' forces north of the Lys, while keeping those
that were south of that river fully occupied. The position
indeed was that either High Command had made plans for
tuming the flank of the other, but that the Germans were in
the stronger force of the two on the flank and that this had

134 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
only been just discovered by Sir J. French and General Foch,
The result was to bring about a great battle of encounter north
of the Lys, in which the 1st Corps, the 7th Division and the
cavalry, together with the French operating alongside of them,
found themselves opposed to almost desperate odds while
covering an unduly extended front. The furious affrays that
ensued have by common consent been given the name of the
First Battle of Ypres ; but determined combats were at the
same time in progress south of the Lys, where the enemy also
succeeded in gradually bringing somewhat superior forces to
bear against the 2nd and 3rd Corps. Maude on taking over
the 14th Brigade found himself involved in this struggle, his
troops occupying awkward ground and under heavy artillery
fire. On taking stock of his brigade and of its position, he found
that it was suffering somewhat severe losses from the enemy's
sheU, and that his men were very tired after nearly a fortnight
of almost continuous fighting. They had been obliged to do
a great deal of digging and had enjoyed very little sleep ;
commanding officers, regimental officers, and rank and file were
nevertheless all alike in good spirits and full of confidence.
Realising that stationary operations were likely to be the order
of the day in this region, he at once set to work to have ob
stacles developed covering his front, to construct communica
tion trenches (the importance of which he was one of the first
to perceive), and to establish a system of supporting trenches
with the object of permitting a larger proportion of the in
fantry to be withdrawn from the actual front line. The
character of the ground favoured concealment of small parties
and sniping operations, and he found it difficult to reach the
headquarters of his different battalions on his first day with
the brigade, as the roads were under continuous rifie fire.
' Tried twice but unsuccessfully,' he wrote in his diary, and
this experience confirmed him in his view that communication
trenches were an absolute necessity in this kind of warfare ;
it was a point that he always paid great attention to, not only
as a brigadier but also later on as a divisional commander
in the Gallipoli Peninsula and in Mesopotamia.
The Germans kept delivering partial attacks for the next
day or two against portions of the front occupied by the
3rd and 5th Divisions ; these were, however, generally re-

IN COMMAND OF THE UTH BRIGADE 135
pulsed with no great difficulty and with loss to the enemy.
But on the 27th the 3rd Division was heavily assailed by
strong hostile forces, and was obliged to faU back at some
points, the situation becoming so threatening that towards
evening Maude was ordered to dehver a counter-attack with
such troops of his own as he could employ, reinforced by other
battahons from the Sth Division placed especiaUy under his
command for the purpose. As this was practically the first
occasion on wliich he had found himself in charge of a mixed
body df troops undertaking a special operation of importance,
his account of the action, which was written home four days
later, may appropriately be quoted. The record in his diary
goes into considerable detail, and it could not easily be foUowed
without a plan :
On the 27th the brigade on our left were driven out of a place
caUed Neuve ChapeUe. I was given three and a half battahons
additional to my own, and Sir Horace suggested that I should
personally direct the attack, so I sent off one battahon at once to
cover some ground, and hurried off the remaining two and a half
battahons as soon as I could collect them. By the time however
that we were all assembled and ready to commence the attack it
was pitch dark, and no moon. The ground over which we were
to attack was unknown to me and to the battalions with me. We
had not been able to reconnoitre the positions of our troops and
of the Germans beforehand, and the battalions that I had with me
had been badly shaken by their losses during the last few days.
Consequently I thought it would be more prudent to delay action
till daylight.
I therefore motored in to see General Morland, 5th Division,
and General Mackenzie, 8rd Division, to represent the state of
affairs, feehng that there was still time to dehver the attack before
dayhght if they still so wished. However, they thoroughly agreed
with my view, and Sir Horace told me next day that he was much
reheved to hear that I had decided not to attack by night.
The next day the attack was delivered and failed, so I don't
know what woiUd have happened if we had gone forward by night.
I commanded my mixed lot of battahons during the fight that day,
in addition to my own regular command, and we had a very
exciting day. For when the Indians were driven back I sent
forward two battahons to stop the gap, and we successfuUy slack
ened the German advance. It was an interesting day. The shell
fire was terrific all the time.
' Only once did I see Joe Maude really rattled,' writes Lieut.-
Colonel Dick-Cunyngham, the then brigade-major of the 14th
Brigade, with regard to this affair, ' and that was soon after he took

136 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
over command of the brigade, when we were fighting round
Richebourg-L'Avoue at the end of October 1914. Our hnes had
been heavily attacked and sheUed for many hours, and the Germans
had captured Neuve Chapelle on our left during the evening.
About 7 P.M. we got orders to make a counter-attack and retake
the viUage, and certain troops were sent us from another brigade
to carry out the counter-attack. When they arrived, one could
see at once that they were not in a fit state to make the attack, and
the circumstances under which the counter-attack had been
ordered were moreover now completely altered. But Maude
considered that an order was an order and had to be carried out.
FinaUy he was persuaded to postpone the counter-attack and to
make a personal report to the divisional commander.'
Actually Maude with his special force was on the 28th
attacking on the right, while other troops were endeavouring
to retake Neuve Chapelle from in front. But the effort failed,
and that village remained in the enemy's hands until it was
captured in an important action four months later. On the
night of the 29th-30th the 14th Brigade was relieved in front
hne by the Garwhal Brigade of the (7th) Meerut Division
which had been coming up from the south during the past two
or three days. Its new commander was delighted with the
behaviour and bearing of the officers and men over whom he
had assumed command. The brigade had suffered heavily at
Le Cateau and had been fighting hard in difficult country
ever since arriving in the northern area from the Aisne ; but
all ranks were in good heart. ' Troops very fit and cheery,'
he wrote on the 31st, ' in spite of the severe work they have had.
All four regiments have done splendidly and never budged an
inch in the most trying circumstances.' The 31st of October
and the 1st of November, it vdll be remembered, were especially
critical days further to the north, where an attenuated Une
of British infantry and cavalry, opposed to vastly superior
numbers in front and to the south-west of Ypres, could barely
hold their own. Only the rare grit and heroism of the troops,
confidently handled under untoward conditions, prevented a
disaster there which must have had far-reaching effects on the
whole course of the war. The sound of incessant cannonade
from that direction was heard where the 14th Brigade was, and
all were aware that a desperate struggle must be in progress.
The brigade now nominally formed a reserve to the Indian
troops, and it was placed for the time being under their corps

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 137
commander, Sir J. WiUcocks ; it had however to be constantly
on the qui vive, as the enemy was particularly active just
during those days, and the Indian Corps was at times hard
pressed. Most of the rest of the Sth Division had gone some
distance further back, and was resting in biUets. The differ
ence in staff methods between those in vogue in the Indian
forces and those to which Maude had been accustomed at
home and with the original Expeditionary Force, gave rise
to some inconvenience during the period that he found him
self attached to General WiUcocks' corps, and, as it turned
out, his battalions although they were supposed to be resting
got very little rest. There was marching and counter
marching, and eventually the brigade had to go back into the
trenches as early as the night of the 7th-Sth of November
in relief of the Sth Infantry Brigade. This was at a point
somewhat further to the north than the old position which it
had occupied south of Neuve Chapelle. It consisted now of
the 1st Devons and 2nd Manchesters, besides the East Surreys
and D.C.L.I.
' The part of the hne that we are holding now is as flat as the palm
of one's hand,' Maude wrote home on the 10th, ' and so constantly
fire swept, and it requires some skill (and luck) to get up to the
firing hne, especially as one does not know quite when the outbursts
of firing are going to begin. I hke to go up occasionally, as one
learns exactly what commanding officers have got to say, and one
gets into closer touch with the feehngs and the wants of the troops.
I went up and saw all the battalions last night, but had to pick
my time as the enemy had been shelhng us very hard aU day, and
they had got the exact range of the road that I wanted to go by.
But we managed to dodge them all right, and as a matter of fact
the musketry up there was not so severe as usual last night. There
is always a lot of sniping going on however, and we are bothered
to a certain extent by German snipers who have crept behind our
hnes and who are behind our hnes of trenches ; but I am having
steps to have them stalked and shot and aU the battahons are on
the qui vive for them.'
Although the nature of the country rendered the construc
tion of deep trenches very difficult where the Indians were,
moderately good cover had been created by strenuous labour,
and the line was fairly weU protected by barbed wire. On
the night of the 14th-15th Maude's battahons were reheved
by the newly arrived Sth Division, which properly belonged
to the 4th Corps. The brigade was thereupon taken back

138 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
into the Sth Division, and it again came under the orders of
Sir H. Smith-Dorrien and General Morland.
' I think I am very lucky in getting such good regiments in my
brigade,' Maude wrote on the 14th. ' They are all first rate, and I
have every confidence in them. They are still weak — especially
two of the battahons, 500 and 600 respectively — and the other two
are each about 800 strong. This is owing to the heavy casualties
we had about a fortnight ago, but I hope we shall soon get drafts
to fUl up with. We have already had one or two, as a matter of
fact, but expect more. Officers are a difficulty, but this is common
to the whole army, for we have all lost heavily in officers ; and,
with the best intentions in the world, it is impossible to produce
trained officers (or men for the matter of that) with a few months'
training. Discipline is everything in a war like this, and it is the regiments
that have most disciphne that shine out above the others. But
discipline, equally with training, cannot be acquired in a day,
but must be the result of continuous gradual military education.
But what we have lacked in peace time, owing to those who thought
that they knew better than soldiers, has been compensated for as
far as possible by the splendid work of the regimental officers and
their men. Speaking mainly from what I have seen of my own
brigade, no praise is too high for their conduct, tenacity, endurance
and devotion to duty, and to my mind no reasonable amount of
force brought against them will beat them.'
His brigade only enjoyed one complete day's rest after
quitting the Indian Corps and rejoining its own division,
for on the night of the 16th-17th it was caUed upon to take
over a stretch of front hne about Wulverghem, between
Bailleul and Messines, from the 156th Regiment of the 39th
French Division, which division had been holding the hne
between the Indian Corps and the 3rd Corps. The rehef
proved a lengthy and difficult business, as the advanced works
were only about thirty yards from the German ones. The
trenches were found to be shallow and imperfect, and much
work had to be got through by night under close and harass
ing musketry fire before they could be considered as giving
adequate security. The brigade was joined on the 17th by
the 1st Norfolks, which brought it up to a strength of five
battalions. Maude also had under his orders for the time
being a French battahon on the left, three British field
batteries and one horse battery, also a French field battery.
Wulverghem was in Belgian territory, and the roads on that
side of the border were found to be much inferior to those on

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 139
the French side. There was moreover a dearth of buildings
and farms, which made adequate biUeting a great difficulty.
The weather had turned much colder, and the troops were
suffering serious discomfort in the trenches as the fuU sup-
pUes of warm winter clothing for them had not yet arrived.
Maude however set himself to overcome these difficulties by
energetic action. Coke was available, and large quantities
of this form of fuel were sent up to the troops in front hne,
who succeeded in making braziers by various devices and thus
turning it to account. Buildings were moreover transformed
into bath-houses with the assistance of the Royal Engineers,
and arrangements for warm water set on foot. That no time
was to be lost in making full preparations for winter had
indeed been shown by one or two cases of frostbite; but
almost a superabundance of warm clothing came to hand
after a few days.
The Germans were mainly on the defensive in front of
the brigade, and they contented themselves with shelUng the
lines very heavily at times. The Prince of Wales, who had
recently joined Sir J. French's staff and who was staying at
Sir H. Smith-Dorrien's headquarters, paid brigade head
quarters a visit on the 20th and again on the 25th. ' He was
very anxious to go up with me to the front trenches,' Maude
wrote home, ' but I told him it was impossible ' — ^His Royal
Highness' eagerness to penetrate into zones where shells
were dropping and bullets were flying, if he could manage it,
caused senior officers frequent qualms at this time. Some
additional battalions were attached to Maude's command at
this juncture, so that he had altogether eight under his orders
when the time came for his brigade to be relieved on the night
of the 28th-29th. It moved back some four miles across the
Franco-Belgian border and went into billets north of Bailleul.
' The men are in splendid spirits,' Maude wrote on the 80th, ¦ and
very healthy considering all they have gone through. In fact in
my brigade the " normal " sick as opposed to casualties are only
about the same as on manoeuvres. I have been round two battahons
to-day talking to the men and hearing their experiences ; they are
all very keen to get on and to have another go at the Germans.
The fighting has been spasmodic during the last few days. Every
one is refitting and replacing casualties. But there has still been
a good deal of sheUing and sniping, and in this brigade we have
lost 150 killed and wounded, including five officers kiUed, during

140 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
the week. There is a westerly wind blowing to-day, and for the
first time for three months one is out of earshot of the cannonade ;
it seems quite strange without it.'
The King was paying the first of his many visits to his
troops on the Western Front while the 14th Brigade was
back in billets on this occasion, resting, and on the 3rd of
December His Majesty inspected Maude's force.
' Parade for King at 2.40 p.m.,' Maude wrote in his diary. ' All
went well. Received him with Royal Salute, troops on parade
and keeping ground taking the word from me. Gave them a short
practice beforehand just to brush them up. King asked me how
long I had been out and what I had been doing previous to getting
brigade. Said he was so glad I had got one. Asked for my arm
and took me on box of his motor car till we got to end of my com
mand. Gave three cheers for King after parade and another
Royal Salute, aU by my word of command. Prince of Wales also
present, and D.C.L.I. gave three cheers for Duke of Cornwall.'
Although the 14th Brigade was performing excellent service
and had full confidence in its leader, Maude would not seem to
have in all respects shown himself to be an easy man for his
ptaff to work with at this time, or to have quite carried the
commanding officers serving under him with him in all that he
did. He had a wonderful insight into every kind of adminis
trative detail, and he went most carefully into the minutest
points connected with the feeding and the comfort of the troops,
greatly to their advantage in many cases. But he had his
own ideas of what a man could do in a day's work: — and they
were large ideas. Most of his commanding officers were of
opinion that the men were being overworked ; but he never
changed his mind, and he graduaUy trained the rank and file
to get accustomed to very long hours. Always fit himself
and a strong man of fine physique, he perhaps hardly made
sufficient aUowances for others not possessing to the fuU
those advantages.
'He was about the most systematic man I have ever met, and was
known in the brigade as " Systematic Joe," ' writes Lieut.-Colonel
Dick-Cunyngham ; ' he got up at the same hour and did everything
at the same time every day of the week, and hated doing anything
that upset his usual daily routine.
Before he took over the brigade I was doing staff officer's work
—writing aU orders, etc., thinking ahead, and putting the tactical
situation before my brigadier. But when Joe Maude arrived I
was no longer allowed to do this, and I naturally at first resented it.

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 141
On one occasion indeed I had a row with him and told him I was
not his staff officer, but merely his clerk. His dictation of orders
and messages every day was a tiresome business ; they were long,
often contained repetitions, and entailed an enormous amount of
work on the Signal Section. It took me over two months to get
him to condense his daily order into fewer hnes, with a "working-
party table." It used to be quite a joke in the brigade when I
was found fast asleep at my desk, trying to write at his dictation.
Yet, although there may have been times when one felt that to
serve on Maude's staff was not altogether pleasant, we got by de
grees to know his ways, and I think that I am right in saying that
when he left the brigade for home every one was sorry to lose him.'
As has been mentioned at the end of the previous chapter,
Maude attached great importance to the early issue of orders,
in the interests of inferior staffs and of the units concerned.
In that respect he was considerate and the troops affected
benefited thereby. But promptitude in this respect is not
the only point to be borne in mind. Conciseness is of almost
equal importance. On active service orders and messages have
to be transmitted by various means to their destination, the
transaction necessarily involving labour in some quarter ;
they have then to be copied by officers or clerks, working often
under great difficulties ; and then every superfluous word
becomes a nuisance. It is much easier for a person dictating
to dictate a long message, than it is to dictate a short message
which says the same thing. It is those who have to take the
message down, those who have to transmit it, and those who
may have to copy it, or parts of it, away out in the dug-outs,
who suffer from any redundancy.
The 14th Brigade went back to the front during the 4th
and Sth of December, changing places with the 13tli Brigade
which had relieved it less than a week before, and occupying
nearly the same ground as before, with headquarters at Neuve
Eglise, A Territorial battalion, the Queen Victoria's Rifles,
one of the first of such units to arrive in the theatre of war,
joined the brigade, mainly for training purposes and as a
temporary measure, on the 4th. The return to the trenches
on this occasion took place in particularly inclement and
trying weather. There were torrents of rain and sleet, the
cold was extreme, and as a result of the deluge the trenches
were floodedfand afterwardsjproved most difficult to drain.
Their sides moreover kept falling in. Maude started working

142 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
parties to cut up brushwood and to make fascines for flooring
the excavations and for revetting them where necessary, and
the situation was graduaUy improved ; but Ufe in the trenches
was becoming very trying. He moreover insisted upon a great
development in respect to elaborating communication trenches
and supporting trenches, as he reahsed the importance of being
in a position to mass considerable bodies of infantry close up to
the firing line in case of emergency, alike for purposes of defence
and for purposes of offence. The enemy in front of the 14th
Brigade, as also of the 3rd Division on its left, enjoyed, it
should be observed, aU the advantage of ground ; all the
higher portions of the Messines-Wytschaete-HoUebeke ridge
were in hostile possession, so that the British were more or
less dominated and overlooked by the opposing side. The
Germans moreover were very strongly entrenched, their whole
front was well protected by elaborate wire entanglements,
and the high ground provided them with good artillery ob
servation stations. It was also easier for them to drain their
trenches than it was for the British troops to do so, owing to
the general lie of the ground.
' Last night too the weather was very bad,' Maude wrote home on
the Sth ; ' floods of rain, and you would have laughed to see me com
ing back from the trenches, slipping and sliding about in the slush —
which was nearly up to one's Imees in some places — tumbling into
ditches and shell holes filled with water, for it was pitch black and
one could not see five yards ahead. I took one header into a ditch
and came out in a state somewhat similar to that after my bath
when I was out with the Kildares last year, though not quite so
bad ; and the excitement was intensified at one point by a sniper
putting a bullet between my brigade-major — who was walking just
in front of me — and myself. Of course it was only a chance shot,
as he could not possibly see us.'
The enemy was comparatively quiescent during the first
few days that the brigade was back at the front, and on the
14th somewhat important offensive operations were started
on our side. It had been arranged with the French that an
attack should be delivered by the 3rd Division, acting in
close co-operation with the 32nd and 16th French Corps on
its left, against the uplands about Wytschaete and HoUebeke.
The result of the heavy fighting of the latter part of October
and the early days of November in the region to the north
of where the 14th Brigade now was, had been to give the enemy

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 143
possession of the highest ground round practically three sides
of Ypres. Wytschaete, due south of the place and less than
five miles from it, enabled the Germans to command the
approaches to the town with artillery fire very effectively,
and the capture of that village was therefore particularly
desirable. The project was that, so soon as the 3rd Division
and the French should have accomplished their purpose,
Maude on their right would advance against Messines, which
lay two miles south of Wytschaete ; but in the first instance
he was merely to demonstrate and to keep the enemy immedi
ately in front of him occupied. Suggestions were made that
some of his troops should attempt minor local attacks on
particular stretches of hostile trench, besides demonstrating ;
but he was opposed to such spasmodic ventures.
The offensive actually began on the 14th, and on that day
and the following three days Maude and his staff proceeded
before daybreak to a small farm well forward, from which a
good view was obtainable. The operation however only pro
duced minor successes, and merely enabled the line held by the
3rd Division to be slightly advanced. The high ground was
not captured, and the French on the left of the 3rd Division
made scarcely any way at all. Fighting went on for four days
and then gradually petered out, the German entrenchments
and entanglements proving too strong to be broken through
without a much heavier artillery bombardment than was
practicable. Maude's share in the proceedings was therefore
confined to maintaining a vigorous artillery fire, while his
battalions expended a large amount of ammunition with their
rifles and machine guns — about half a million rounds on the
first two days ; he did not altogether like these tactical
methods ; they taught the infantry to fire without aiming,
seeing that their task was merely to keep sweeping the ground
in front of them with bullets. "The 14th Brigade was reheved
on the 17th, and it went back into billets in rear for a rest,
' One of the saddest parts of my day is my daily visit to hospital,'
Maude wrote on the 20th. ' I have just been to see a very sad case.
One of my officers was wounded three days ago, being shot through
the neck and spinal cord, so he was paralysed below the neck.
He was however wonderfuUy cheery, although he could scarcely
speak, and seemed such a nice fellow. He cannot Uve long, they
tell me.
We have wounded varying from ten to fifty a day, and in addi-

144 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
tion twenty sick. I cannot bear seeing the wounded, I don't know
why ; but they always seem glad to see one and to be spoken to.
The men are wonderfully cheery in spite of their hardships. The
other day I met a man in the Manchesters being carried to hospital
with his foot bound up, so asked him what was the matter. He
said " Rheumatism." I said " Nonsense, you 've got gout. You 've
been drinking too much in the trenches." " Yes," he rephed, " there
was plenty of water there," and roared with laughter. They are
most amusing, and I hke talking to them quietly at times. Then
there is the other side of the picture, when I have to jump down
their throats for being slack. I have got some footballs for them,
and we are having great games whilst here during these four days.
They are playing league matches, which should last a long time
judging by the few occasions we have for playing.'
Maude not only made it a practice to visit hospital daily if
he possibly could manage it, but he also invariably attended
. the funeral of any one of his officers who was killed or died of
wounds within reach ; he moreover often attended the funerals
of non-commissioned officers and men when he was not too
occupied. The brigade went back into the trenches again on
the 23rd, and was therefore in them during Christmas time,
the line taken up being somewhat further to the south than
the section which had been in its occupation a few days before.
The trenches were found to be in very bad condition owing to
the wet, and, as it proved almost impossible to improve them,
Maude decided to have entirely new trenches dug along certain
stretches of the front by night in advance of the previous
firing line. This work was skilfully and successfully carried
out at most points, and without the enemy being aware of
what was in progress till it was completed.
Some very noteworthy changes in the organisation of the
British troops were carried out at the end of the year, and ought
to be recorded. The Expeditionary Force was reconstituted
as two armies, the First Army under Sir Douglas Haig, and
the Second Army under Sir H. Smith-Dorrien ; Sir Horace
was succeeded in command of the 2nd Corps by the late head
of the Sth Division, Sir C. Fergusson, so that Maude found
himself again under his old chief of the Curragh period. The
intention was that the Second Army, which was constituted
out of the 2nd, 3rd, and Sth Corps, should be on the left,
and the First Army should be on the right. The Sth Corps
was being formed from the 27th and 28th Divisions, which had
been organised in England out of battahons and batteries

. IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 146
brought home from far distant foreign garrisons. Major-
General J. R. Longley, who had been commanding officer of
the East Surrey since the beginning, left the 14th Brigade
about this time to take up command of a brigade himself, and
his views with regard to Maude as a chief may be recorded
here :
I was only about two months in the 14th Brigade after he took
it over before passing on to a brigade command, but that was more
than long enough to realise his powers of leadership. He was not
altogether a stranger to us, having been previously G.S.O. to the
5th Division v/hen my battahon first joined it in 1912.
We all appreciated our good fortune in having a man like him
as our brigade commander. All ranks had the utmost confidence
in him, and felt that all would be well in the brigade with ' Joey '
at their head. Time only served to strengthen the esteem and
confidence in which he was held by his brigade, and I am sure that
there was a general feeling of personal loss when he left it on
promotion. Maude's brigade went back out of the line to rest for a few
days at Bailleul immediately after the New Year, and re
turned to the trenches on the 10th in a somewhat different
sector from that left a week earlier. They were in very bad
order owing to the wet, and much labour was necessary to
make them more habitable and reasonably secure. General
Morland, who used to visit Brigade Headquarters daily, sug
gested shortly afterwards that it might be better if Maude were
to take over his present position in the front permanently,
and if the plan of frequent reliefs were to come to an end — a
proposal entirely to Maude's taste, as he felt sure that his
battalions would work even better than they had been doing
under such conditions. The troops were having a trying time
owing to the incessant wet weather and were suffering con
siderable hardship in consequence, and this somewhat in
creased the numbers on the sick list, which was a matter that
always caused the brigadier concern. The enemy, on the
other hand, was shovidng little activity except with artillery ;
but the German guns and howitzers were very lively from time
to time, and caused appreciable losses ; the village of Neuve
Eglise where the Brigade Headquarters was fixed was often
shelled violently.
' Shelling greatly due to stupidity of men who will stand and
gape at aeroplanes,' Maude wrote in his diary in some irritation
K

146 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
on the 29th of January. ' On the last two occasions when we have
been shelled I warned every one that in consequence of this stupidity
we were certain to be sheUed, and on each occasion my prophecy
came true.'
A week later, on the 6th of February, occurs this entry: 'Thirty-
one years' service, but don't feel hke it. What an eventful Ufe
to look back upon, and how interesting.'
Writing home on the 7th, he remarked : ' Nothing very exciting
going on here. They have taken to shelling us pretty regularly
two or three times a day in our headquarters, but for so far they
have not done any very good shooting, and it is only occasionally
that they get a lucky shell in. However, directly they begin
to shell us, I tum all my guns on to Messines, which is the corre
sponding village opposite, so I suspect we do them much more harm
than they do us. Our trenches are getting on splendidly. I
have about 1400 or 1500 men working at them each night, building
up and repairing traverses, shoreing and revetting them, bahng
them out, and draining and making shelters for the men. They
work splendidly, all four battalions, and it is so satisfactory to
see the progress each time one goes round. The whole line is three
or four times as strong as it was when we took it over, and we have
no fears if we are attacked in anything like reasonable numbers.
I don't think much of the lot we have got opposite to us, as it is
impossible to stir them into any sort of activity. A few days
ago we bombarded them from trench mortars, then for two nights
we turned machine guns on to their working parties, and last
night we pelted them with rifle grenades from our nearest trenches.
But none of these "insults" seemed to stir them up to any response.
In fact, they seemed to be afraid to take any sort of aggressive
action.' In respect to the shelling of Maude's headquarters, it may
be observed that both the corps commander and the divi
sional commander considered its position to be somewhat
unduly exposed, and that they made representations to him on
the subject. But he was unwilling to make a change, and he
was a man who was not easily influenced in a matter of this
kind once he had made up his mind. ' It is scarcely right for
a brigadier to be always moving about from place to place,
when the men have to stop where they are,' he remarks in
his diary. But under instructions from the corps commander.
General Morland early in March insisted on the headquarters
being moved out of Neuve Eglise.^
The early days of the month of February passed quietly
' 'He scored off me by moving up nearly a mile closer to the front,'
writes Sir C. Fergusson.

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 147
in the region where the 14th Brigade was located. In the
middle of the month Maude heard privately from his friend
General Lambton, who was Sir J. French's Military Secretary,
that it was proposed to appoint him Brigadier-General on the
General Staff in the Oth Corps, which was about to be formed,
and he was greatly put out by the news. ' Terrible blow,' he
wrote in his diary, ' as I love my brigade, and the work is
astonishingly interesting. Besides, one feels that one is doing
some fighting here, whereas back with a corps one might as
well be in England.' A few days later he heard that he had
been mentioned a second time in despatches and that he had
been awarded the C.B. The project of transferring him from
his brigade to the staff eventually fell through — possibly
because he did not conceal his preference for remaining where
he was from Lambton, and also because Generals Fergusson
and Morland were both very anxious to keep him.
It had been decided at General Headquarters that an
important offensive was to be carried out by the First Army
in the region of Neuve Chapelle (where the 14th Brigade had
been located when Maude took it over in October), and with
the object of assisting this operation indirectly the 2nd Corps
had been instructed to be aggressive for the time being.
Maude gave his brigade directions accordingly on the Oth,
explaining that the action of battalions was to be limited to
organised sniping, machine gun fire, rifle and hand grenade
activity, sapping, and trying to capture enemy patrols and
to destroy the German vdre entanglements. He was par
ticularly pleased with the work done in these directions on
the following night, and especially mentions the skill and
dash of two young officers in his diary. He was always very
careful to recognise good service and to send his congratula
tions to those concerned when any small success was achieved;
when writing home on the 3rd he had expressed unbounded
pleasure at seeing that his battalions had received a fair share
of rewards in a recent Honours Gazette. The assistance
afforded to the First Army by the 2nd Corps took a more
active form on the 12th, for on that day the 3rd Division,
alongside the Sth, delivered an attack, and Maude's guns gave
what support they could ; the operation was not successful
in itself, but it no doubt served the purpose of holding the
enemy and of preventing any hostile reinforcements being

148 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
sent south towards Neuve Chapelle. The attack of the First
Army, although it had achieved a considerable measure of
success, had not led to the complete rupture of the German
front which had been hoped for, although a dent had been
made in it ; and the latter part of February was unmarked by
any iiicident worthy of note.
Rumours reached Maude several times during the early
part of March that his brigade was going to be moved north
nearer to Ypres, and these reports proved to be true in a
measure ; but as it turned out the move, which was made on
the 24th, was only to about Kemmel, situated six miles north
of Neuve Eglise.
' Very sad that we shall lose our trenches on which we have spent
so much trouble and labour, and had hoped that, till the advance
came, we might retain them,' Maude had written in his diary on
the 19th. ' But it is the fortune of war and we must take the
rough with the smooth. I fancy that those we are going to are
not nearly as good as these, but luckily I have made a private
hoard of sandbags, as I know that stores will be the difficulty, and
I have from 15,000 to 20,000 ready to hand. The only difficulty
will be to transport them.'
He was much gratified after the change at receiving a
message from General Pulteney, commanding the 3rd Corps
(one of whose brigades had taken over the 14th Brigade
trenches), that for the first time in the campaign the corps
had no complaint to make on taking over other people's
trenches. On the other hand, he found much work to be neces
sary in the sector taken over, and as the sniping at night was
heavy it made any development and improvement of the
trenches difficult at first. He always paid great attention
to the work of the batteries that happened to be from time to
time attached to his brigade, so as to ensure immediate co
operation between the guns and the infantry in case of emer
gency, and so as to counter hostile shell fire promptly should
tliis suddenly become troublesome. The shortage of artillery
ammunition was however making itself much felt at this time,
and the gunners were consequently working under consider
able difficulties. Maude had seven batteries under him in his
new position, but they were all field or horse artillery units,
and as they were only provided with shrapnel they were of little
use for battering the enemy trenches ; he however occasion-

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 149
aUy succeeded in getting some of the heavy guns which were
not under his orders turned on to these.
Another move was however in prospect, for Maude was told
on the 1st of April that his brigade was to be transferred to a
position stUl further to the north, near St. Eloi, and a day or
two later he learnt that he was to occupy this new sector more
or less permanently, as had been the case at Neuve Eglise —
an arrangement that he entirely approved of. The brigade
in the meantime went back for a few days into billets ; but
it moved into its new trenches on the night of the 8th-9th.
These Maude regarded as very far from perfect, and he im
mediately concerted means for substantially strengthening and
elaborating them with the Engineers. Then, in his diary
for the 12th, the following entry occurs :
Back for a hurried dinner and then down to trenches again with
brigade-major and Fleming. Started at 28 and went along to
23, which is the right of my hne. Wanted especially to see
machine-gun positions. Twenty-eight is a curious trench, a
series of bastions with nothing between. All trenches were badly
deficient of parados, and many of traverses. Bullets seemed to
come from every direction and we have quite a few casualties.
However the men are working splendidly and we shall soon make
the trenches better.
On the way back got hit by a stray bullet, which went through
my right arm and into my right side, finally lodging close to my
spine, pointing upwards. Walked on as far as the East Surrey's
dressing station, whence I was carried down on a stretcher to
Lankhof Chateau. Here an ambulance met me and I was taken
to 14th Field Ambulance at Ypres. Inoculated against tetanus
and put to bed, having first sent a note to Charlie Fergusson asking
him to wire to Eric to let him know that I had been hit. Could not
sleep. He was anxious to remain in the war area and not go home,
and next day he had visits from Generals Fergusson and
Morland, who were extremely sorry to lose his services even
for a short time. He also received a note by special messenger
from General Smith-Dorrien, scribbled in pencil and running
as follows :
I am indeed most deeply distressed to hear you have been
wounded. I am told it is not serious, but even comparatively
shght wounds take a long time to heal, and all that time you,
than whom there isn't a more valuable brigade commander in
the army, are lost to the cause. B  will teU you how a heavy
one day cold prevents my coining to see you personaUy. I cannot

150 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
thank you sufficiently for aU you have done and for the grand
example you have set others. May you soon recover.
He was strongly advised by the many friends who came to
see him to go back to England ; there was doubt as to whether
the bullet was still in his body (as he believed himself), and
the first attempt with the X-rays at Ypres was a failure. His
diary suggests that he was not in all respects a very amenable
patient on the subject of whether he was to be sent home or
not. It had been the same when he met vrith the accident on
the day of Driefontein in South Africa, at which time the medi
cal officers had failed to keep him as long in hospital as they
thought desirable in view of the serious injuries he had re
ceived — with the result that his shoulder was a trouble to him
ever afterwards. Holding the strong views that he did on the
subject of disciphne, his attitude in this matter is worthy of
note, for it illustrates one side of his character. He knew that
his services at the head of his brigade were of real value to
the country, and that the regret expressed on all hands at his
mishap was very genuine. He would have been more than
human had he not been influenced to some extent by fear of
losing his command if he quitted the war zone. Still, he was
too experienced a soldier not to be well aware that an officer
on the sick hst is under the orders of the doctors, and he event
ually saw himself that it would be better for him to proceed
home. He was moved to Boulogne first, where he was again
X-rayed and where the exact position of the bullet was ascer
tained. On the 17th he crossed the Channel, and on reaching
London he found himself noted to go to Lady Ridley's Hospital
in Carlton House Terrace, where his family at once came to see
him. There never was any question of an attempt to extract
the bullet, which in the future did not cause him much annoy
ance ; but the wound took more than three weeks to heal,
although within a very few days he was able to walk about a
little and to do business in London. He was in a state of
considerable anxiety lest he should lose his brigade, and he
wrote to Sir H. Smith-Dorrien and to Generals Fergusson and
Morland on the subject, undertaking that he would be back
on the 2nd of May.
It should be recorded here that while Maude was away from
his brigade in England, the distinguished leader of the Second
Army, who had been associated vrith the 5th Division and the

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 151
14th Brigade from the beginning, first in the capacity of their
corps commander during the critical days of the great retreat
from Mons, during the advance across the Marne and the
struggle on the Aisne, and during the anxious November and
December period on the Flanders border, and who had then
remained associated with them as their Army Chief since
the opening days of 1915, rehnquished charge of the northern
half of the British line and returned to England. The
high opinion which Sir H. Smith-Dorrien had formed of the
capacity of the brigadier of the 14th Brigade, as displayed
during the previous six months, is expressed as follows in a
letter written by him from Gibraltar in April 1919 :
He took over command of a brigade in October 1914, and I soon
discovered that I had got a brigadier of exceptional grasp, energy,
and personality. He joined his brigade at a time when prospects
were far from bright. The brigade had been fighting incessantly
from the commencement of the campaign, at Mons, Le Cateau,
the Aisne, and on the La Bass6e- Ypres front, their casualties
had been enormous, they were far below strength, and in them
were few representatives of the original units which had started
from England. The weather was past description — torrents of
rain daily — and to construct habitable trenches was almost im
possible ; and yet, excepting a few days behind the Une occasion
ally owing to lack of reserves, he found his battahons day after
day and night after night in close contact with the enemy.
Maude's untiring, cheerful nature and soldierly intuition at
once infused new hfe into the brigade, and the latter, reahsing
that he was a bom commander who never thought of sparing
himself, quickly gave him their whole confidence and affection.
The last entry in my diary when I was commanding the Second
Army in France, referring to Maude, sums up fairly well my
appreciation of him :
18th April 1915. — One of my best brigadiers was wounded in
the trenches last night — Brig.-General Maude. He makes hght
of his wound, as any one who knows him would expect. He has
gone off to Boulogne to-day, and I have just heard that the bullet
is still in and that they are senduig him to England. I hope
that he may soon recover and come back to us, as he is an extra
ordinarily valuable man.
As it happened, there was severe fighting about Ypres in
the latter half of April. The famous ,' HiU 60,' near St. Eloi,
was captured on the 18th, and it was two or three days after
this that the Germans delivered their great gas attack further
north about St. Julien, drove the Entente forces back some

152 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
distance, and created a critical situation for the moment.
On the 25th Maude heard from Fergusson that the East
Surreys of his brigade had taken part in the assault on Hill 60
and ' had done magnificently,' but had unfortunately suffered
many casualties and lost both their commanding officer and
their adjutant. The knowledge that fighting of this exciting
character was in progress made Maude all the more anxious
to get back to France, but he had been reassured as to retaining
command of the brigade provided he was back reasonably soon.
He went to Buckingham Palace on the 1st of May to receive
the C.B. from the King, and on the 3rd he returned to the
front, sleeping that night in hospital at Boulogne. Next day
he motored back to St. Eloi, visiting General Headquarters,
Corps Headquarters and Divisional Headquarters on the way,
and not arriving until late to take over charge from Colonel
G. Thesiger, who had been placed in temporary command of
the brigade while he was away. (Colonel Thesiger was killed
when commanding a division at Loos some months later.) He
found himself at once in the very thick of severe fighting.
The 27th and 28th Divisions on the left of the 5th Division had
just been skilfully withdrawn some distance, reducing thp
acuteness of the Ypres salient, part of which had been rendered
almost untenable as a consequence of the German attack of a
few days before. The enemy on discovering this retirement
had become very active, and was now inclined to press forward
all round Ypres.
' Found everything just as I left it,' Maude wrote home on the
6th. ' My Devons, who had been on Hill 60 for fifteen days, having
been lent to the 15th Infantry Brigade, . were just coming off the
hill and were relieved by the Duke of Wellington's belonging to
the 13th Infantry Brigade. They had hardly left the hill four
hours when the Germans turned gas on to the Duke of Wellington's
and rushed the hill, capturing it and two other trenches. So all
yesterday the 13th and 15th Infantry Brigades were busy organis
ing a counter-attack to recapture the hiU, which was to take place
at 10 P.M. It was a magnificent sight to watch, as my head
quarters are within full view and within one and a half miles of Hill
60. For twenty minutes the artillery, rained shells on to the small
suminit of the hill, and the bursting of the sheUs at fifty or sixty
a minute simply lit up the countryside. The attack was successful ;
but the enemy counter-attacked and retook the hill and they are
now in possession of it and of two trenches to the north of it.
The East Surreys and Devons of my brigade have done splendidly,

Brig. General F S. MAUDE, C.B., C.M.G.
In Hospital, Carltcn House Terrace. (April 1915.

IN COMMAND OF THE UTH BRIGADE 153
and the Germans were not able to tum them off HiU 60 for eighteen
days. Everyone says that they have been magnificent, and I am
trying to get two V.C.'s amongst other things for the East Surreys.
The Devons also did splendidly and, when the Dorsets were badly
gassed and had only about half a dozen men left standing up,
pushed up their companies and by their promptitude saved the
situation. Several of them have been specially mentioned for
decorations also.
Yesterday and to-day we have had a perfect hurricane of shells
passing over our headquarters, but luckily none of them were aimed
at our farm, which is fairly weU concealed now that the leaf is
coming out.'
There was heavy fighting on the Sth and 9th north of where
the 14th Brigade was posted, the 27th and 28th Divisions being
assailed with great determination by formidable hostile forces ;
but although some ground was lost these attacks were beaten
back at almost all points. The whole situation near Ypres
was however causing anxiety to General and Army Head
quarters, and the question of retiring the Sth Division to a
rearward position was under consideration, a plan to which
Maude was strongly opposed. An elaborate offensive was
being carried out by the First Army further south at this time,
in conjunction with some French corps still further south ;
but these operations proved to be a failure for all practical
purposes, the First Army suffering heavy losses without
gaining any commensurate advantage, and after a few days
activity was relaxed by both sides almost along the entire
front. Maude had been recommended not to walk much, as
his wound was not yet quite healed, but on the 10th he never
theless made a tour round his trenches, and he was much pleased
at the good work that had been done and that was being done
by the D.C.L.I., Manchesters and East Surreys, who were at
the time occupying them ; a good deal of attention was be
ginning to be given to mining by both sides at this time, in
which the British troops developed, gratifying skill and dis
played marked enterprise. In the diary and letters home there
are, on the other hand, frequent references to lack of artillery
ammunition and to the British being out-gunned. ' Germans
have suffered enormously, and I think we have frightened
them a bit ; where they score is in their artillery, as their guns
are heavier and they have more ammunition. But when we
cross bayonets there is only one in it and our men know that

154 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
well and are full of confidence. . . . The country is only
just beginning to realise the class of war we are engaged on.
We certainly are not a nation of soldiers. Everything that
the Germans do is perfect from the soldiering point of view and
as regards organisation, whereas we are all unorganised and
haphazard about everything and muddle along as best we can.'
On the 28th the Germans attacked the 28th Division with
gas which, as the wind was blowing from the north, came down
upon the 14th Brigade, reaching Maude's headquarters where
the staff were affected in spite of having on their masks.
Reinforcements were hurried up to assist the 28th Division,
and the assailants were eventually beaten oft with loss ; but
there were many casualties on the British side and a number
of men in the 14th Brigade suffered from the effects of the gas.
The question of retiring to a line further back was still under
consideration, although the brigadiers and troops alike were
entirely against such a move. ' I cannot say how strongly I
feel about the policy of always looking over the shoulder,'
Maude wrote in the diary on the 29th. Leave for officers,
which had been closed for some weeks, was now reopened, as
a period of comparative tranquillity was anticipated in high
places. ' We are a truly marvellous nation,' Maude wrote on hearing this.
' Here we are in the midst of a summer campaign, where every one
ought to be straining every nerve to bring matters to a successful
issue before the winter wet and cold set in again, and we simply
sit down day after day and do nothing. Lack of fighting material
is of course the cause ; but what a terrible record of bunghng and
maladministration, and what needless loss of Ufe has, and will,
come of it. No doubt the guilty parties will be whitewashed in
due course, as usually happens.'
On the 4th of June General Morland went home for a week's
leave and Maude took over command of the Sth Division in
his absence ; but he remained at his Brigade Headquarters,
motoring over to Divisional Headquarters daily to sign papers,
etc. June proved to be a quiet month for the Sth Division ;
and, as the trenches occupied by the 14th Brigade were now
very complete, the work for all concerned proved lighter than
it had been for months. Still, in spite of the good cover now
provided, the brigade continued to suffer a number of casualties
from the enemy sheU at times. There was also a good deal of

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 155
mining activity during these weeks, and one or two scares
occurred owing to reports that the enemy was about to blow
trenches up ; but neither side was at this time carrying out
such operations to the extent and on the ambitious scale that
they did on the Western Front at a somewhat later date.
Maude's career in this theatre of war was however coming to
an end, for on the 22nd he heard from General Lambton that he
was to have command of one of the New Army divisions being
organised in England, and that he was to go home at once.
' Although I am naturally delighted at my advancement in my
profession,' he wrote in the diary, ' I feel sad, first at going home
even for two months, although Billy tells me my division will
come out then, and secondly at leaving this splendid brigade,
which has been so magnificent throughout. It has been the finest
command that I could ever wish for.'
On the 24th and 25th he went round bidding good-bye to
his battalions in the trenches, and on the latter day learnt that
he had been promoted major-general in the Honours Gazette.
His successor, Lieut.-Colonel C. W. Compton of the Somersets,
did not however arrive until the 27th. On that day he gave
up command of the 14th Brigade, after having been in charge
of it for eight months. He went round the units that were in
reserve in the afternoon, and made short speeches to each,
being loudly cheered by officers and men, and he then motored
to Bailleul to spend the night with General Fergusson. Next
day he motored to General Headquarters and on to Boulogne,
arriving in London in the evening and going on to Watford at
once. On the day of his quitting his brigade he had issued
the following farewell order :
In relinquishing command of the brigade on appointment to
command a division, the Major-General Commanding wishes to
express to his Staff, and to Commanding Offlcers, Warrant Offlcers,
N.C. Officers and men, his warm appreciation of the wholehearted
and loyal support which he has invariably received from all ranks
during the eight months that he has been in command. It will
always be to him a source of pride and pleasure to look back to
his association with the five splendid regiments belonging to the
brigade, which already bear historic names for gallantry on many
a hard fought field, and whose reputation has been so signally
enhanced during this campaign, not only by heroism in battle, but
also by grit, determination and sheer hard work during the winter
of exceptional severity and discomfort, and by their general
smartness and efficiency in billets and bivouacs.

156 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
He feels confident that the grand fighting spirit existing in the
brigade will carry it triumphantly over all obstacles and enable
it to emerge at the close of the war with a record second to none,
and with additional laurels entwined round the names of the five
regiments composing it.
It is with a sad heart that he severs connection with his old
friends, but although separated from them he vrill still foUow their
doings with the keenest interest and will wish them one and all
from day to day, health, happiness and success, and ultimately a
safe and victorious retum to those who are near and dear to them.
During the eight months which Maude had spent at the head
of the 14th Brigade in the field he had acquired much valuable
experience, and he had been provided with ample opportunities
of proving what a resolute soldier he was. It is true that, with
the exception of the critical operations about Neuve Chapelle
immediately after he took up command, he had enjoyed scarcely
any opportunities of handling troops actually in attack, or in
conducting operations in the open field. He indeed came upon
the scene as a leader almost at the very juncture when the
effort on the part of the British Army under Sir J. French to
turn the German right flank was brought to a standstill, and
when mobile combinations on the part of the belligerents in
the northern region of the Western Front gave place almost
automatically to more or less stagnant trench warfare. But
although his bent was ever for the offensive if the situation at
all justifled such an attitude, he proved himself a master of
defensive action when this was imposed upon him. Moreover,
even in the affair near Neuve Chapelle, he displayed a wise
caution and a conspicuously well-balanced judgment under
conditions when there existed exceptional temptation to run
risks. Especially entrusted with the conduct of an attack
almost immediately after exchanging staff duties for leader
ship, he nevertheless, after carefully reviewing the situation,
decided that the attack must be delayed and accepted the
responsibihty of representing his views to be such to those set
in authority ov^r him. Maude's attitude on that occasion
marked him out not merely as a good judge of perplexing
tactical conditions, but also as a man of strong character.
Few brigadiers serving under Sir J. French probably paid
such close and constant attention to the development of the
front held by their troops as General Maude. He expected
much from his battalions, it is true. He got an enormous

IN COMMAND OF THE 14TH BRIGADE 157
amount of work out of his men. But as a consequence of his
frequent visits to the trenches, of his sympathetic encourage
ment alike to regimental officers and to rank and flle, and of
his ready and unfailing recognition of what these accomplished
from day to day, that work was always done not only willingly
but even enthusiastically. He devoted every attention from
the outset to the comfort and well-being of the troops under
his orders, and although he was always particular on such
points as tidiness and good order in the billets, his efforts
to secure palliation of their hardships in so far as conditions
of active service permitted made him a most popular chief
amongst his men. ' We were all very sorry when he left,'
remarks his old brigade-major, Lieut.-Colonel Dick-Cunyng
ham, ' and personally I realise that under his tuition I learned
a great deal that was of immense value to me afterwards.'
Writing of him in March 1919, his former chief, Lieut.-
General Sir T. Morland, pays an eloquent tribute to the value
of his work as a brigadier :
Joe Maude had charge of the 14th Brigade of the 5th Division
under my command from October 1914 to June 1915, and I cannot
speak too highly of his services as brigade commander. He took
over at a most strenuous time, and he soon impressed his person
ality upon the brigade. An untiring worker, he never spared
himself ; always a gallant fighter, he remained cheerful in the most
anxious situations. A highly educated officer who was devoted
to his profession, he was a strict disciplinarian and a loyal comrade,
and he always looked closely after the comfort of his men by
whom he was much beloved. He had all the qualities of a great
leader. As appeai'Si from some of the quotations that have been
introduced into this chapter, as also from his farewell order
on relinquishing command, he always took a very genuine
pride in his brigade. He had fine regiments belonging to the
old Regular Army under his orders. He had material to
deal with that was plastic in his hands. The very high stan
dard of efficiency attained by the 14th Brigade while he was
at their head was primarily due to the regimental officers and
to the grit and valour of the rank and ffie, but it was also in
no small measure owing to the personality, the ability, and the
indefatigable efforts of the general officer who was holding the
command during those strenuous months on the Western
Front.

CHAPTER VIII
THE DARDANELLES
On reporting himself at the War Office on the 29th of June
Maude leamt that he was to have charge of the 33rd Division
of the Fourth New Army, forming in Nottinghamshire, and
after a week of leave he proceeded to Mansfield and took up
command. He was favourably impressed with the rank and
file from the outset. ' Let me begin by saying,' he wrote on
the 16th to Sir A. Murray, who was superintending at the
War Office the organisation and training of the New Army
divisions, ' that in practically every case the battalions consist
of men of splendid physique. . . . They are also generally
speaking a particularly smart-looking and well-behaved lot
of men ; these remarks apply to the R.E. and Train as well.'
He was unhappy at not having his artillery with him, but was
reassured on learning that he would find them on Salisbury
Plain, whither the division was to move very shortly. There
still remained much to be done in respect to equipment and
administration, as well as in the matter of training superior
officers and staffs in addition to the training of units ; for
Maude had been given to understand that the command
would probably move over to France in September. He
threw himself into the task with characteristic enthusiasm
and energy.
The division proceeded to Salisbury Plain between the
3rd and 7th of August, and Divisional Headquarters were
established at Bulford ; but it was to lose its new chief almost
before he had made his influence felt. For, on the ISth, tele
graphic instructions arrived from the War Office intimating
that he was to proceed forthwith to the Dardanelles, and that
all arrangements had been made for him to leave overland on
the moming of the 17th. Starting by motor at a very early
hour on the 16th, he was able to bid his eldest daughter SteUa
good-bye at Tidworth, where she happened to be staying, on
his way through, and he reached Mardale early in the forenoon,
168

THE DARDANELLES 159
proceeding from thence to the War Office, where he was made
acquainted with the position of affairs in the Galhpoli Penin
sula. Then, after a busy day in getting outfit for a hot climate,
he motored back to Watford to spend the night, his son Eric
fortunately being at home for the summer holidays. At a
very early hour next morning he bid good-bye to his family
— for the last time — and, motoring up to Victoria to catch the
boat train, started oft on the long trail which was eventually
to lead him to beyond Baghdad.
Stirring events had been in progress on the shores of the
.-Egean while the 33rd Division had been concentrating on
Salisbury Plain. Considerable reinforcements having reached
Sir I. Hamilton from home during July and the opening days
of August, he had on the night of the 6th-7th launched his great
, attack upon the Sari Bair heights overlooking Anzac {vide the
sketch map on p. 161), simultaneously with the effecting of an
entirely new descent upon the Gallipoli Peninsula in and near
Suvla Bay by the 10th and 11th Divisions of the Oth Corps,
newly arrived under his command. But after four days and
nights of combat General Birdwood's efforts to secure the
crest of the mountain from Anzac had been definitely defeated,
even if ground had been acquired on the slopes and if the
Anzac position had been much extended northwards ; and
this reverse was attributable to some extent to the failure of
the 10th and 11th Divisions to assist him as the commander-
in-chief had intended. The delicate operation of landing the
inexperienced troops of those two New Army divisions on an
unknown shore in face of a certain amount of opposition had
been satisfactorily carried out ; but the advantage thus gained
— ^gained in virtue of surprise — had not been followed up.
The Turks had been granted leisure to assemble such formid
able forces facing Suvla that when, on the Oth, the newly
landed contingent had at last moved forward to the attack
it had been able to make no impression upon a well-posted
enemy, and so the hoped for co-operation between the Suvla
force and Birdwood's battalions that were holding on grimly
to the spurs of Sari Bair had come to nought.
In view of what had occurred. Sir Ian had asked that a
commander for the Oth Corps should be sent to him, and also
two divisional commanders. Lieut.-General Sir J. Byng had
been selected for the corps, and in the case of the two divisional

160 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
commanders the choice had fallen upon Maude and upon
Major-General E. A. Fanshawe, who, like Maude, was at the
moment in command of one of the New Army divisions pre
paring in the United Kingdom for service abroad. TraveUing
together, Fanshawe and Maude reached Taranto near midnight
on the 19th, and there they met Byng, who had proceeded
thither direct from France. They sailed for the .^gean on
the following day, arriving on the 22nd at Mudros, the base of
the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, where they spent the
night. Next moming they continued their voyage to the
island of Imbros where Sir I. Hamilton had his General Head
quarters, and Maude then learnt that he was to have command
of the 13th Division of the New Army at Anzac ; General
Shaw, who had brought it out from home, and had commanded
it in the struggle for Sari Bair, had just been invalided. He
proceeded thither by destroyer in the afternoon and landed
on the Gallipoli Peninsula about 7 p.m., just a week after he
had received his orders at Bulford for the Dardanelles.^
The 13th Division properly formed part of the 9th Corps ;
but it had been the earliest of the reinforcements to join Sir
I. Hamilton, and, arriving in the theatre of operations about
the middle of July, had in the first place been put ashore in
the Helles area and had taken over trenches there so as to give
the troops some experience in contact with the enemy. After
a few days of this it had been transferred to Anzac and had
played a prominent and highly creditable part in the furious
affrays for the possession of the Sari Bair heights, fighting
valiantly alongside the seasoned Australians, New Zealanders,
and Ghurkas ; but it had suffered very heavy losses in these
encounters. Referring to them afterwards in his final despatch
of the 11th of December 1915, Sir I. Hamilton wrote :
The 13th Division of the New Army under Major-General Shaw
had alone lost 6000 out of a grand total of 10,500. Baldwin was
gone and all his staff. Ten commanding officers out of thirteen
had disappeared from the fighting effectives. The Warwicks and
the Worcesters had lost hterally every single officer.
So it came about that, when Maude assumed command, he
found himself at the head of three shattered brigades of
infantry, the total strength of which scarcely amounted to the
' The map ' Anzac and Suvla ' illustrates the work of the 13th Division up
to December.

THE DARDANELLES 161
numbers that a single brigade is supposed to muster ; the
composition is given in the footnote.^ None of its artiUery

-n

w.

:Jda2i Si
A DEACll ¦
Savl a.
Bay

«l."l..

Kuctiuk ,.
AnaFarta )
Ova I

¦d"b

EACH?

TuzlaGeu]/USaltLake}'

rurshun Keui

65^

Mebninesc Point

S' '.<, '¦¦.,! A
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.../'Sdmfa'r: 't^bcilrja ..¦¦ / -">
"KaraWaA y"" S ,-,s -^ ;¦ u

¦ri

ANZAC & SUVLA%
Scale oF Miles.

^ Baucfioi

a » o

Roads

Ari Burnu&H.p'/m^''^' '^ /./.¦/"'•...',!
AnzacX r, -¦;: U',.- ,. (.'/ ? /v? i'""'
(lY ,.—¦ :;fy ,,-¦¦ V

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y4flzacl. Coirei

(jjal

GabaTep
>.
<?-,.'
"<s..'-,l
,^-
iljeur-
was with the division, and after his experiences of close co-
» 38th Brigade.— 6th Royal Lancashire, 6th East Lancashire, 6th South
Lancashire, and 6th North Lancashire.
39th Brigade. — 9th Royal Warwick, 7th Gloucester, 9th Worcester, and
7th North Stafford.
40th Brigade.— 4th South Wales Borderers, Sth Royal Welsh Fusiliers,
Sth Cheshire, and Sth Wilts.
Divisional Pioneers.— 8th Welsh. L
162 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
operation between artiUery and infantry on the Western Front,
of having the guns within the section held by his brigade under
his own orders, and of large numbers of batteries at hand
with a fair supply of ammunition, its new chief was much dis
turbed to find no guns under his personal command. His
General Staff Officer, 1st Grade, was Colonel (now Major-
General Sir W.) Gillman, R.A., who had a wide experience of
staff work and had been with the division since an early date.
On the morning after his arrival he pored over maps vdth his
General Staff and examined figures with his administrative
staff, and that afternoon he walked up the Chailak Dere,
visited two of his brigadiers, and went round a portion of the
line. Every one but himself was in shirt sleeves owing to the
heat of the weather ; at a later date he adopted this same
fashion for a time in the Gallipoli Peninsula, but it was noticed
that he never did so in Mesopotamia. He somewhat surprised
his staff by adopting the plan of writing out himself his
orders and daily reports — an unusual course for a divisional
general to pursue.
Two days later, he leamt that he was to move to the
Suvla area in the following week, so that the whole of the Oth
Corps should come under General Byng's control, and the
preparations for this change of position were at once put in
hand. The trenches held by his infantry at Anzac were taken
over between the 28th and 30th by the 54th Division from
Suvla, and by the 1st of October Maude's own troops were
settled down in the new area, his headquarters having moved
by water on the night of the 31st. For the time being, the
13th Division was kept in reserve about Lala Baba, and the
divisional commander at once set to work to improve and to
develop the trenches and dug-outs in this rearward position.
The entire Suvla area was under artiUery fire of the enemy
from dominating positions, and that the situation was tacticaUy
extremely unsatisfactory is illustrated by the fact that on the
2nd of September the division had from sixty to seventy
casualties amongst its personnel, and 120 amongst its mules.
There was moreover a deplorable lack of material for creating
effective shelters, and it is clear from the entries in Maude's
diary that he felt oppressed by the difference that existed
between conditions on the Gallipoli Peninsula in respect to
artillery, munitions and stores of all kinds, and those to

THE DARDANELLES 163
which he had been accustomed to when commanding the 14th
Infantry Brigade. He had left home without an aide-de-camp,
but early in September he was joined by Lord Hartington and
Captain Wormald of the Coldstream to act in that capacity.
' My division is still in reserve,' he wrote home on the 12th of
September, ' cramped up in a very narrow space and mainly em
ployed on fatigue work, building winter quarters. Not very
exhilarating although the Turks wake us up most days by shelling
us and causing a few casualties. But our inaction is almost comic
after the speed with which we dashed out here, and meanwhile the
Turks are digging hard everywhere in front of us and making them
selves stronger. I suppose that shortage of reinforcements is the
reason, but surely that is our fault for trying to take on more than
we can do with our small army. If after a fight we have to sit
down for six weeks or two months we lose all the effect of the fight.
The only effective way seems to be to have reinforcements close at
hand, and when you have casualties to dash them up at once, and
slap at the enemy before he has had time to recover from his blow.'
The 13th Division remained some three weeks in reserve
and then changed places with the 53rd, taking over the
trenches on the low ground north of Chocolate Hill stretching
away to about Sulajik. Lieut.-Colonel W. D. Brownrigg, who
was Assistant-Adjutant and Quartermaster-General of the
13th Division at this period and for a long time afterwards,
gives an interesting account of Maude's methods and procedure
in connection with his staff when he took up the command,
and after he had taken their measure.
To commence with,' he writes, ' General Maude was a difficult
man to work under — as his desire for, and knowledge of, detail
was almost uncanny. But gradually and kindly he instilled his
methods into his staff, and was not satisfied until he had done so.
In fact it was not until close intimacy with him had shown the
many striking quahties under his almost querulous air of thorough
ness, that one leamt to love the man almost as much as one admired
the soldier. From September to November 1915 was a duU,
monotonous, soul-kilhng period. During all this time General
Maude strove to raise the moral of his men after their heavy losses
and privations of the August fighting.
His daily moming staff conferences at 8 a.m. in the cliff-side
were in reahty a parade of Staff officers and administrative heads
of services and departments, to receive their orders for the day
and report on their doings of the past twenty-four hours. Do not
let it be supposed from this that his staff were automatons. No
one was more ready than General Maude to receive, weigh and sift
advice given by the most junior of his staff. He expected it and

164 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
asked for it. But he always was the final adjudicator of poUcy.
. . . He forgot nothing ; no detail was too small for him ; yet
he always had time for everything and he never let the mass of
detail obstruct from his vision the big idea. One of his sayings
to the writer is a treasured remembrance, as it gives expression
to a basic principle, " If a man wants to go into the details of the
work of his staff he must be accessible."
How wonderfully accessible General Maude was, no one but those
who have served near him can reahse. On coming into his tent
or dug-out, one might fiad him scribbling on his knee, as was his
wont, busy with one or other of the many points or problems to
be considered or to be solved by a divisional commander. No
matter how busy he might be, he would after finishing a sentence
tum round and deal straightway with the new matter brought
before him, and, when dealt with, go on with the old. Never
irritable, never petulant, except when laziness or inefficiency
became apparent. . . . Day or night, awake or asleep, he was
always accessible, always ready to take advice, and always ready
to give advice to those who asked for it.
He demanded two things of his staff — energy and efficiency.
The first he expected to find in a man, the second he built by Ms
own teaching on the foundation of the first.'
At this period, and during the following three months,
the Turks practically confined their activities to occasional
heavy bombardments of the trenches, and Maude from the
outset kept inculcating upon his subordinates the need of
fostering offensive ambition amongst the troops and of keeping
the enemy on the qui vive by alarms and excursions. He
learnt at Corps Headquarters on the 29th that orders had
come for the 10th and 53rd Divisions to leave for an unknown
destination, and that his troops would take over the trenches
that were at the time held by the 10th Division about Chocolate
HiU. ' What a hopeless country we seem to be,' he writes on the 80th
in his diary, ' always a pohcy of drift, and what that means when
war is in the balance every soldier wiU appreciate. Why are we
waiting here indefinitely without guns, ammunition and men,
when, given those three necessaries, we could soon be in Constan
tinople ? Troops suffering a good deal from sickness, and deterio
rating generally from this sedentary hfe. Why cannot the pohcy
be definitely adopted either to go on with this or to give it up ?
There should be no half measures — ^it only means further sacrifices
in blood and money, which are heavy enough.'
1 ' And^again on the 4th of October : ' Am busy trjdng to stimulate
offensive spirit in the troops, but it is uphill work in this sedentary
warfare. StiU one can do something in the way of patrolhng, and

THE DARDANELLES 165
the 39th Infantry Brigade have started weU, two young officers
 and  having already distinguished themselves. Up at
trenches each of these three days and spoke to commanding officers
as weU as brigadiers as to necessity of working up the dash of the
troops.' 1
Only the 10th Division left Suvla, as it turned out, proceed
ing to Salonika ; but the consequence of its departure was to
place the important Chocolate HiU position under Maude's
control ; the Turks were fond of making this rising ground in
British possession a target for their shell fire, and this demanded
special labour on the part of the troops holding the trenches
in respect to repairing and perfecting cover. He entertained
hopes for a time that his division would be moved to Salonika,
where, he conceived, an active campaign might be contem
plated ; a report had got about that his old chief in Flanders,
General Smith-Dorrien, had arrived there, for which as a
matter of fact there was no foundation. An entry in his diary
early in the month indicates that his request that the artillery
vdthin his section of the lines should be placed under his
orders was at last complied with — he could be very persistent
when he felt satisfied that he was right vvdth regard to any point.
Colonel Gillman had left the 13th Division staff to take up the
appointment of commander of artillery in the corps ; and it
should be mentioned here that Maude's tendency to centralise
staff work in himself had made the situation a little difficult
at times for Gillman, although they remained always good
friends and were brought together again later on in Meso
potamia. Maude indeed had vrished his chief staff officer to
have command of one of his infantry brigades at Suvla ; but
it could not be arranged.
Nothing especially noteworthy happened in the Suvla area
during the month of October, although a very important
change took place in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force
1 Maude's handwriting was not his strong point, and it had suffered owing
to the injury to his shoulder at Driefontein ; it is almost impossible to
decipher some of the names of persons and places jotted down in pencil in
his diaries. The name of one of these two officers is clear enough, but the
other is illegible, and it hardly seems fair to give one without the other.
There is another point in this extract to which attention may be drawn,
because it is characteristic of the man. Even in his diaries, where the
entries were made hurriedly and for his own use, he invariably puts the
 'Infantry' Brigade. That is absolutely correct, as there are also
artillery and cavalry brigades ; but officers as a rule leave the ' Infantry '
out in unofficial communications, or when talking. He had accustomed
himself to put the full and correct designation instinctively.

166 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
because Sir I. Hamilton relinquished the command on the
17th, and handed over charge to General Birdwood for the time
being, pending the arrival of his successor Sir C. Monro. Maude
had hoped at first that the despatch of a new commandei:-in-
chief might possibly synchronise with the adoption at home of
a vigorous policy in respect to the Dardanelles, and with the
arrival of the drafts, artillery, and stores that were needed to
transform an army, which under existing conditions was
helpless for offensive purposes, into a force capable of striking
a resounding blow ; but these hopes were doomed to be dis
appointed. Writing at a later date Sir I. Hamilton places his
high opinion of the commander of the 13th Division on record
as follows :
I always held Maude in warmest admiration. We often worked
together at the War Office, and there I learnt the openness of his
character, the simplicity and the charm of his manner, and his
thorough-going devotion to business. But it was at Gallipoli that
I first reahsed his outstanding qualities as a commander. Maude
was the heart and soul of the Suvla Bay area, because he had
the power of holding both heart and soul unmoved, serene and
confident amidst much doubt and depression. Throughout, he re
mained a shining example of resolution unquenched by discourage
ment. He could never understand why we were restrained from
attacking, or why the home people could not understand that we
could win the war if only we were backed. Up to the bitter end
his brave spirit was never defeated and never, had he had his way,
would we have sailed away from the Dardanelles or yielded the
half -won field.
It soon transpired that nothing was to be hoped for in
the direction of reinforcements in men and munitions. As a
matter of fact. General Monro very speedily came to the con
clusion that the only course to pursue must be one of uncom
promising evacuation of the Peninsula, seeing that events in
the Balkans pointed to the early establishment of direct com
munication between the Central Powers and Constantinople,
which, as matters stood, could hardly fail to render the position
of the Expeditionary Force more unsatisfactory than ever,
and that its difficulties must inevitably be increased by the
rough seas that were to be expected in this region in winter.
He telegraphed home to that effect on the 3rd of November ;
but this was not known on the spot at the time, except at
General Headquarters. Maude had a conversation with the

THE DARDANELLES 167
new commander-in-chief on the 30th of October, and his entry
in the diary that evening gives expression to his disappoint
ment at what he had gathered in the course of the interview :
We are a weak-kneed nation. Why not push through and finish
the business ? It would not be difficult, given men, ammunition
and guns. It is the dreadful pohcy of do nothing that is fatal.
The weather had in the meantime been growing decidedly
cooler. The ffies, which had caused the troops such torment
during the summer months, had disappeared. Occasional
rain served to lay the dust. With developing piers and jetties
and with improving local communications, the situation at
Suvla had become in some respects decidedly more satisfactory
than it had been when Maude had brought his division thither
two months before. Had there been the requisite warm clothing
and had the material needed to construct suitable shelters
in a region where no timber existed been available, the
conditions would have been quite tolerable in spite of the un
favourable tactical position in which the troops found them
selves. But important stores were wholly lacking, or else
were sadly in arrear, so that, in place of officers and men being
a prey to heat with its resultant ills, they were now beginning
to suffer from cold and exposure. The result was that al
though the health of the force as a whole gave less cause of
anxiety than had been the case some weeks earher, progress
in this respect was not so great as it ought to have been.
Maude himself with his vigorous frame and his fine constitu
tion suffered scarcely at all from illness ; l^ut his staff were
often temporarily indisposed, and one or two of them had to
be invalided from the Peninsula. His practice of, if possible,
visiting some section of his trenches every afternoon, gener
ally taking his chief staff officer, Lieut.-Colonel R. Hildyard,
vpith him, afforded him means of getting the exercise that he
always craved for, brought him into personal touch with
regimental officers, and made the commanding figure and the
wdnning smile of their chief familiar to the rank and file of the
13th Division. As matters stood the Dardanelles Army, in
so far as divisional commanders knew, had a winter in this
bleak and exposed position to look forward to, and the lack
of adequate provision for the anticipated conditions could
not but cause grave anxiety to a soldier so far-sighted and so

168 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
sohcitous for the welfare of the troops under his control.
Lord Kitchener visited the theatre of operations in the early
part of November, and on the 14th spent some time at General
Byng's headquarters which were at Suvla Point, but Maude
did not see him.
The first intimation of an impending evacuation reached
the divisional commanders of the Suvla area on the 24th,
when a conference took place at Corps Headquarters, at
which was shown a communication from the commander-in-
chief suggesting the UkeUhood of a withdrawal from the Penin
sula, directing that all surplus stores should be gradually
embarked, and intimating that drafts except for the 29th,
42nd, 52nd and Royal Naval Divisions (these constituted the
Sth Corps and were all at Helles, except the 29th which
was on the left of the 13th at Suvla) would henceforth proceed
to Alexandria. In view of this intimation from Army
Headquarters, Maude at once took up the question of evacuat
ing his surplus stores as fast as possible, and also of strength
ening his trenches and adapting them to the requirements of
a slender garrison.
But everything, immediately afterwards, was thrown for
the moment into a certain amount of confusion, and work
of all kinds was greatly delayed, by a terrible storm which
visited the Peninsula on the 26th and which turned into a
blizzard, lasting for two days. Great suffering was caused
to the troops in the GalUpoU Peninsula, expecially to those
stationed at Suvla, where the bivouacs and dug-outs were
particularly exposed and where heavy casualties resulted
in many units. Maude was then seen at his very best.
Every day he vnth one of his staff went round the whole flooded
line — or round so much of it as time and the elements would
permit. His cheering presence at this time was, as one of
his staff described it, worth another brigade in the trenches.
The 13th Division came through the ordeal particularly weU.
It gained great praise from General Byng for its endurance
and its resource in combating the elements, and also from
General Birdwood, who was now in command of the Dar-
daneUes Army. General Monro had delegated the duty, as
he was in charge of all the troops in the Eastern Mediter
ranean, including Salonika which at the time was occupying
much attention, while maintaining a general control.

THE DARDANELLES 169
• Went up to the 39th Infantry Brigade with Hildyard,' Maude
wrote in his diary on the 28th. ' Nearly blown away getting there,
and could hardly make way against head wind. Saw three com
manding offlcers and Cayley and they were aU doing splendidly 
Went on to see the 40th and 38th Infantry Brigades. AU very
cheery in spite of desperate condition of trenches, waist high in
mud and water in some places. Sent up extra fuel and rum on
pack animals. Also sent troops a congratulatory message on
their splendid' conduct.'
There is no mention here of how highly the visits of their
divisional general, staggering about through the mud and slush
in the tempest, was appreciated by regimental officers and
men. They felt him to be one of themselves, sharing their
trials and heartening them with his cheery encouragement,
for it was imdoubtedly a terrible experience for all concerned.
The inclement weather did not flnally abate until the night of
the 30th, by which time the casualties owing to exposure
throughout the Suvla force had become very heavy.
' Last night after four days the gale subsided,' Maude wrote home
on the 30th. ' The violence of it, added to the snow bhzzard and
the icy cold, have been indescribable, but the way in which the
division have stuck it out has been magnificent. I have had two
complimentary messages from the corps commander on the sub
ject, and to-day he came over to see me and expressed himself
personaUy. I think it would be difficult, unless you had seen it,
to realise what the men have had to go through ; it has been terrible
for them, especiaUy as they are not yet fitted out with warm
clothing fully, nor have they material to make good shelters.
We have had 1350 sick in my division in the last three days, and
I am afraid that there wiU be still more, and fifteen deaths from
exposure ; and yet I fancy that our total is about the lowest in
these parts. The conditions were as bad as in Flanders as regards
mud and water, but in addition there was this frightful bhzzard
and insufficient clothing and shelter. The water came down the
gullies Uke rivers without warning, and some were drowned, while
others had narrow escapes. The only consolation is that the Turks
have had an even worse time if possible, for many dead bodies have
come floating down the gulUes towards us, whilst we could see
them leaving their trenches in large numbers and we were able
to fire on them accordingly. Numbers have also deserted and
come over to us.'
Maude was in the meantime devoting much attention to the
problem of how the withdrawal ought to be carried out, should
it be ordered. Plans were prepared with the approval of

170 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
General Byng for special works about Lala Baba and across the
space between the Salt Lake and the shore south of Nebrunesi
Point, as it had been decided that the evacuation would take
place from two points and that the Suvla force would withdraw
as two separate sections, the 13th Division covering the em
barkation of the right or southern section. The left or
northern section would embark near Suvla Point, while the
right section would embark near Lala Baba and possibly also
at C Beach. But no definite orders came to hand as to whether
the withdrawal was to take place or not, and owing to the
Government's infirmity of purpose the position was becoming
an extremely anxious one. It was practically certain that
the enemy would shortly receive formidable accessions to an
artillery already decidedly superior to that of the forces
chnging somewhat precariously to the coast of the peninsula.
The stormy weather at the end of November had done great
damage to the existing piers and had for a day or two cut oft
all communication between Suvla and the ships, affording
commanders and staffs a foretaste of what they might expect
if the troops remained where they were. No reinforcements
were arriving nor material for constructing winter accommoda
tion, and, to a man of Maude's temperament and instinct for
looking ahead, the situation was to the last degree exasperating.
' We are truly a nation of muddlers,' he writes in his diary on the
2nd of December. ' But surely the procrastination of the last few
months and the scandal which must necessarily result must wake
the Government up. First, the want of decision by which we did
not arrange either to go on or to get out of here month's ago.
Secondly, the total lack of provision of vrinter clothes for the troops
in adequate quantities, and the absence of material for making
shelters. It is all too lamentable and has cost many valuable lives
that might have been saved.'
At last, however. General Monro on the Sth received in
structions from home that Suvla and Anzac were to be evacu
ated, and this was at once communicated to' General Byng,
who informed his divisional commanders,
' Hope that they have at last made up their minds,' Maude writes
that day in his diary. ' Of course I would far rather have gone for
the Turks and smashed them, and I think we could have ; but if
the Government vrill not let us do that the only alternative is to
get out of this — and we ought to have done so long ago.'

THE DARDANELLES 171
He had a soldier's horror of half-measures and could not
brook indecision. We may take it that, in expressing the
opinion that the Expeditionary Force could have ' smashed '
the enemy, he was assuming its ranks to be fiUed up and
its force of guns and howitzers to be greatly increased. A
divisional commander would naturally not be fully acquainted
with the situation in the theatre of war as a whole, nor be
cognisant of the strength of the hostile forces ; there is no
doubt that in December 1915 the Turks had large bodies of
troops in reserve about the DardaneUes — as was pretty well
known at Army Headquarters — ^which could have been
brought up had the AlUes attempted a serious offensive. But
it having at last been decided that Suvla was to be abandoned,
Maude was in his element. Stagnation was at an end. Some
thing was going to be done, even if it was something disappoint
ing, and he vigorously entered upon the task of framing plans
for an operation demanding exhaustive calculations and elab
orate procedure, an operation in which perplexing tactical
considerations had to be accommodated to abnormal adminis
trative requirements, and one which could only be crowned
with success if the staff work involved was to be of a high order.
Methodical in all things, Maude, ahke on the Western Front
and at the Dardanelles, always carefully noted down in his
diary day after day what private letters he had written and
also what official communications of importance to superior
authority he had despatched during the twenty-four hours ;
and, considering the inconvenient conditions under which
correspondence had to be carried out as a rule, it is astonishing
what an amount of it he got through. He never lost the
opportunity of a mail going home, or of the report of such an
event taking place, to despatch a number of letters to friends
as well as to his family, all of them written in pencil and
generally on his knee. In respect to official documents, the
preparations for evacuating Suvla necessarily obliged him to
communicate frequently with Corps Headquarters, and the
preparation of a comparatively lengthy memorandum dealing
with some subject or other would seem to have been almost
a daily event with him early in December 1915. Major-
General H. E. Reed, then General Byng's Chief of the General
Staff, has drawn a harrowing picture of himself, cowering in a
damp dug-out in the night watches with his feet in the mud,

172 SIR STANLteY MAUDE
as he endeavoured by the lantern's misty light to assimilate
the contents of memoranda of many paragraphs emanating
from the Divisional Commander of the 13th Division, of which
the purport could only gradually be ascertained by deciphering
an odd word here and there. Nor wet nor cold deterred Maude
from writing ; and it was probably because he had not time
to write concisely that he wrote often at unwelcome length,
not quite realising how difficult it was for the recipient to
read his communications.
The principle on which the simultaneous vnthdrawal from
Suvla and Anzac, as also the vrithdrawal a month later from
Helles, was carried out has often been described. The actual
embarkation of stores, animals and personnel was always
effected at night and every effort was made, by means of
demonstrations of disembarking troops and stores by day,
by the display of minor activity in front line, and by making
it apparent that reliefs were being carried out as usual, to
deceive the enemy as to what was in progress. Surplus
animals and material, together with any men who were in
doubtful health, were got away first ; but as a matter of fact
much of this work, in so far as the 13th Division was concerned,
had been already completed before the definite orders to go
came to hand on the Sth. Then the supplies and ammunition
were cut down to a minimum consistent with means of removal,
the number of guns was gradually reduced, while battalions
and even brigades began to disappear as the date for final
evacuation approached. The plan was that the troops left
for the last two nights, which in the case of Suvla and Anzac
were provisionally fixed for those of the lSth-19th and 19th-
20th of December, should consist only of the bare minimum
of combatants to make the positions reasonably safe, sustained
by very modest contingents of the medical and other adminis
trative services ; half of these troops were to be vrithdrawn
on the last night but one. On the last night the front trenches
were to be held by exiguous detachments to the very end,
and these detachments were at a fixed hour to steal away and
to make straight for their embarking places — a decision only
arrived at on the 11th after a conference between General
Godley, who commanded at Anzac, and General Byng, with
their divisional generals. Godley was strongly in favour of the
plan, but Maude, it may be observed, felt some doubts on the

THE DARDANELLES 173
subject and proved to be somewhat difficult to persuade that
it was the correct course to pursue.
' This,' he wrote in his diary that night, ' is of course an attractive
scheme, and one which I originally suggested, but it has the ele
ments of a gamble. If the Turks find out we are on the move they
vrill attack and arrive peU-mell with the troops at the ships where
there wiU be no covering force. They may find it out by aeroplane
reconnaissance noting our empty trenches during the day, by the
noise of troops retiring (they are always noisy at night), or by noting
the increased activity of shipping. On the other hand, if we with
draw only to some second hne on first night it will decisively teU
the Turks that we are off and we shaU have a bit of fighting on
the second night.'
Strong positions were in any case being prepared at Suvla,
covering the embarking places, and Maude devoted particular
attention to these works, expressing much satisfaction in his
diary at the zeal and efficiency displayed by the troops in their
construction. A difficulty arising from the fact that the left
of the Anzac force and the right of the Suvla force would be
moving oft at the last in different directions, the one towards
Anzac Cove three miles oft and the other towards Nebrunesi
Point, was overcome by an arrangement under which the troops
on the extreme left in the Anzac area were to retire into
Maude's section, and to come under his orders in the event of
a fight. Already on the 13th his own troops had ' nearly got
rid of everything worth taking away ' ; but he was particu
larly anxious that no artillery should have to be left behind
and destroyed at the last moment, and he had some difficulty
in inducing the corps commander to permit reducing the guns
to a very low figure for the last forty-eight hours — twelve field
guns and four field howitzers, only ten pieces to remain on
the last day. There unquestionably was danger in this. It
meant that a meagre force of infantry, charged vrith the re
sponsibility of holding an extended front in close contact with
the enemy, would have but frail artillery support to rely on
should the enemy suddenly launch an attack or should adverse
weather interrupt the process of evacuation at the last. Not
all soldiers of experience would concur in Maude's view, but
his attitude in the matter was typical. He recoiled from such
a confession of defeat as would be proclaimed to the Turks
were the wreckage of a few demolished pieces of ordnance

174 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
to be left them to gloat over, and he cheerfully accepted
the risk.
All this time the constantly diminishing army was being
favoured by tranquil atmospheric conditions such as at that
season of the year could not reasonably have been reckoned
on. Night after night, personnel and animals took ship and
departed, and the dumps of munitions, supplies, and ordnance
stores grew smaUer and smaller. General Marshall, who was
in command of the 53rd Division, had been especially charged
vrith administering the embarkation work in Maude's sector,
acting in conjunction vrith the naval authorities. But for
occasional bursts of shell fire that were directed at times on
the beaches, the Turks remained apathetic, and they gave no
signs of reahsing that their antagonists were melting away
from before them. So it came about that on the morning of
the ISth the programme had been carried out in full as it had
been drawn up for the period preceding the final effort, and
barely 20,000 invaders — less than half the numbers present
at the beginning of the month — remained in the Suvla area.
Maude's left brigade, the 39th, was to withdraw under
orders from General Fanshawe, who was in charge of the Suvla
Point evacuation. His tactical position was that he had at
command an inner fortified system consisting of well-wired
lines securing the Lala Baba isthmus between the Salt Lake
and Suvla Bay and the southern isthmus separating the lake
from the shore to the south of Nebrunesi Point. From 1| to 2|
miles in front of this inner stronghold, the front line of trenches
ran north and south across the Chocolate Hill high ground
and down to the junction with Anzac not far from Hill 60.
The left of this line as coming under Maude's orders for
evacuation was occupied by his SSth and 40th Brigades, the
right part was in charge of portions of the 2nd Mounted
Division. The troops from the front trenches, as also the
small detachment from Anzac, were to retire by way of the
isthmus south of the lake when the time came, and were to
embark at and near a pier known as ' South Pier,' inside Suvla
Bay between Lala Baba and Nebrunesi Point. The total
numbers to be withdrawn at that point, still left on the 18th,
amounted to rather less than 10,000 men with sixteen guns.
Nearly half of these, vrith six guns, got away vrithout diffi
culty on the 18-19th, the naval arrangements proving most

THE DARDANELLES 175
satisfactory, and the operation being carried out practically
without a hitch.
The Ottoman artillery was inclined to be troublesome
during the 19th, and one shell in the afternoon hit the pier
and did damage, which was however speedily repaired. The
troops to be withdrawn during the coming night had not only
the possibility of a Turkish infantry attack and pursuit to
fear, but also the risk of a heavy bombardment of the area
near the embarking place, of which the hostile gunners had the
exact range, should the enemy become aware of what was
afoot. A burst of hostile shell fire might cause serious damage
to the pier and to the craft near it, which must give rise to
delay and confusion. However, the enemy failed to perceive
during the day what weak forces remained in the Suvla area,
and then, during the night watches, allowed the detachments
in the front trenches to be gradually withdrawn and the
trenches finaUy to be left untenanted, without discovering
what was in progress. Eight of the ten guns still ashore in
Maude's section were run dovoi out of their positions at dusk
and removed to an embarking place near Suvla Point under
special arrangements ; the remaining two were vrithdrawn
at 8 P.M. and embarked at South Pier. His other troops
began to take ship in instalments, the first at 7.30 p.m., the
second at 10 p.m.
' From about 11 .30 onwards,' he writes in his diary, ' our front hne
of trenches was only held by 200 men, till 1.30 when they finally
withdrew. From 11.30 onwards the Salt Lake lines were only
held by 100 men and 3 machine guns, the Lala Baba defences
being held by 250 men and 6 machine guns. As soon as the final
party from the trenches had passed through the Salt Lake lines,
we closed the gaps in the wire and withdrew every one except the
Lala Baba garrison, and embarked them, and finally we embarked
the Lala Baba garrison and the 6 machine guns at 4.5 a.m.
We got everything away and left the Turks, who seemed quite
unaware of what was going on, practicaUy nothing. At 4 a.m.
we ht a huge bonfire on which we poured several thousand gallons
of oil (petrol) and had a magnificent blaze. It was wicked waste
and could have been avoided had more sea transport been available.
No guns left behind by me, and only a few rounds which we buried.
Weather simply perfect throughout and almost a flat calm, not
too cold.'
' I am glad to say we made a clean sweep of everything,' he wrote
in a letter to General KiggeU, Sir D. Haig's Chief of the General
Staff, describing the withdrawal, ' and speaking generally for my

176 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
own division I do not think we left behind us £200 worth of stuff
worth having. I got away all my guns and ammunition and we
even destroyed the sandbags which we had to leave in the parapets
by ripping them with bayonets or clasp knives to make them
useless. The withdrawal was apparently a complete surprise for
the Turks, for nothing happened on either night beyond the usual
sniping and firing. Li a way I could not help feehng a little sorry
that they did not find us out, for my division had two strongly
prepared lines, each vrith an exceUent field of fire, to faU back upon,
and if they had only come on we should have given them a real
good dressing. But I suppose that from the broader question
of the whole evacuation, it was best that it should have been a
complete surprise to the Turks, as it was.'
Further on he wrote : ' They are a good division and keen as
mustard to get at the Turks.'
The vrithdrawal from Suvla without loss of a gun or an
animal, with scarcely a casualty, and at the cost of very few
stores of appreciable value, is acknowledged universally to
have been a masterly operation of war. Once that fictions,
pubhshed with the object of deceiving the pubhc, had been
abandoned by Marshal Liman von Sanders, who commanded
the Ottoman forces in the Dardanelles, the Germans ac
quainted with the facts readily admitted the skill with which
Suvla and Anzac had been vacated. There had been no pre
cedent in modern military history for such an undertaking,
and the brilliancy of its execution reflected credit alike on the
commanders, on the staffs, and on the troops. The extrication
of the Suvla and Anzac armies from the positions which they
had occupied since August had, before the event, been looked
upon by most military authorities acquainted with the situa
tion as a dubious and dangerous undertaking. Fear that
some grave disaster would result had fomented that irresolu
tion at home which so enhanced the difficulties on the spot.
The news that the thing was accomplished, virtually without
any sacrifice, caused profound relief in Entente circles and
was, rightly, hailed as a victory.
When the evacuation was completed and the morning broke,
Maude vrith his staff were taken over to Imbros by steamer,
arriving about 8 a.m., where he learnt at Army Headquarters
that the division was to go to Helles. It was not known
whether the Government intended to cling to Helles or not,
as, although General Monro had recommended a complete
abandonment of the Gallipoli Peninsula, sanction had only

THE DARDANELLES 177
been received from home to evacuate Suvla and Anzac.
Moreover, while some of the division was at Imbros, most of
it had been shipped to Mudros, and Maude was much dis
appointed at the news and at the prospect of a fresh period of
sedentary service ; for it was obvious that if Helles were
going to be retained it would be held merely as a defensive
position. He however obtained permission for the division
in the meantime to be concentrated at Mudros, and he pro
ceeded thither on the following day, the 21st, having a very
rough passage — an experience which proved how little time
the Suvla and Anzac forces had had to spare when they com
pleted their evacuation of the peninsula some twenty-four
hours earlier. At Mudros he met many friends, and he was
able to discuss the present and the future with Generals
Monro and Birdwood and the headquarters staff, but his stay
in the island was not prolonged. For he left for Helles on
the 27th with the advanced troops of his division, of which
only the 39th and 40th Brigades were to accompany him,
the question whether this last foothold upon Turkish soil was,
or was not, to be retained not having been decided when he
took his departure. Helles was under command of Lieut.-
General Sir F. J. Davies, a Guardsman and old friend of
Maude's, and was held at the time by the 29th, 42nd, 52nd,
and Royal Naval Divisions, with some artillery left behind by
the French ; but the 13th were to relieve the 42nd.
The position in occupation of the Allies at the extremity of
the peninsula is shown on the sketch map on p. 178. It perhaps
provided rather more elbow-room than there had been at
Suvla, but in most respects the conditions were almost worse.
The landing and embarking places were, if anything, even
more exposed in case of rough weather than those vrithin
and around Suvla Bay. The Turks could shell practicaUy
the entire area from the far side of the DardaneUes, taking it
in the flank. It was dominated in front by high ground
which was entirely in the enemy's hands. Hostile infantry
and guns, which had been tethered to Suvla and Anzac for
months past, were now at liberty to succour the Ottoman
divisions that had been confronting General Davies during
the autumn. Successful as had been the withdrawal of Byng's
and Godley's legions from the northem zone, this had made
Helles a decidedly less satisfactory position to hold than it
m

178

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

had been before, and had made it a more awkward trap to
get out of, because of the fair warning of what might per
adventure be in contemplation which the enemy had received.
Maude found himself and his troops planted down in new
surroundings, vrith the prospect of his very likely having to

(Line hell}
August to
January
FTissarlik
i/ **= Scale of Miles.
I % H H Q I _ _.  2

effect a dehcate retreat from his position before having settled
down in it.
The Home Government's delayed decision to abandon Helles
did in fact reach General Davies on the 29th, at a juncture
when only the 39th Brigade of the 13th Division had arrived.
The last of the 40th Brigade did not land until the 31st, and
the division took over the trenches on the extreme left of the

THE DARDANELLES 179
Une, stretching from Fusiher Bluff for about one-fourth of the
length of the front south-eastwards, reheving the 42nd Divi
sion, which thereupon departed from the Peninsula. The
29th Division was on the right of the 13th, the 52nd Division
held the trenches beyond that, and the Royal Naval Division
filled in the extreme right. The 52nd Division was under
command of Major-General Hon. H. A. Lawrence, who had
been in Maude's year at the Staff College ; but he was placed
especially in charge of the embarkation organisation — a
circumstance which necessarily brought them into close
contact. Maude makes special reference in his diary to how
on one or two evenings he enjoyed discussing military matters
in general vrith a friend whom he had been much associated
with in Camberley days, after the points in connection vrith
the operations they were actually engaged in at the moment
had been settled.
Simultaneously with their taking up their position, Maude's
infantry started work on the masses of stores which had if pos
sible to be got down to W and V Beaches before the troops left,
to be embarked by night. He was distressed at the amount of
material that remained to be evacuated, as it was clear that
quantities of valuable goods could not possibly be got away
and would have to be destroyed, and that the operation
could not consequently be conducted so cleanly as had been
the case at Suvla. He refers to the point daily in his diaries
between the 30th of December and the final evacuation ; it
was not merely the waste of commodities and the loss to the
pubhc that he lamented, but also the fact that abandonment
of armament, stores and animals would be tantamount to a
defeat of the withdravring force in the enemy's eyes, no matter
how successfully the actual troops themselves were to get
away. ' Each walk that I take up to the trenches makes me feel some
what sad,' he wrote privately to General Daries on the 3rd of
January. ' My fellows have been working Uke Blacks to try and
get things away, but the whole place is so littered with stuff that it
is difficult to collect it and bring it down to places where it can be
put on carts and wagons. We are doing our level best to carry
out your instructions to clear the area, and yesterday, for instance,
we evacuated over thirty tons weight ; but this seems only a drop
in the ocean, and I am afraid that the enemy wiU get a considerable
amount of booty when we withdraw. StiU, I am teUing them to

180 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
keep pegging along, and I impressed this point particularly on
brigadiers and commanding officers when I saw them up in the
trenches this afternoon, although it seems scarcely necessary to
do so as they are as keen about clearing things as I am myself.'
The night of the 8th-9th had been provisionally fixed for
the final withdrawal, and all preliminary work was being carried
out on the assumption that impedimenta must be got off before
the 7th. This preliminary work was, however, a good deal
interfered vrith by rough weather at night, although as the
vrind was always from the north-east the piers at W and V
Beaches, on which much depended, did not suffer. It was
evident that the Turks had gained accessions in strength as
regards guns and shell, for their bombardments at times were
vigorous, although they were mainly confined to the daytime,
when interference vrith work on the beaches was of less con
sequence than at night. The two right divisions were to
effect their vrithdrawal at V beach and the 29th Division at
W Beach. Up till the Sth of January the design had been
that a large part of the 13th Division should use Gully Beach,
the rest embarking at W Beach ; but the plan was then
modified ovring to the exposure of Gully Beach to the weather,
and because it had been decided that a larger force of infantry
and artillery was to be retained for the last night of all than
had previously been contemplated. The scheme for the
13th Division that was in the end elaborated was that (except
for the final detachments to quit the trenches on the last night
which were to be got away from Gully Beach) the whole of it
should be embarked at W Beach.
The weather was fine and calm on the morning of the 7th,
and a decision was therefore arrived at to carry out the final
evacuation on the night of the Sth-9th. Soon after Maude had
been made aware of this, the enemy started a violent bombard
ment of the general front, and especially of his sector, a cannon
ade which in the afternoon gave place to a formal infantry
attack. As this was the first occasion on wliich the 13th
Division had been tested in serious combat since he assumed
command, the account of the affair which is entered in his
diary may appropriately be quoted :
At 11.30 A.M. Turks began shelhng heavily all along the front
aiid continued tiU 5 p.m. Those who have been at HeUes the whole
time say that it was the heaviest shelling that they have seen here.

THE DARDANELLES 181
From 3 to 4 the shelhng was intense, and at 3.45 the Turks opened
heavy rifle fire. At 4 p.m. they sprung two mines near Fusiher
Bluff, and at 4.15 they attacked Fifth Avenue and Fusiher Bluff
resolutely. The attack was handsomely repulsed by the North
Staffords, who however lost Walker, their colonel, one of our best
commanding officers. The Turks tried to attack aU along our
front, but the officers could not get their men forward elsewhere.
Turks suffered heavily and division did splendidly, all battahons
holding well to their position in spite of the fact that in many
places their trenches were blown to pieces. Army Commander
and Corps Commander both sent congratulatory messages. In
spite of the fighting, brigades did weU in getting their stuff away,
including the packs which we are sending to Mudros to-night.
There is reason to beheve that this abortive offensive ad
ventured by the Osmanlis was, from the point of view of the
Helles force, a decidedly fortunate occurrence. The repulse
had been unmistakable, the victory of the British at the point
where a strong effort was made to break down their resistance
had been complete, and the attacking side may well have
deduced from their disappointing experience that the trenches
confronting them were held in strong force. Marshal Liman
von Sanders, the Ottoman commander-in-chief, undoubtedly
suspected that vrithdrawal was in progress — ^that such a
development was probable must indeed have been obvious to
the enemy, and the hostile aviators had very likely established
the fact that the dumps of stores in the Helles area were dim
inishing in bulk and that animals were disappearing. The
Turkish staff could not, on the other hand, tell on what date
the final evacuation would take place. When on the after
noon of the 7th, the vigorous bombardment of several hours'
duration merged into an infantry attack which was decisively
defeated, those in authority on the enemy side would seem
to have come to the conclusion that, even supposing a com
plete withdrawal of General Davies' force to be in course of
preparation, the concluding act of the drama was not actually
imminent. The attitude maintained by the Osmanhs during
the following thirty-six hours at all events suggested some
such appreciation of the situation on the part of Liman von
Sanders, for there was an almost complete cessation of shell
fire from the Turkish batteries, and the Ottoman infantry
remained noticeably quiet in their hnes during what were
perhaps the most critical hours of the Dardanelles Campaign.

182 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
The moming of the Sth of January broke stiU and fine,
auguring well for the success of the formidable undertaking
that was to commence at sundown. The plan decided upon
was analogous to that which had been adopted with such strik
ing success at Suvla and Anzac. Successive withdrawals
were to take place during the early hours after darkness set
in, and the guns, other than those which it had been decided to
abandon and destroy, were to be got away as soon as possible ;
the depleted detachments which were to hold the front
trenches to the very last were then all to withdraw simul
taneously along the whole front at 12.15 a.m. So as to ac
custom the enemy to a silent period after that hour, it had been
made the practice for several nights previously to cease all
activity on the part of infantry patrols and of bombing
operations at 11.30 p.m. ; the Turks had fallen in with this
arrangement and had shown scarcely any enterprise after
midnight during the foregoing week. When the time came,
their advanced troops entirely failed to notice that the trenches
close in front of them had been vacated. For conveying the
embarking troops to the transports and warships which were
to take them on to Imbros and Mudros, dependence was being
placed almost entirely upon the special lighters, provided vrith
motor power, which had been extensively used since August,
They were capable of carrying 500 men as a full load,
although about 400 was more usual on this occasion. When it
came to be a question of shipping men and guns from impro
vised jetties in a rising sea, they proved extremely serviceable ;
they had been nicknamed ' beetles ' by the troops, owing to
the derricks that supported their gang-boards resembhng
antennae. A small pier had been constructed at Gully Beach,
the point from which the last detachments of the 13th Division
to hold the front line trenches were to put off ; the strength of
these last detachments, together with divisional headquarters
and some minor details, came to 645 of all ranks. Maude
in his diary describes the vrithdrawal of his division as
follows :
Parties began assembling at Gully Beach, which I fixed as divi
sional headquarters, at 5 p.m., so as to send detachments of 100,
200 and 400 complete, forward to their forming-up place at W
Beach, as 400 was a Ughter-load. All were well up to time and
numbers very accurate, which was very creditable considering

THE DARDANELLES 183
yesterday's fighting and the immense amount of work which
brigades have had to do cleaning up, getting orders out, etc. Indeed
the embarkation people told me afterwards that this was the best
division of the lot in getting away, and we scored consequently as
we got a ship practically to ourselves for a very large part of the
division. As night began to fall, the vrind, which was in the south,
began to freshen, and it looked as though there might be difficul
ties as regards embarkation. However all went well up to the
departure of the last party from W Beach, and all were embarked
at 11 P.M.
By 1.15 A.M. aU the last detachments from the trenches, consist
ing of 555 all ranks, including R.E. for closing gaps, control officers
from control stations, etc., were all in at Gully Beach, and then
the fun began.
First, the hghters, of which there were to be two, were half an
hour late. Secondly, one, in coming alongside the pier, ran aground
and had to be abandoned. Thirdly, the two steamers provided
for myself and staff were late. I decided to put as many as possible
on the one lighter, and we got about 500 on, leaving stiU 135 to
embark, including headquarters, R.E., R.A.M.C, etc. Of these
I had two pickets, consisting of one offlcer and 10 other ranks,
out covering the beach. The embarkation on the fighter was very
slow, and just as it was completed at 2.30 the Naval Transport
Officer came to me and said that no further hghters were coming,
that the sea was getting up, that the steamers could not take myself
and my staff off, and that the rest of the troops and my divisional
headquarters must go to W Beach to embark.
Gully Beach was a good two miles from W Beach, time was
passing, vrith the wind rising it was obvious that getting off
might prove awkward enough, and the handful of men under
Maude were by this time entirely isolated, seeing that the last
detachments from the trenches of the other three divisions
had now been making direct for W and V Beaches for two
hours, and that they had, in fact, arrived at their destination.
There was moreover an uncomfortable prospect of finding the
gaps through the lines, and also those through the retrench
ment covering W Beach, closed up by those responsible for
this service, because this belated move of a party from Gully
Beach had formed no part of the programme issued to all
concerned. ' I reaUsed that it might be a rush against time,' Maude wrote to
Davies next day, ' for I did not know how soon W Beach would be
cleared of the last lighter and it was then after 2.30 a.m., so I puUed
in my pickets covering the beach and sent off the last remaining
135 men with 2 staff officers, hot foot, for W Beach. This left

184 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Hildyard, the A.D.M.S. and myself and 12 men of my headquarters
to dispose of. We had all the kit of headquarters with us, for
which we had provided two steamboats, but as the horses had been
shot and the vehicles destroyed, it was somewhat of a problem to
get it along. Luckily however the A.D.M.S. remembered that
there were three or four vehicle-stretchers lying handy, and these
we got and loaded up. We could not go by the beach route as it
was too heavy going, so we started up hill on to the plateau, and very
hard work it was. We all puffed and blew like grampuses, especially
as we were all warmly clad. I then sent Hildyard by the beach
route to try and notify W Beach that we were going, and the
A.D.M.Sj. and I and party pursued our weary way across the top.
AU went well until we came to the inner defences (except for an
occasional faU in the dark), but, once there, we found that the
garrison had been withdrawn and had embarked, and that the wire
had been hermetically closed. One of the party however produced
some wire cutters, rather hke a pair of nail scissors, and after much
hacking we managed to carve an opening. The Turks now began
to pitch some sheU about us which accelerated our movements a
bit, and then we were again brought up by the Inner Defence
trenches. As we could not get the stretchers over the ditch we had
to abandon them and the very heavy stuff, and the men carried as
much as they could over. Finally we reached W Beach, where
Hildyard had obtained the last " beetle," in which we made our
way at a slow rate and through heavy sea to Imbros, taking four
and a half hours over the journey.
Before we left the shore the bonfires had begun to blaze and the
explosives were going off. It was a fine display of fireworks and
we had a splendid view of them. Altogether it was an experience
that I would not have missed for anything.' ^
There had been considerable difficulty in carrying out the
embarkations at W and V Beaches after midnight, especially
at the former, and the heavy swell that was setting in had
' The following lines were jotted down on the leaf of a notebook by one of
the beach staff at W Beach in the small hours of the morning on the 9th of
January, purporting to have been written by General Lawrence :
' Come into the lighter, Maude,
For the fuze has long been lit ;
Quick iuto the lighter, Maude,
And never mind your kit.
I 've waited here an hour or more
The tidings that your march is o'er ;
The sea runs high ; but what care I !
It 's better to be sick than blown sky high.
So jump into the lighter, Maude,
The allotted time is flown ;
Come into the lighter, Maude,
I 'm off on the launch alone.
I 'm off on the launch alone.'

THE DARDANELLES 185
caused the naval staff considerable anxiety. This final
evacuation of the Peninsula was carried out under much less
favourable weather conditions than those which had attended
the withdrawals from Suvla and Anzac three weeks before. In
deed, had the vrind got up a very few hours earlier, the sea
might have been running so high that the completion of the
embarkation would have been impossible, that the piers would
have carried away before the whole of the troops had reached
the shore, and that a decidedly critical situation might have
been created, although carefully prepared positions protecting
the two beaches existed, which had been designed to meet
this very contingency.
The destruction of guns, animals, vehicles, ammunition,
ordnance stores, and supphes of all kinds went to Maude's
heart. He deplored the waste of so much valuable material,
and he grudged to the enemy such satisfaction as the Turks
might derive from it. But there were larger accumulations
of impedimenta in the Helles area than had been the case at
Suvla and Anzac, the personnel available for the fatigue parties
needed to dispose of what remained to embark was numeri
cally considerably less in proportion to the work to be per
formed than had been the case in the northem zones, and,
when the Home Government at last decided that the Peninsula
was entirely to be evacuated, the mihtary situation impera
tively demanded as rapid a withdrawal as possible in view of
a likely complete break-up of the weather. The arrangements
for firing the dumps of stores and ammunition were on a most
elaborate scale ; they proved highly successful and gave rise
to the fireworks spoken of in the letter quoted above. The
spectacle of those conflagrations which rang the curtain down
upon the Dardanelles Campaign apprised the Ottoman forces
on the high ground overlooking the HeUes area that their
antagonists had slipped away from in front of them, unob
served, for a second time. Then, too late, they opened a
harmless artiUery flre on the beaches when the last of the
troops to quit the shore were already afloat and under way
for Imbros.
Maude only remained a few hours at that island, getting a
passage on to Mudros in H.M.S. Chatham that same afternoon.
There he found most of his division assembled. They re
mained until the ISth and then began embarking for Egypt,

186 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
which was the destination for the time being of what had been
the DardaneUes Army.
Arriving at the theatre of operations comparatively late in
the day, and on a date by which serious fighting was almost at
an end in the Peninsula, the commander of the 13th Division
had nevertheless been a particularly prominent flgure during
the four and a half months that were to elapse before the effort
to conquer the Straits was finally abandoned. General Sir
W. Birdwood, who had played so great a part in the campaign
from the outset, writes as follows of Maude's services :
(Jeneral Shaw came to me in command of the 13th Dirision,
which Sir Ian Hamilton posted to my Australian and New Zealand
Corps soon after the dirision arrived in the Galhpoli Peninsula.
To my great regret, Shaw was invahded after a short time on
the Peninsula, but I heartily welcomed Maude as a successor,
feehng that he was just the man we wanted. He indeed proved
himself to be so during his tenure of command, giving as he did a
feehng of complete confidence to aU who were serving under him.
I am sorry to say that the division did not remain very long with
my Anzac Corps, for it was shortly transferred to Byng's Oth
Corps at Suvla. Later on, however, on my succeeding Sir Ian in
command of the Dardanelles Army, Maude again came under me,
and I had an opportunity of seeing his wonderfully good work
with the dirision at Suvla.
Before the evacuation of Cape Helles, it was found necessary
to reheve a very exhausted division there. As the troops who had
formed the Suvla garrison, which had been vrithdrawn, were avail
able, I decided that the best division to send to reinforce Cape HeUes
was that under Maude, who consequently commanded his dirision
at the evacuation of both Suvla Bay and Cape Helles. He again
showed exactly that same courage, determination and cheerfulness
which he had displayed at Suvla, and he conducted the withdrawal
of his division vrith similar success. I remember so well meeting
him on the last day on the Peninsula, when I went round to see
something of the troops immediately before the vrithdrawal. I
was again much impressed by his soldierly spirit at a time of natural
anxiety, which gave aU complete confidence. He came to see me
next day full of satisfaction and thankfulness at the success of the
evacuation and of pride in his division.
I am sorry to say that was about the last that I saw of him, ex
cept just as he passed through Egypt on his way to Mesopotamia.
It was indeed largely due to Maude's own merits as a com
mander that he enjoyed the good fortune of participating in
both those final events which by their signal success to some
extent compensated for the disappointments that had been

THE DARDANELLES 187
sustained in eight months of indeterminate warfare on the
Galhpoli Peninsula. He had won the fuU confidence of those
over him as well as of those under him, and so it came about
that he and his division were called upon to undertake the
anxious and difficult operation of effecting a vrithdrawal by
sea in face of the enemy tvrice over.
The months which he spent on the shores of the Mgean pro
vided him vrith experiences very different from those which he
had undergone at the head of the 14th Brigade in Flanders. At
Suvla his attention had been devoted rather to questions of
administration and to problems of organisation than to the
conduct of actual combat. The conditions of the case had
obliged him to interest himself more especially vrith sanitation
and supply and not vrith leadership in action. Only at the
very last, on the day before the remnants of the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force finally disappeared from Turkish soil,
was the division over which he had watched so vigilantly and
of which he had come to be so justly proud, called upon to
engage in battle under his orders. Still, if his experiences
since quitting Western Europe had been in a sense disappoint
ing to a fighter such as he was by temperament, the last weeks
provided him vrith ample excitement and furnished him with
a splendid opportunity for displaying at once that genius for
methodical organisation and that strategical and tactical
intuition which, in concert, were a year later completely to
transform the military situation on the banks of the Tigris.
' So long as wars last,' was the dictum of a German writer when
news of the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac came to hand, ' the
British vrithdrawal from the Ari Bumu and Anafarta fronts will
stand before the eyes of all strategists of retreat as a masterpiece
for which there has been no precedent.'
The abandonment of Helles was in some respects an even
more signal operation of war. Maude and the greater part of
his division were engaged in both those critical undertakings ;
and they participated in the later one under conditions of
special difflculty. They only appeared on the new scene of
action as instructions came to leave it. Nor, amid all the
innumerable stirring events which marked the progress of the
great World War, did many incidents more dramatic take
place than that of a group comprising a divisional general, his
medical officer, and ten rank and file — ^the tail end of an army

188 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
which a few days before had mustered many thousands of
men — ^trundling hand-carts across country, through hnes of
entrenchments and of vrire entanglement at dead of night and
in a rising storm, making for a surf-beaten beach two miles
away where their arrival was impatiently awaited by sailors
only too well aware that not a moment ought to be lost in
sheering off and getting to sea.
For his services in the Dardanelles Campaign, Maude was
mentioned in despatches both by Sir I. Hamilton and by
Sir C. Monro. He was also about this time nominated a
Commander of the Legion of Honour by the French
Government.

CHAPTER IX
THE MOVE FROM EGYPT TO THE FRONT IN
MESOPOTAMIA
Divisional headquarters of the 13th Division embarked on
board the s.s. Tunisian at Mudros on the 18th of January and
sailed next morning, proceeding in the first place to Alexandria,
where the ship arrived on the 21st. There Maude learnt that
his division was to assemble at Port Said, and he and his
staff continued the voyage thither that night, reaching their
destination next moming. It had been arranged that the
division should form part of the 15th Corps under command
of Lieut.-General H. S. (now Lord) Home, the corps being
completed by the 11th and 31st Divisions.
The ships bringing the 13th Division from Mudros kept
arriving during the next three or four days, and its infantry
gradually took over the defences of the Canal at and near
Port Said. Maude at once busied himself vrith training
questions and selecting musketry ranges, and also vrith the
problems of re-equipment. He was joined by most of the
artillery properly belonging to his command, which had been
in Egypt for some months past, and he was glad at last to have
a more or less complete division under his orders. The 34th
Brigade was under command of Brig.-General J. W. O'Dowda,
the 39th under Brig.-General J. de S. Cayley, and the 40th
under Brig.-General A. C. Levrin, all of whom retained their
positions during the next six months. Several of his staff,
including Lieut.-Colonel Hildyard, went home on leave on
the 26th, and a few days later he was joined by two fresh
aides-de-camp. Lieutenant F. P. Musgrave and Captain G. A.
Ogilvie-Forbes : Lord Hartington had been invalided from
Suvla in December and Captain Wormald was going home.
Captain Ogilvie-Forbes gives a pleasant account of Maude's
kindness and consideration on his first taking up his appoint
ment :
I had just arrived at Port Said and I at once made my way to
the Casino Palace Hotel, which was the headquarters of the 13th
189

190 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Division, early in the moming. Being quite a stranger and know
ing nobody, I felt somewhat nervous at the prospect of taking up
duties as A.D.C. in absolutely novel and possibly somewhat
critical surroundings. I waited in the haU and after a short time
he came dovsTistairs. I watched his tall figure descending the long
ffight, and his smile of welcome banished all misgivings as he
approached me. The ice was broken, and I was perfectly happy
long before he spoke to me.
We went out into the garden and he told me all about the im
pending departure to Mesopotamia, inquired after my regiment
and dirision, and told me to spend the next few days in getting
my kit as he would not want me immediately. So I had ample
time to settie down and to get my bearings.
Even before the Dardanelles Army had been safely with
drawn fron its somewhat precarious position in the Gallipoh
Peninsula, an awkward situation had arisen in a theatre of
war situated even further to the east. General Tovraishend
had in November made his memorable advance up the Tigris
from above Kut, which had been in British possession for
some weeks past, with the object of occupying Baghdad.
The story is a familiar one. After defeating the Turks at
Ctesiphon, some thirty miles short of the city, he had been
obhged to faU back in face of greatly superior forces and had
only got back to Kut, where large accumulations of stores
existed, after a most trying retreat, harassed on the way by
formidable Ottoman contingents as well as by swarms of
marauding Arabs. It had been agreed that he should hold the
place, which was of strategical importance quite apart from
the supplies that were collected there, and should send away
his mounted men. On the 7th of December he had been
invested by the enemy. The question of his relief had at once
arisen, and early in January an advance had been made up
the Tigris with this in view ; but after some preliminary
success the relieving army had been brought up short, and a
second attempt made on the 21st of January met with a
decided repulse. It speedily became apparent that if Kut
was to be saved fresh troops must be hurried to this theatre
of war, seeing that those on the spot had already been highly
tried and had suffered heavy losses — ^they were the same
Indian divisions as Maude had met in France in October and
November 1914, where they had undergone severe fighting
before they were transferred to Mesopotamia. The Home

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 191

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MESOPOTAMIA
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SCALE OF UILES
100 200 300

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LOWER MESOPOTAMIA

SCALE OF MILES

192 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Government therefore decided to move a British division
from Egypt to this scene of action, and the 13th Division had
hardly settled dovra near Port Said when, on the 30th of
January, General Home informed Maude that he would
shortly be proceeding to Mesopotamia, his command having
been selected for this new undertalring by the War Office.
Maude welcomed the news, although he fully reaUsed that
at the moment his troops were still very short of equipment,
and that it would be extremely difficult to get them properly
fitted out at short notice. Several of his units were further
more fax below war establishment, and the prospects of re
ceiving adequate drafts to fill up gaps were none too rosy.
' We are still busy re-fitting and re-equipping,' he wrote home on
the 31st, ' and are making somewhat slow progress, as there is a
great shortage of things. People don't seem to realise that, if
you leave things behind and burn them, you cannot expect to have
them made good automatically at the other end. This waste that
has been so conspicuous throughout, and the shortage of trained
men, are the two factors which are delaying progress in the war
more than anything else. Secret. — I was told yesterday to hold
the division in readiness to go to Mesopotamia within the next
two or three weeks, so I expect we shall be off almost as soon as
we can be fitted out, as we shall want a lot of fresh clothes for such
a tropical place. It will be an interesting experience, and I hope
that we shall have more scope for movement there ; at all events
we ought not to get tied up in trench warfare. I suppose that we
mean to make a good push there, though I have not heard of any one
going in addition to this division.'
The division was inspected by Lieut.-General Sir A.
Murray, commanding the troops in Egypt, on the 3rd of
February, formed up on the beach, the ' Parade State ' show
ing 354 officers, 9953 other ranks and 18 guns ; the difference
between the strength of different battalions was very marked,
as the strongest mustered 1040, while the weakest only mustered
325. Maude made the comment in his diary that ' men looked
splendid, I thought, though there were necessarily many
deficiencies owing to evacuations.' ' He must have had a
strenuous time getting the division into shape after the GalU
poU campaign,' Sir A. Murray vmtes ; ' I remember his telhng
me that of the 13th Division which left England, very few
were serving when I inspected them ; so quickly does per
sonnel change in war.'

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 193
New equipment came to hand slowly at first ; but horses and
mules poured in on the division faster than the picketing gear
arrived, and Maude noted in his diary that they sometimes
had from 100 to 200 animals loose at a time in Port Said.
In view of the situation on the Tigris, the War Office were
pressing General Murray to get the division oft, and on the
Oth Maude was somewhat taken aback on its being proposed
that his troops should begin embarking that night ; but on
his making representations he managed to obtain a few days'
grace, during which much was accomplished. The absence of
some of the staff on leave at home caused a certain amount of
inconvenience, but the officers temporarily acting worked vrith
a vrill and Maude was fully satisfied. Clothing, which had
been very short, was satisfactorily made up, the resources of
the Ordnance Department in Egypt being for the moment
devoted practically entirely to the fitting out of the division.
The 11th Division began taking over the canal defences about
Port Said from the 13th on the 10th of February, and Maude
decided to start oft himself in the first ship to leave on the
moming of the 13th ; in his diary he expressed himself as
well pleased with the progress of the equipment work during
the last day or two. He left Port Said late at night on the
12th vrith the divisional staff, arriving next morning at Suez,
where he was to embark. He went on board the s.s. Kalaya,
and his 3Sth Brigade began embarking during the day. The
Kalaya sailed early on the 14th.
' This will be quite a new experience for us aU, and we are looking
forward to our new Ufe immensely,' Maude wrote in a farewell
letter to Sir A. Murray on the 12th. ' At aU events it ought to
mean fair and square fighting in the open, and manoeuvring at
which we shaU beat the Turks.
Our re-fitting and re-equipping has gone weU, though we stiU
have a good many deficiencies. We ought to be more or less
complete before the whole division starts, if things go on as they
are doing now.'
He and his staff had gone through a particularly busy time
during the previous fortnight, hard at work in dealing vrith
innumerable administrative problems connected vrith fitting
out the troops for the new theatre of operations, and he was
very appreciative of the services performed by his immediate
N

194 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
entourage. Lieut.-Colonel Brownrigg writes as follows of
those few days of exceptional stress :
Maude's patience and consideration for his staff during those
strenuous days of re-forming and re-equipping at Port Said in
February 1916 vriU never be forgotten by me. He saw at once
that the impossible had to be done, and that quickly. He saw
there was no time for centralisation of details in his own hands.
So he decentrahsed in a way that he had never done before (though
the daily conferences continued), and it was a source of pride to
several of his staff six weeks later at Sheikh Saad to get one of
those ' pats on the back ' which he was such a past master in
giving, just at the right moment, straight from his heart and devoid
of aU fulsomeness and fiattery.
The voyage proved uneventful. Maude spent much of his
time in studying such limited information as to Mesopotamia
as the authorities in Egypt had been in a position to place at
his disposal ; he mentions in his diary that he each moming
ran about a mile round the deck and did physical exercises.
He was not fully acquainted with the situation in the theatre
of war to which he was proceeding, and he would not seem to
have been aware of the somewhat critical conditions in respect
to Kut, although he fully realised that his division had hard
fighting in front of it. ' I do hope that we shall carry out a
business-like campaign,' he wrote ; ' a definite objective, a
vigorous policy, and that we shall have adequate means in the
way of munitions.' News came to hand by wireless while they
were crossing the Arabian Sea that the Russians were pushing
down through Persia to co-operate vrith the British forces
which were endeavouring to reach Townshend, encouraging
tidings which Maude communicated to the troops on board.
The Kalaya arrived oft the bar of the Shatt-el-Arab on the
25th ; but, as there was some misunderstanding about orders
to proceed, she did not ultimately fetch up oft Basrah until the
morning of the 27th, when Maude at once proceeded ashore
and reported himself to the commander-in-chief. Sir Percy
Lake. He then learnt the state of affairs in so far as it was
known at Army Headquarters.
It vriU be convenient at this point to discuss briefly the
nature of the problem with which the Anglo-Indian forces
were confronted in Mesopotamia at this juncture, and which
for the moment centred on Kut and its relief ; the situation

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 195

\.^^ mA-4'ti'^ n^ s/pR'^ /Kr.*."^

5C^f VF YAsaS

KUT
DECEMBER 1916
TO
FEBRUARY 1917

196 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
is illustrated by the maps ' Lower Mesopotomia ' on p. 191, and
' Turkish Positions, April 1916,' on p. 195.
The existence of substantial magazines of food supplies and
of warUke stores, as also its site at the point where the Shat'i-
el-Hai issues out of the Tigris, had afforded strong arguments
for chnging on to Kut. On the other hand, once the place had
been ringed in by the Turks, that these had created their Unes
of circumvallation against attack from outside, and that they
had occupied and had fortified positions further out which any
relieving force would have to capture before it could hope
to succour Townshend, geographical and topographical con
ditions greatly favoured them. The relieving force was on
the Tigris, and for it to effect the relief it was almost imperative
that it should secure possession of the channel of the great
waterway right up to the beleaguered city, because the river
afforded the only available means of transport on any com
prehensive scale. Any advance without constant use of the
river meant almost insuperable difficulties in connection with
supply, ahke for the relieving force itself and for the beleaguered
garrison after it had been relieved.
It vrill be noticed on the sketch map on p. 195 that the ex
tensive Suwaikieh marshes approach to vrithin a mile or two
of the Tigris along a stretch of some miles of the river's course
at a spot twenty-five miles or so below Kut. The consequence
of the existence of this topographical feature was that nature
had on the left bank of the river created a mihtary defile which
could not be turned on that bank — a deffie which was to prove
in some respects the main stumbhng block in the way of the
reheving army. As a matter of fact, the Turks had, after
investing Townshend, moved down the river as far as Sheikh
Saad. But in the January fighting they had been driven back
from that point, and had again been ejected from a fresh
position which they had taken up at the Wadi, although these
successes had cost the Anglo-Indian forces nearly 6000 casual
ties. On the other hand, when an attempt was made to force
the position which they had then taken up at Hannah, at the
eastern end of the defile above-mentioned, the attack had
failed vrith a loss of nearly 3000 men. When Maude reached
Basrah, the reheving army was for the most part assembled
about the Wadi on the left bank of the Tigris. The enemy was
holding strong lines at Hannah, had prepared another fortified

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 197
position further back vrithin the defile at Felahieh, and had
moreover fortified a third position stiU furtherback at Sannaiyat
— all three positions situated on the left bank of the river. They
also had works on the right bank approximately abreast of
Sannaiyat, and they were holding a long entrenched line ex
tending southwards from the Tigris near Es Sinn and curling
back south-westwards in the direction of the Shatt-el-Hai ;
its strongest point was the Dujaila Redoubt. These works
barred the way for a direct advance from about Sheikh Saad
on Kut. The Tigris, it should be mentioned, is apt to rise in
March ovring to the melting of the snows, and, although this
assists navigation from the point of view of depth, the strong
current impedes it from the point of view of speed. Moreover,
the river is wont to overflow its banks and to flood the country,
adding greatly to the difficulties of military operations. The
weather in March and April is also likely to be very unsettled,
rain storms usually transforming the flat alluvial plain into a
morass in many places and rendering movement difficult at
all points.
The War Office had taken over the general direction of the
operations from the Indian Government in the middle of
February, but the Mesopotamian Field Force — Force D as it
was called — continued to be supplied almost entirely under
arrangements made by Simla. The army under General Lake
consisted, in the flrst place, of the Oth Indian Division with
another infantry brigade, which were shut up in Kut. The
relieving force, or Tigris Army Corps, which was under General
Aylmer, was composed mainly of the 3rd (Lahore) and 7th
(Meerut) Divisions, which had been employed on the Western
Front from the late autumn of 1914, where Maude when com
manding the 14th Brigade had been associated vrith them in
November, until they had arrived in Mesopotamia during
December 1915 and January 1916.^ But there were also
certain other infantry units included in the army, as well as a
force of cavalry. General Aylmer was very badly off for
artillery, having practically only horse and fleld guns, and none
too many of those ; he was very short of field hovritzers and
he had no guns or hovritzers of heavier calibre — a serious
' While on the Western Front these divisions had been generally
designated by their territorial titles, as there were also 3rd and 7th Divisions
in the British Expeditionary Force ; but in Mesopotamia the numbers (which
are much more convenient on service) were always employed.

198 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
matter when endeavouring to force a way through successions
of fortified Unes held by so stubborn an enemy as the Turkish
infantry soldier. The Tigris Army Corps moreover was ill
fitted out in respect to aircraft, and it entirely lacked certain
necessary warlike stores with which the British troops operat
ing in Europe had been equipped since a very early date in the
war. The troops had suffered considerably in the January
fighting and they were far short of establishment, especiaUy the
British infantry included in the force. River transport was
very deficient ; and although since General Lake's arrival in
January the question of improving Basrah as a maritime base
was being taken in hand, it still lacked most of the con
veniences which a commander of Maude's experience and
foresight naturally expected to find, aware as he was that
lower Mesopotamia had now been a theatre of war for more
than fifteen months.
' Apparently Tovrashend is closely invested and is eating horse
fiesh,' he wrote in his diary on the 27th, after two interriews with
the commander-in-chief. ' He has suppUes to last till the 15th of
April. Great difficulty of the campaign is that everything depends
upon water transport, and steamers are quite inadequate to deal
with the question. . . . Soon the Tigris and the Euphrates vriU
be in flood owing to the snows melting, and then the whole of both
banks of both rivers vrill be under water.'
He at once raised the question of drafts to fill the gaps that
existed in most of his units, and he also discussed the matter
of small-arms ammunition, a point which caused him a good
deal of anxiety. His infantry were armed with the ' short '
rifle taking ' Mark VII.' ammunition, whereas the rest of the
infantry in Force D were armed with the other rifle taking
' Mark VL' ammunition — as had been Indian troops in France,
in the Galhpoh Peninsula, and in Egypt. On this point he
found himself at variance with Army Headquarters, where
the view was entertained that having two sorts of ammuni
tion in the field would cause confusion. Maude pointed out
that it had not caused confusion in other theatres, and that if
he used the wrong ammunition the musketry of his infantry
(to which he attached great importance, remembering what an
asset it had proved in France a year and a half before) would
for aU practical purposes be Uttle better than unaimed fire.
The point was however decided against him, although no

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 199
objection was raised to his using up the Mark VII. ammunition
that he had brought vrith him, if it got up the river. The
division had four miUion rounds of this — Maude's adminis
trative staff had a way of getting things done — the rounds
reached the front, and his infantry never used any other
ammunition than Mark VII.
During the next few days the ships bringing his troops from
Egypt kept arriving daily, and General Lake arranged to
send the 38th Brigade, the first to arrive, up the Tigris by
steamer, to be followed by divisional headquarters and the
40th Brigade ; the artillery were to march ; in the meantime
the division encamped at Basrah as it disembarked. Maude
was a strict disciphnarian ; but it is interesting to note in his
diary for the 3rd of March that, in the case of two young
officers tried by field general court-martial for unseemly
conduct and sentenced to be severely reprimanded, he com
muted the sentence to a simple reprimand ' as obviously it
was only a boyish prank.' Letters sent home by officers
serving under him all testified to the high regard in which he
was held in the 13th Division. ' Our divisional general is a
great fellow,' one wrote, ' and very sound. We all have the
utmost faith in him.' He had not been favourably impressed
with Indian staff methods during the time that he had been
alongside of, and attached to, the Indian Army Corps in France,
and he found much to criticise in his diary now that his divi
sion was forming part of an army organised and administered
on Indian lines. But he was greatly interested in the en
tirely new conditions under which he found himself and in the
army which he had joined, and in accordance vrith his usual
practice he worked out more than one ' appreciation ' of the
situation on the Tigris, as he understood it, before proceeding
to the front. ' Interesting as my experiences were in France
during the first year of the war,' he wrote to Sir H. Mackinnon
at the beginning of March, ' they have been stiU more in
teresting during the last six months, and I would not have
missed a day of them for anything.'
The 38th Brigade began moving up river on the 4th, and
Maude himself started on the 10th with his divisional head
quarters, although some of the staff remained behind to super
intend the moving up of later echelons. He always preferred
in case of a move of this kind, where his troops in the nature

200 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
of tilings were being transferred to their new position in drib
lets, to be amongst the first to arrive in the new locality. He
had generally followed that course in the case of the minor
changes of position of his brigade in France, he had done the
same when his division was suddenly sent from the .^gean
islands to Helles and when afterwards it went to Egypt, and
he had embarked in the first of the vessels conveying his
command from the Suez Canal to Mesopotamia. He could
not understand why his brigadiers in their moves sometimes
preferred to adopt the opposite course, and waited to see
everything off ftom. the point of departure before proceeding
themselves. Lord Wolseley in the Nile Expedition adopted
the same plan as that favoured by Maude, proceeding prac-i
tically in advance of his army first to Dongola and later to
Korti ; but his action was criticised in some quarters. It is
one of those points that admit of difference of opinion.
Two days before Maude quitted Basrah, General Aylmer
had after six weeks' pause undertaken an offensive against
the Turkish position about the Dujaila Redoubt, which, had
all gone well, might have achieved a success of immense im
portance. Previous attacks had taken place on the left bank
of the Tigris. On this occasion the commander of the Tigris
Army Corps endeavoured to break the enemy's front on the
right bank, and he proposed to effect his purpose by surprise.
A night march was carried out by practicaUy the whole force
from the right bank near the Wadi, vrith the idea of assaulting
the hostile entrenchments at dawn. Even on paper there was
httle margin left in the matter of time for reaching the
objective during the dark hours, and, as it tumed out, the
march had not been completed by the whole of the force at
daybreak. Whether success ought not to have been achieved
even so has been the subject of a good deal of controversy ; but
what actually occurred was that an attack was not delivered
at once vrith the troops which had arrived, that the opera
tion proved unsuccessful when the attack was dehvered, and
that the reheving army suffered a somewhat serious reverse.
Steaming up the Tigris on the 11th, Maude passed many
boat-loads of wounded coming down — casualties in this un
fortunate engagement, which, besides causing somewhat
heavy losses, was not calculated to stimulate the morale of
troops who had already experienced mortifying rebuffs. A

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 201
strong headwind checked the speed of the steamer going up
stream, so that he only arrived at corps headquarters at
the Wadi on the mormng of the 13th. He then found that
General Gorringe, previously General Aylmer' s Chief of
Staff, had assumed command at the front, and he learnt that
he ought to have stopped at Sheikh Saad, as that was the place
where his division was to assemble. Before turning down
stream he was however able to discuss matters with Gorringe,
to post himself up vrith regard to the general situation at the
front, and to hear particulars as to the unsuccessful combat
of the Sth. He found some of the 38th Brigade already in
camp at Sheikh Saad.
' Gorringe had a long talk vrith me about things,' he wrote in his
diary on the 13th, ' and told me that he meant to leave us at Sheikh
Saad tiU about the 25th, when he would use us to attack the Hannah
position on the left bank of the river, unless he was able to burst
the bimds ^ vrith shell fire and flood the Turks out. This would be
the first ste.p towards reheving Townshend and, after that, we
repeat the attempted coup of the Sth against the Sinn position.'
He was delighted to find excellent training ground about
Sheikh Saad, and he at once started to make the most of the
little time that would be available for the instruction of his
troops as they arrived at the front, in anticipation of the
effort to be made very shortly. Hearing that a good supply
of hand-grenades had arrived at the base, he pressed for the
early despatch of a class of weapon of which he had learnt the
value in France, at Suvla and at Helles, and he started grenade
training. The members of his staff who had gone home on
leave from Egypt rejoined him on the 17th. The river was
rising, and exercises were occasionally interrupted by the need
of hurrying oft large working parties to ffll gaps tom in the
bunds by the flood, which threatened the camps. Sir P. Lake
arrived at the front on the 21st to discuss matters and returned
to the base on the following day ; and by the 23rd, the 40th
and 39th Brigades, the artillery and practically the whole of
the 13th Division, had arrived at Sheikh Saad and were pre
paring for the anticipated offensive, which had been put oft
for a few days.
Maude when in the fleld was at all times most anxious to
' Although Maude had only become associated with an Anglo-Indian Army
a fortnight before, he was already picking up Anglo-Indian expressions ;
'bund' is Hindustani for 'dyke.'

202 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
receive his letters from home, and he was a good deal put out at
this juncture by the unaccountable delays in receiving his
mails. Writing on the 30th he mentioned that he had only
received one set of letters from Mardale vrithin the past two
months. But in this same letter he also refers to another
point, which attracted attention then and at a later time in
this country, which is indirectly suggested in the report of the
Mesopotamia Commission, and which is animadverted upon
very freely by Mr. Candler in The Long Road to Baghdad.
Seeing that he had already served during the war in France,
in the Galhpoh Peninsula and in Egypt, and was at a later date
to assume a paramount responsibility for the conduct of the
operations in this theatre of war, Maude's views, as bluntly
expressed on a subject of general military interest, are worthy
of note.
' What makes us all very angry however,' he wrote, ' is the rigorous
censorship that exists here, coming as we do from France and the
Dardanelles, where the censorship was reasonably strict, but not
excessively so. For instance, a short time ago we were told that
no reference to any operation in Mesopotamia was allowed. I
wrote suggesting that this must be a mistake, and that only refer
ence to present or future operations, but not to past operations,
was meant, but I have had a reply to the effect that even past
operations must not be mentioned. The War Office instructions
on the point are quite clear and include no such instructions, and
it is difficult to see what harm can be done now by saying that such
and such a unit or indiridual, for instance, did well or badly at
Ctesiphon, or even in more recent fighting, or that we have killed,
woimded or taken prisoner so many hundred Turks. However
there it is, and consequently there is little left to write about ;
in fact, I may say, nothing, for, apart from the fighting, one's daily
hfe is uneventful and the country baffles description, it is so un
interesting. Censorship is of course of inestimable value in pre
venting useful information reaching the enemy, but throughout
this war we have sadly overstepped the mark as to what is necessary
in this respect, although in England the pubUc have long since
awakened to this fact and demanded that undue secrecy should
cease. . . .
I have letters from Jack Cowans and WiUingdon ^ asking me
how things are going (amongst many others), but of course I am
precluded from answering them, and shall only be able to explain
at the end of the war the reason for my silence. It certainly seems
strange that a general officer cannot be trusted to use his discretion
as to what he says and does not say, and, even if he is silly enough
' Governor of Bombay.

MOVE FROM EGYPT TO MESOPOTAMIA 203
to say the wrong thing, the censor can still cut it out, without his
being prohibited to mention the war as it affects him.'
(The envelope containing this letter is marked ' Passed by the
censor.') The ruling, vrithout any qualification, that past operations
must not be mentioned was somewhat unfortunate, seeing
that these operations had latterly been unsuccessful and that
hospital arrangements had broken down. It is possible that,
had this restriction not been in force, the deplorable condition
of affairs in the Mesopotamian theatre of war would have been
realised both at Simla and in England at an earlier date than
it came to be, it is possible that steps to place matters on a
proper footing would have been taken sooner than they even
tually were, and it is even possible that a relieving army,
more effectively fitted out for the undertaking and stronger
in numbers, might have pushed up the Tigris and have carried
out successfuUy the task of saving Kut. As will be seen. Sir
P. Lake, who had not been long in command and who was
carrying on a system that was in force when he arrived,
relaxed the rules shortly after this.

CHAPTER X
THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT
Maude was busy during the closing days of March making all
preparations for the important operation which his division
was about to undertake, and General Gorringe had accepted
his proposals vrith regard to the method by which the attack
on the Hannah entrenchments was to be carried out. The
7th (Meerut) Division under General Younghusband, it should
be mentioned, was at this time on the left bank of the Tigris
and was holding trenches facing Hannah, while the 3rd
(Lahore) Division under General Keary was on the other side
of the river. Maude had gone all round the 7th Division's
trenches on the 23rd vrith Younghusband, and had asked that
they should be advanced nearer to the enemy's hnes, a task
which Younghusband promised to have carried out. He had
also carefully reconnoitred the enemy's position from the
right bank of the river, and he had framed his plans well in
advance. His 3Sth Brigade had moved to Wadi from Sheikh
Saad on the 20th, and by the end of the month the whole
division except the 39th Brigade and divisional headquarters
was in the forward position.
The 38th and 40th Brigades reUeved the 7th Division in
their trenches on the night of the 1st of April, and that same
night the 39th Brigade marched from Sheikh Saad to Wadi.
Maude himself, vrith his staff, went up by steamer on the 1st,
and after a consultation vrith General Gorringe at corps head
quarters, they proceeded to the trenches and settled down in
them in heavy rain.
' This rain continued aU the evening,' he wrote in his diary of that
day, ' and we were sitting soon in a bog. Got my tent pitched in
the trench and with difficulty managed to get a shovel, vrith which
I worked for one and a quarter hours, and finally drained and made
tent so habitable that I was able to take in three of my staflE.
Wretched cold and wet night lying in the mud, but rain stopped
and it vriU probably be fine and hot in the moming. Went round
204

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 205
part of the trenches on arrival and saw to many things. Cold
dinner and not very much of it. Corps operation orders for assault
issued and reached me foUovring morning.'
The weather oft and on had been very bad for some days
past ; the Tigris was already in flood, and its swollen waters
had caused much inconvenience at Sheikh Saad, bursting the
dykes and inundating portions of the camping grounds. The
attempt to force the awkward deffie on the left bank of the
river was in fact about to be undertaken under most un
favourable weather conditions, as there was always the risk
of this flat, low-lying isthmus being flooded from either flank.
Although this in a measure affected both sides, the Turks
had made preparations against such an eventuahty, while
their assailants were not in a position to do so in advance, in
the event of their not securing the different hostile positions
and of their having to dig in in front. The actual Hannah
position consisted of five lines of entrenchments, at a point
where the defile was only about 1000 yards vride. About
four miles further through the deffie, at a point where a bend
in the river narrowed it to about 1000 yards, was a second
position — ^that of Felahieh — which was not so elaborately
prepared. Two miles further on was the third position of
Sannaiyat, a strongly entrenched line at the locality where,
going westwards, the defile widens out to about 1500 yards ;
the Turks placed their main dependence upon this third set
of defences. The assault on Hannah was originally to have
taken place on the 3rd ; but it was put off till the 4th, and
eventually it was postponed tUl the morning of the Sth.
It ought to be mentioned here, because it is a fact that is
not generally known in connection vrith> the final effort of the
forces on the Tigris to reheve Kut, that Sir P. Lake was run
ning considerable risks in undertaking offensive operations
at all. Ovring to the difficulties caused by the lack of river
transport there was an alarming deficiency of supphes at
the front. The short campaign, Maude's share in which is
about to be related, was fought vrith only three days' reserve
of suppUes in the area occupied by General Gorringe's corps.
The communications were no doubt fairly safe, and they were
afforded useful protection on the left bank of the river by the
extensive Suwaikieh marshes, which would haye obliged the
enemy to make a wide detour to get at the rear of the Anglo-

206 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Indian army on that side. But could the Turks have
managed to get a gun down to below Sheikh Saad and sunk
a few of the river craft plying in the channel, the troops at
the front might have starved. The truth was that, although
experience was to prove that the relieving force was not strong
enough to effect its purpose, it was in reality too strong for
its own communications ; these were not fully equal to feeding
three divisions, with the cavalry and attendant troops.
Maude was very appreciative of the work which the 7th
Division had carried out since the 23rd of March, and he was
also quite satisfied vrith what had been effected by the artillery
in respect to cutting the vrire entanglements in front of the
Hannah lines. The plan was that the assault was to be
delivered at 4.55 a.m., without artillery preparation, the guns
only opening fire on the rear trenches as the assault on the
front ones took place. The 39th Brigade had gone into the
trenches during the night of the 2nd-3rd, and all the orders for
the attack were issued on the 3rd. Maude mentions in his
diary that on the afternoon of the 4th he went round the
trenches and talked to some of the men in most of his bat
talions. ' They were all full of fight and keenness,' he remarks.
All ranks indeed realised that much depended upon them, and
that much was expected of them. The arrival of an entirely
British Division at the front had given great encouragement
to the Tigris Army Corps, and officers and men belonging to
it could not but feel that the force which was trying to relieve
Kut was looking to them for a lead. They had come upon the
scene in Mesopotamia, bringing vrith them a high reputation
earned on the slopes of the Sari Bair mountain and during the
successful evacuations of Suvla and Helles. They knew that
their division had been specially selected from amongst
several others to proceed to a theatre of war where all was not
going weU. ' They were a cool, hard, determined-looking
breed,' Mr. Candler writes, 'well seasoned now, and bumt
to the complexion of Ghurkas.' They had confidence in
themselves, confidence in their brigadiers, unbounded con
fidence in their divisional commander, and during the next
few hours they were to show that the confidence was not
misplaced. The story of the fighting of the 5th may weU be
told in Maude's own words, as jotted down in his diary :
5.4.16. Up at 3 a.m. and had breakfast at 4.15. Attack went

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 207
in at 4.55 and was entirely successful. Took the three Unes one
after the other and pushed on at once, driring the Turks before us.
We gained ground steadily till about midday, when we came up
against the trenches at the Felahieh bend.
I had arranged for an attack at 1 p.m., preceded by an artiUery
bombardment at noon tiU 1, but corps commander came up to
see me about noon and suggested waiting tiU dark. Had already
pushed my headquarters forward tvrice and was now vrithin about
1500 yards of the firing hne. Here Forbes, one of my A.D.C.'s,
was hit.
Made all my plans for the attack in the evening and issued the
orders. Told corps commander that I feared that 7.45 would be
too late, by means of a message sent by one of his staff. Bombard
ment began at 7, by which time it was almost dark, and at 7.45
the assault went in and the position was captured. Everything
went splendidly. There were the usual lot of panic-mongers who
came in and spoke of every one having been killed, but nothing
could have been better than the work of the division and indeed
throughout the day.
Machine guns very busy, especiaUy during the last attack, and
it was a pity that the assault was made in pitch darkness, as it
does not do for half-trained troops.
Weather fine and quite hot. 7th Division came through us and
reheved us for the night, and we vrithdrew to bivouacs near the
river. The casualties suffered by the division in this day of battle
came to a total of 1796. General Gorringe commended Maude
and all under him for their prehminary success at Hannah, and
he was still more generous vrith his eulogies for what had been
accomphshed in the second phase of the struggle. ' The
highest praise is due to General Maude and his brigade com
manders and all under their command for this successful night
attack, a difficult operation at aU times, requiring dash and
good leadership as well as personal bravery among the junior
commissioned and non-commissioned ranks.' Sir P. Lake in
his despatch of the 12th of August 1916 wrote that ' the 3Sth
Infantry Brigade and the Warwicks and Worcesters of the
39th Infantry Brigade did particularly well in this assault.
High praise is due to Major-General Maude, his brigade
commanders, and all under them for this successful night
attack.' \ The capture of the Turkish first hne had in reaUty
been a simple business enough, for the enemy had offered no
stubbom resistance to the assault, to the disappointment of
the troops who had been most anxious to show their mettle.
The attack upon the Felahieh works had been a much higher

208 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
trial. There the Ottoman troops had defended themselves
stoutly, and the infantry had been obhged to fight their way
through vrithout artillery support and in the dark. Colonel
Brownrigg describes the operations as follows :
His (Maude's) operation orders for the attack on the Hannah
trenches are a model of thoroughness and are a wonderful example
of his own axiom for orders and instructions — that they should be
' clear, concise and complete.' As it happened, the Turk got wind
of the impending move against him and, having become aware of
the presence of an ' all British ' division in the trenches opposite,
had made himself scarce prior to the attack, which spent itself on
almost thin air. This was unfortunate, as the preparations were
so complete that success was assured — as far as could be humanly
seen — even if the Turks had held the Hannah position in full force.
The evening foUovring the capture of the Hannah position, how
ever, Maude decisively beat the Turk in an encounter battle ; and
in one day he, at the head of his division, had covered six miles of
the distance separating us from Kut. The troops rested on the
ground won — ^but not so Maude, who spent nearly the whole night
risiting and cheering the wounded and dying, and getting his first
ghmpse of those insufficient medical arrangements which his own
powers of organisation were so soon to put on a happier footing.
The offensive on the left bank of the Tigris which had
opened so auspiciously was not destined, however, to accom
plish its purpose. Within a few hours of the 13th Division's
triumph at Felahieh, the force endeavouring to succour Kut
met vrith a serious reverse close at hand ; for the 7th Division,
after reheving the 13th during the night of the 5th-6th,
advanced and were repulsed in their attack upon the third
Turkish set of entrenchments, that at Sannaiyat, but under
circumstances that assuredly reflected no discredit on the
troops. The position had not been reconnoitred effectually.
The assaulting columns had to find their way through the
13th Division in the dark, and they were also greatly hampered
during their advance by numerous and deep cross-trenches.
The result was that, instead of their being ready to make their
rush at dawn as had been intended, the battalions were stiU
more than a mile from their objectives when it became hght.
The ground to be traversed was flat and it was destitute of
cover. No preparation by artiUery had been arranged for,
as the attack was to have been delivered on the same lines as
Maude's on Hannah on the previous moming. In spite of the
delays, the attempt to storm the formidable hostile hnes was

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 209
actually made ; but the troops could not get vrithin some
hundreds of yards of the enemy front, and they eventually
had to fall back and to dig in. The situation was made the
more untoward by the Tigris overflovring its banks and by a
strong wind from the north causing a flood to break over
portions of the ground from the side of the Suwaikieh marsh.
The 7th Division, however, held on grimly in spite of the
reverse, and the troops even tried to get forward gradually
on the 7th. They did manage to make some progress that
night. In the combats which took place at the time of the attempted
rehef of Kut, and during most of the fighting indeed that
occurred in Mesopotamia below Baghdad, one of the principal
difficulties which commanders and subordinate leaders of
troops had to contend vrith was that, owing to the flatness of
the ground and to the total absence of trees almost every
where, there were no points to march on. There was nothing
but a dead level vrith no topographical features of any kind
to help. Particularly did this happen to be the case about
Sannaiyat where, to secure direction, the expedient was to
some extent resorted to of sticking up posts in rear of troops
as they advanced, enabhng guides to keep direction by looking
backwards from time to time. Even in broad daylight, free
use had to be made of the compass for making a move over a
comparatively short distance. Such conditions undoubtedly
favour the defending side during the progress of tactical
operations, and they accentuated the obstacles to victory vrith
which the Anglo-Indian troops were constantly confronted
during their unsuccessful conflicts of April 1916.
There had been an idea of delivering a fresh attack upon
Sannaiyat, the 7th Division advancing on the right and the
13th on the left ; but it was ultimately decided to employ only
the 13th for the projected undertaking. Gorringe regarded
this portion of the Turkish lines that had been constructed
to cover the siege of Kut as the key of the situation, and,
seeing that it coincided vrith the widening out of the deflle on
the left bank of the Tigris, its capture must inevitably have
exerted a great influence over the campaign for the relief of
General Townshend. It was arranged that Maude should make
the attempt at dawn on the 9th. The 3rd Division, which was
on the right bank of the river, had contrived to push forward

210 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
some distance on the 7th, and this enabled him to reconnoitre
the trenches about to be attacked from the flank and from their
right rear, his brigadiers accompanying him. All the plans
for the advance were drawn up with the utmost care. A bridge
was completed over the Tigris at Felahieh on the Sth, which
may have helped to mislead the Turks, inducing them to
anticipate a transfer of the bulk of the relieving force from the
left to the right bank; but ample enemy forces remained in the
Sannaiyat lines. The attack of the 13th Division took place
at dawn on the 9th, as intended, and the story of the combat
may be told in Maude's words as recorded in his diary :
Division moved as soon as it was dark. 40th Infantry Brigade
to be at 7th Division headquarters at 8.30, 38th at 9.30, and 39th
at 10.30. My disposition as follows : Troops to deploy in line
600 yards from enemy's front, 38th on right, 40th on left, 39th in
second line. . . .
Line deployed quite successfully, no noise, and everything vnth
utmost regularity. Had staff officers out to superintend and had
front hne pegged out vrith pickets. Also had a member from each
battahon to mark its left. At 4.20 a.m. line moved forward to
assault, orders being to rush the first three lines. Two leading
ranks of platoons to carry and consohdate first line, two rear ranks
of platoons to carry and consohdate second line, 39th Brigade to
carry and consohdate third Une. Line advanced steadily and
noiselessly till 4.28 when leading line was vrithin 100 yards of
position. Then Turks sent up a flare from their left which made our left
lose direction shghtly (our compass bearing was 260 degrees tme).
About half a minute after, another fiare went up from the enemy's
right, followed by heavy outburst of machine-gun and rifle fire.
Second hne lay down while first line pushed on. Consequently first
line, which did splendidly, got into Turk's trenches in a good many
places. North Lancs, King's Own, Welsh Fusihers, and Wilts
especially. But being unsupported by second hne had to give way.
Officers most gaUant in trying to raUy second Une, but were unable
to get men forward more than a few yards, and subsequently second
hne recoiled carrying in a great measure hnes in rear with it. Men
quite surprised by flares.
We held on tenaciously where we were aU day, the troops scratch
ing holes in the ground and digging themselves in as best they could,
and at night we vrithdrew into the trenches we started from in
the moming. Division required a good deal of sorting, so got
permission to send in the 39th Infantry Brigade to Felahieh.
The casualties suffered by the 13th Division in this unsuc
cessful engagement amounted to 1792 of all ranks, and the

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 211
result was a grievous disappointment to Maude and to the
whole relief force. The reverse foreshadowed the final failure
of Sir P. Lake to save Kut, and its gravity was apparent to all
concerned, foUovring as it did upon the failure of the 7th
Division to force a way through three days before. Whether
this formidable Sannaiyat position would have been reduced
had Maude's second line performed its share in the original
rush intended to vrin a way through the three hnes of entrench
ments, it is impossible to say; but the 13th Division had
undoubtedly been set a formidable task. It is clear that the
enemy was fully prepared for an assault, and the Turks had
enjoyed three clear days for perfecting their defences since
being ejected from the Felahieh line and since beating
oft the onset of the 7th Division on the morning of the Oth.
' In this attack the division was badly shattered,' writes Colonel
Brownrigg, ' and it was perhaps on this occasion, more than any
other, that General Maude proved his greatness of spirit and
bigness of heart.
Divisional H.Q. was well up behind the fire trenches from which
the attack was to be dehvered next moming, and all night General
Maude sat in a chair in a shaUow recess, wrapped up in a coat (for
it was bitterly cold) receiring news of the troops arriring in posi
tion, and now and again referring to a map. His staff lay huddled
together in a trench beside him. There was no overhead cover
for any one and there were no blankets.
Shortly before dawn the final advance was made, the attack
was deUvered — and failed. Then the big man showed himself
vrith a cheerful face and a smile for every one. He accepted the
inevitable. Kut was not yet to be reached. His staff were gloomy,
but not so Maude. As soon as the position of the troops was more
or less understood, he proceeded to go round the whole front hne,
smiUng and whistling, and cheering the wounded. He never
showed for one moment — not even to his staff — the bitter dis
appointment which must have been weighing on his heart.'
Maude mentions in his diary that he was so exhausted on the
night of the lOth-llth, after being awake all the previous night
and after the busy day that he had spent on the Oth, that he
' did not wake up, although lying in water the greater part of
the night.'
' In the water-logged trenches of El Hannah,' writes Captain
Ogilvie-Forbes, ' he gave what he jokingly used to refer to as his
" house-party," when he inrited those who had no shelter from the
torrential rain to share the hospitahty of his httle tent. He always

212 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
kept open house, especiaUy when the hardships were at their worst,
for any casual visitor be he ever so junior. " Ask him to dinner,"
" ask him to lunch," were amongst his most frequent orders.'
The Tigris Corps was not merely struggling with antagonists
who were holding skilfully designed entrenchments in strong
force, during its gallant efforts to bring succour to the stricken
garrison of Kut. It was also struggling against nature, and
it was struggling against time. On the one hand, the inunda
tion of much of the country, coupled with the mud that was
created everywhere by temporary overflows from the Tigris
and by the occasional torrents of rain, forbade any attempt to
turn the formidable hostile positions, and it at the same time
rendered advance preparatory to attacking them frontaUy
most difficult. On the other hand, the sands were running
out fast, and every day, even every hour, that was lost
rendered the situation of Kut more desperate. Supported by
such very inadequate artillery power as Gorringe had at
command, a mere local victory at any point necessarily
ranked as a fuie feat of arms under the existing conditions.
But only a succession of such victories would achieve the
purpose that the Tigris Army Corps had in view. Some doubt
had existed as to the exact date up to which Townshend
would, on the reduced rations that he was now issuing, be able
to hold out ; but it was now known that if the relief was to
be effected it would haye to be effected by the 25th.
Sir P. Lake decided after a consultation vrith Gorringe that
a fresh effort to penetrate the Turkish lines must be made,
but on the right bank of the Tigris where, as already men
tioned, the 3rd Division had made good some ground while
the 13th and 7th Divisions had been trying to break through
on the further side of the river. It was arranged that the 7th
Division should remain in the trenches facing Sannaiyat, and
that the 13th Division should be transferred to the southem
bank and should co-operate vrith the 3rd Division. This
move of Maude's troops was carried out on different dates
between the 12th and the 16th, his infantry taking up positions
at Abu Roman some distance in rear of the 3rd Division. He
records in his diary that he had been very busy during these
days writing letters to the relatives of the numerous officers
under his command who had fallen in the confficts at Hannah,
Felahieh and Sannaiyat.

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 213
The operations on the right bank were to start with an
attack by the 3rd Division upon the end of the Turkish lines
next the river at a locality named Beit Aiessa. This was
situated about a mile and a half up-stream from the end of
the Sannaiyat Unes on the further bank ; and there were
important dykes here, which gave the Turks power to inundate
considerable areas of ground when they thought fit. The
8rd Division had gained a footing in some of the forward
trenches on the 15th ; its attack dehvered on the morning
of the 17th was most successful, for practically the whole of
the trenches that formed the objective were taken.
It was arranged that its infantry brigades should be relieved
by those of the 13th Division after dusk ; but at about 7 p.m.,
before the rehef had actually commenced, the Turks suddenly
assumed the offensive in strong force and with great determina
tion. A desperate affray ensued in the dark. The Ottoman
assailants recaptured some guns and machine guns which they
had lost in the morning, and they threw portions of the 3rd
Division into confusion. Called upon urgently for aid, Maude
hurried up five of his battaUons, and these played an important
part in restoring the situation at some points where the 3rd
Division had been compelled to give way. But there would
seem in the first instance to have been some delay in the arrival
of the whole of the troops of the 13th Division, who were
supposed to be ready to take the hnes over ; for they should
have been on the spot almost immediately after the Turkish
counter-attack was delivered. Maude himself was not alto
gether satisfied. ' Reinforcements from the 13th Division
were already moving forward,' Sir P. Lake wrote in his de
spatch of the 12th of August, ' but ovring to the darkness and
boggy ground they were delayed and some hours elapsed
before they arrived.' The results of this nocturnal combat
were undoubtedly most unfortunate for the reheving force,
as valuable ground which had been weU won in the moming,
and possession of which would have greatly aided further
advance towards Es Sinn, passed back into Turkish hands.
Those battalions of the 13th Division which were thrust into
the fray did admirably, and, had some additional ones reached
the fighting front, the enemy might perhaps have been beaten
off at all points and a very important victory might have been
gained. Maude would seem to have disposed aU but five of

214 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
them in second line after a time ; but the accounts of this
combat are somewhat confficting, and his ovm view clearly was
that upon the whole his command had done well. ' Division
behaved magnificently during the fight last night,' he wrote
in his diary next day ; ' Worcesters, East Lancs, South Wales
Borderers and Wilts did especially weU.' He was deUghted
vrith their performance under exceptionally trying conditions.
The Turks had succeeded in re-taking some of the trenches
closest to the river, and in recovering the guns and machine
guns they had lost in the moming ; but they lost very heavily
in the combat, and victory on the whole rested with the
relieving force. In his despatch of the 12th of August Sir
P. Lake estimated their casualties at from 4000 to 5000.
Maude issued the following complimentary order in con
nection vrith this affray :
The G.O.C. vrishes to express his appreciation of the excellent
work done by the dirision on the night of 17th-18th, when the
3rd Division was heavily attacked by the enemy and in a position
of some danger.
The readiness vrith which the reinforcing battalions moved
forward, and the steadiness which they subsequently displayed,
undoubtedly saved the situation and were mainly instrumental
in inflicting on the Turks the huge casualties which they suffered
on that occasion.
The gaUantry of the division and its splendid tenacity have
received the commendation of the corps commander when con
versing with the G.O.C.
In a letter of thanks to General O'Dowda, commanding the
38th Brigade, General Keary remarked : ' It is hardly possible
that my worn-out troops could have held on vrithout the assistance
so loyally accorded by your troops.'
The 13th Division reheved the 3rd Division in the Beit
Aiessa position on the 18th. On the foUovring morning the
39th Brigade attempted to recapture the trenches close to the
Tigris, which had been taken forty-eight hours before and had
been won back by the Osmanlis on the occasion of their
counter-attack by night, but the operation failed. ' Want of
officers chief cause,' Maude wrote in his diary ; ' casualties
not too heavy though we have lost up to to-night some 800
killed and wounded in three days.' The troops on this
occasion were greatly hampered by flooded ground, some of
the men being drowned.

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 215
Kut could only hold out for about another week. In view
of the strength of the enemy hnes in rear of Beit Aiessa
which had still to be reduced if the offensive was to continue
on the right bank of the Tigris, and also of the fact that
Sannaiyat closed the river to steamers a mile and a half below
Beit Aiessa — a point of considerable importance from the
aspect of trying as a forlorn hope to run a vessel vrith supplies
through to the starving garrison — Sir P. Lake resolved that
there must be yet another attempt to break through on the
left bank. The 7th Division were to be employed for the
undertaking ; but they were to be helped as far as possible
by fire from the right bank. The Sannaiyat entrenchments
could be taken in enfflade, and to a certain extent in reverse,
frpm below Beit Aiessa. This plan was communicated to
Maude, who at once started selecting positions for his machine
guns and his artillery so that they should play their part
effectively in the contemplated operation. The attack was
to have been dehvered on the 20th ; but ovring to a sudden
inundation from the side of the Suwaikieh marsh it had to
be postponed until the 22nd. Maude's guns violently bom
barded Sannaiyat on the 20th and 21st. On both those days
his infantry also made some progress in front of Beit Aiessa,
although not vrithout encountering sturdy opposition ; the
bombing parties were particularly successful, and he was much
pleased vrith their performances.
• Casualties especiaUy heavy in officers, and we are having bad
luck in this respect,' he wrote in his diary on the 21st ; ' some of
the battahons have only five or six, including the colonel and
adjutant, left. Some drafts are however arriving, but not in
sufficient numbers to keep pace with casualties. We lost about
8500 at Hannah, Felahieh and Sannaiyat, and about 1000 since
we have been at Abu Roman. On the other hand, we have pun
ished the Turks, especiaUy during the night attack on the 17th-18th,
when they are reported to have lost very heavily, and in front of
our trenches and quite close to them are at least 1000 bodies.
Attack on Sannaiyat position by 7th Division postponed till
to-morrow. Meantime I have a battery of thirty-five machine
guns in position just across the river ready to rake their line.'
' 22.3.16. Up and breakfasted early. Had bombardment of
the enemy in my front by my artillery early to mislead the enemy.
For attack on Sannaiyat position registration began at 6 a.m.,
slow bombardment at 6.20 a.m., and intense bombardment at
7 A.M. Infantry 7th Division attacked at 7 a.m. They got a

216 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
footing in the Turkish trenches, but could not hold on, and after
fierce fighting were compeUed to give way. My guns and machine
guns got good targets and did great execution among the Turks.'
Mr. Candler (who vritnessed this final effort to force the
Turkish entrenchments on the left bank of the Tigris from
the same side of the river as Maude) gives a graphic descrip
tion of the action. The 7th Division went very near to achiev
ing success. They were however terribly handicapped by
floods and mud, and, in spite of the heroism of troops who had
forced their way well home into the hostUe position and of the
effective assistance that they were receiving from the opposite
side of the river, they could not maintain what had been won
at the outset. It does not follow that, even if they had
secured possession of the whole position, their victory would
necessarily have ensured the saving of Kut. But for practical
purposes their failure meant that the prolonged attempt to
reheve the place had come to an end, although neither the
commander-in-chief nor Maude even then gave up all hope.
Maude had from the outset been of opinion that the real
offensive ought to be conducted on the right bank of the Tigris,
as there was elbow-room there. His appreciation of the situa
tion was that the extensive Beit Aiessa— Es Sinn lines covering
the approaches to Kut on that side of the river ought to have
been made the objective, the main attack being delivered on
the right or southem part of the enemy front which practically
had an eastern and a southern face. He would have kept the
Turks busy on the eastern face by local attacks and bom
bardments, and would have occupied their attention on the
left bank of the Tigris by a show of force, while all the time
intending to break through the southern face and to roll up
the line. He had a discussion vrith Sir P. Lake on the 23rd,
and even at this late date there seems to have been an idea
of carrying out an operation somewhat on these lines ; be
cause the 3rd Division, which had been in reserve since the
18th, was sent off to the left on the moming of the 24th, when
it pressed forward arid dug in about two miles from the Es
Sinn position ; a brigade of the 7th Division was also brought
across the river and placed in reserve. Nothing however
came of these preliminary movements. That night the
Julnar made its intrepid essay to run the gauntlet of the Tigris
defences and to convey food to Kut. Maude, who knew of

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 217
the enterprise, had his machine guns and artiUery sweeping
the further river bank after dark, and he mentions in his diary
that she passed his advanced troops at Beit Aiessa at 9.15 p.m.
' without incident.' She got as far up as the river bend at
Megasis, and was there brought up short by a vrire rope across
the channel and captured. This was ascertained by aeroplane
reconnaissance next morning.
Gorringe made Maude aware on the 26th of the instructions
which had been sent to General Townshend vrith regard to his
getting into communication with the Ottoman commander
and trjdng to secure the most favourable terms possible.
Kut still had supphes enough to hold out till the 30th, and the
Corps Commander asked Maude for his opinion as to whether
a relief before that date could any longer be regarded as a
feasible proposition. Reluctantly, Maude gave it as his view
that, in consequence of the condition of the force (especially
in respect to officers), of the shortness of the time available,
and of the situation as a whole, the thing was impracticable.
'In such flghting as this,' he wrote in his diary, 'the officer is all-
important, and right well he does it. But vrithout him even
the RegiUars will not go on, and when it comes to partially
trained troops such as the New Army Divisions the position
is quite impossible.' Two days later, on the 28th of April,
Kut surrendered after its garrison had made a glorious defence
of five months, and after 24,000 troops had been killed,
wounded and taken prisoner in trying to bring it aid. Of the
24,000 casualties 10,000 had occurred since the 4th of April,
the day before the 13th Division was first engaged.
' You will have read in the papers,' Maude wrote a few days later
to Colonel J. MagiU, ' the fuU narrative of our failure to reheve Kut.
Its fall has been very disappointing, but I do not think that the
fault hes with the soldiers, although no doubt an attempt wiU be
made to saddle them with the responsibility. The local diffi
culties, the long line of communications, the water transport (or
rather the lack of it), the menace from floods and rains, the barren
ness of the country — all these factors rendered the most careful
organisation and liberal expenditure necessary as a prehminary
to success. The obstacles in our way were enormous, hampered
as we were by floods and restricted as our movements were by
being tied to the river — but we did our best, as I think vrill be
admitted when the story is known.'
Then, after a brief resume of the various actions up to the
repulse of the Turkish counter-attack on the night of the 17th-l8tb

218 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
of April, he goes on : ' During the next few days the dirision dis
tinguished itself by some very good grenade work, during which
we infficted many casualties on the Turks and drove them back,
and then on the 22nd the 7th Division failed once more in an attack
upon the Sannaiyat position. After this it was adjudged that we
could not continue our attempt to reheve Kut, and here we are,
holding on to the position we held previously. Kut has faUen,
Townshend, I understand, haring previously destroyed his guns
and munitions. An attempt to re-provision him by running a ship
through failed, the stream being too strong and the ship too noisy.
It was a good attempt however.
We were beat by want of time to clear away the remaining
obstacles in our way, and by want of drafts to replace our casualties
and especiaUy those amongst officers.'
Maude goes on to refer to a point that he also mentions
more than once in his diaries, and which would seem to be
deserving of note in summing up the causes of Sir P. Lake's
failure. The importance of the relieving force knowing the
exact date up to which the besieged place of arms could hold
out would not seem to have been quite sufficiently reahsed
vrithin the place itself. It may be observed that it is not un
usual for some doubt to exist upon this point under similar
conditions, and that beleaguered garrisons have on many
occasions in the past held out a few days longer than had been
expected. They have even been succoured at a later date than
that laid down as the date beyond which defence was im
possible. When Maude attacked Sannaiyat on the Oth of April,
vrith troops who had gained very substantial successes three
days before and who were full of confldence, he was under the
impression that Kut could only hold out till the 13th — ^that
only four days in fact remained for the garrison to be saved.
As it tumed out, the garrison could have held out, and did
hold out, for nearly another three weeks. Had the commander
of the 13th Division known this he would have proposed to
sap up much nearer to the position to be attacked before
delivering his assault upon it ; and, as General Gorringe had
readily agreed to his proposals hitherto, Maude would no doubt
have been granted the additional time that he asked for.
Whether an attack by the 13th Division under such conditions
would have proved successful is a matter of conjecture. But
its leader was a master of the art of thorough preparation for
an enterprise, when given facihties for making such prepara-

THE EFFORT TO RELIEVE KUT 219
tion, and he seems to have thought himself that two or three
days' grace might have changed the result.
' I need not enlarge upon the bitter disappointment felt by
all ranks on the Tigris line at the failure of their effort to relieve
their comrades in Kut,' Sir P. Lake wrote in his despatch of
the 12th of August. Maude shared in this feehng of dis
appointment to the full ; but he never showed it. Nor in his
diary nor yet in his letters does he offer any criticisms or
complaints vrith regard to the handhng of the force, except
on quite minor points, although the plan of operations actu
ally adopted in April was not in accordance vrith his own
appreciation of the situation. It may be mentioned here that
the diary, as it has come to hand, closes on the 1st of May 1916,
practically synchronising vrith the fall of Kut. He had kept
it carefully ever since the outbreak of the Great War, and he
continued to do so. But the portions of it subsequent to May
1916 were in his room when he died in November 1917, and
they had to be destroyed for fear of infection. The Army
Commander had fortunately taken off the embargo which had
previously been placed upon references to past events in
Mesopotamia, and consequently Maude's letters, which during
the previous weeks had been uninformative, became full of
interest again from about the date of the fall of Kut
onwards.

CHAPTER XI
FROM DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER
The weeks immediately subsequent to the surrender of
General Townshend's force constituted a particularly trying
and tragical period for the Tigris Army Corps, - All ranks were
to a greater or less extent depressed by the sense of failure.
The troops had suffered hardships of no common order, buoyed
up by the hope that they would, somehow, succeed in bringing
succour to comrades in sore distress. The losses suffered since
January had been very heavy. The yawning gaps in the ranks
were but slowly being fflled up. Exhausting operations had
been carried out by an army, beset by inundations, struggling
through sticky mud, drenched at times by violent rain-storms,
and carrying out an almost impossible task on rations that
were barely sufficient. Officers and men could not but be
aware that, although the medical arrangements had been
amehorated within the past two or three months, they still
fell short of what soldiers have a right to expect when cam
paigning in a theatre of war where hostilities have already
been for a considerable time in progress. The fall of Kut
moreover occurred just at that season of the year when the
hot weather sets in vrith intensity in Mesopotamia, and when
the troops necessarily began to experience the trials which
sojoum in encampments or bivouacs in simamer in desolate
tropical lands carries vrith it.
When an army on fleld service in a hot country settles down
to a condition of comparative quiet after having been engaged
on extremely active operations, sickness almost invariably
sets in. Maude had experienced this fifteen years before
when he joined up vrith the Coldstream on the Modder during
the lull between Lord Methuen's vigorous effort to relieve
Kimberley and the cominencement of Lord Roberts' great
forward movement into the enemy's territory. It is a ques
tion of reaction. There was however bound to be disease in
May and June on the Tigris even had the army been on the
«8Q "

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 221
move, even had it been furnished with ample supplies and com
forts of all kinds, and even had perfect hospital arrangements
been the order of the day. As the floods dry up under the rays
of a burning sun, the climate naturally becomes unhealthy.
Strong vrinds, which incidentally create almost suffocating
dust-storms, distribute the germs that are bound to be created
in camping grounds no matter how carefully sanitation is
attended to. The heat is intense. Flies, insects and creeping
things become a torment, and in the case of General Lake's
forces these untoward conditions were confronting a soldiery
who were already somewhat debilitated, who were suffering
from a not unnatural despondency, and who were therefore
particularly liable to contract any ailments that are common
in Irak. Maude's division was, it is true, somewhat better
situated than those alongside of it in this respect, seeing that
his troops had enjoyed a fair amount of rest and much change
of scene on their travels from the Helles beaches to the plain
of Sheikh Saad ; but no one would realise more clearly than
he did how imperative it was to look after the well-being of
his men under the circumstances, to watch with jealousy all
matters connected vrith the sanitation of his encampments,
and to stimulate by precept and encouragement the morale
of troops of whom he was the trusted chief.
There had already on the 24th of April been some suspicious
cases of cholera in the 13th Division ; these foreshadowed an
epidemic which however happily did not prove very serious.
Maude records in his diary that on the 28th there were twenty
to thirty cases daily and five to eight deaths — ' cause obscure,
some people say water, some that it comes from the Wadi,
probably the latter.' All manner of precautions were taken,
and the outbreak was kept well in hand ; Maude insisted on
visiting the cholera camps from time to time, against the
vrishes of the medical officers. His troops were still in the
early part of May holding the hne about Beit Aiessa in the
right of the front south of the Tigris, with the 3rd Division on
their left ; the 35th Brigade of the 7th Division (which re
mained on the other bank of the river) was temporarily under
his orders. Those of his troops not actuaUy in the trenches
were inspected by Sir P. Lake early on the 1st of May in their
various encampments, and Maude mentions in his diary that,
after going round the trenches a little later on that day, he

222 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
was badly sniped on the way back. ' A frightful sand-storm
all day, bUnding every one and smothering things with dust ;
rain in the evening. Decided to move our camp to-morrow.'
So runs the last entry in this particular booklet of the diary
and closes a most valuable personal record.
Little of special importance occurred for some three weeks
subsequently, but that Maude had lost none of his enthu
siasm for action and that he found plenty to occupy him, is
shown by what he wrote to Colonel MagiU on the 10th of May,
in the letter of which part has already been quoted on p. 217.
Now I am busy reorganising my division, and only hoping that
an advance by the Russians will bring about a corresponding
advance on our side, for one would dearly love to enter at least
Kut — if not Baghdad — so as to settle matters vrith the Turks.
However we shaU see how matters develop.
The weather gets hotter day by day, but the nights though
somewhat stuffy are not yet unpleasantly so. But by night
every creeping thing imaginable appears, fiying bugs and quaint
animals of sundry descriptions, including sand-lhes, many of which
bite badly. The ffies too in the daytime are rather a plague.
However none of these things vriU matter if we can get a move on ;
it is inaction that I dread, and we seem in danger of relapsing into
trench warfare, which, in this country at all events, ought to be
unnecessary. The wastage in my staff has already begun again,
and I have one sick and one (an A.D.C.) wounded vritMn the last
month. Dust-storms are trying, and I hardly like to estimate the
amoimt of sand that I swallowed going round the trenches the day
before yesterday. At all events one came back black as a nigger
minstrel.

At this time Maude was still Uving in a single-fly tent in
spite of the heat. ' Shorts ' and shirt-sleeves had come to be
the recognised parade costume for officers ; but he himself
never appeared outside his tent vrithout a jacket. Every
Sunday, if he possibly could, he visited every tent in his three
field ambulances and he saw, if he did not actually speak to,
every patient — and there were by this time generaUy large
numbers of patients. He was greatly pleased one day to see
in a newspaper arriving by the mail that his son Eric had
passed into Woolwich from Lancing. A few days after
this circumstances suddenly arose calUng for prompt action,
in which he showed that neither heat, nor the discouragement
so generaUy felt throughout the force, had affected his vigour

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 223
as a leader and his capacity for correctly appreciating a military
situation at short notice.
As will be seen from the sketch map on p. 195, the Tigris
between the Megasis bend and Beit Aiessa runs north-east
wards. The general direction taken by the enemy trenches
from where they quitted the river bank in front of Beit Aiessa
was southerly, down to a point about three miles east of the
Megasis bend and some way north of the Dujaila Redoubt.
The Turks had always looked for a British advance along the
river bank, and their main Es Sinn position, designed to meet
such a move, faced almost northwards and at right angles to
their general line. The enemy front between the right of the
Es Sinn position and where this met the Tigris facing Beit
Aiessa was known by the name of the Chehala hnes. Suppos
ing Maude's division to advance, it would first have to force
the northern end of these Chehala hnes, and would then in
the nature of things make a left wheel and push almost in
a southerly direction towards the Es Sinn position, with its
right foUovring the Tigris bank.
Early in the moming of the 19th a message came to hand
from the 40th Brigade trenches that the enemy had disap
peared from in front of them, information which was speedily
found to be correct by patrols. Maude at once ordered two
battalions to press forward vrithout delay, and by 9 a.m. they
had occupied the part of the Chehala lines facing his division,
while patrols were already on their way towards Es Sinn.
This was reported to be vacated both by the patrols and also
by aeroplanes, and he was anxious to advance forthvrith to
take possession of the position and to hurry up guns into it,
so as to bear upon the retreating enemy. But the Corps
Commander was unfortunately away at Sheikh Saad, and an
opportunity of harassing the Turks, and of shovring them
that there was plenty of fight left in the army opposed to
them, was lost. The Turks had a bridge over the Tigris
between the Megasis loop and Kut, and this they removed
during the night. Next morning the cavalry made a vride
sweep south of the Dujaila Redoubt, and reached the vicinity
of the Tigris and of the Hai near Kut, while the 3rd Division,
after making a detour involving an exhausting march, occu
pied the Es Sinn position vrithout opposition. The enemy,
in so far as the right bank of the Tigris was concemed, had

224 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
quietly retired to fresh ground close to Kut, a withdrawal on
the part of the Osmanli forces which appreciably altered the
general situation on the Mesopotamian front. In consequence
thereof. General Lake was now in a position to push forward
his advanced hne on that side of the river as far as the Megasis
loop, to vrithin about five miles of the position where General
Townshend had maintained himself so long.
The Svdtan's troops were however maintaining their grip
upon the Sannaiyat entrenchments on the further side of the
great waterway ; so that the retreat of the Turks on the
right bank did not, under the conditions existing at the
moment, in reality benefit the British very much. So long as
Khahl Pasha's forces had been in the position of besiegers of
the stronghold, they had been obhged to maintain a line of
defence at a distance of several miles from Kut, so as to keep
the relieving army at arm's length. Now, however, that the
place had fallen and was in their hands, it was in many respects
of advantage to the Turks to shorten their front on the right
bank of the Tigris and retire in that quarter — so long as they
held Sannaiyat. Supposing their opponents to follow such
retirement up, as they were almost obliged to do, the immedi
ate result was automatically to lengthen their opponents' land
communications — for British vessels could not pass Sannaiyat
— and the abandonment of a few square miles of barren
country was a matter of small moment to the Turks. The
Ottoman retreat did, on the other hand, bring a certain
amount of encouragement to the Tigris Army Corps at a
moment when this stood much in need of some such stimulus.
There had been several references in Maude's diary since
the beginning of the World War to the unsatisfactory character
of the staff methods in vogue, and comments of the same kind
had also appeared in the diary which he kept in South Africa,
This was a subject which he thoroughly understood and which
he had closely studied, and he was (perhaps more than the
majority of British officers of experience) convinced of the
vital importance of regularity and system in the conduct of
such transactions. His own abnormal acquaintance vrith de
tail enabled him to detect failures in this respect more readily
than would be the case with most soldiers of authority and
standing, and it undoubtedly made him a somewhat exacting
critic. Ahke on the Western Front, in the Gallipoli Peninsula

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 225
and during the short time that his division spent in Egypt,
he had found grounds for complaint. In Mesopotamia
matters appeared to him to be even more unsatisfactory.
' Staff work,' he observed in a letter written home on the
22nd of May from near Beit Aiessa, ' has been a shortcoming
throughout this war. Our number of trained staff officers
was even at first scarcely adequate, but now, vrith our large
army, it is dreadful. I speak with some knowledge, having
been in eight different army corps during the war, and the
2nd, 3rd and Oth were the best in this respect. It is one
of the chief points towards which we shall have to turn our
attention at the end of the war, this training of the staff.
The broad principles are in many cases unknown.'
He was much interested in riding over the ground which
the enemy had abandoned, noting the character and the de
tails of the Ottoman trenches, and he mentioned in a letter
home that at this time he was keeping all the three horses
which he had busy. A 14th Division had been constituted at
Sheikh Saad on the 12th, and it was in contemplation that this
should shortly relieve the 13th at the front. The Arabs had
latterly been becoming somewhat aggressive against convoys
and isolated parties, and the question of deahng vrith the
marauders was exercising the various staffs. The 40th
Brigade, the first portion of the 13th Division to move back
from the front, started for Wadi on the 29th. An interesting
event had taken place in the middle of the month, which
deserves mention although Maude was in no way directly
concerned — a Cossack sotnia had ridden through from Persia
to Ali Gharbi, on the line of communications below Sheikh
Saad, and it remained with the Mesopotamia Army until the
4th of June, when the visitors rode back to rejoin the Russian
general, Baratoff, beyond the Turko-Persian frontier. By
the 13th of June the whole of the 13th Division was back
about Sheikh Saad and Wadi.
' Life is very uneventful and supremely uninteresting,' Maude
wrote home on the 28th. ' It is certainly not the country to select
for campaigning, for in summer you cannot move ovring to the heat
and sickness, and in the winter you are beset vrith cold and floods.
AU the offices close from 12 to 4, some of them from 10 to 4, and
consequently everything gets blocked. As you will reahse, this
is little to my taste, and the thing that would reaUy amuse me would
be to see some one like ' (a very well-known and dashing commander)
p

226 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
' wrestUng under such conditions ! Of course one must keep the
men under cover during the heat of the day or they would go down
hke ninepins ; but I fkid no difficulty in working from 8.15 tiU 5,
with short intervals for meals, and I do my riding in the early
moming and late in the evening.
What a lot there will be to talk about when the war is over !
I only vrish that we were not so far away and that visitors could
run out here and tell us, and get, all the news. Heat is intense —
117 degrees and 118 degrees under cover and little wind, but the
nights are cool or comparatively so. We are fairly free from flies
nov? as the heat has killed them off, but mosquitoes and sand-flies
abound and are troublesome. Arabs are fairly active and tmcu-
lent ; they are the most accomphshed thieves you ever saw, and
will get into your tent and steal your things without thinking
twice about it. They have not paid me a visit yet, but my people
have been robbed of rifles, clothing, stores, horses, etc.  told
me that he had lost most of his things.
I shaU be glad to get back to an active and vigorous life. As
I told them at the War Office the other day, although I have been
steadily at it from the start of the war, I feel as ready as ever to
take on anything reasonable, and long for a sustained offensive.
I would have loved to join those Cossacks who came down to see
us the other day and to join them in their roring life about the
country, travelling light and covering the ground quickly. We
understand the science of mobility so little.'
The day after this letter was written an event which was to
exercise a considerable influence over the operations in this
theatre in future, and under Maude's own control, took place.
This was the beginning of a railway from the left river bank
opposite Sheikh Saad, which was to lead in the direction of
the Dujaila Redoubt, and which would in due course overcome
much of the difficulty that was at present felt in respect to
supplying the troops that were pushed forward south of the
river ovring to the use of the river itself being closed by tbe
Sannaiyat position above Felahieh. It may be remarked
here that the effect of general control of the operations having
been taken over by the War Office was making itself felt at
last in many directions, and that it was about this date that
the Mesopotamian campaign came to be managed practically
entirely from WhitehaU, although supphes and stores con
tinued to be very largely provided from India. Sir W.
Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, fuUy
realised that if the forces under Sir P. Lake were to retrieve
the disaster that had occurred at Kut, means of transport of

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 227
all kinds, whether by river, or in the form of railways, or in
the matter of motor lorries and animals, must be provided
on a generous scale ; and steps had been, and still were being,
taken to fit out the army operating in this region vrith the
means of acting on the offensive when at a later period of the
year the climate would permit of active movements. Con
siderable reinforcements in respect to artillery of comparatively
heavy type also had already arrived in the country and had
reached the front. Much was, however, still lacking in the
matter of material, especially in respect to that which was
needed for the long line of communications.
At Sheikh Saad, Maude was in a position to attend closely
to the comfort of his troops, and he was constantly being seen
by them in the mornings and evenings as he rode about the
encampments and watched them at their work and at their
various exercises. It was to a certain extent a period of rest
for the 13th Division, although rest under most trying climatic
conditions. The Arabs occasionally caused some excitement,
however, quite apart from their nocturnal depredations. The
War Diary of the Tigris Army Corps records that, to try and
put a stop to the nuisance at night. General Gorringe on the
4th of July issued an order that sentries were to fire first and
to challenge afterwards, but that Maude pointed out that in
the case of his division and of their system of patrols this would
be too dangerous.
His career as a divisional commander was however draw
ing unexpectedly to a close. ' One day at the beginning of
July,' writes Colonel Brownrigg (it apparently was on the 10th),
' he summoned an early morning conference of all brigadiers,
comrnanding officers, senior chaplains, and heads of services
and departments. At this conference he told us that he was
leaving us to assume command of the Tigris Corps. One was
stunned by the suddenness of it. He was nearly the junior
major-general in Mesopotamia, and some people felt that the
division could never be quite the same vrithout him. His
personality had permeated into every corner of its organisa
tion, and he had been such a real "commander" in every
sense of the word.' He had received a cipher telegram on
the Oth, which he was told to decipher personally. This in
formed him that he was to take up command of the army
corps. He proceeded up the Tigris to corps headquarters,

228 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
which were near the river on its right bank in the bend op
posite Felahieh, on the foUovring day, arriving at noon. lEs
intimate connection vrith the ISth Division, which had lasted
for ten and a half months, thus came to an end, although the
division was within a very few months to win fresh laurels
under him as commander-in-chief. Brigadier-General Cayley,
who had been in charge of the 39th Brigade from the outset,
took over command, and was confirmed as leader of the
division in due course.
It should be mentioned here that the K.C.B. was conferred
upon Maude at a somewhat later period, but antedated Sth
June 1916, and this honour therefore represented a recog
nition of his services as divisional commander.
Of the many distinguished British officers who led divisions
during the World War, few perhaps were so completely identi
fied vrith the troops under their control while divisional
commander as was Maude. With the precious gift of a
singularly attractive personality were combined in him a fine
physique and an inexhaustible energy that enabled him to
keep touch with those under his orders to an extent which not
all men of his age would have found possible. ' The hardest
and most efficient worker I have ever met,' was General
O'Dowda's description of him in a letter home. When officers
and rank and file leamt that he had left them for a higher
sphere they hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. For
while they deeply regretted losing him as their divisional chief,
they had such a belief in him that they knew that his rise in
the hierarchy of command in Mesopotamia vastly improved
the prospects of British arms in that region henceforward.
Many sympathetic appreciations of Maude have been written
by subordinates of his in the division which he loved so weU
and for which he did so much ; but of these the following
must suffice :
In a letter to his mother (written on the day after the death of
the famous soldier at Baghdad) an engineer officer expressed the
affectionate remembrance he entertained of his former dirisional
chief very happily : ' From the day he first took over command of
us at Anzac he has been universally respected and admired. In
Galhpoh, Egypt and Mesopotamia every one has felt that in com
mand he had a friend — a strong man who has done his best for
the soldier and for the country's good. I shall never forget his
kindness to me on three occasions. Once at Suvla during the

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 229
deluge, when he went 200 yards out of his way through the most
appaUing water and mud to thank my company for what we had
done under somewhat trjdng conditions. Again when he asked
four of us to dinner to celebrate the 4th of June last year ; and then
this year on the Sth of June he asked again those who had dined
with him last year. On each occasion he was charming — most
cordial and quite unassuming. As a commander he was cheerful
and would never entertain any suggestion that we were not a
hundred times better than the enemy, and yet he was by no means
foolhardy and always took the very greatest pains to see after
the soldier's welfare. ... I believe no commander in this war
would have been followed further or with more trust and confidence
by his men. T. Atkins as a rule does not know or think much
about those in high authority. But in General Maude's case it
was different. In this division at any rate every man had .the
highest regard for him and confidence in him.'
' From a staff officer's point of view,' writes Brigadier-General
R. Hildyard, who was the principal General Staff Officer of the
13th Dirision most of the time that the subject of this Memoir was
in command, ' what appeared to me to be General Maude's most
outstanding characteristics were his devotion to duty, his method,
his profound knowledge of detail and his thoroughness. He
mapped out his day so that he never had an idle moment. I never
knew him to take five minutes off to read a paper or a book which
did not deal vrith mihtary matters. He rose before dawn, then
went through all the messages and correspondence of the prerious
day, bringing out any points at a conference of all his divisional
staff. He then spent six or seven hours visiting the front-hne
trenches, which he did every day except Sunday, when he inspected
hospitals. This routine he never varied while his troops were in the trenches,
and every regimental officer when speaking of Maude always
mentions the way he came up in the mud and cold to visit them
when the big blizzard of November 1915 raged for four days in
Gallipoli, causing 2000 casualties to the dirision and obhterating
the trenches.
His knowledge of detail was wonderful. Nothing was too trivial
for him to examine and to give orders about. As well as being a
commander, he was his own staff officer, dictating his own orders.
This procedure may not, from his staff officer's point of riew, have
been altogether pleasant ; but the Service gained, as his orders were
models of lucidity and conciseness.'
' I knew him first when I was assistant to the principal chaplain
in Galhpoli and he was in command of the 13th Division,' writes
the Rev. A. C. E. Jarris, principal chaplain. * No G.O.C. ever took
a greater interest in the chaplain's work than he. As a matter of
fact, as divisional commander, he arranged their weekly duties
personally. He had a high ideal of the possibiUties of a chaplain's

230 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
work, not only as a spiritual and moral infiuence but as a corporate
factor of real military value. He held strongly that the chaplain's
department was a vital part of the army organism.'
Sir W. Gillman, in an appreciation of Maude as a dirisional
commander, pronounces him to have been ' an indefatigable
worker. No day was too long for him and his powers of endur
ance were remarkable. He was furthermore as brave as he was
indefatigable, and he possessed the highest sense of honour based
on strong religious conrictions. Revelling in hard work himself,
he expected others to do the same. His rare powers of appUca
tion had given him as thorough an insight into General Staff
duties as into those connected with the administration of an army,
and no one was more fully quaUfied than he was to criticise details
of schemes submitted to him by his subordinates. He aimed at
a pohcy of perfection, and expected those under him to be imbued
vrith the same lofty sentiments.'
' He has been criticised as a centraUser,' General Gillman goes
on to say, ' and no doubt vrith justification. He insisted on
keeping Ius hand on the reins, and considered it essential for him
self not only to direct but also to watch how his directions were
carried out. His habit of centralising did not imply that he did
not trust his subordinates ; rather was it second nature vrith him
to look into the details of everything. If the work was not being
done to his satisfaction, he took over the guiding himself. As
G.O.C. of a dirision in Galhpoh and Mesopotamia he was easily
able to keep all the reins in his own hand, and did so with markedly
good results. He took over the 13th Division just after it had
been shot to pieces, and he worked it up in six months to a pitch
of perfection that made it second to none.'
Maude assumed command of the Tigris Corps at noon on the
11th of July, which automatically gave him the temporary
rank and position of a lieutenant-general. It will be con
venient before proceeding with the narrative of his services
as a corps commander to indicate the composition and the
general distribution of the troops which had come under his
orders. The force — ^which in reahty represented more than an army
corps although it was known as the 3rd Army Corps or
Tigris Corps — comprised the Oth Indian Cavalry Brigade;
the 3rd Division under General Keary ; the 7th Division
imder Major-General A. S. Cobbe (he had recently taken
charge in place of General Younghusband who had been
invahded some weeks before) ; the 13th Division, now under
General Cayley ; the 14th Division under Major-General R. C.
Egerton ; corps artiUery, which included two brigades of field

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 231
hovritzers, a brigade of 60-pounders, some other heavy pieces
and anti-aircraft guns ; various departmental units. The
14th Division was in front hne on the right bank of the Tigris,
about the old Es Sinn position, the Dujaila Redoubt and
Megasis. The 7th Division was on the left bank, in the narrow
strip stretching from the trenches facing the Sannaiyat posi
tion eastwards to Hannah. The 3rd Division was distributed
so as to act as a reserve to the 14th Division on the right bank
of the river. The 13th Division was back about Sheikh Saad.
The cavalry and corps artiUery were distributed throughout
the area in occupation of the corps. It should be added that
the light railway was now under construction all the way to
Es Sinn and that railhead was temporarily established about
five miles out from Sheikh Saad. There was one bridge over
the Tigris at Sheikh Saad and another a little above Hannah.
The Turks were holding Sannaiyat, and they occupied some
newly constructed lines near Kut on the right bank of the
Tigris ; but south of the river the opposing lines were not in
the same close contact as was the case at Sannaiyat.
With his usual energy, and in no way deterred bj"^ the intense
heat, the new Corps Commander set to work at once to make
himself thoroughly acquainted vrith the situation within his
extensive and important area of command. He devoted
special attention to the question of utilising the newly arrived
Stokes mortars to the best advantage. After a discussion
which he had vrith General Cobbe vrith regard to position and
possibilities in the zone on the left bank of the Tigris, that
general arranged for a special reconnaissance to be carried
out on the night of the 13th-14th to ascertain whether an
operation through the rapidly drying Suwaikieh marsh could
be regarded as a practical proposition ; the result was dis
couraging. On the 14th, Maude moved out to Es Sinn and
spent the foUowing day there, examining the defences of that
advanced front. He decided that the defences required
strengthening, and particularly vrished those that were pushed
furthest forward to receive attention ; two existing posts were
to be substantially strengthened and a section of 60-pounders
was to be placed in either of them, when completed. The
guns were not to be fired (except in case of emergency) without
leave from corps headquarters ; from so forward a position
these powerful weapons could sweep most portions of the Kut

232 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
defences, and Maude contemplated giving the Turks an un
pleasant surprise with them should a favourable occasion
present itself. On the 18th he went down-stream to Sheikh
Saad to meet the Army Commander who was coining up to
pay a visit of inspection.
Sir P. Lake, it may be observed here, had already spent
some years in India before taking up, at an inauspicious
moment some seven months earher, the very serious respon
sibihties of commanding ' D ' Force, the army in Mesopotamia.
Townshend had then already been invested for six weeks, the
reheving force had met with a decided check at Hannah, there
was a serious lack of everything that an army requires for
conducting an active campaign, and the task to be performed
was in any case one of extraordinary difficulty. Td the last,
during the desperate efforts made to save Kut, he had kept in
good heart — Maude in his diary pays a signal tribute to his
chiefs resolution at the very end — ^but he had seen those
efforts fail. Senior by some years to his principal lieutenant
and not fitted out vrith the same iron constitution, the trying
climate was telling upon Lake, and Maude, realising that the
commander-in-chief was by no means in robust health, did
what he could to lighten the fatigue that was inseparable from
the carrjdng out of inspection duties under the existing con
ditions. ' Sir Percy has been up here for the last few days, and so I have
been pretty busy,' he wrote home on the 23rd. ' I have taken him
round and shovwi him as much as possible, but he is not too strong,
and naturally one must be careful to see that he does not overdo
things. Our longest journey was out to the Dujaila Redoubt, and
the fact that it gets hot so early increased the difficulty. Moreover
he did not want to stay a day out there, so we came straight back
which made it longer. I generally send tents out on these sort of
occasions and stay 24 or 48 hours ; then one can see and do more.
But it is a big command to get about over, and especially so when
communications are so difficult. Some people motor, but I find
riding best, as the bumping on the motor cars is far worse than
Ireland at its worst.'
The commander-in-chief paid especial attention to the hght
railway ; this was making excellent progress, railhead at the
time being roughly half-way between Sheikh Saad and Dujaila.
He finished up his visit by seeing the 13th Division at Sheikh
Saad, and he left for Basrah on the 26th. Maude had been

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 233
able to discuss a number of matters with him and was taking
several important questions of organisation in hand, notably
in respect to machine-gun companies and artillery distribution.
The Arabs were continuing to provide local excitement ;
their depredations were not sufficiently important, however,
to give grounds for any real anxiety, and they kept the troops
on the alert vrithout throwing an undue strain upon the
soldiery. In a letter to Colonel MagiU, dated the 4th of August, Maude,
after speaking of his good fortune in finding himself a corps com
mander, goes on : ' But it is such an absorbingly interesting
command. First and foremost it has such a large proportion of
Indian troops, and it is strange that I, who have never been in
India, should be commanding them. Secondly, it is so much
bigger than most corps, comprising as it does four divisions and
a Cavalry Brigade. And finaUy it is a campaign so full of diffi
culties and complications as can hardly be realised at home.
Again, I was only the third senior dirisional commander here,
and so I was lucky to be selected.
It is all a big business. First, the expedition wants organising
— not only the fighting troops, but also the hne of communications ;
and with difficulties as to river transport, suppUes, intense heat
and sickness to contend vrith, it is far more difficult a matter than
the armchair critics think. Still every one from the commander-
in-chief downwards is working with a will, and good results are
sure to foUow. I only hope that I shall do my part all right — ^it
certainly will not be for want of trying.
The last two months have been intensely hot — up to 126 degrees
under cover sometimes, and generally over 120 degrees. So we
have stewed pretty well, and all work has to be done before 8 and
after 6 ; and even after 7 a.m. it is almost too hot for white men to
stir. We have a headquarters camp on the river within 4000 yards of
the Turks' first line, and they occasionaUy shell us but do little
damage. I get a bathe (just a dip) at 4 a.m. daily, which freshens
one up, and I don't stay in long enough to get slack. Most people
tum in in the middle of the day, but I prefer to go to bed at 8.30
P.M., and my daily programme is work 5.30 to 7.30, then breakfast,
work till luncheon, work till 4, tea, ride 5 to 7, dinner 7.30. Of
course this is often varied by inspections of ground and positions.
For instance, the night before last I shifted my camp and spent
the whole of yesterday going round one of my dirisions.
I have a most palatial dug-out, built by my predecessor, of mud
and very airy, so I am not to be pitied. Flies are all dead long
since from excessive heat, and so we are spared that trouble. Also
most of the fiying bugs, etc., that used to annoy us at dinner have
disappeared.'

284 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
i
Although he would have been more than human had he not
felt gratified at having so large a body of troops under his
immediate orders, and at controlhng so extensive and so im
portant an area of country, Maude was too accomplished an
organiser not to realise that he was responsible for an unwieldy
charge, and that it would be desirable to assimilate the organisa
tion more closely to that generally accepted as the right one
in the British army. His experiences gained in command
were of great use to him when, shortly afterwards, he found
himself transferred to an even higher sphere, enabling him to
decide upon a number of improvements in the order of battle
of the forces on the Tigris front, which a practical acquaint
ance with their requirements had shown him to be necessary.
An interesting correspondence that took place early in
August between corps headquarters and the 14th Division,
which was holding the advanced position about and beyond
Es Sinn, illustrates his theory as to how the campaign on the
Tigris ought to be conducted. The division was disposed
to regard the works which it had been constructing purely
from the defensive point of view. A memorandum, signed
by Maude's chief staff officer, but bearing unmistakable signs
of being virtually his own handiwork, begins : ' The notes
as to the position at Es Sinn by your C.R.E. seem to be drawn
up under a misconception of the policy which is to be followed.
The line now held by your division is to be held offensively,
not defensively ; that is to say, it has been secured as a jump-
ing-off place for further aggressive operations as the oppor
tunity offers.' Further on, referring to three strong points
which had been developed and which were to have appreciable
garrisons, the memorandum observes : ' As regards the
suggestion made that the Pentagon, Imaal Mansur and DujaUa
Redoubt might become miniature "Kuts," this is a situation
that we should earnestly vrish for. Kut, it must be remem
bered, had no relieving force at hand ; here we have ample
forces to strike instantly, and the phght of the Turks who had
the temerity to attempt such a move would be a pitiable one.'
The memorandum concludes : ' If your division were at
tacked, it would not be so much a question of sending up
another division to reinforce it, as of a force being sent up to
counter-attack the Turks vigorously from such direction as
would be most hkely to give the most favourable results.'

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 235
' Like aU, I think, who had to do with Maude during his service, I
formed a high opinion of his mihtary capacity during the time
when he was serving under me in Mesopotamia,' writes Sir P. Lake,
' and particularly after he had succeeded to the command of the
Tigris Army Corps.
His work at this time was especiaUy valuable, for his close touch
vrith his subordinates, and his knowledge of his men and their
wants, did much to maintain morale under the trying conditions
of a prolonged hot season in a treeless country, of unavoidable
sickness, and of an almost entire absence, due to shortage of river
transport, of creature comforts.
He was a gaUant soldier and an inspiring leader, for his cheerful
ness, optimism and energy gave him a remarkable influence over
those whom he commanded, while his careful and thorough working
out of his plans went far to ensure the intelhgent co-operation of all
ranks. For his personal character we all had the highest respect.
He was a true gentleman and Christian.'
Maude was wrapped up in the work connected vrith his
corps, and he was particularly interested in the question of
utilising the river transport to the best advantage, consequent
upon a request from the Army Command for his views on the
subject ; he had also expressed his agreement vrith a proposal
from Basrah that the 13th Division should be moved back to
Amarah so as to relieve pressure in respect to supplies at the
front and so as to liberate some of the daily arriving stores
for the purpose of building up a reserve. But on the 21st of
August he received a cipher message directing him to hand
over command of the Tigris Corps to General Cobbe, and to
proceed to Basrah to take over command of the army from
Sir P. Lake. He consequently went down by steamer to
Sheikh Saad on the 22nd. There he had a three hours' con
ference vrith his successor, who met him by arrangement,
and he then continued his voyage down to the Shatt-el-Arab.
The War Council at home had for some time been watching
the course of events in the Asiatic theatre of operations vrith
grovring solicitude. Since the War Office had begun to take
general charge of the campaign, much had been done to
ameliorate the position of ' D ' Force in respect to war material
and means of transportation, even if the effect of this could
hardly yet be fully felt. But reports coming to hand from
various sources were all pointing to the morale of the troops
having gravely suffered, as a result of the Kut disaster and of
the defeat of all their efforts to relieve General Townshend's

236 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
gallant garrison. It was realised that chmatic conditions
in the summer time in this torrid region were not calculated
to invigorate, mentally or physically, a mihtary personnel
which was suffering from depression and which was weakened
in health. The condition of the army in August, immobile
on the Tigris and the Euphrates, was not such as to promise
its embarlring on an active and effective campaign as soon as
the cold weather should approach. The revelations that had
been made in connection with the prosecution of this under
taking in jits earlier stages had aroused in the minds of many
members of the Home Government a certain distrust of India
and of matters Indian. There had also been a tendency
latterly to entrust high command in the various theatres
where our forces were carrying on operations against the
enemy, to men somewhat junior in years to those upon whom
at the outbreak of the Great War these heavy responsibilities
had almost automatically been placed. The War Council
had therefore come to the conclusion that the chief command
of the army in Mesopotamia ought to be entrusted to a man
younger than the distinguished officer who had been holding
that arduous and responsible position since the beginning
of the year, and to one whom recent experience had kept
thoroughly in touch with the War Office and the home forces.
It was a stroke of good fortune for the country under these
circumstances that Sir W. Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial
General Staff, had been closely associated vrith Maude just
before the outbreak of hostihties in August 1914, and had then
enjoyed opportunities for gauging the capabilities as an organ
iser and administrator as also for estimating the character of
a soldier who, since that date, had proved himself a doughty
commander of men in the fleld. Maude was on the spot. He
was nine years younger than Sir P. Lake, he was known to
possess a strong constitution, and he never seemed to be sick
or sorry. Although he was the junior in respect to permanent
military rank of every divisional general in Mesopotamia
except General Cobbe, although his standing in the mihtary
forces was considerably lower than that of many officers who
had proved their capacity for high command on the Western
Front and who could easily have been sent out to Basrah,
although he had never been in India in his hfe and ' D ' Force
was composed largely of Indian troops, Sir W. Robertson

DIVISIONAL TO ARMY COMMANDER 237
accepted the responsibihty of recommending that Maude
should take over the charge of the Asiatic campaign, and Sir P.
Lake received instructions to hand over command to him and
to proceed to England. The War CouncU at the same time
ordered that charge of the Tigris Corps should be assumed
by General Cobbe in place of Maude, although he was junior
in grading to the other divisional commanders and was
considerably younger in years than any of them. Steps were
at the same time taken to procure the services of certain
staff officers and directors of departments from other
theatres of war.
Maude arrived at Basrah on the 24th of August, and he then
enjoyed the advantage of spending some days in consultation
vrith Sir P. Lake before that general sailed for England on the
2Sth. There was a bond of sympathy and a complete under
standing between the outgoing chief and his successor ; for
no one reahsed better than Maude what difficulties had been
contended vrith and in many instances overcome during the
past eight months under most trjdng conditions by the re
sponsible head in Mesopotamia. ' I am more sorry than I
can say for him,' Maude wrote home when announcing to his
family the advancement to the chief command, ' and have a
great admiration for him ; for he has battled splendidly
against ill-health practically all through.' This feeling was
common throughout the forces. One of General Cobbe's first
acts on assuming control of the Tigris Corps was to despatch
a gracefuUj'^ worded message of farewell on behalf of all ranks
under his orders to the departing commander-in-chief, which
was cordially acknowledged. Then a page was turned over
in the history of the Empire, as the vessel vrith Sir P. Lake on
board cast off and steamed down the Shatt-el-Arab.

CHAPTER XII
PREPARATIONS FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN
The new Army Commander of the Anglo-Indian forces in
Mesopotamia had brought his two aides-de-camp. Captains
Ogilvie-Forbes and Musgrave, with him. Apart from them,
he took over the headquarters staff as tliis had been constituted
under his predecessor ; this included the Assistant Mihtary
Secretary, Lieut.-Colonel L. G. WilUams, who vrith the two
A.D.C.'s henceforward constituted his personal staff. The
two principal members of the staff at Army Headquarters
were Major-General A. W. Money, Chief of the General Staff,
and Major-General M. Cowper, D.A. and Q.M.G., who
being an officer of the Indian Army was fully acquainted
with the conditions of service, and so forth, of the native
troops under Maude's command. The important post of
Inspector-General of Communications was in the hands of
Major-General G. F. MacMunn, with whom Maude had had
frequent dealings while in the Gallipoli Peninsula and while
in Egypt, as he had then held a high position on the line of
communications in the Eastern Mediterranean. There is
also always a ' Political Officer ' in Asiatic campaigns which are
being carried out under the orders of the Indian Government ;
this appointment had been held by Sir P. Cox for some con
siderable time in Mesopotamia, and he retained it under the
new order of things, acting under the instructions of the
Army Commander.
In so far as the distribution of the forces is concerned, the
situation in respect to the Tigris Corps (which represented the
bulk of the fighting forces) has been indicated in the last
chapter ; it had already been arranged before the change
took place in the command of the corps that the 13th Division
should be vrithdrawn from it and be stationed at Amarah
temporarily, and that it should come direct imder the orders
of Army Headquarters for the time being. StiU, these troops
up the Tigris did not represent the whole of Maude's army.
238

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 239
There was also the 15th Indian Division, under Major-General
H. T. Brooking (who had passed out of Sandhurst at the same
time as Maude and had gone into the Indian Army), which
was situated on the Euphrates and was assembled for the
most part about Nasirieh. There was furthermore a body of
troops who were distributed along the line of the Karun River,
and who were particularly charged with the defence of the
important oU-fields in that region. A detachment stationed
at Bushire down the Persian Gulf was also under the orders
of Army Headquarters. Finally, and in some respects by
far the most important of all, there were the numerous im
portant base estabhshments at Basrah itself upon which
almost everything depended, together vrith the garrisons of
the links on the chain of communications.
On the way down-stream from Sheikh Saad to take over his
new responsibilities, Maude had written a very interesting
letter to Colonel MagiU, which deserves to be quoted in full
as it serves to illustrate his point of view at the time of his
assuming chief command, as also to indicate his plans for the
immediate future. These had to be modified in some respects,
for he found it necessary to remain somewhat longer at the
base than he had originally contemplated.
' No doubt you vrill have heard before this reaches you,' he wrote,
' of my appointment to command the army in Mesopotamia, as
foUovring quickly on my prerious appointment last month to
command the Tigris Corps. It is a great advancement for me and
I look upon myself as being exceptionaUy lucky. It is of course
a great responsibility.
The conduct of any expedition naturaUy must be this, but here
there are such pecuhar difficulties in connection vrith the campaign
that it makes this far from easy to control. There is the long and
vulnerable line of communications, shortage of river transport,
the absence of roads and railways, the intense heat, the floods,
the non-existence of local supplies, and the time which it takes at
this distance to get our supplies and war stores here. These all
complicate matters tremendously, and constitute an interesting
though a stiff problem.
However, here we are, and the only thing is to get at it heart
and soul, for difficulties exist only to be overcome, and I cannot
help feeling that with vigour and determination we may bring
the campaign to a fairly speedy and successful conclusion. But we
shaU have to work hard, and the delays, the lethargy and the
apathy apparent now in some quarters must cease once and for all.
The political questions, of which there are many too in connection

240 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
vrith Persia and Arabistan, will be pecuUarly interesting, and with
them I shall have to deal very largely.
I propose to put in two or three weeks at Basrah so as to talk
over matters very thoroughly vrith the I.G.C., let him know my
plans, see how he proposes to carry them out, give him clear in
structions, and then leave him to settle the details himself. Then
I hope to get a bit nearer the front, for although there are columns
under my command in various directions, still the place where a
decision will be sought is on the Tigris, and it is there that, being
in chief command, I should be. Basrah is far too distant for the
commander's headquarters, for down there one would know Uttle
or nothing of what is going on. The heat is diminishing gradually
and we have cooler mornings, evenings and nights— -although the
middle of the day is still hot enough for any one. Next month
I understand it gets cooler, and almost cold in October. Organisa
tion is what we want more than anything at present, and, that
once obtained and our supphes and transport put on sound Unes,
it vrill then be possible to set to and tackle the enemy.'
The last paragraph of this letter is especially noteworthy,
and is to some extent very typical of Maude. It displays
that same determination to be well up to the front which was
noticeable in his actions right through the Great War, whether
as a general staff officer repining at the withdrawal of his
corps commander from a headquarters that was a shell trap
to a locality slightly further back from the firing line, or as a
brigadier, when ordered by superior authority to move it on
account of its exposed position, shifting his headquarters
forward instead of backward as was intended, or as a divi
sional commander ever going on in advance of his division
on the occasion of any move of the force under his control.
It serves to show moreover that, at all events in theory, he vvas
in favour of decentralisation. His forecast however was, as
vrill be seen, too sanguine on the subject of the period that
would suffice for him to revolutionise the conditions at the
base, and of the date when he would be able to quit Basrah
and move his Army Headquarters nearer to the fighting front.
Finally, the letter indicates his firm intention, even before
he had taken up his charge, to institute vertebrate offensive
operations against the Ottoman forces as soon as he had satis
fied himself that all was ready.
Ever since he had arrived in this theatre of war, Maude had
been taking careful note of the general situation from the
point of view of supply, in so far as he could judge of such

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 241
matters as a subordinate commander. During his short stay
at Basrah before going to the front in March he had taken
stock of many points which appeared to him to call for modi
fication or improvement. Much had as a matter of fact been
done since that date to accelerate the unloading of ships, to
develop store accommodation, to improve the hospitals, and
to raise the river port more nearly to the level of what was
required in the case of a locality which was serving as the base
for a great military force. But even before he returned to
the Shatt-el-Arab and revisited this focus of the fighting
organisation of which he was now taking up charge, he was
fully persuaded that any prospect which there might be of
undertaking an offensive campaign against the Turks as soon as
the great heats of summer came to an end, must hinge abso
lutely upon a substantial development of the establishments
at Basrah taking place, on a generous expansion of means of
transport in all its forms being secured, and upon the accom
plishment of a thorough-going development of the whole ad
ministrative system behind those divisions and brigades with
which he hoped, when the time came, to transform the situa
tion in the theatre of war. On his way down-stream from
Sheikh Saad, and during the few days before Sir P. Lake left,
he made up his mind to devote himself personally to setting
the house in order in rear of the army in the immediate future.
But he desired also to impress his views as to the need of pre
paring for an early offensive upon commanders at the front,
and, before recording his labours as an administrator and
organiser at Basrah and on the communications, a memoran
dum ought to be mentioned which he issued on the 1st of
September, three days after taking up the office of commander-
in-chief. This document, while referring to the difficulties in respect
to communications which the army had been suffering from
during the summer season, intimated that there was good
prospect of these matters being placed on a satisfactory basis
vrithin a couple of months. It enjoined on commanding
officers the importance of utiUsing every available moment
in developing the offensive spirit amongst the troops, and in
training them for active operations in the field by day and
by night. Sannaiyat and Es Sinn were to be held defensively
for the time being ; but this was not to prevent local offensive
Q

242 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
movements should a favourable opportunity present itself.
All possible information of the area which might be traversed
in case of an advance was to be obtained ; but the work was
to be carried out by aeroplane in preference to reconnaissance
on the part of mounted troops, for fear of putting the enemy
on the alert. The memorandum advocated minor local
offensive operations in the form of patrolling, laying ambushes,
and throvring hand-grenades, with a view to inculcating dash
and enterprise amongst the soldiery ; but it deprecated under
takings such as the destruction of bridges, and any enterprises
of that kind that would be of a purely temporary nature and
which would be more usefully associated with a definite scheme
of operations. Maude in fact was anxious by every means to
raise the morale of the troops and to prepare for an offensive
campaign ; but he did not wish any steps to be taken which
might indicate to the enemy that the apparent stagnation
behind the outposts of his legions was shortly to give place
to a very pronounced and purposeful activity.
The climate of Basrah in September is not an invigorating
one, many of the staff at the base were feeling the effects of
the summer temperature, and a certain air of lassitude hung
about the place for which there was a good deal of excuse.
The new commander-in-chief perceived at once that it was
imperative to infuse energy into the aggregate of personnel
working in close contact with Army Headquarters, to im
prove methods in most directions, to divide up certain branches
of administration and to create certain new ones ; but he
introduced such changes as he considered necessary, tactfully,
and he stimulated his subordinates to display alacrity and
animation by force of example rather than by injunction.
To poke a stick into the heap and start all the ants tearing
about frantically was not his way. But it was wonderful how
speedily he made the presence of his vigorous personality felt,
and how the stir which it almost imperceptibly created at
Basrah vibrated in all directions throughout that portion of
the theatre of war which was under control of the British
forces. He was joined at the end of the month by Brig.-
General F. F. Ready as D.A.G., Brig.-General H. O. Knox
as D.Q.M.G., and Brig.-General G. L. Holdsworth as head of
his Remount Department.
The inadequacy of the river transport had admittedly been

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 243
one of the main causes contributing to the iU-success of the
mihtary operations ever since General Townshend had been
compelled to fall back from Ctesiphon after having been
committed to an enterprise for which no adequate prepara
tions had been made. Much had been done by General Lake
to develop this, and valuable accessions in river craft arrived
just at this time. But very much still remained to be done,
and Maude at once went into the whole question and was not
long in deciding what further material must be asked for.
Some of the difficulty experienced in this respect at an earlier
date had been removed by the construction of a light railway
from Kurna to Amarah, which to a considerable extent elimin
ated a particularly awkward stretch of the Tigris, but tbe total
absence of stone made the construction of permanent- way very
difficult. This railway was being transformed into a metre-
gauge hne ; Maude saw to it that the work should be actively
proceeded with, and that there should be an adequate staff
to ensure full use being made of the line when completed.
Although operations in Mesopotamia had commenced in
the latter part of 1914, scarcely anything had been done to
improve fhe wharves, to create new jetties, or to supply
floating landing-stages until General Lake took this all-im
portant question up after arriving in January. Still, a meta
morphosis could not be effected in a matter of such magnitude
as this in a day. Much still remained to be done before the
original programme would be completed, and the contem
plated developments did not in all respects go so far as
Maude deemed to be absolutely necessary. There had been
grievous delays in getting the ocean-going ships discharged
at the base and at Kurna during the spring and the summer,
ships which were bringing the war material and the food
supplies upon which the army depended. Big vessels some
times remained for weeks moored in the Shatt-el-Arab waiting
to unload — ^this at a time when the available tonnage was in
sufficient to meet the requirements of the Empire. So, calUng
in expert advisers to his aid, Maude set himself to think out
what further developments of a practical nature the situabion
called for, and to decide how these could most rapidly be carried
into effect. Then again, a deplorable deflciency of labour was
hampering operations at the base; the Army Commander
perceived that it would be necessary to import personnel to

244 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
overcome part of this want, but he also perceived that a
certain amount of quite appropriate local personnel existed,
and that this only stood in need of organisation to bring it
into play.
Moreover, while speedily making up his mind on the subject
of the material requirements, the supply of which appeared
to him to be indispensable for prosecuting the operations which
he was already visualising in outline, Maude also satisfied
himself on the subject of to some extent remodelling the exist
ing staff organisation on the line of communications and at the
base. Some entirely Jiew branches, he came to the conclusion,
must be set on foot. Certain existing branches, he determined,
should be split up and their duties decentralised.
Already, before his predecessor quitted Basrah, he had
drawn up a long telegram to Sir W. Robertson, indicating
a number of requirements that he vrished to have met and
enumerating a list of articles of war material that he desired to
have despatched to him as soon as possible, and no sooner had
the ship with Sir P. Lake on board dropped down the reach
than he saw to it that this message was promptly despatched.
Besides Sir W. Robertson, another former chief of Maude's
was installed in high office in Whitehall, for Sir J. Cowans,
who had been Director-General of the Territorial Forces in
succession to Sir H. Mackinnon, was Quartermaster-General.
From the time that Maude assumed the chief command, a
complete understanding was established between General
Headquarters at Basrah and the War Office — ^to the great
advantage of the Anglo-Indian Army that was campaigning
in Mesopotamia. What he asked for he got, if it could possibly
be provided ; and the friendly consideration with which his
demands were treated by the military authorities in England
he was the first to acknowledge himself.
' Whenever I telegraph for anything — and this I do most days — I
almost invariably, unless there is a good reason to the contrary,
get a reply promising supply,' he wrote home on the 9th of Sep
tember. ' I cannot of course for obvious reasons mention the various
items that I have demanded during the bare fortnight that I have
been in command, but almost without exception I have received
an instant reply sajdng that they vrill be sent. ... So I am very
hopeful that when we have had a httle time to get things running
and to collect ourselves for our spring, we may be able to tackle
the Turks to some effect. But this of course vrill depend on the

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 245
instructions which I shaU receive from time to time as to the
general pohcy of the Government.
I am busy all day seeing my directors of the various departments,
my staff and the senior officers responsible on the hnes of com
munications, speeding up things, making suggestions as to possi-
bihties and trjdng to see our way through difficulties. The fall
of the river is hampering us a good deal, but it is only one of many
difficulties wliich have to be got over. Every one is working with
a will, and as things improve from day to day we are bound to feel
the machine moving vrith increased speed.
In the evenings I ride, or go by launch on the river, to risit any
thing that wants looking into. I am at this moment on my way
back from the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's works, where we have
a dockyard for putting our barges and boats together as they arrive.
The delay and chaos there in the past have been stupendous, but
we are now shoring along with increased speed daily, and I have
some reaUy capable men in charge. Other nights recently I have
been through the Ordnance Stores, Supply Depots, Hospitals,
Red Cross Department, Remount Depots, Aircraft Park, along
the railway to railhead, and to visit numerous outlying detach
ments. There is always something to be done, and I keep my
horses busy, though I have not got the full number (6) that I am
entitled to yet.'
Amongst the new directorates that were set on foot was
that of Inland Water Transport, a department which as soon
as it had been properly constituted effected something in
the nature of a transformation in connection with the manage
ment of the multifarious river craft plying on the waterways,
and which succeeded in utilising to the best advantage the
important reinforcements of material which were now coming
to hand. Maude also recognised at once that considerable
additions were required to the available skilled personnel in
respect to the administration of the Works Department, to
the railways (with the progress of which he was not wholly
satisfied), to the Ordnance Department, and to the central
control of the Supply and Transport services. He had no
hesitation in putting forward requests for expansion of the
existing administrative staff regulating these matters, and,
vrithin a very few weeks of his taking up the chief command,
important accessions of experts had landed at Basrah to aid
him in reorganisation. The whole subject of hospital accom
modation was also carefully reviewed, and although immense
improvements had been introduced in respect to this under
Sir P. Lake's regime, a further expansion of estabhshments

246 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
was deemed to be expedient and was carried out. The Re
mount organisation was overhauled and placed on an improved
footing, and the Veterinary branch was to a certain extent
reconstituted. Thanks to the amphtude of his acquaintance with the
administrative requirements of an army, Maude was in a
position to go very closely into the minutice of the majority
of these problems himself, and most of the modifications that
were introduced bore the stamp of his own hand. No detail
was too insignificant for him to concern himself with ; he
indeed centralised control in himself to an extent that might
have been mischievous, but for his indefatigable energy and
his abnormal powers of getting through work. In respect to
matters of which he possessed no knowledge, such as dockyard
operations, wharfage questions and troubles in connection
vrith the unloading of ships, he contrived to select the very best
men available to act as his advisers and to control the opera
tions. It is true that under the conditions that he found existing
at the base and on the hne of communications, he was per
haps to some extent hampered by his own warm-heartedness
and kindliness of disposition. Mr. Candler hints at this when
he says that the commander-in-chief was ' more ready to make
allowances than most disciplinarians.' The very last man to
tolerate sloth or procrastination for a moment on the part of
any individual under his orders, Maude would hesitate to rid
himself of a subordinate who was doing his best, but who was
not inteUectuaUy equal to the task. He would in fact be
disposed to do the work himself rather than to take the more
drastic course which many soldiers similarly placed would
adopt vrithout hesitation and as a matter of course. Medioc
rity was distasteful to him ; and yet he would put up with
mediocrity at times in preference to hurting another man's
feelings. He very soon discovered that his original hope of being able
to push Army Headquarters forward well in advance of
Basrah vrithin two or three weeks of his assuming the chief
command, was doomed to disappointment. Resolved not to
commence serious operation in the field until all was absol
utely ready, until the estabhshments in rear of the fighting
front were in perfect order, until ample reserves of suppUes,

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 247
ammunition and stores had been accumulated vrithin reach
of the troops who were to carry out the active campaign, and
until the organisation on the Une of communications could
be thoroughly relied on, he found it impossible to quit the base
so soon as he had originally contemplated. He remained at and
about the port on the Shatt-el-Arab during the whole of
September, and he was still there in the third week of October
when Sir C. Monro, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief
in India, arrived on a visit of inspection on his way out from
home to take up his appointment.
This visit of General Monro's was a most opportune incident,
and was welcomed by Maude. Not only did it afford the
in-coming Commander-in-Chief in India the opportunity of
acquainting himself at first hand with the situation in Meso
potamia and of discussing questions in connection with it on
the spot vrith the commander of the forces operating there,
but it also gave no small encouragement to the army as a
whole. The troops were already beginning to realise the
driving power penetrating through the ramifications of the
rearward services from Basrah almost to the very trenches,
a driving power which emanated from Maude. General
Monro's appearance amongst them, of which all ranks speedily
became aware, served to assure them that the Mesopotamian
Field Force was no longer a Cinderella, apparently looked upon
vrith comparative indifference by Government Departments
in Simla and in Whitehall. After the fall of Kut, and during
the torrid summer that was now over, the morale of the army
had suffered to some extent. It was already improving
rapidly, just as its health was improving with the gradual
setting in of cooler weather, and Sir C. Monro's visit put a
finishing touch to the ameUoration that was being effected.
Maude accompanied him up the Tigris to the Front, and the
inspection served to some extent as one by himself, as all the
superior commanders and the principal staff officers were
seen by General Monro and also some of the troops. One
point that particularly struck Maude was the marked advance
which had taken place in the appearance of the rank and ffle
within the two months that had passed since he had last seen
much of them. Then they had been, as he expressed it, ' all
parched and dried up by the sun,' now they looked healthy
and were evidently in good heart. The trip up-stream was

248 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
made under fairly pleasant conditions in a new steamer, which
nevertheless was not altogether comfortable in the middle of
the day when the sun was in full force. General Monro had
unfortunately met with an accident some time before which
somewhat interfered vrith his activity ; but he went out to
Es Sinn by railway, and he saw something of all the divisions
and cavalry brigades under General Cobbe's orders. On the
way back a halt was made at Amarah, where Maude's old
Division, the 13th, was inspected. Sir C. Monro altogether
spent about a fortnight in the country, and he managed to see
a great deal, even if he was unable to visit Nasirieh or the
Karun River line. ' What impressed him more than anything,
I think,' Maude wrote home, ' was the magnitude of the under
taking : in fact, he said to me that this would be reckoned
in history as about the biggest expedition of its kind that
England had ever sent out.'
Two or three days after General Monro's departure for
India on the 26th of October, Maude started on a visit to the
Karun line and the Anglo-Persian Oilfields. He had been
somewhat unwell, and on the 27th Colonel Willcox, consulting
physician to the force, saw him and found him suffering from
sand-fly fever.
' His only care then was,' writes Colonel Willcox, ' for the important
duties that he was engaged on, and after hearing what his illness
was and the treatment necessary, his anxiety was that his work
should be interfered vrith as little as possible. Removal to hospital
was not necessary, and part of the time required for rest was occu
pied in his journey up the Karun River to visit the oilfields area.
General Maude made a complete and rapid recovery from this
iUness, which to most patients means a week or more in hospital,
but to him was two days' rest in bed, after which he was able to
resume his duties with certain restrictions as regards over-exertion.'
The Army Commander's own account of the river trip hardly
conveys the impression that it represented a period of repose.
He proceeded on the 29th by steamer up the Karun as far as
Ahwaz, where he inspected the troops and defences, and he
then went on to the oilfields.
First we motored some fifty miles over the desert, crossing three
rivers, and then we had a hght luncheon and got into some American
buck-boards, in which we drove through the mountains — thirty-five
miles over roads which only exist in name. It was a wild journey,
and we only reached the oilfields after dark, having in the course

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 249
of our drive crossed one river, which zig-zagged continuously, no
less than thirty-nine times. We stayed the night at the oilfields 
I should have liked to have stayed several days and to have in
vestigated the oilfields, not only from a mihtary but also from a
business point of view ; but time pressed, so, after a cursory look
round in the moming, we were off at 5.45 a.m., driring five miles
in American buck-boards and then riding sixteen miles through
the mountain passes. We then had lunch and drove another nine
miles in American buck-boards, after which we motored about
a hundred miles to rejoin our ship, which had gone some distance
down the Karun. . . .
Of course you understand the reason of my risit to this quarter.
It is because my responsibihties extend not only over the Tigris
and Euphrates fronts, but also right into Persia as far as a hne
drawn north and south through Ispahan, where we get into touch
with the Russians. So I felt that I ought to make myself
acquainted as far as possible with all this neighbourhood.
On the day after getting back to Basrah he started for
Nasineh, going by train as far as the railway was completed —
ninety miles — and then motoring on the remaining forty-five
miles. Next day he inspected the troops there under General
Brooking, rode through the remains of Ur of the Chaldees,
and afterwards went by gunboat some distance up the
Euphrates. Next day, the 2nd of November, after inspecting
the troops at another station near Nasirieh, he returned to
Basrah, spent the afternoon there interviewing heads of depart
ments and other officials, and at night proceeded up the Tigris
to Amarah, on the way up to the front where he now pro
posed to fix Army Headquarters. He was satisfied that the
arrangements at the base and on the line of communications
were sufficiently advanced to admit of his quitting Basrah
for good. He had indeed been very well pleased latterly vrith
the progress that had been made, and he was confident that he
could now rely upon the services in rear of his fighting army keep
ing this supplied regularly with all that it was likely to need.
It should be mentioned that during a stay of a few hours at
Amarah he performed a service which gave him great pleasure.
I had a parade of my old dirision for the purpose of presenting
the ribbon of the Victoria Cross to four members of the division
who earned it in the fighting last April. The parade was a fine
one and the division looked magnificent. It is extraordinary how
the men have picked up during the last few weeks, and they looked
not only clean and smart, but they stepped briskly and looked
healthy. It was a red-letter day for the dirision, for I fancy that

250 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
there are not many — ^if any — dirisions that can say they have had
four V.C.'s presented on the same day.
During the weeks when he had been so constantly busy vrith
the development of the base and the line of communications
during September and October, Maude had not overlooked the
desirability of effecting certain changes in the order-of-battle
of the troops on the Tigris line. The arrangement under which
all of these, from Sheikh Saad forward to the advanced trenches,
constituted one single Army Corps was not a satisfactory one
on paper, and he had experienced its inconveniences in prac
tice himself, both as a divisional general and as the Corps
Commander. Soon after reaching Basrah he had requested
Sir W. Robertson to send him an additional corps commander
with the requisite staff, and the choice had fallen in London
on General Marshall, who was commanding the division in
Egypt which had been under him at the DardaneUes, and with
whom Maude had been associated closely at the time of the
evacuation of Suvla. A reorganisation was carried out on
the 15th of November under which the Tigris Corps (vrith the
13th Division which was to move up from Amarah) was split
into two army corps, while the Cavalry Brigades became
independent of the corps organisation and were formed into
a division. The title ' Tigris Corps ' was finally dropped ;
a 1st Indian Army Corps, consisting of the 3rd and 7th
Divisions with corps troops, was constituted under General
Cobbe ; a 3rd Indian Army Corps, consisting of the 13th
and 14th Divisions with corps troops, was constituted under
General Marshall. As regards general distribution, the 1st
Corps was to be on the right on both sides of the river, vrith
the 3rd Corps on its left, the latter taking over some of the
ground previously held by troops of the 1st Corps as soon
as the 13th Division came up to the front from Amarah.
These changes were brought fully into force during the second
half of November.
Maude was deUghted to be at the front again and was much
pleased with the appearance of the troops and with the general
outlook. As regards supphes, the situation was now improv
ing from day to day, the hght railway was completed to Es
Sinn and beyond, railhead being close up to the most advanced
trenches, and although the days were getting shorter the
weather had now become suitable in all respects for campaign-

FOR AN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN 251
ing. He felt that the era of preparation was nearly at an
end, and that the hour for action was approaching.
The varied nature of the questions with which at this time
he occasionaUy had to deal is Ulustrated by the following
extract from a letter of his to his family :
My chief pohtical officer, Sir Percy Cox, has been off touring with
a Potentate who lives some two hundred miles west from here, and
whom we are anxious to get to help us in that direction. He has
been presenting him vrith K.C.S.I.'s and things like that, and now
he is bringing him to Basrah where we have got up a great pro
gramme for him. He is to have salutes fired for him (which those
sort of people love), an aeroplane display, an artiUery display, a
tour to see the development of the Port of Basrah; etc., so that I
think he will be impressed. I have sent him a personal message
regretting my absence, and Cox wired yesterday to know whether
he might present him with a jewelled sword from me, to which I
replied ' Certainly, provided that I do not have to pay for it.'
Such a funny thing to be able to produce at a few minutes' notice
on active service ; but I suppose that political officers are rather
like the professional ladies who make long journeys on hners, and
who produce the most elaborate fancy dresses for dances on board.
By the early days of December the protracted period of
preparation was virtually at an end, although a few finishing
touches to the organisation as a whole still remained to be
added. A steady stream of reinforcements had been moving
up the Tigris for some weeks, and a generous supply of drafts
which the War Office and the military authorities in India
had taken care to despatch betimes, were filling up the gaps
in the units at the front and were providing depots for rapidly
making good the wastage to be expected during the fights
which Maude contemplated. The troops were in good health,
partly owing to improved food arrangements and partly
ovring to the arrival of the cool weather, and they were now
full of confidence and looked forward eagerly to trjdng con
clusions afresh vrith the Turks. The training camps which
had been formed at Amarah had been broken up, and the
units that had been stationed there for some time past were
now in their places at and beyond Sheikh Saad. The general
concentration was in fact completed, and the accumulation
of supplies and war material in advanced position was in a
very forward condition. The army commander felt sure that,
vrith General MacMunn as Inspector-General of Communica
tions and vrith ample reserves of everjrthing actually in the

252 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
country, the flow of personnel and material from the base up
to the front, as required, was assured,
Lieut.-General Sir A. Cobbe, who played so prominent
a part in the campaign now about to be launched, writes of
Maude's share in preparing for the operations which led to the
conquest of all Lower Mesopotamia within the next few months
that ' he took over command of the force at a time when the
country was aroused by the misfortunes of Kut. He thus
enjoyed the advantage, as he himself said, of drawing to the
full on the resources of the Empire. But it is one thing to
have the power and it is another thing to have the capacity
enabhng that power to be effectively used, and it is here that
his remarkable military knowledge and foresight were dis
played. From guns and ammunition, river and land trans
port, to rations and clothing for his men and the thousand
other details required in war, he personally worked out the
requirements for his future operations ; the results gained
are the most convincing proofs of his prescience.'
The three and a half months which had passed since Maude
had taken up his highly responsible position at the head of
the forces of the Empire in the Asiatic theatre of war had pro
duced nothing to interest the outside world, and, except in
Irak itself and amongst the few in England and India who
were behind the scenes, the situation on the banks of the
Tigris and Euphrates appeared to be one of unprofitable
stagnation. But a dramatic change was about to take place.
Great events were at hand.

CHAPTER XIII
THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD
The Turldsh army on the Tigris front occupied the same
positions in the early part of December as they had been
occupjdng ever since their withdrawal from the Es Sinn
position in the previous May. On the left bank of the river
they were still holding the Sannaij^at position ; but, during
the months that had intervened since the last attack made by
General Gorringe's forces upon those formidable entrenchments,
the Ottoman defence system in that area had been much
developed, a series of elaborately fortified positions now ex
tended right back to Kut, and the river bank between Kut
and Sannaiyat was effectively secured by earthworks and
armament. On the other bank of the Tigris (as shown in the
map ' Kut, December 1916 to February 1917,' on p. 195) new
lines had been taken up in May, which extended from a point
on the river three miles north-west of Kut in a south-westerly
direction across the Khaidiri Bend to the Shatt-el-Hai, and
then turned north-west on the further bank of that stream.
Within their entrenched position the Turks had a pontoon
bridge across the Hai near its exit from the Tigris ; and the
enemy also possessed another pontoon bridge on the eastern
side of the Shumran Peninsula, which afforded access across
the main river. Ottoman and Arab posts moreover extended
for some miles down the Hai, to the south of the entrenched
bridgehead. On the left bank of the Tigris, Maude's advanced troops
were disposed in trenches vrithin 120 yards of the Sannaiyat
defences. On the other bank his foremost detachments were
situated eleven miles up-stream from Sannaiyat, and there
also were advanced posts vrithin a couple of miles of the
Ottoman lines across the Khaidiri Bend and within about five
miles of the enemy position on the Hai. Strategically, as
Maude pointed out in his despatch of the 10th of April 1917,
the Turks were in a somewhat uncomfortable position ; be-
253

254 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
cause their line of communications to Sannaiyat ran more or
less parallel to the British front facing the Tigris from the
south-east. The danger represented by this was fairly obvious,
and the Ottoman commander had prepared against it by the
very elaborate system of entrenchments in rear of the Sannai
yat position to which reference has been made above. Any
British advance across the Hai necessarily threatened the
enemy's communications on the left bank of the Tigris in
sectors still further back from Sannaiyat, whereas the extensive
Suwaikieh marshes provided a natural protection to Maude's
communications against any effort that the Turks might make
to strike at Sheikh Saad or the Tigris line of communications
lower down. His plan, as indicated in his despatch, was
designed to make the most of this significant strategical
situation. It was : ' First to secure possession of the Hai ;
secondly, to clear the Turkish trench systems still remaining
on the right bank of the Tigris ; thirdly, to sap the enemy's
strength by constant attacks and give him no rest ; fourthly,
to compel him to give up the Sannaiyat position, or in default
of that to extend his attenuated forces more and more to
counter our strokes against his communications ; and lastly,
to cross the Tigris at the weakest part of his line as far west
as possible, and to sever his communications.'
All being ready for the offensive. General Cobbe's artillery
opened a heavy bombardment of the Sannaiyat position on
the 13th of December to convey the impression to the enemy
that this was about to be assailed. Then, after dark, the
Cavalry Division, and the 3rd Corps under General Marshall,
made a night march from about Es Sinn and to the south,
heading for the Hai, and they effected a complete surprise
although the river itself proved to be a somewhat awkward
obstacle to get across.
' Yesterday moming,' Maude wrote home on the 15th, ' after a
night march, very creditably carried out by the Cavalry Dirision
and the 3rd Corps, we threw our left forward to the River Hai
and obtained a footing there. This I was most anxious to do as
it gives us control of the Hai waterway, stops the Turks from
dravring supphes from Hai Town, gives additional security to
Nasirieh, separates the Turks from the turbulent Arabs about
Shattra, who will now become more peaceably disposed towards
us, and incidentally places us in a more satisfactory position.
Whilst the ground which we had secured was being consolidated,

/w^''*w-u-^-.^ /]2-

/7- 2 ¦/;

-7

The Army Commander with his A.D. C.s. moving to
Advanced G.H.Q., 13th Dec. 1916.
(With facsimile of his note sent to Lady Maude with snapshot.)

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 255
the 3rd Corps swung northwards and cleared the left bank of
the Hai of hostile troops to within three miles of Kut, whilst the
cavalry — moving with great dash — got within 700 yards of their
bridge over the Tigris and sheUed the Turks fairly heavily. These
movements, which were made against the Turkish right, had
been preceded by a strong feint extending over some thirty-six
hours which I made with the 1st Corps against the Turkish left at
Sannaiyat, so as to try to mislead him and draw his attention
away. In this we had a great measure of success, for he reinforced
his left at the expense of his right.
During last night one of our aeroplanes paid three visits to Kut
and found the Turks trying to tow their bridge up-stream. The
pilot dropped bombs on each occasion and the pontoons were cut
adrift and are now all over the river. They are consequently
without bridges over the Tigris or the Hai now.
During to-day, whilst the 1st Corps still continue bombarding
the Sannaiyat position and attracting a certain amount of Turkish
attention in that direction, the 3rd Corps gained further ground
towards Kut, and are now within about a mile of the loop of the
river on which Kut stands. The cavalry have also worked forward
well, and have given the Turks a busy time. Consequently we
are well satisfied with our two days' work. We have also had
to deal with a certain number of marauding Arabs, but we have
managed to keep them at a respectful distance and to give them
more than they bargained for.
The weather has been beautiful and most suitable for operations
—nice and cool even in the middle of the day, although perhaps
the nights have been too cold for the troops bivouacking. But
still one cannot have everything, and on the whole we have been
very lucky, and supphes, transport, ammunition, etc., have been
excellent. The troops have done splendidly, and the reconnais
sance work of the Flying Corps has been quite first rate and most
useful to us.'
Pressure was maintained on the Turks during the next two
or three days, and by the end of that time a position had been
secured on the bank of the Tigris opposite Kut, although the
enemy held on grimly to the entrenchments across the Khaidiri
Bend and also to the Hai bridgehead. Maude now deter
mined to consolidate his position on the Hai and to improve
communications before developing fresh offensive operations,
while keeping the opposing side busy by means of raids and
bombardments, and while the hght railway was being pushed
on to the Hai. Soine delay was then caused by heavy rains
towards the end of the year, and by a sudden rise of the
Tigris which caused considerable areas of the country to be
flooded and damaged the permanent- way of the Ught railway,

256 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
so that it was the 5th of January before resolute active
operations could be resumed. These in the first place took the
form of a prolonged attack by portions of General Cobbe's
1st Corps upon the elaborately constructed system of defence
works stretching across the Khaidiri Bend, which secured to the
Turks a footing on the right bank of the Tigris below Kut.
This undertaking brought about a period of almost continuous
trench combats and bombardments, which lasted a fortnight
and in the course of which the enemy displayed a most un
yielding spirit, frequently counter-attacking with vigour and
intrepidity and suffering heavily in the process. But the
Ottoman power of resistance was gradually, sapped, line after
line was wrested out of hostile hands, and on the night of
the 18th-19th the Turks finally abandoned the position and
retired across the river.
' We have had some very strenuous fighting during the last ten
days,' Maude wrote home on the 21st with reference to these opera
tions, ' but it has all been eminently successful, and we have driven
the Turks from the whole of their trench system on the right bank
of the Tigris north-east of Kut, back across the river. The 3rd
Division did most of the fighting and did it splendidly. As you
know, the Turks are very stubborn fighters, especially in trenches ;
but our men fairly beat them at their own game, and with bomb
and bayonet drove them steadily back, foot by foot, tiU by the
moming of the 20th they were all pushed across the river. . . . The
men are tremendously pleased with themselves — as well they may
be, for their conduct has been splendid.'
Already before this set of operations had been brought to
its triumphant conclusion. General Marshall was getting to
work against the hostile entrenchments that stretched athwart
the Hai River and formed the bridgehead in the enemy's hands
on the right bank of the Tigris to the south and south-west of
Kut. This offensive likewise gave rise to protracted and bitter
affrays, in which somewhat heavy casualties were suffered by
both sides. But Maude's heart never failed him on such
occasions. Although the progress of the assailants was
checked from time to time at some particular section of the
defensive line, and although the Turks would occasionaUy
deliver some resolute counter-stroke which would win a patch
of ground back for them temporarily, progress was for all
practical purposes continuous, so that by the 4th of February
the enemy had been forced to quit the whole of the lines east

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 257
of the Hai. The whole of the right bank of the Tigris from
opposite Sannaiyat up to the point where the Hai flows out
of the main waterway, had thus been brought under Maude's
control. He was more than satisfied with what his troops were
accomplishing, and he was particularly pleased one day when
a brigade of his old division picked up 343 dead Turks in the
trenches which it had captured with the loss of only 224
casualties altogether. The hospital arrangements also were
working most satisfactorily, for whereas in the previous April
it had taken three days to evacuate wounded personnel from
about Beit Aiessa back to Sheikh Saad, the injured now were
within a few hours on board very specially fitted up ships
which conveyed them from Sheikh Saad' to Amarah. The
whole journey sometimes took less than thirty-six hours.
No pause took place in the offensive. General Marshall
proceeded to extend his left, vrith a view to ultimately en
closing the Dahra Bend, and a fresh set of offensive opera
tions thus developed which led ultimately to the whole of the
enemy's forces within that segment of a circle being destroyed,
or surrendering, or fleeing across the river. By the 13th the
Turks had been definitely enclosed within the bend, and were
fighting with their backs to the Tigris. Then on the 15th a
general assault was delivered on the inner position which the
enemy had gradually been forced back upon, and it became
apparent during the course of the battle that the Ottoman
power of resistance in this quarter was virtually broken.
' To-day we have had a very heavy fight,' Maude wrote on the 15th.
' We had previously ringed in the Turks into the Dahra Bend on
the right bank of the Tigris, and this moming, after a heavy bom
bardment against their left centre, we attacked their right centre
and immediately estabhshed ourselves in our objective, and con-
sohdated it, the whole assault being carried out under a heavy
bombardment. ArtiUery work went on for some hours after this,
and then we launched a second attack against the enemy's left
centre, which was also completely successful. We of course have not
got the details yet, for the fight is stiU progressing, and I do not
wish to exaggerate ; but I think that I can safely say that we have
taken a thousand prisoners; and General Marshall — ^who commands
the 3rd Corps which has been engaged — ^assures me that it wiU
be nearer two thousand. Still we shall see, and of course there
wiU be many dead and wounded Turks as well, besides masses of
arms and equipment, and possibly machine guns, etc. So this
is a very heavy blow for them, coming as it does on the top of two
B

258 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
months of 'continuous fighting vrith scarcely any success. I fancy
too that the Turks are getting short of food and ammunition, whilst
we have plenty of both, and that aU helps to make people feel
happy and confident.
They are wonderful stickers, those Turks, and there are few
troops that would fight hke they do. I think that they are bound
to crack before long ; but till they do we shall keep hammering
at them, and I have already planned some more operations to keep
them on the move which we shaU carry out vrith the least possible
delay. The weather has been wonderfully mild lately and we have no
complaints on that score ; but the rain is a nuisance, to-day it is
raining hearily — the result of a thunderstorm. It does not matter
to me personaUy as I have a httle tent, but I am sorry for the
troops, most of whom have to be out in the open ; besides, it com
plicates our movements. The Turks have cut the bund up-stream
of Kut and have flooded the country westwards, so that it makes
it difficult for us to operate. But I must not complain, for we have
been extraordinarily lucky taking all into consideration. Things
could not have gone better for us than they have done.'
The victory of the 15th proved to be as complete as General
Marshall had promised the Army Commander. By nightfall
all resistance had ceased except along a short stretch close to
the river bank at a point where the remnants of the Turks
were trjang to escape across the channel. This was to have
been dealt with by a combined operation during the night,
but two Ghurka companies forestalled the contemplated
movement by delivering an assault on their own initiative,
which was completely successful. The total number of
prisoners taken on the 15th and 16th in the Dahra Bend
amounted to 2005 ; many rifles, five machine guns and great
quantities of ammunition, hand-grenades and other war
material were also captured. In his despatch of the 10th of
April Maude gave warm praise to the infantry and artillery
for an operation ' brilliantly carried out,' which had had the
effect of driving the Turks finally from the right bank of the
Tigris in the neighbourhood of Kut.
The first three phases of the commander-in-chief's plan of
campaign, as explained in his own words in the passage quoted
on p. 254, had now been brought to a successful conclusion.
Although the fighting had been very severe at times and al
though casualties had on some occasions been regrettably
heavy, the Anglo-Indian forces, even if occasionally temper-

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 259
arily brought to a standstiU, had invariably been completely
victorious in the end, and Maude had good reason for feehng
gratified at the fine spirit that had been displayed by the
soldiers flghting under his orders. ' The troops are on the
top of their toes now,' he wrote, ' and one can hardly hold
them in, they are so keen to get at the Turks.' Moreover,
everything had proceeded smoothly in rear of the fighting
front as a result of the carefuUy thought out preparations
in the elaboration of which he had borne so prominent
a part. There had at no time been any anxiety on the score
of supplies. The river transport was worldng admirably, and
it was as a matter of fact also gaining valuable accessions of
tonnage ; the railways were pulling their fuU weight ; and the
animal transport, although at times sorely hampered by the
mud following the occasionally heavy rains, was performing
what was required of it. The administrative personnel had
worked wholeheartedly throughout, and its enthusiastic co
operation vrith the actual combatants had played, and was
playing, a dominating part in breaking Ottoman fighting power
in Mesopotamia. Even the fact of the enemy cutting the
bunds some distance further up the Tigris than where the
advanced portions of the Anglo-Indian army was awaiting the
next move, in reahty proved to be a blessing in disguise, seeing
that it enabled the Cavalry Division to find water where there
othervrise would have been none. Moreover, although the
Osmanh troops in the Dahra Bend had undoubtedly been
highly tried by artillery fire on the 15th and were batthng
under perilous and discouraging conditions, their readiness to
yield themselves up on that day suggested that the enemy's
morale was deteriorating.
The further operations which Maude had in mind and to
which he referred in his letter of the 15th, quoted above,
consisted of an attack upon Sannaiyat by troops of the 1st
Corps, and of the passage of the Tigris at a point above the
Dahra Bend by a portion of General Marshall's command.
As vrill be seen from the sketch map, there is ^a very well
defined loop in the river's course immediately above Dahra
which came to be known as the Shumran Bend. The com
mander-in-chief's design was to force a way across the river
channel at about the southern end of this loop, and prepara
tions for embarking on this daring venture were set on foot

260 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
as soon as the Dahra Bend had been cleared of the enemy.
In the meantime the Army Commander published the foUow
ing Order of the Day, in recognition of what his army had
already accompUshed, and as an encouragement in \'iew of
what it was still to be called upon to perform :
After a period of severe and strenuous fighting, extending with
only short pauses over a period of two months, I vrish to express
to the Navy, to Lieut.-Generals Marshall and Cobbe, to the
dirisional and brigade commanders, to the staffs, including my
own, and to aU ranks of the fighting troops, my warmest thanks
for their splendid work, and my congratulations on their brilliant
successes. To the regimental officers, non-commissioned officers
and men a special word is due for their matchless heroism and
fighting spirit, and for their grit and determination so fully in
accord with the best traditions of British and Indian regiments.
Whilst regretting deeply the casualties necessarily incurred in the
attainment of our object, the series of stinging blows dealt to the
enemy, his severe losses which are out of all proportion to the size
of his force, and his obriously faUing spirits, afford ample proof
to all ranks that their sacrifices have not been made in vain.
My thanks too are due to Major-General MacMunn, to the
directors and their assistants, and to all ranks of the Administrative
Serrices and Departments, both in the field and on the lines of
communication, who, in the face of unexampled difiiculties, have
by sterhng work and energy risen superior to tbem and have
regularly met the needs of the fighting troops vrith ample supplies,
stores and munitions, without which the loss of life would have
been considerably increased and success rendered impossible, and
have been the means of providing every comfort attainable for
the sick and wounded.
To each and every member of the Navy and Army, and to those
who though not belonging to either of the Services have helped to
bring about the results achieved, I tender my warmest thanks for
their whole-hearted and magnificent support. The end is not yet ;
but with such absolute co-operation and vigour animating all,
continuance of our success is assured.
F. S. Maude, Lieutenant-General,
Commanding Indian Expeditionary Force ' D.'
Uth February 1917.
General Cobbe had been keeping the enemy on the qui vive
in the Sannaiyat lines while the Dahra Bend operations were
in progress, helping to distract the attention of the Turks,
and Maude now issued instructions that the formidable
position on the left bank of the great river, which three times
over had proved too strong to reduce in the previous April,

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 261
was to be assaUed on the 17th. The attack proved a failure.
Heavy rains on the previous day had converted the approaches
into a quagmire, and although the two front series of entrench
ments were captured in gallant style, a determined counter
attack on the part of the defenders led to the ground which
had been so secured passing back into Ottoman hands again.
The water-logged condition of the country and a sudden rise
of the Tigris then put a period to further efforts for five days,
although an almost incessant bombardment was kept up
with the object of deceiving the enemy as to when a fresh
attack might be expected.
' On Sunday, the 18th, I did duty vrith the advanced section,'
writes the Rev. A. Jarvis. ' Before returning to Sheikh Saad on the
Monday the army commander told me that he particularly wanted
a celebration on the Wednesday moming ; all the preparations
for the advance on Kut and Baghdad had been kept a profound
secret. On the moming of the 21st, a cold, dark, ghmmering davsm
with a hoar frost on the ground, the guard tent was prepared and
our simple altar erected, and there we gathered for the Holy Mys
teries. After the serrice he remained for a long time in silent
prayer. There were perhaps a dozen of us present ; some of the
General Staff knew what the day meant for the campaign.
After breakfast I saw him walking alone to a nullah overlooking
Sannaiyat, and almost immediately afterwards the artillery opened
an overwhelming fire. The advance to Baghdad had begun, and
it never stopped until we were beyond the city. That historic
event vriU always be associated in my mind with the sohtary figure
kneeUng before the Ughted altar in the presence of his God in the
grey hght of a winter mom, and I have often wondered how much
those silent moments contributed to the great achievement with
which Maude's name will ever be associated.'
The final attack on Sannaiyat was delivered on the 22nd.
The two front lines were not only captured on this day but
were also effectively consolidated in preparation for a further
bound forward towards Kut. Feints of crossing the Tigris
near Megasis and at Kut from the right bank of the river were
also carried out on this date, while the finishing touches
were being quietly put to the paramount design — that of
forcing a way across the great obstacle at the apex of the
Shumran Bend.
Winning a passage over the mighty stream when almost at
its highest, in defiance of an enemy sustained by a formidable
assemblage of guns, was a project recalhng Welhngton's

262 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
forcing of the Douro and of the Bidassoa during the Penin
sular War. In his The Long Road to Baghdad, Mr. Candler,
an eye-vritness of this memorable operation of war, pro rides
us with a stirring description of the adventures met vrith by
the parties which enjoyed precedence in the adventure.
Maude makes clear in his despatch how great were the diffi
culties which had to be overcome, and he at the same time
indicates how far-reaching was the success that attended the
efforts of those who led the way. The scene opened just
before dawn on the 23rd vrith the ferrying of detachments
of infantry across the channel at three points, down-stream
from the spot where the bridge was to be thrown. All three
advanced parties made good a footing ; but owing to the very
heavy fire brought by the Turks to bear upon the water, the two
lower ferries were speedily abandoned and all the remaining
troops were put across at the point highest up. Gradually
the leaders pressed forward within the loop of the river, and the
construction of the bridge was promptly taken in hand.
At 4.30 P.M. this was completed, and reinforcements there
upon began to pour across. ' By nightfall,' Maude wrote in
his despatch, ' as a result of the day's operations, our troops
had by their unconquerable valour and determination forced
a passage across a river in flood, 340 yards wide, in face of
strong opposition, and had secured a position 2000 yards in
depth covering the bridgehead, while ahead of this hne our
patrols were acting vigorously against the enemy's advanced
detachments, who had suffered heavy losses, including about
700 prisoners taken in all. The infantry of one division were
across and another division was ready to follow.' Nor were
the triumphs of that day of victory confined to the stirring
events on the extreme left of the Anglo-Indian army, for
General Cobbe's troops followed up their success of the 22nd
by securing possession of the third, fourth and fifth hnes at
Sannaiyat, so that by the evening they had placed themselves
in a dominating position on the extreme right of Maude's
far-flung front.
General Marshall's forces were in considerable strength on
the left bank of the Tigris by the morning of the 24th, and they
continued their pressure on the enemy vrithin and beyond the
Shumran Bend the whole day long, gradually overcoming aU
resistance other than what was offered by a stalwart Turkish

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 263
rearguard, as the enemy retired in disorder up the river.
1650 prisoners, 5 guns and 8 machine guns were included in
the day's booty. General Cobbe simultaneously gained pos
session of the last hne of trenches at Sannaiyat, whereupon
his troops moved forward rapidly, almost unopposed, through
the successive defensive systems which the enemy had con
structed between Sannaiyat and Kut, his advanced guard
reaching the vicinity of the latter place before dark. The
Turks, it may be remarked, had regarded Sannaiyat as impreg
nable, and, taking into consideration the comparatively weak
support in respect to heavy artillery which the 1st Corps had
at its disposal, it seems doubtful whether the position could
have been captured, even in spite of the valour of the assailants,
had it not been for the influence exerted upon the defenders
of the hnes by events in the Dahra Bend and at Shumran.
Even so, the garrison of Sannaiyat had manifested a rare
tenacity and fortitude, as was evidenced by the very heavy
losses which they had endured. ' Many trenches were choked
vrith corpses,' Maude wrote, ' and the open ground where
counter-attacks had taken place was strewn vrith them.'
When darkness closed in on the 24th, what was left of the
Ottoman forces was in full fUght from the scene of their
triumphs of a few months before, and that night the British
gunboats, pushing up froin Felahieh, moored off Kut.
Maude was the very last man to rest on his laurels and to
allow a discomfited antagonist breathing space to recover from
defeat. The events of the 22nd-24th of February may never
theless fairly be said to have placed the coping-stone on the
series of offensive operations which had commenced a little
more than two months before, when he of a sudden pushed
forward his left and secured the passages over the Hai. The
lines of entrenchments on which the Turks had expended
infinite labour on both sides of the Tigris, defences which
converted the environs of Kut into one huge stronghold, were
now all in the hands of his troops. The enemy, almost bereft
of armament and war material, was in full retreat. The
Tigris was open as a line of communications for supphes to
be brought up abreast of the leading troops of the Anglo-Indian
army, and armed river craft could now be depended upon to
take a prominent part in such further offensive operations as
Maude might contemplate. The disaster which had befaUen

264 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
General Townshend's force ten months before, and the suc
cession of reverses which the troops under Aylmer and Gor
ringe had met vrith when engaged on an almost impossible
task, were amply avenged. Not often in the history of war
has so dramatic a transformation been recorded in the rela
tive positions of opposing belligerents.
It is difficult to pick a hole either in the conception or in
the execution of this two and a half months' campaign, which
entirely revolutionised the military situation in Mesopotamia.
If the plan was a bold one, it was also at the same time a
reasonably safe one, and evefy fresh undertaking in connec
tion with its execution had been thought out in advance.
It might be suggested that the attack deUvered upon Sannaiyat
(which in the first instance was unsuccessful) was unnecessary,
seeing that the enemy was bound to abandon that formidable
position should the passage of the Tigris at Shumran prove
successful. But that forcing of the river was in reality by far
the most hazardous undertaking of all the various enterprises
comprised in the scheme of operations as a whole, the realisa
tion of the plan in full hinged upon its success, and to facili
tate the crossing by every means that Maude had at his
disposal was imperative. The attack on Sannaiyat on the 17th
chained large Ottoman forces to the spot on that day as also
on the following days — infantry and artillery — and it auto
matically diminished the resistance that was bound to be
encountered at Shumran ; moreover the Turks as a matter of
fact lost the more heavily of the two contending sides on that
day, even if they repulsed General Cobbe's troops. One of
Maude's outstanding merits as a commander in the field indeed
was that, in spite of his constant solicitude for the comfort and
well-being of the troops serving under his orders, he never
shrank from losing men when there was a definite strategical
or tactical object to be gained by doing so. A success at
Sannaiyat on the 17th would naturally have been preferable to
a set-back ; but whether the result of the operations at that
point was to be a success or to be a set-back meant a matter
of secondary consideration. The point of real importance was
that the Turks should be kept fully occupied opposite Maude's
extreme right at the moment when he was striking the
decisive blow vrith his extreme left.
Messages of congratulation poured in upon the Army

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 265
Commander after the news of his triumphs became known ;
for the recovery of Kut, although the place was of no
importance in itself, appealed warmly to the imagination
of the people all over the Empire. Maude received cable
grams from the King, from the War Office, from the Com
mander-in-Chief in India, from Sir Douglas Haig, and from
Sir A. Murray ; these were pubhshed, with his rephes, in an
Order of the Day for the information of his troops. But the
completeness of his success was hardly known even to
himself imtU two or three days later. For even on the 25th,
when General Marshall pressed on vigorously after the re
treating enemy on the left bank of the Tigris, with cavalry
pushing forward on his right and the gunboats steaming up
stream on his left, he was met with some stubborn opposition
after advancing some eight miles ; and he had to deploy his
guns and infantry and to deliver an attack before the Turks
gave way. During that night however the Ottoman forces
became utterly demoralised in the course of a hurried retreat,
and this retreat developed into a veritable rout on the follow
ing day, as a result of daring action on the part of the Royal
Navy and of relentless pressure by the mounted troops.
For the three gunboats, reheved to some extent of fear of
heavy artillery fire from guns concealed in pits, pushed boldly
ahead of the army, and they became completely separated
from it for a time owing to the sinuosities of the ri ver channel.
Although strongly opposed at one point by rifle and gun fire
from the banks, the httle fleet steamed hard against the
current, and in the afternoon came up vrith the heterogeneous
Turkish flotilla of fighting craft, transports and barges. This
armament was attacked at once. The hostile crews fought
their vessels gallantly enough ; but the British gunboats
proved very much more than a match for the enemy armada
and gained a complete \actory, capturing or destroying the
entire flotilla but for a couple of patrol boats which managed
to escape up-stream. The flying Ottoman army had in the
meantime entirely outstripped Marshall's infantry ; but the
British and Indian cavalry kept well up with the fugitives,
accelerating their movements, maldng imposing captures,
and pressing so close on the heels of the fugitive foe that on the
evening of the 27th the foremost echelons of the mounted
troops reached Azizieh, half-way from Kut to Baghdad.

266

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

• At the commencement of operations,' writes Sir A. Cobbe, ' the
Army Commander was hampered by the necessity of avoiding
losses — a policy which so often defeats its own ends and leads to
extravagance in this direction ovring to effecting nothing. When
given a freer hand he framed his plans with the intention of defeat
ing the enemy's forces before they could be reinforced, and of
inflicting such blows on the Turks that their morale would be
lowered for the future. This could only be attained by hard

fighting, seeing that his opponents were fiushed vrith their successes
at Kut, and were confident that their own fighting powers far sur
passed ours. Having made his plans, Maude carried them through
vrithout a falter. Unaffected by temporary set-backs, always
eager for action, chafing at inaction though suffering it when
necessary (such as during the halt in pursuit to Baghdad in
order to let rations come forward and keep pace with his rapid
advance), he inspired those under him vrith the same spirit. He
fiUed them vrith confidence that they would be backed up in what
they undertook and that the serrices behind them would not faU.'

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 267
' I fancy that in my last letter I told you aU about the crossing
of the Tigris, and the magnificent way in which the troops accom
phshed it,' Maude wrote home on the 28th. ' Nothing could have
been finer, and, as Sir Charles Monro said in his telegram to me, it
wiU take a very high place in the records of the British Army.
Since then we have been pushing on merrily. First the whole
army was in pursuit, and then, as the infantry became less and less
able to keep up with the fiying enemy, the gunboats and Cavalry
Division took it up, and they are still at it now. The enemy is
absolutely demorahsed and streaming away towards Baghdad in
confusion, leaving guns, trench mortars, machine guns, rifles,
ammunition, equipment, tents and stores of all kinds scattered
along the road, whilst they have bumt and buried a certain amount.
Then, on the river, the gunboats have captured quite a lot of
shipping — four ships (including one of our gunboats which we lost
in the retirement from Ctesiphon), launches, barges, mahalas,
pontoons and a considerable amount of bridging material. The
Turks have thrown some guns into the river, and altogether it
is a complete rout. Since we started operations in December we
have taken something hke 7500 prisoners, including over 2500
yesterday, and this, added to the dead whom we have actually
counted and buried, and aUowing for a reasonable proportion of
wounded, means — placing it at a low figure — that we have accounted
for over three-quarters of the Turkish army which was opposed to
us. NaturaUy the troops are dehghted at their excellent per
formance, as they may well be.
I have called a halt temporarily just to pull things together and
to reorganise our communications, which have unavoidably become
somewhat dislocated by the transfer from our former system back
to the river line only. It is a great thing to have got control of the
Tigris once more, and it will help us enormously in our future
operations which I trust that the Government wiU allow me to
undertake. We have again had some more rain, but luckily only
for a short time, and the strong north wind which came soon dried
up things generally.
As soon as we got the narigation of the river again I came right
forward, and it is interesting to see closely much of the ground
over which the fighting had been near the river, such as the Khaidiri
Fort Bend, the Dahra Bend, and the actual place where the passage
was forced. Looking at the ground, it scarcely seems feasible
that a force should have crossed as we did, first in loose pontoons
and then by a bridge, in face of an enemy entrenched and holding '
the far bank with infantry, machine guns, and artillery. But we
managed to help matters by ha^dng a semi-circle of artillery and
machine guns right round the bend on the day in question, and their
fire simply smothered the Turks. Still, even with that, it was a
great performance and one that those who took part in it ought to
remember for the rest of their Uves.
I did not think much of Kut as we passed it, and did not stop

268 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
to go into it. It has been badly shelled and the minaret had been
knocked over by our artillery, and it really possesses no interest
except from the sentimental point of riew. I am now hring once
more on a river steamer, and shall probably do so for the present,
as one has to be constantly on the move and it is the easiest method
of getting over the ground ; but as soon as we can get more or less
settled down I shall get ashore again.'
The Army Commander was intent upon giving the enemy
no rest, but, as mentioned in the letter quoted above, he
had been compelled to stay the forward movement for fear
of entirely outrunning his supplies. The staff had found
some difficulty in persuading him of the need for this pause ;
but the arrival of General MacMunn with a flotilla of vessels
crammed with food and stores as soon as navigation was
safe, and his representations as to the imperative need of
getting these forward before a fresh rush to the front was
undertaken, decided the matter. The Inspector-General of
Communications went aboard the steamer on which Maude
vrith Army Headquarters was on the point of moving up
stream. The staff feared that further advance was for the
moment premature, and they urged General MacMunn to
make representations.
' I was hteraUy pushed into his curtained-oft space,' is General
MacMunn's account of what followed. ' He said, " How are
supphes ? " I said, " Coming on well, but it is two miles of river
for every one mile by land, and I can't feed you and supply
ammunition if you move another yard yet." He looked at me
quizricaUy and asked, " When may they start ? " So I said,
" Not before the 5th," when aU he remarked was " Right." By
that time we had the show in hand. You see, I had received no
warning of his proposed push for Baghdad.'
From the 28th of February to the 4th of March the move
ments of combatant units consisted in the main of a general
closing up towards the front at Azizieh, where the moimted
troops had come to a standstill, having outrun their supplies.
The 1st Corps was pressing up in rear of the 3rd Corps, and
a satisfactory concentration of force was effected vrithin the
week in anticipation of a fresh advance. Very heavy ad
ministrative work had to be got through during those few days,
ending in a triumph of organisation; for when the pause
came to an end everything was ready for a final move on
Baghdad. Amongst other things it had suddenly become

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 269
necessary to transfer some of the great accumulations of
goods assembled at the terminus of the hght railway between
Sheikh Saad and the Hai, from that locality to the river,
partly by employing motor and animal transport across the
space between the terminus and the Tigris by Kut, and
partly by evacuating the stores back by rail to Sheikh Saad.
' Sinn railway station,' as Mr. Candler puts it in his compelUng
picture of how the communications of the army were transformed,
' which had seemed the centre of our universe, was left out of the
scheme of things. The S. and T. staff who were needed for the
advance were locked up in the depots as caretakers, or to evacuate
supplies down, not up the line. Three or four thousand tons of
ammunition and R.E. stores had to be cleared, and local transport
was necessary to collect it and get it away. Thirty train-loads of
empty shell cases and empty boxes alone were removed, and the
Arabs were kept oft while the gleaning was going on.
But the abandonment of the main artery at Sinn was merely a
temporary dislocation ; the river was the permanent and com
pensating gain. Not that it was all plain sailing. Every division
had so many ships aUotted to it. But some were slower than
others ; some ran against mudbanks ; the channel had changed
its course many times since Ctesiphon, and the pilots did not know
the way ; in some cases coal gave out, and there were knavish
units on the banks commandeering other people's food. Often at
first we looked anxiously for the smoke of the supply steamers.
Once or twice emergency rations were consumed. But soon
anxiety was forgotten. " Q " never failed us. When a day's
rations went wrong, a camel convoy would emerge out of the blue,
or a leisurely cortege of Ford's vans would traverse the BibUcal
plain. During the whole pursuit only one division was on half
rations, and that only for one day. How it was done Providence
alone knows, and Proridence was " Q." '
The reference to the Arabs above suggests mention of their
operations directed against the fugitive Osmanhs during their
hurried retirement from Kut to beyond Azizieh. The beaten
army had not been harried during its retreat by the speedy gun
boats and the eager horse alone. They had also experienced
extremely rough treatment at the hands of the Arabs, who, as
is not unusual in the case of warriors of that predatory char
acter, swarmed on the flanks and the rear of the beaten side,
cutting off and murdering stragglers, increasing the panic and
the rout, and appropriating any booty that was sufficiently
hght to be carried oft. It may moreover be mentioned here
that the continuous victories of Maude's forces had latterly

270 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
been exercising a most pacifying influence over the nomads
and villagers dwelUng in the area of Mesopotamia Ijring below
Kut.' This gratifying state of things held good both along
the line of the Tigris and also in the region to the south along
the Hai and the lower Euphrates, where General Brooking
and the 15th Division were vrith some impatience awaiting
orders to push forward.
By the 4th of March the administrative situation was
completely restored, and Maude had received a guarded ap
proval from home for his continuing the advance on Baghdad.
It is in this connection a matter of regret that the commander-
in-chief's diaries during the last eighteen months of his life
had to be destroyed afterwards; because in his numerous
letters to his family and to many soldier friends during the
long period of preparations that led up to his starting his
offensive in December 1916, as also during the succession of
combats around Kut, he would never appear to have mentioned
any intention of pressing on to the City of the Caliphs. He
does in his letter of the 28th, which has been quoted on p. 267,
it is true, speak of further operations for which he hoped to
get Government consent ; but even at that late date, and after
so much of the programme had been carried out, he does not
name Baghdad. Still, Mr. Candler is probably right when,
in a flne appreciation of the army commander after his death,
he puts it thus : ' And yet, I believe. General Maude saw
Baghdad in his grasp all the while, his own personal objective,
for he had no orders from home in which the city was written
large as a definite goal.' The truth indeed is that, had Maude,
before he commenced his offensive campaign in the Kut
region, suggested to the War Council that he proposed — or
even that he merely hoped — ^to gain possession of the capital
of Mesopotamia, that body would, after their untoward ex
periences at the Dardanelles and in connection with General
Townshend's force, have had some justification for placing
a curb on the activities of so enterprising a commander and
for tying him down very tightly to the achievement of some
strictly limited object.
His theory and practice of making war was to bide his
time until all was properly in train for an effort, and then to
move rapidly and to strike hard. All being ready at nightfaU
on the 4th of March, the mounted troops, with General Mar-

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 271
shall foUovring ahd the 1st Corps bringing up the rear, surged
forward on the left bank of the Tigris on the moming of the
5th, and during that afternoon the cavalry came upon the
enemy in position at a place called Lajj, some twenty-five
miles from Azizieh.^ At the expense of somewhat heavy
losses to themselves, the 13th Hussars by their intrepid action
here helped very materially to dislodge the Turks, and to
constrain them, in face of the arrival of further troops from
the south, to effect a precipitate retreat during the night.
Next day the mounted troops, still pushing ahead at speed,
found a carefully prepared position near the famous arch of
Ctesiphon evacuated by the Turks, and that night the horse
men were close to the Diala River, the channel of which
created a very formidable obstacle barring the road which led
along that bank of the Tigris to Baghdad. In a letter home,
written on the Sth, Maude gives a concise and graphic de
scription of the course of events on the first four days of the
advance from Azizieh :
We were off on the moming of the 5th towards Baghdad. We
did twenty miles on that day to Zeur, and the cavalry got a bit
beyond that and had a stiffish fight with the 51st Division, v(fhich
was the only one remaining intact, in the neighbourhood of Lajj.
However during the night the Turks withdrew, and pretty fast at
that for we found it difficult to catch them next day, although
we got a number of prisoners who were straggUng. Next day we
pursued our course to Bustan, and on the 7th we got to the hne
of the Diala, where the enemy — though not in strength — ^managed
to hold us up on the river, mainly by a few guns and a number of
machine guns. During the night we tried to force a passage at one
or two places, but the machine guns in the moonhght were too
much for us vrithout incurring heavy casualties, which hardly
seemed justified.
Meantime the 1st Corps was coming up steadily behind the 3rd
Corps. I had taken the precaution of ordering a bridging train
and a half forward in case of need, and so it seemed to me that the
best way would be to tum the line of the Diala by moving up the
right bank of the Tigris. I therefore ordered a bridge to be thrown
at Bavri. This was completed in four hours this moming (Sth),
and the Cavalry Division are now across, and the 1st Corps leading
division are foUovring them. Their instmctions are to press on
to Baghdad, which is twenty-one miles from where they are at
present, whilst I have given full instmctions to the 3rd Corps
which i trust wiU ensure the passage of the Diala being forced
during the night.
^ The operations in Mesopotamia subsequent to the advance from Azizieh
are illustrated by the map ' Environs of Baghdad ' on p. 266.

272 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Yesterday we passed Ctesiphon, and though the Turks had
prepared a very strong position — almost a fortress — they went
straight through it, and I think that the rapidity of our advance
had something to do with their not stopping. All the work there
was new and very well designed and strong. Yesterday afternoon
there was a series of explosions in Baghdad, and to-day fires are
burning fiercely in many directions. We hear stories of reinforce
ments coming from various directions, but I fancy that the Turks
wiU clear if we can only press them sufficiently strongly.
Our great difficulty now wiU be the fioods, which will be a serious
problem to tackle ; but if we can get into Baghdad vrithin the next
few days we shall get to work determinedly to combat this disability,
and no doubt we shall find a way out of it. I have been busy
drafting proclamations, orders, etc., to come into effect when we
get to Baghdad ; but I think that we have broken the back of it
now. Supplies are coming up well, and it is quite an imposing
fleet to see on the river. It is a terribly long line of communica
tions, and so I hope when we get into Baghdad we may be able to
organise a good supply system there locally. The country seems
very fruitful up here — large vegetable gardens and any amount
of live stock — so it all looks promising. AU is quiet on other fronts.
The troops throughout have done magnificently, and the number
of regiments which have specially distinguished themselves is very
large, both British and Indian. The men are at the top of their
form, and although tired after their recent marches, owing to the
fact that they have done so much trench Ufe and because of the
gale of wind and dust that we have had, they are most cheery.
The actual occupation of the capital of Mesopotamia was
not to be effected without some severe fighting, in which the
enemy was greatly aided by the topographical difficulties
which the lie and the nature of the country placed in the way
of Maude's forces, and in which the enemy was in particular
aided by the existence of the Diala, a river 120 yards vride,
vrith houses and walled gardens on both sides of the channel
favouring defence while opposing obstacles to the bringing
up of pontoons. There could be no question of surprise here
as there had been at Shumran. The bold attempt of portions
of the 13th Division to force a crossing on the night of the
7th-8th had failed completely and vrith loss. A fresh effort,
made the foUovring night and preceded by a bombardment,
only succeeded in very limited degree and ahnost by a miracle,
in spite of devoted gallantry on the part of the troops con
cerned. Some of the Loyal North Lancashire did manage
to gain a footing on the further bank, and they not only
gained a footing but they maintained their grip upon a small

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 273
loop in the river embankment, unsupported except by fire
from the other side, for nearly twenty-four hours in spite of
every effort of the enemy to dislodge them. Early on the
morning of the 10th the passage was really effectively forced ;
other troops of the 13th Division were ferried over at two
points and they joined hands vrith the Loyal North Lanca
shire men. More infantry followed, a bridge was thrown and
completed by noon, and then General Marshall pressed for
ward in the afternoon up to near a position which the enemy
had taken up barring the way to Baghdad. ' The passage of
the Tigris and the Diala in face of an enemy in position,'
Maude wrote to Lord Dundonald a few days later, ' stand out
as episodes which will take some beating.'
Sir Arthur Lawley, who was superintending the working of the
Red Cross, had been invited by the Army Commander to come up
the river in view of the expected taking of Baghdad. ' Yesterday
moming at breakfast-time we passed close to the great Ctesiphon
Arch, and an hour later we anchored just south of the bridge of
boats which carried over the Tigris all the troops operating south
west and west of Baghdad, to the right bank of the river,' he wrote
home on the 10th. ' There was a ceaseless fiow of traffic until about
3 o'clock, when they opened the bridge to let through our ship and
a good many others that were eager to get forward. The next
bend of the river brought us vrithin sight of H.P. 53, which is the
boat in which General Maude and all his headquarters staff are
estabhshed. We anchored just astern of them and then pitched
our tents on the bank just opposite H.P. 53.
We found Joe Maude in great spirits and full of confidence, as
indeed he well may be, in spite of a temporary check at the Diala
River — a very strong position occupied by the Turks. The night
before last about 100 men of the East Lancashires (?) got over
the river and hung on all day under cover of our guns, and a bad
time they must have had ; but they stuck it out, and last night a
lot more of our men got over. . . .
I hear that there were about 600 wounded in this force yesterday
on the right bank, so there must have been some sharp fighting.
The cavalry are there, and they have had a great time since the
operations in December began ; since the Sannaiyat and Shumran
actions they have had an opportunity which has not been given
to a British Cavalry Division for the last hundred years. The move
has been amazingly rapid, which shows how admirably thought
out and laid down were the prehminary preparations.
The strain on every department has been tremendous ; but each
one has stood the strain, and when you reaUse that Joe Maude
has gone into every detail of every department himself, and is
personally responsible for the setting up and working of the whole
s

274 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
machine, you vriU see that he has proved himself a great adminis
trator as weU as a great soldier.'
While the operations for the forcing of the Diala were in
progress, the cavalry and the 1st Corps on the right bank of
the Tigris had been much impeded by dry watercourses, and
there was moreover a complete lack of water away from the
river bank. They were however within about seven miles of
the city by the evening of the 9th, and their advance was
continued on the morrow in spite of a blinding dust-storm,
meeting with opposition sometimes fitful and sometimes
determined, and delayed almost as much by physical diffi
culties as by the efforts of the Turks ; but at nightfall the
advanced troops were very near to Baghdad. That night
the Turks gave up the idea of trying to stay the advance of
the conquering army, and drew oft to the north, so that the
city was occupied by troops especially detailed for the purpose
early on the 11th, the Black Watch, on the right bank, having
the honour of being first in the place and of seizing the rail
way terminus of the line leading to Samarra, a section of the
contemplated German Baghdad Railway.
' We were now vrithin close range of the city,' Maude wrote home
of the night of the lOth-llth, ' and I think the Turks saw the game
was up ; for during the night they fell back all along the hne and
made off as fast as they could along both banks of the Tigris, the
remnants of the 4th, 51st and 52nd Divisions by the right bank,
and the remnants of the 14th and 45th Divisions by the left bank.
Our patrols were in close touch with them all night, and as soon
as we found that there was movement going on we followed up,
though the difficulty of moring as fast as they did with our imper
fect knowledge of the ground was almost insuperable. However
by daybreak the Black Watch had occupied the railway station,
and Baghdad feU into our hands shortly after that. The cavalry
followed in pursuit ; but the exhaustion of the troops after their
severe fighting and unavoidable shortage of water lessened the
vigour of the pursuit. The cavalry however occupied Khadimain
and got over 100 prisoners and four aeroplanes. The gunboats
joined in the chase as soon as possible, and at dusk the enemy were
reported to be entrenching in a new position fifteen miles north
of Baghdad, covering the entrainment of their troops. More
prisoners were captured by the 3rd Corps, and they also got large
quantities of arms, ammunition, and equipment.'
As for the Army Commander himself, his steamer proceeded
up the river comparatively early in the morning and, it being

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 275
known that the troops which had been told off to enter the
city and to keep order had taken up their stations, the vessel
quietly brought up alongside the building which had been the
British Residency in peace days, and which the Turks had
been using as a hospital, at 3.30 p.m. Maude stepped ashore
accompanied by his personal staff. It was somewhat char
acteristic of the conqueror of Baghdad that he should have
made his entry into the ancient seat of the Cahphs in this
undemonstrative fashion; and some even think it was a
mistake. The Oriental believes in display. Impressed by
pomp and circumstance in placid times of peace, the spectacle
of a victorious commander entering a captured city almost
like an ordinary traveller arriving to make a stay, amounts
in his eyes to something like an anachronism. But the
citizens of Baghdad had here to do vrith a conqueror who
would never take credit to himself for what he had accom
plished, but who always gave the credit to those under
him who had co-operated in the achievement. What
Maude no doubt above all things vrished to avoid was to
convey the impression, by making a formal entry into the
city at the head of his troops, that this chmax to a campaign,
as well as the signal successes which had preceded it, were —
as they undoubtedly were — primarily his own handiwork.
It is interesting to contrast the details of his entry into Bagh
dad vrith those of his entry into another capital, Pretoria,
sixteen years before.
' As we steamed up into the city with the gunboats escorting us
on the 11th, the day we got the tovm,' he wrote home a few days
later, ' the banks were hned on both sides by crowds of inhabitants,
who applauded vociferously at intervals, and altogether ninety
per cent, of the population seemed dehghted that we had arrived.
The city was in rather a turmoil, for directly the Turks went out
at 2 o'clock in the moming, Kurds and Arabs began looting
everywhere, and although we got into the city by about 6 a.m.
there was time for them to do a considerable amount of damage.
StiU we soon reduced them to order.'
The actual occupation of Baghdad by no means connoted
an immediate cessation of active operations. Maude was much
too far-seeing and resolute a soldier to check the advance of
his troops for one moment, so long as the enemy displayed the
shghtest symptoms of recovering from the shocks sustained,

276 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
or while any strategical points of importance situated vrithin
the immediate zone of campaigning remained in hostile hands.
Already on the 12th, portions of the 3rd Corps were on the
move, pressing forward on the left bank of the Tigris to secure
possession of certain important embankments up-stream
which, were they to be cut by the Turks, would cause disas
trous floods lower down. By the 14th, the troops had flxed
their grip upon these bunds nearly thirty miles above the
city, after encountering but feeble opposition on the way.
But the enemy at flrst displayed a much more unyielding
disposition on the opposite side of the river. In that direc
tion the Turks were moreover in more formidable force. A
considerable body of Ottoman troops of all arms were found
to have taken up a strong position near Mushaidieh on that
bank of the Tigris, some twenty miles or so north of Baghdad.
There General Cobbe attacked them on the 14th. After a
prolonged and at times well-contested engagement, in which
all arms of the Anglo-Indian forces co-operated to admiration
and the gunboats on the river played an effective part, the
Turks were completely rolled up. They were kept on the move
aU night by Cobbe's eager infantry and dispersed so rapidly
towards morning that all touch with them was practically
lost next day. Then the town of Bakuba, which is situated
in a productive district on the left bank of the Diala, was taken
on the morning of the 18th, after a surprise crossing of the
stream during the night ; and the very next day Feluja on the
Euphrates, on the opposite flank of the arena of operations
to Bakuba, was occupied with little difficulty. Reports to
the effect that the Turks had started breaching the bunds of
the great western waterway and were flooding the country
had caused Maude anxiety ; but the stories proved to be
exaggerated, and the prompt action taken prevented much
harm being done. Thus, by foUovring up his victories below
Baghdad immediately and relentlessly, the Army Commander
had, within ten days of his securing possession of the city,
virtually occupied all the surrounding country, had got the
river embankments absolutely under his control, and had
secured for the use of his army the abounding produce of a
considerable tract of fertile and thickly populated country.
The second phase of the campaign for the conquest of
Baghdad hardly caUs for lengthy comment. It nevertheless

THE CAMPAIGN OF BAGHDAD 277
illustrates Maude's methods of making war to the fuU as effec
tively as do his victorious operations around Kut. Prepara
tions for an active campaign had been so complete beforehand,
that elaborate additional administrative processes were not
necessary to enable him to make a fresh rapid advance from
Azizieh. But he took care not to move forward from that
half-way house between Kut and the Mesopotamian capital
until all was absolutely ready for the delivery of a decisive
stroke, and, in spite of the temptation to push on the leading
portions of his army in hot pursuit of the retreating enemy,
he paused for a week to ensure his supply system and to enable
the whole of his troops to take part in the flnal move. The
consequence was that, vrithin a fortnight of his pushing for
ward from Azizieh, the programme was complete and the
Turks were scattered. Most commanders would probably
have done as he did in respect to throwing a bridge across the
Tigris below the junction of the Diala with the main river.
But not all commanders, having done so, would have kept
practically half their force on the left bank of the Tigris and
have accepted the risks involved in forcing a passage across the
tributary stream, when the enemy's front along it would
virtually be turned by the troops who were advancing up the
right bank of the main river. Maude however meant to infUct
an absolutely crushing defeat upon his antagonists. It was
no part of his theory of operations that the enemy should be
manoeuvred out of a position and be allowed time to vrithdraw
northwards at leisure. By attacking the Diala line, while at
the same time moving up the further bank of the Tigris, he
pinned down the Turks who were on the one bank, while part
of his army was pressing forward to attack those who were on
the other bank, and in consequence he signally defeated both
hostile forces in actual encounter. By the procedure adopted
he won a total victory instead of only a partial one.
Nor would his victory have been so complete as it was, but
for the decision and ruthlessness with which the enemy was
followed up immediately after the occupation of Baghdad.
The taking of the place was in itself such a triumph, and the
moral effect of its fall was bound to be so great that, seeing
what a strain had already been put upon the successful troops,
a good excuse undoubtedly existed for sanctioning a temporary
yelaxation of effort. But that was not Maude's way. Like

278 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Nelson, he would not be satisfied with any but the utmost
results. ' Had ten ships been taken and the eleventh escaped,
we being able to get at her, I should never consider it well
done,' was the great admiral's doctrine, and Maude conducted
operations on land in that same spirit.
Tidings of the capture of Baghdad aroused enthusiasm, not
only throughout the confines of the British Empire, but also
in all the Allied countries. It was the first conspicuous and
dramatic triumph that had been achieved by Entente forces
on land since the Battle of the Marne, and the likelihood of
its exercising a far-reaching effect over the whole course of the
war in Eastern regions was manifest. A message of hearty
congratulation was received from the King, and telegrams
also came to hand, amongst others, from the Viceroy of India,
from the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, from the Secretary
of State for War, from the Commander-in-Chief in India, from
Admiral Sir David Beatty on behalf of himself and the Grand
Fleet, from the commanders of the British armies in all the
other theatres of war, and from the Lord Mayor of London.
Vice-Admiral Sir Rosslyn Wemyss, the Naval Commander-in-
Chief in the East Indies, expressed particular gratification
that the Royal Navy had been able to co-operate with the
troops in their triumph. Nor did the Home Government faU
to give their recognition of what the Army Commander in
Mesopotamia had accomplished in practical form, for Maude
was definitely promoted to the rank of lieutenant-general.

CHAPTER XIV
CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST
If the capture of Baghdad and the subjection of the im
mediately surrounding district in some respects changed the
character of Maude's preoccupations, these highly important
events rather increased his labours and responsibilities than
diminished them. In the first place, the great Oriental city
itself required to be organised, although this work was rendered
the easier by the fact that the inhabitants in general were
delighted to be relieved of the presence of the Turk. Mar
auders and similar evil-disposed persons had to be laid by the
heels. A military administration had to be set up, and correct
relations had to be established vrith such remnants of the
former civil power as it seemed desirable to retain. The
question of sanitation in particular was promptly and ener
getically grappled vrith. Then again, cbmmunications had
to be improved, and the matter of throwing bridges had
straightway to be taken in hand ; a boat bridge over the
Tigris had already been completed by the 17th of March. A
house-to-house search for arms was instituted, and this proved
highly productive even if the weapons secured were of a varied
character. Hospitals were fitted up in suitable buildings,
and even at this early date arrangements for the comfort and
the housing of the troops during the coming summer were
already being devised.
Then there was also the question of developing and making
full use of the produce of the fertile tracts around Baghdad,
so as to reheve some of the strain on the very long line of
communications which reached back to the Shatt-el-Arab.
Maude was well aware that this region contained considerable
resources of grain, of fodder, of meat, and of fruits and vege
tables, as also of fuel (a commodity of great importance to
the army ovring to the extent to which the river transport
depended on its supply), and he was determined to get value
out of what could be made available. He had therefore 279

280 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
arranged to have a Local Produce Controller on his staff, and
this official. Colonel E. Dickson, lost no time in setting to work
on duties which were to prove of great assistance to the main
tenance of the army and to the prosecution of its subsequent
operations in the field. The Army Commander was much
impressed vrith what he noted as regards the fertility of the
country during his first few days near and in Baghdad, and in
his letters home he made comparisons between the agricul
tural wealth of the region where the bulk of his troops now
foimd themselves, and the arid tracts where they had under
gone such extremes of fortune during the preceding fifteen
months. It should also be mentioned that the moral effect which the
triumphant advance of the Anglo-Indian forces from Es Sinn
to the City of the Caliphs was exerting all over Lower Meso
potamia had become distinct and pronounced. This relieved
Maude of a certain amount of anxiety concerning his rear.
Arab sheikhs kept coming in to pay their respects at local
posts all along the line. The tribesmen were displaying less and
less bent for turbulence. Even marauding was on the dechne.
Certain exiguous Turkish detachments which had been dis
posed in posts along the lower Euphrates had withdrawn up
that river as the invaders from the sea swept forward up the
Tigris, and, gathering as one body at Feluja, they had repre
sented the garrison of that place which was so summarily
ejected on the 19th of March. The situation on the Karun
and between Kurna and Kut was quite satisfactory, and at
Nasirieh much had been done by energetic measures of ad
ministration to develop and to settle the surrounding region.
All the time that Maude had been busy elaborating his
plans for a far-reaching offensive campaign, which was to make
him virtually master of all Lower Mesopotamia and its capital,
and had been carrsdng them out, the question of Russian
co-operation from the side of Persia had been a subject of
inter-communication between London and Petrograd. It had
indeed been at one time hoped that the Anglo-Indian army
would receive very substantial assistance from tMs quarter,
even before it had penetrated beyond Kut. The Tsar's forces
were in occupation of all northem Persia, with bodies of
advanced troops pushed forward generally to about Kerman-
shah, and it had been fairly obvious that any progress on their

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 281
part directed in a westerly or south-westerly direction must
automatically threaten the communications with Mosul and
Aleppo of such Turks as happened to be operating in regions
to the south-east of Baghdad. StrategicaUy speaking, the
situation had in fact appeared to be fuU of promising possi
bilities. But the Russian forces available for action were not
large, they were opposed by the Turkish 13th Corps, they
were hampered by having to rely upon lengthy and indifferent
communications with their own home territory, and they were
not, as a matter of fact, handled vrith any remarkable enter
prise during the early stages of Maude's offensive campaign—
at the time, that is to say, when they appeared to be offered
somewhat tempting opportunities for delivering an effective
stroke. Now, however, that Baghdad was in his hands and
that news from Persia pointed to the Ottoman 13th Corps
being in full retreat from the region about Khanikin, east
of the upper Diala River, the Army Commander was particu
larly anxious to arrange for effective conjunct operations
between portions of his own forces and such troops as the
Russians might be able to push forward from the direction of
Kermanshah. He was anxious to prevent the junction of
the enemy 13th Corps (14th and 45th Divisions), which had
retired northwards from Bakuba after that place had been
occupied, vrith the enemy 18th Corps (4th, 51st and 52nd
Divisions) part of which had crossed the Tigris from the right
to the left bank, and to complete the overthrow of the latter.
There appeared to be a good prospect of dealing the Turks a
heavy blow if the Russians would press forward strenuously.
So Maude obtained leave from London to make all arrange
ments direct with General Baratoff, who was in command of
the Russian forces.
Information as to the actual position of affairs as between the
Russians and the Turkish 13th Corps was however somewhat
defective. The Ottoman force was entitled to more respect
than was believed to be the case, and General Baratoff's troops
were advancing under considerable difficulties and without
any compelhng impulse. Maude constituted a ' Khanikin
Column ' under charge of General Keary, which pressed north
from Bakuba on the 20th of March ; but it found itself
strongly opposed by the 18th Corps in hilly ground on
the 23rd, and a vigorous attack was deUvered that proved

282 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
unsuccessful. This enabled the 13th Turkish Corps to cross
the Diala about Kizil Robat and to get touch vrith the 18th
Corps, so that Maude had to push forward additional troops
to help the ' Khanikin Column.' Several encounters took place
during the closing days of the month, in which the enemy
suffered heavily. But the Russians failed to come up, no
decisive success was achieved by the Anglo-Indian forces,
and the results of the operations were indeed less far-reach
ing than had appeared probable when the scheme was being
drawn up.
It was not till the 2nd of April that direct touch was at last
gained between the British and Russian patrols about Kiril
Robat. By that time the strategical advantages of the
situation had disappeared, for the Turks had succeeded in
vrithdrawing more or less intact to the general line of the
Shatt-el-Adhaim. It moreover had become apparent that
the Russian forces were in no condition for prosecuting an
active campaign, and that they could therefore hardly be
relied upon to afford any really effective aid, although arrange
ments had been made to afford them substantial assistance
in respect to supphes and transport.
' We have been busy again out here,' Maude wrote home on the
31st of March, ' and on the 25th we had a big fight vrith the Turks
coming down from Persia. Although we were not able to tum
them out of their positions — which are very strong — we hung on
to them tenaciously, and that is what I wanted to do, so as to pre
vent their getting away before the Russians come along. We know
that the Russians have very few troops in front of them, because
we have identified nearly all the regiments in front of us ; but I
suppose that they have difficulties vrith transport and supplies,
and the things that have happened recently in Russia do not I
expect help them much. However I hope that they vrill come
along soon.
In the meantime we are keeping the Turks busy, and the day
before yesterday my old division attacked the 51st and 52nd
Turkish Division and gave them a good beating, driving them back
across the river which they had advanced from, and infUcting very
severe losses upon them, besides taking many prisoners. It was
a capital performance, and as the 14th Division is also retreating
towards Kifri, this has rid us of three of the five Turkish divisions
opposed to us. The other two I should very much hke to keep
here tiU the Russians arrive, if they ever do ; but we can hear httle
or nothing of them, and although we send out aeroplanes constantly
to look for them they are not to be found anywhere. The weather

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 283
still continues fine, and the river is wonderfully low for the time
of the year ; but I expect that we shaU be baring floods before very
long now, as the thaw must have begun up in the Caucasus.'
So long as the situation on the left bank of the Tigris had
not been satisfactorily cleared up, Maude had not been pre
pared to push his troops forward on the right bank so as to
secure the terminus of the railway at Samarra. But as soon
as the Turks fell back on the left bank behind the Shatt-el-
Adhaim, the 7th Division pressed forward from Mushaidieh,
the scene of General Cobbe's victory of the 14th of March,
and after overcoming some stubborn opposition it advanced
to beyond Beled, capturing useful rolhng stock on the hne.
Then it found itself strongly opposed. As it had now advanced
further forward along the Tigris on its right bank than the
hne of the Shatt-el-Adhaim (on the left bank) which the Turks
were holding, the situation obhged the Army Commander to
call a halt.
The position on the 10th of April on the left bank of the
Tigris was that the bulk of the 18th Turkish Corps was
holding the Une of the Shatt-el-Adhaim near the junction of
that stream vrith the main river, while the 13th Turkish
Corps was for the most part disposed in the stretch of the
Jebel Hamrin which extends between the Diala and the Shatt-
el-Adhaim, threatening any Anglo-Indian forces in flank that
might advance with the idea of forcing a passage across the
latter stream and of defeating the 18th Turkish Corps.
It had been intended that General Marshall should attack the
line of the Shatt-el-Adhaim on the night of the lOth-llth
vrith his 3rd Corps ; but the enemy 13th Corps suddenly
came down on the 10th from the Jebel Hamrin on Marshall's
flank. This Turkish move gave rise to some lively encounters
which lasted over two days, but which by the 14th had ter
minated in a notable triumph for the 3rd Corps, the enemy
dravring oft northwards through the defUes of the Jebel
Hamrin. Having thus settled the 13th Corps for the
moment, Marshall now turned his attention afresh to the
Shatt-el-Adhaim, and his troops forced the passage of that
river in brilUant style on the night of the 17th-18th.
This success made an advance on the right bank of the
Tigris at last justiflable, and the force on that side of the river
at once moved forward. The Turks had created defensive

284 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
lines barring the way, and the troops had severe flghting
before they made railhead opposite Samarra good. But
this was taken on the 23rd, and the victory achieved on
this occasion was very complete : for over 700 prisoners
were secured, 15 guns were taken, and a large quantity of
rolhng stock, of which only part had been seriously damaged
by the Turks before they beat a retreat, fell into the hands of
the 7th Division which had carried the operation out. The
division had been appreciably assisted by artillery fire from
the other bank of the Tigris during the fighting.
The Turkish 13th Corps, which throughout the weeks
immediately foUovring the British occupation of Baghdad
was handled by its commander vrith creditable enterprise, had
been moving down the right bank of the Shatt-el-Adhaim
vrith the intention of trying to save Samarra, a circumstance
which afforded General Marshall a welcome opportunity for
dealing this hostile force a crushing blow. The position held
by one of its two divisions was captured by a surprise attack
at night on the 24th of April, and the corps thereupon re
treated hastily up the right bank of the river. Marshall
followed the enemy up with vigour, in spite of heat and trans
port difficulties, and attacked the defeated corps again by
surprise on the 30th at a point some thirty miles from the
Tigris. The result was a complete victory. The Turks were
rolled up and driven north in disarray, and this gratifying
success may be said practically to have closed the prolonged
series of operations on a large scale on the part of Maude's
army which had been in progress since the previous December.
' Altogether I do not think that they (the Turks) can have been
pleased vrith their experiences during the last month,' Maude wrote
home on the 4th of May, ' as the 18th Corps have been beaten
five times, and the 13th Corps three times. They have lost
very heavily in casualties, whilst we have taken 17 guns, close on
3000 prisoners, and masses of other things, including a large amount ,
of rolling stock and some barges. AU this time the Russians have
been quite inactive, which has been a thousand pities ; because
they might have done a lot while we were engaging both corps,
for there was httle or nothing left for them to fight. But I suppose
that they are all at sixes and sevens, and cannot get anything done
properly. StiU, it is to be regretted, as we ought by now to have
got them well estabUshed on the Tigris above us, and that would
have simphfied the situation tremendously for the next autumn,
when we begin fighting again,'

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 285
He had had a visit from two Russian generals at the end of
April and had arrived at a certain understanding with his
allies ; but he realised himself that the results of the Revolu
tion of the previous month were bound to exercise a disastrous
influence over their military dispositions and their mihtary
efficiency in the future, even if he could hardly yet foresee
the total collapse that was to supervene before long. Russian
forces still practically dominated Armenia, and the Army
Commander no doubt at this time, when already beginning
according to his custom to look forward to what the strategical
situation was hkely to be some months later, pictured to
himself that this promising condition of things would still
exist when the season arrived for starting offensive operations
in the autumn. In the meantime, however, the time had
come to effect a redistribution of his forces, seeing that the
hot weather had practically set in.
While the strenuous operations beyond Baghdad, of which
a brief account has been given above, were being carried out
under the general direction of the Army Commander in the
latter part of March and throughout April, he had been
devoting close attention to the question of ensuring general
security during the period of comparative inactivity that would
ensue in the hot weather, and he had also been concerned vrith
arranging for the welfare of his troops during that trying time.
Tents were brought up from the rear. Encampments were
laid out on carefully selected sites. Well-organised canteens
were provided. Supplies of comforts were distributed. Pro
vision for the recreation of men and officers was not forgotten.
Arrangements had moreover been made for laying a metre-
gauge railway from Kut to Baghdad, so as to reheve the strain
on the water transport to some extent, in view of the coming
season of low water. Orders had furthermore been sent for
the infantry of the 15th Division to move up from Nasirieh to
the front so as to increase the strength of the forces in immediate
contact with the Turks — ^this although the Arabs had been
displaying a good deal of effervescence at the time when the
Sheikh Saad-Es Sinn railway was being pulled up and removed.
The Tigris, it should be mentioned, had given less trouble than
had been anticipated in respect to inundations ; the river had
kept particularly low this year, and in this respect the army
enjoyed better luck in 1917 than had been the case twelve

286 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
months before when Maude's division was participating in
the endeavour to relieve Kut ; anxiety on this score was
indeed virtually at an end by the beginning of May.
The question of local supphes had already been placed on a
sound footing, and the situation in this respect was improving
from day to day as better relations were established vrith the
Arab producers. Maude's genius for organisation and his
forethought at this time were almost as valuable to his army
as was the influence of his personaUty over the course of the
warlike combinations which were being carried out by Generals
Marshall and Cobbe. Much of his time, moreover, was taken
up vrith political and administrative questions in connection
vrith the territory which he had conquered.
' I have some quaint interriews from day to day,' he wrote on the
14th of April, * and I have been obhged to hmit them considerably,
as they take up so much of my time. One of my recent ones was
vrith a Chaldean priest who came on Easter Sunday to give me his
blessing. He had asked preriously if he might do so, and I said
' ' Certainly.' ' When he came in he proceeded to give me his blessing,
and said that he hailed me as the first Christian conqueror of Bagh
dad, so I immediately interjected " How do you know I am a
Christian ? " This seemed rather to upset him. However he started
again and finished off vrithout interruption. He is a very nice old
thing, and he did a lot of good work for our prisoners. . . .
I forget whether I told you that we have got a most comfortable
house which used to belong to Khalil, and we have settled down
very happily in it. Everything is most comfortable, and we have
even got electric hght now and double doors to keep the mosquitoes
out, so we are not to be pitied.
We are doing a lot in the towa. We have practically remade
the streets, which were full of holes and indeed full of chasms.
We have also organised a mihtary and ciril police, and we have got
a system of night watchmen for night work. The people are aU
dehghted to see us, and whenever I ride out in the evening one is
met vrith smihng faces and salutations everywhere. I have only
been tvrice assaulted so far, once by a man and once by a woman,
who rushed out from the crowd and insisted on kissing my boots,
which I hope they hked. All round outside, too, our troops are
received in a most friendly manner, though of course, as you know,
the Arab character is a treacherous one. Still, whenever we occupy
places which the Turks have been holding preriously, they cheer
our arrival.
Everything is pretty quiet elsewhere, and the country seems to
be setthng down well. I have had the Chief of the Indian General
Staff, General Kirkpatrick, who was vrith me at the Staff CoUege,
here recently and he has seen as much as possible in the time at
his disposal.'

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 287
By the end of April the heat was getting severe, and during
the closing stages of their offensive the troops suffered con
siderably from it, the water difficulty also presenting itself from
time to time. Maude was therefore very glad to be able to
call something in the nature of a halt, so as to give the troops
that rest which they had so fully earned after five months of
very strenuous fighting. The Mesopotamian Comforts Fund,^
in the organisation of which Lady Maude and her daughters
had taken a prominent part, was beginning to bear fruit even
up at the front, luxuries of various kinds coining to hand for
the troops. Bands were arriving in the country. The Army
Commander knew well that there would be a risk of sickness
spreading as soon as the rank and file became sedentary for
the summer after their exertions, and he was determined that
plenty of recreation should be provided for them. The health
of the force was however still most satisfactory, and, as it
turned out, it remained satisfactory upon the whole through
out the hot weather.
' Personally I look forward to a busy summer,' Maude wrote to
Sir W. Lambton on the 17th of May, ' as there is much to do.
Future operations, restless Arab tribes all round, reorganisation of
civil and miUtary administration of Baghdad and surrounding
country, reconstruction of our communications, development of
local supphes, new railway hnes, the proximity of the Russians,
pohtical questions, and a thousand and one other items give one
plenty to do and to think about. But we are all in tearing spirits,
and shall be quite ready for the Turks when they feel hke trying
conclusions again.'
Actually, the whole of the troops could not even yet settle
comfortably because some punitive work had to be under
taken against the Arabs. In the middle of May the Russians
moreover suddenly proposed to undertake an offensive from
where they were drawn up east of the Diala, towards Kifri,
and they asked for co-operation by Anglo-Indian troops.
This was prepared in haste and a couple of columns moved
out ; but the Russians were incontinently hustled back again
after crossing the Diala, and the undertaking thereupon
• It may be mentioned that in the middle of October 1917 the receipts of
this fund amounted to nearly £57,000; over £18,000 was collected on
' Flag Days.' At the end of the campaign there was a balance of some £9000
left over, and this sum is being set apart to endow a ' Stanley Maude Ward '
in the Endell Street Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

288 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
collapsed. Maude was sufficiently satisfied vrith the progress
of the various matters that he had been occupying himself
vrith at Baghdad towards the end of the month, to admit of
his paying a visit to Samarra, going out by train on the 18th
and returning next day. On the way back a quantity of
sand had been blown on to the line at one place, the engine
was derailed and the first five trucks were telescoped, four
men unfortunately being killed and seven injured. A few days
later he paid a visit to the front about Deltawa and Bakuba,
and he would have hked to take a run down to the base and
to see how matters were progressing at Basrah, Nasirieh and
Ahwaz ; but he could not find the time to do so, as such a trip
would have taken several days. By the end of May matters
had settled down for the summer, June proving a very quiet
month except for an important punitive operation against
the Arabs in the Diala valley, in which 14,000 sheep, 240
camels and large quantities of grain were captured ; 80 of the
tribesmen moreover were killed. A number of officers, in
cluding General Money, Chief of the General Staff, had gone
away on leave at the end of April, but these began returning
in the latter part of June.
' We held a most successful 4th of June dinner,' Maude wrote
home on the Sth. ' About twenty-eight were present and I made
General Holdsworth take the chair, as he was senior to me at Eton.
He and I used to have great races there ; he beat me in the Mile
and I beat him in the Steeplechase, and I won the Mile next year.
We had dinner at the Hotel Maude, and every one enjoyed them
selves immensely. I left about half-past ten, but I beheve that
the others stayed till nearly one o'clock and played footbaU, etc.,
in the courtyard of the hotel.'
' I ride most evenings and occasionally go by launch,' he wrote on
the 27th, ' but always to inspect something as there are such numbers
of things to look into. Last night I was down at the Expeditionary
Force canteen — we have got eight canteens running at different
places about here now. I saw one man buying a number of things
there, and I asked him whether he was hungry, and he said "Yes."
So I said, "That means that you do not get enough to eat?" And
he said that he had never been so weU fed in his hfe, but th,at he
hked a few extras to go vrith it. That is just the advantage that
the canteen gives us, as it enables the troops to get httle luxuries
to supplement their already substantial rations. . . .
Things are going along very satisfactorily in every direction.
My only worries are the Russians and pohtical questions, but I do

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 289
not let them worry me too much. I just say what I think and leave
it at that. . . .
I had a capital fUght by aeroplane the day before yesterday.
The 7th Division were very anxious that I should present their
Football Cup to the winning team after the final match, but the
train would have taken eight hours each way to Samarra and bapk.
So we flew there in an hour and fifty minutes, and came back in
fifty minutes — eighty miles each way. It took us a long time to
get there as there was a strong Shamal blowing, which made us
rock unpleasantly at times. I went out in dayhght and flew back
by moonlight, so that I had the experience of day and night flying.'
The action of the Army Commander in pajdng this aerial
visit to Samarra was very highly appreciated by all ranks.
It appealed to their sporting instincts, and it demonstrated
to the 7th Division what a lively interest Maude took in their
welfare and in their occupations. Sir C. Monro in India was
somewhat concemed on learning that the commander-in-chief
in Mesopotamia had taken to making flying trips, and he
conveyed a hint to Baghdad on the subject. ' The answer
seems to be that you can lose your life walking down stairs,'
was Maude's comment when mentioning the matter in a letter
home ; but that same answer might, after all, be made to a
remonstrance vrith regard to any reckless act. Although he
could not keep so closely in touch vrith regimental officers and
rank and fUe, now that he was in control of a great army
distributed over a vride area of country, as had been possible
for him when at the head of the 13th Division, he never missed
an opportunity of going among the troops when one offered,
and he made a point of presenting ribbons of decorations
personally after having awarded them, if it could be managed.
The consequence was that his army not merely entertained a
feehng of profound confldence in his soldiership, but that
British and Indian troops ahke also felt a genuine affection
for this chief, whose manner and bearing were ever so sym
pathetic and who was so prompt with his commendation when
any good work had been performed. The story of his frequent
visits to the station hospitals, and of his kindly inquiries when
making his rounds on these occasions, was carried out to the
distant camps by convalescents. All hands moreover fuUy
reaUsed how much the vastly improved conditions in which
they were living, as compared to earlier experiences, were
attributable to initiative and drive at the very top.

290 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
' Few could visit an hospital as he did,' writes the Rev. A. C. E.
Jarris, principal chaplain. ' No one knows better than a chaplain
how difficult this gracious ministry is, but he possessed the gift
In a rare degree. Entering a ward he took possession of it; rank
made no difference, he was equally at ease with all — always saying
and doing the right thing, always apparently knowing something
about everybody, and always cheerful. His presence radiated
confidence and hope.'
The Army Commander had been supplied with a singular
craft known as a ' glisseur ' or ' scooter,' driven by a powerful
motor engine, which skimmed along the surface of the water
at a great rate and making a fearsome noise. This contrivance
enabled him to travel at speed about the waterways imme
diately round Baghdad, and it assisted him considerably in
respect to carrying out inspections and visits by adding to
the time at his disposal. Amongst his many duties was that
of conducting interviews with local notabilities, and he was ^Iso
eso offitno charged vrith exercising general control over the
administration of the country. How effectively he performed
this service is shown by the fact that Mesopotamia has perhaps
been the most peaceful region in British occupation during the
months following the Armistice. Colonel Willcox gives an
interesting description of Maude's work in connection with the
medical arrangements and of the care of the sick during the
summ'er months :
It was frequently my privilege to meet General Maude, and to
discuss with him matters relating to the prevention of illness
amongst the troops, and any practical suggestions always received
his utmost support. He took the greatest interest in the pre
vention of scurvy, which had been a great scourge to the Indian
troops, and he gave instractions to Colonel Dickson that at all
costs fresh vegetables and supplies were to be issued up to the fullest
medical requirements. These instructions were faithfully carried
out and as a consequence scurvy speedily disappeared from the
force. After the occupation of Baghdad General Maude took the keenest
interest in every detail of the medical arrangements, and it was
largely due to his active support that so very high a degree of
efficiency was attained. The hospitals at Baghdad and the medical
arrangements generaUy were as satisfactory in every way, as regards
medical care, nursing and equipment, as any hospitals in London
or in any theatre of war. He personaUy visited the hospitals at
least twice a week, and by his kindly interest did a very great deal
to alleviate the sufferings of the patients and to encourage them in

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 291
their progress towards recoveiy. He took a special interest in
the Indian patients, and as an example of his thoughtfulness and
sympathy he leamt Hindustani in order to be able to converse
with them on his visits to the Indian hospitals.
It is impossible to exaggerate the great help and sympathy which
the Medical Serrice in Mesopotamia received from him during the
whole time of his serrice as G.O.C. His personal interest and great
sympathy were the prime causes of the perfection of the medical
arrangements in the hospitals and in the field.
Maude had always, alike as a brigade commander, as a
divisional commander and as a corps commander, kept a
watchful eye over the Chaplain's Department, and had in
terested himself particularly in its work, forming close re
lations with its personnel. The Rev. A. C. E. Jarvis writes
as follows of his work in this connection when Army Com
mander in Mesopotamia :
I met him officially for the first time when I was sent by the War
Office to Mesopotamia to report on the Chaplain's Department on
its transfer from the Indian Ecclesiastical Department. He gave
me all faciUties and a free hand. He told me that he was seriously
understaffed, and at once stated the total number of all denomina
tions he required, — a figure which I found, after careful investiga
tion, to be absolutely correct. Haring made up his mind he
never rested until he got his men.
The Army Council appointed me Principal Chaplain to the force,
and I took over in January 1917, and it was then that I was brought
into close personal touch with him. Persistent in inquiry, un
failing in solicitude in aU that concemed the Department and the
spiritual and moral welfare of the men, he always stood by me.
' My chaplains,' as he always referred to us, meant as much to him
as did any other branch of the service.
The year 1917 was one of climatic extremes in Mesopotamia.
The heat during the month of July was intense, the tempera
ture rising considerably higher than it had done during either
of the previous summers passed by Anglo-Indian troops in this
tropical part of the world. Thanks, however, to the excellent
arrangements which had been made in the matter of tentage
accommodation, the health of the troops gave rise to httle
real anxiety, even if there were an undesirable number of cases
of heat-stroke. One operation undertaken during this torrid
period did not prove successful, and what occurred rather
suggested that active work in the field ought to be avoided
until the weather grew a httle cooler. News had come to hand

292 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
that the Turkish garrison of Ramadi, their furthest advanced
post on the Euphrates above Feluja, was scanty in numbers.
So Maude gave directions for a portion of the 1st Corps to fall
upon the place. The enterprise took place on the night of the
lOth-llth of July ; but the result was disappointing, the failure
being largely due to a very severe dust-storm — a form of
atmospheric disturbance that was very common during the
summer months. The losses sustained in the affair were
chiefly owing to the temperature, and as a matter of fact a
number of Turks from Ramadi came in afterwards and
voluntarily surrendered, which indicated that the garrison
had been roughly handled even if the attack had been un
successful. General Money, who had been in indifferent health ever
since Maude had taken up the chief command, had to be in
valided soon after his return from leave, and it is worth
mentioning that when referring to this in a letter home the
Army Commander remarked that he ' did most of the General
Staff work himself ' — an admission of his system of centraUsa
tion. Colonel H. R. Hopwood became Chief of the General
Staff. Suggestions had been made to Maude that he should
himself take short leave of absence to India ; but, although
he fuUy realised that men who had severely felt the strain of
the campaign or whose health was suffering ought to be aUowed
a change, he would not hear of it. ' The cases I cannot under
stand,' he wrote, ' are those that are well and strong and have
nothing the matter with them. Surely it is a time when every
day and every hour should be utilised to the full by everybody
to try and bring this war to a successful conclusion.' That
life in Baghdad was none too pleasant at this time is shown
by the following extract from a letter of his of the 20th
of July :
My house at night is literally like an oven, for the sun bakes the
bricks in the walls and the tiles on the floor throughout the day,
and they give off the heat all night. I vrish that I could get out
under canvas ; but there is too much to be done, although as soon
as all the reorganisation and preparation is finished I mean to get
back to tent life as early as possible. It is so much more satis
factory being right up vrith the troops and seeing and hearing all
that is going on at first hand ; and although some people do not
like losing their little comforts it is unquestionably in my opinion
the right place to be.

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 293
The raUway from Kut to Baghdad was completed before the
end of the month ; this proved a great boon, for the Tigris was
now getting very low, and navigation along some of its stretches
was becoming liable to interruption. The two lengths of rail
way Kurna-Amarah and Kut-Baghdad avoided the shallowest
portion of the waterway, upon the uninterrupted naviga
tion of which the very existence of the army would othervrise
have depended, and vrithin a month half a dozen trains a day
were conveying war material and food supphes up to the
advanced base. It was becoming more and more apparent to
Maude as the summer wore on that no reliance could be placed
upon Russian assistance from the side of Persia, and that the
situation in Armenia was coming to be such that he must
be prepared for considerable bodies of Turkish troops being
Uberated from that mountainous region for action against
himself. That the fall of Baghdad had aroused consternation
in Berlin as well as in Constantinople was well known. Every
thing pointed to the Anglo-Indian army in Mesopotamia being
called upon during the coming cold season to withstand
determined efforts on the part of the enemy to recover pos
session of the city and the territory which had been wrested
out of the hands of the Osmanlis.
It was understood that General AUenby, who had just
assumed command of the British forces on the borders of
Palestine, would shortly commence active operations in that
quarter ; but, even allovring for the effect of an offensive from
the side of Egypt, the position of Maude's army around Bagh
dad, dependent on its long line of communications, was not
wholly without anxiety. Report at one time declared that
the very successful German commander, Mackensen, was
about to take charge of hostile operations in Northern Meso
potamia. This story proved to be incorrect ; but it transpired,
on the other hand, that general superintendence over the
Ottoman operations was going to be exercised by another dis
tinguished German soldier. Von Falkenhayn. The Army Com
mander at Baghdad had therefore to be prepared for an active
offensive campaign on the part of the enemy, conducted under
skilled leadership, when the cooler weather set in. But he
was nowise dismayed. He indeed looked forward vrith calm
confidence to the future, well aware of the adequacy of his
own arrangements and placing the fullest reliance on his troops.

294 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
The earlier days of August were signalised by no occurrences
of importance, although the great heat was beginning to pass
away and the health of the army remained satisfactory. A
memorandum was issued on the 7th urging upon subordinate
commanders the importance of getting all ranks fit for rapid
marching and entrenching, and by the middle of the month
Maude had decided that a beginning of active operations
might now be made. Sharaban, twenty-five miles north-east
of Bakuba, was occupied on the 20th and fortified, the Army
Commander paying a visit of inspection to the place at the end
of the month. Orders were also issued for more or less con
tinuous reconnaissance work to be carried out by the
Air Force, which had received substantial additions to its
strength in personnel and material, with the object of locating
and of harassing the enemy.
About this time Maude was a good deal disappointed at
only seeing a precis of his despatch of the 10th of April ap
pearing, in which he had recorded the results of his campaign
of conquest up to the end of the previous March.
' I see that they have only published a resume of my despatch,' he
wrote home, ' which of course is very different from the real article ;
a paraphrase such as this will convey little or nothing to the troops
for whom, so far as I am concemed, it was primarily intended. So
I am having it printed in full and will distribute copies throughout
the army, so that they may see at least how much their work is
appreciated. I realise of course that paper is getting scarce in England, and
if they were simply to publish my next despatch in an abbreriated
form I would have nothing to say. But it seems to me that a place
hke Baghdad is not captured every day, and this fact might have
justified a httle more extravagance, so that every one might know
exactly what had happened.'
He would, however, appear to have been under a misappre
hension in this matter. The despatch was published in full
in the London Gazette of the 10th of July. It was a long com
munication, however, so the various newspapers only made
extracts from it, or published it in the form of a summary.
The same thing happened to many other despatches sent in
to the War Office by commanders-in-chief during the pro
gress of the Great War. The mistake in such cases seems to
be — and it is one especially to be avoided where operations
are being carried out in lands far away from home like Meso-

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 295
potamia or East Africa — that a liberal consignment of copies
of the Gazette is not sent out to the scene of operations as a
niatter of course by the War Office. Despatches sent in by a
victorious general (that institution should remember) serve a
twofold purpose. They furnish the Government and the
country with information. They also acquaint the army
concerned that its leader has brought to the notice of the
Government and the country what his troops have done, and
that he has given them the credit that they deserve for the trials
they have undergone uncomplainingly and for the resolution
and hardihood they have displayed when at grips with the foe.
While quietly making preparations for the offensive cam
paign which he had been planning, Maude was also continuing
to devote attention to the innumerable questions that arose
in connection with the comfort and contentment of the troops
under his command. He was particularly pleased with the
development of the hospital arrangements in Baghdad and
with the results obtained by the Local Produce Control which
he had set up on first arrival at the city. The place was
indeed assuming many of the characteristics of an Indian
cantonment of old standing.
' I am sending you the programme of the races which we had last
week,' he wrote home on the 6th of September ; ' they were a great
success and will, I hope, be the beginning of a succession of meetings
in years to come. The new club is being laid out with polo groimd,
racing tracks, lavni tennis courts, cricket and footbaU grounds,
golf course, and arrangements are being made for aquatics in
connection with it. We are also starting an Officers' Club in the
city, and it ought to be open in two or three days' time. I went
over it yesterday and it ought to be a first-rate institution.
A few nights ago the Nursing Sisters here gave a moonhght party
to which they asked me, and it really was very well done. They
have a nice house on the river bank about one and a half miles
above Baghdad. They prevailed on me to play a game of musical
chairs, for which about twenty or thirty people started, and finaUy
I won the competition, although not without a struggle. Later on
in the eveningi suggested that they should have two or three dances,
which all the nurses loved, although there were some very black
looks amongst the matrons and senior medical officers who seemed
to think that there was something very dreadful in dancing. I
never can follow the thoughts of such people ; for dancing in
itself is quite harmless, and considering the splendid way in which
these young girls have worked throughout the intense heat all this
summer I think that they deserve any reasonable relaxation one
can give them. . . .

296 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
I get so impatient sometimes because things do not go as quickly
as I could vrish, but one is apt to forget the difficulties of our com-
mimications and the length of the river hne. It is indeed wonderful
how things are coming along, and the work of the railways and
inland water transport is quite magnificent — especially the latter,
as the river is dovra at its very lowest, and yet groundings are few
and far between. We have got simply masses of men, munitions,
and supplies coming along, and everything looks most prosperous.'
' The general was strict, but not unreasonably so,' Captain
Musgrave, Maude's aide-de-camp, writes of him ; ' if he gave an
order for a thing to be done at a certain hour he expected it to be
done at the hour named. Those who knew him always had suffi
cient tmst in him to feel sure that he would not attempt to carry
out impossible projects. His great power of inspiring confidence
in those under him was perhaps one of his most remarkable char
acteristics ; this went through the whole of the force — right down
to the private soldiers.
Very precise in respect to punctuahty, I never knew him to be
late for anything. Nor was he ever before his time. A favourite
sajang of his was that every officer ought to have written up over
his shaving glass in order to be perpetually reminded of it, " In war,
time is everything."
When at home in his own house with his personal staff he would
at meals and such times put business away from him as far as
possible, and the conversation would carry one far away from
Mesopotamia. But if an important message or telegram arrived
he would attend to it at once and dictate the reply.'
During the closing days of September two important opera
tions were carried out with a view partly to extending the
area under control of the Anglo-Indian forces, and partly to
depriving the enemy of valuable sources of supply. The first
was the occupation of Mendali on the Persian frontier about
fifty miles east of Bakuba, which was effected on the 29th
by a cavalry force after a sharp skirmish. The second, a
much more serious enterprise, was a carefully prepared attack
by General Brooking vrith his 15th Division upon Ramadi
on the Euphrates above Feluja, where a Turkish force had
been in position all the summer. This undertaking proved
a signal success. The place was surrounded on the 28th after
a night march and its main defences were captured, and then,
when the attack was resumed next morning, the Turks sur
rendered almost to a man : 3500 prisoners, 13 guns and 10
machine guns fell into the hands of the victors, besides launches,
barges and armaments of various kinds — a most satisfactory

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 297
opening to the autunm campaign. The capture of the few
river craft was especiaUy useful in connection vrith estabhshing
a water transport service on the Euphrates. Major-Generals
R. Stuart Wortley and W. GiUman (who had been Maude's
G.S.0.1. in the 13th Division when he first joined it in
GaUipoU) arrived during the month, Stuart Wortley becoming
Deputy Quartermaster-General and GiUman being appointed
to take command of the 17th Division which was to be formed
at Baghdad.
Having rendered the position on the Euphrates secure,
Maude now tumed his attention to his right flank beyond
Sharaban, and in the middle of October a number of columns
operating in concert succeeded in occupying the whole of the
section of the Jebel Hamrin range of hills which is situated to
the west of the Diala, and also portions of the range to the
east of that river. This was accomplished without encounter
ing much opposition. The weather was now very pleasant
and was even cold at night. Maude wrote home in excellent
spirits, delighted at the prospect of active operations and at
the success which was attending their opening stage.
' I forget whether I told you that I flew out to Ramadi in an
aeroplane shortly after the fight,' he mentioned in a letter home,
' starting at 6 a.m. and getting there soon after 7 o'clock. I then
rode round the battlefield and saw everything in detail, and later
inspected the captured. In the afternoon I went out and planned
the new defences for the place with the general in command there,
and in the evening I flew back, taking just an hour to do so. It was
much the best way of getting there as I could not well spare much
time, and if I had motored it woiUd have meant seven and a half
hours each way at least, and the jolting and jerking would have
been dreadful. In fact it was this question of bad communications
which required so much careful preparation before we attacked
Ramadi, and although things are much better in this respect
they are still very bad. But we are hard at work on them and
matters are improving.'
The Army Commander always had twenty-four orderhes
about him, who had been especially chosen from his old divi
sion, four being on duty at a time. His immediate entourage,
as also the military police authorities in Baghdad, were anxious
about his safety. There was some reason to believe that
fanatical elements were plotting against his Ufe, and a report
reached Headquarters one time in the autumn that an attempt

298 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
would actually be made against him. Although rather dis
posed to pooh-pooh such stories, he allowed himself to be
persuaded that special preventive steps were called for, and
he agreed to the guards over his personal quarters in the house
where he resided being doubled. His rides and motor drives
through the streets caused those in charge of the police con
siderable apprehension at times, and special precautions were
taken if it was known beforehand what route he was going to
follow and where he was going to.
The caravan route that for centuries has led from Baghdad
to Mosul does not coincide with the hne of the Tigris. It
skirts the foothills that project outwards from the upland
regions of Kurdistan and Luristan into the great plain of
Babylon and Chaldea. In his plans for prosecuting further
offensive operations against the Ottoman forces, Maude had
ever kept his eye fixed on Kifri and Kirkuk as a next objective,
and in the early days of summer, before the utter collapse of
fighting potentialities in the Russian hosts consequent upon the
Revolution became apparent, he had always contemplated joint
combinations by the Allies in this region. Although any aid
worthy of serious consideration from the side of Persia could
be regarded as at an end by the autumn of 1917, and although
this circumstance, coupled with the disquieting situation in
Armenia, necessarily added to the difficulties of any advance
northwards from the Jebel Hamrin, the Army Commander
had evidently proposed to act in this direction in due course
during the cold weather that was now setting in. The opera
tions of October had indeed made a good commencement for
such a plan of campaign. But before committing any large
portion of his army to offensive operations on an ambitious
scale directed towards Kirkuk, the commander-in-chief
deemed it necessary to dispose effectually of the Turkish
contingents which all the summer had been assembled on
the Tigris to the north of Samarra.
The enemy, as it happened, made the first move in this
quarter, advancing somewhat unexpectedly but in tentative
fashion down both banks of the river towards the end of
October, General Cobbe from Samarra prepared to fall upon
this hostile armament, but it drew back. Maude thereupon
sent orders that it was to be dealt vrith where it had
halted, about midway between Samarra and Tikrit. The

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 299
enemy position on the right bank of the Tigris was in con
sequence attacked and taken on the 2nd of November, and
Cobbe followed this up three days later by a successful onset
upon the hostile forces gathered at Tikrit, the fruits of the
victory being a number of prisoners and some valuable booty
in war material and river craft, while the discomfited Turks
retreated precipitately up the Tigris. This very satisfactory
encounter proved to be the last triumph on the battlefield
to be placed to the account of the ever victorious army that
had grown out of ' Force D,' while it served under the orders
of Sir Stanley Maude. The fight has therefore a tragic signifi
cance of its own. For a very few days later, the British and
Indian detachments that were spread out over a wide stretch
of country fanwise round . Baghdad, and that were holding
the chains of communications that led back from the city
to the Persian Gulf, learnt vrith profound grief, and at first
vrith consternation, that they had lost their beloved chief.
But there were no grounds for consternation. The con
queror had consolidated his conquest. If his task was not in
a military sense completed, such substantial progress had been
accomphshed towards its completion, so surely had the
foundations been laid, that the Anglo-Indian army had now
no grounds for fearing a reverse of fortune in Mesopotamia,
nor for anticipating that yet further triumphs would not fall
to its lot under the guiding hand of the distinguished soldier
who took Maude's place.
In this and in preceding chapters references have been
made to the mutual confidence that sprang up between
Maude and those serving under him in the field, as he passed
upwards through the various stages of Brigade Commander,
Divisional Commander and Corps Commander up to that of
Army Commander. But he possessed the precious gift of
inspiring trust in those set over him as well as in subordinates
of all degrees, and this was one of the secrets of his achieve
ments at the head of formidable legions. From the time that
he had assumed supreme control in Mesopotamia he had
enjoyed, and had been sustained by, the full confidence of
his military superiors at home and in India. The extent to
which this mutual reUance held good, and the benefit which
it conferred upon the State and upon the forces engaged in
an arduous campaign, is expressed by Sir W. Robertson, to

SOO SIR STANLEY MAUDE
whose unvarying support — practical support and moral sup
port — Maude and his men owed so much, in the following
tribute to the memory of the conqueror of Baghdad :
I saw much of Maude and his work for some years before the war,
especially when he was one of my chief assistants in the Directorate
of Mihtary Training in 1914, and was greatly impressed, not only
with his professional attainments and his love for the army, but
also with his sincerity of purpose and his high standard of honour
and justice. In my opinion these are amongst the first quahfica
tions required in a leader of men, and without them no man is fit
to lead. Therefore, when it became necessary in August 1916 to
appoint a new commander to our forces in Mesopotamia, I had not
a moment's hesitation in recommending Maude for the place.
It was very important that no mistake should be made in the
selection, for the campaign had hitherto been a series of dismal
failures and disappointments, and had entailed great hardships
and suffering upon the troops. Further, Maude was then prac
tically an unknown man to the War Cabinet, while there were not
a few other officers, some of whom were known to the War Cabinet,
whose fitness for the post could not be overlooked. I consequently
reaUsed that I was taking upon myself a great responsibihty in
recommending Maude, and him alone ; but it sat lightly upon me,
because I always felt satisfied that he would do everything that
was humanly possible to retrieve the situation. How weU he
retrieved it is one of the finest pages in the history of the war, and
from first to last our relations were of the most cordial and mutually
helpful kind.
This was the more remarkable seeing that we could communicate
vrith each other only by telegraph, and, as everybody knows, it
is always difficult in these circumstances to convey one's real
meaning. But I cannot recall a single instance of misunderstand
ing arising between us as to our respective wishes and intentions,
and this satisfactory result could not have been achieved but for
Maude's clear mihtary vision and his single-minded devotion to
duty. Throughout the war I was fortunate in having to deal with
commanders in the different theatres of operations whose one
desire was loyally to play the game and, ignoring self, to advance
the general cause. No one was more conspicuous in these en
deavours than was Maude. He was a gentleman and a soldier
in the best sense of the word, beloved by aU who had the pririlege
of knowing and of working with him.
What might be caUed the combatant side of the r61e enacted
by the Anglo-Indian forces in the Mesopotamian theatre from
April to November, furnishes convincing testimony as to the
understanding which existed between the Army Commander
and those, high and low, who were serving under his orders.

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 301
The operations of April and early May, which rendered the
position around Baghdad absolutely safe from real danger,
and which during the summer months caused the troops to
be virtually immune from molestation even in minor degree,
were carried out under no inconsiderable conditions of diffi
culty. They called for rapid movements and exhausting
marches effected in great heat by troops who had already gone
through a strenuous campaign, troops who had passed through
the wilderness, who had reached the promised land, and who
might reasonably hope for a respite. But even if their chief
could not from the nature of the case be up and amongst them
in those trying days, his unconquerable spirit animated them
all. The nomadic events on the Shatt-el-Adhaim, the dram
atic capture of Samarra, the dash across the desert to Feluja
on the Euphrates, all in their way threw a heavy strain for
the time being upon the personnel of the forces entrusted with
the tasks ; but officers and men made light of this. Every
undertaking of those few weeks moreover, with the exception
of some of the earlier work on the Diala that went partly
awry owing to the fully expected co-operation of the Russians
failing to materialise, was wholly triumphant; moreover,
even there, the balance of success was, in the end, emphatically
on the side of the Anglo-Indian forces engaged. ' I hope
always to cherish his memory as I saw him in Baghdad on the
occasion of my visit,' General Kirkpatrick wrote of Maude at
that particular time ; ' calm, cool, determined to pursue his
success to the utmost of his means, and enjoying the con
fidence of all. He has indeed left the heritage of a great
name.' The following appreciation by his distinguished subordinate.
Sir A. Cobbe, serves to indicate how the conqueror of Baghdad
was regarded by an experienced soldier, who enjoyed the
privilege of commanding one of his army corps and of con
tributing to, and sharing in, his anxieties and his triumphs :
Maude's greatest weakness perhaps was that he undertook too
much himself, so that his staff were apt to feel themselves in the
position of confidential clerks. Methodical to a degree and punctual
to a minute, his day was mapped out from the time when he rose
until he went to bed. Engrossed in his work, a slave-driver of
himself perhaps more than of those under him, he gave one the
impression of a cold, calculating nature, which was almost repellent
at times. That this was not his real nature was shown by his

302 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
impetuosity in the hour of victory, by his humanity, by his care
and thought for those under him, and also — as I can testify — ^by
his large-hearted and very human acceptance of sharp differences
of opinion vrith his subordinate commanders. As he once said to
me in reply to an apology for a somewhat heated conversation over
the telephone, ' I never remember those things. I know that it is
only keenness.'
His standard of duty and self-sacrifice was a high one. He re
warded those who came up to it generously. He was coldly just
to those who in his eyes fell short of full performance of their
miUtary duty. He possessed most of the attributes of a big com
mander. His plans were always laid with the larger possibiUty in
riew, whilst he was meticulous in working out the details for the
initial stroke. He was a past master of that systematic staff work
which is so necessary when conducting a campaign. A httle apt
to be impatient by nature, he could nevertheless keep himself in
check owing to the self-control he always exercised.
If ever a man gave all his thoughts and his life to his country
it was Maude. He died in the hour of victory, a victory secured
in a distant and minor theatre of operations, but one which un
doubtedly exercised its effect upon the general fortunes of the
Great War. He lived and he died a very gallant EngUsh gentleman.
Sir George MacMunn, who had played so important a part
in rendering possible the brilliant campaign carried out by
the Army Commander and who assumed command on the
return home of Sir W. Marshall, sends the following account,
dated the 17th of July 1919, of the relations that existed
between them, and of what Maude accomplished during his
period of service in Mesopotamia.
I write this note on our late chief from his quarters in Baghdad
(where died also Von der Goltz), and from the room in which he
died, in which I work in some hope that his hand may rest on my
shoulder. I first met Maude at the War Office in those strenuous years of
preparation before the war. We next met in Gallipoh where I
had official dealings with him as commander of the 13th Dirision.
But we first came really together when, one of the last to leave
Suvla Bay, he landed on peaceful Imbros to find his tired men
drawing hot Maconochie rations as they stepped off their hghters.
That gift of the old officer, care and thought for his men, lay very
deep within him.
In Egypt I helped to equip his division for Mesopotamia,
following him thither shortly afterwards as Inspector-General of
Commimications. In May 1916, just after the fall of Kut, I
found him at Sheikh Saad on the Tigris, once again re-forming
that dirision that had so often been battle-swept ; and we talked

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 303
far into the night of how to maintain the army in health and
efficiency in an undeveloped land of great extremes. It was not
however until September 1916, when he had succeeded to the
command of the army and I was constantly thrown vrith him,
that I came to appreciate and to understand the determination,
the vision, and the knowledge of principle and detail that animated
him. Few knew how anxious were his days from the advance beyond
Kut to the last days in 1917. The army hung by a thread and
the enemy attempts to expel us were considerable ; but main
tenance was his chief anxiety in my interriews vrith him during
and after the advance, and at times he would wire to me twice
or thrice a day. It was this strain on mind and body, continued
through a long and abnormally hot summer, that left him httle
strength when the trial came. Efficiency and thoroughness had
been his watchword, and he died at the height of his achievement.
One great difficulty which Maude imavoidably laboured
under in Mesopotamia, at all events during the earlier days
of his occupying high command in that theatre of war, was
the fact of his never having served east of the Red Sea before
1916, vrith the result that he necessarily at first was wholly
unacquainted with the language and the customs of a con
siderable proportion of the soldiers under his orders. Until
he took over charge of the Tigris Corps in July 1916 he had
never been closely associated with Indian units. He had
seen something of native troops at Suakin and at Tofrek for
a few weeks as a youngster, and he had met them again from
time to time on the Western Front ; but for all practical
purposes he had had nothing to do with them. Of the five
divisions vrith which he carried out his victorious operations
of advance and consolidation for eleven months in the Cradle
of the World, four, however, were on Indian estabhshment,
with three-quarters of tljieir infantry composed of native
troops, as were also his cavalry.
But he set himself to get over this difficulty by studying the
habits of the Indian portion of his army as far as time permitted,
and by learning Hindustani. With the aid of officers of the
Indian Army on his staff he contrived to ascertain a great deal
about the peculiarities of those warriors who were recruited
in the great British Dependency in Asia and on its border
land, and whom he led to victory. They discovered this and
appreciated it, and so, by force of his sympathetic personality
and as a result of his continuous success, he won the confidence

304 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
of Punjabis and Sikhs and Rajputs as fully as he did that of
EngUshmen and Scots. In all questions connected vrith these
troops he was moreover aided by the very close understanding
secured between himself and the military authorities at Simla,
by whom, under the impulse given by the newly-arrived
Commander-in-Chief, the existing resources in personnel and
material of all parts of Hindustan were developed and turned
to account to a wonderful extent during the months when
Maude was Army Commander in Irak. The following apprecia
tion of him, written by Sir C. Monro, is proof of the mutual
trust which existed between two of the foremost soldiers
produced in the critical days of the four years' war.
Maude was a typical Guardsman — thorough in every sense. He
had the invaluable gift of inspiring those under him to great
efforts at critical moments. His rare military instinct and judg
ment, combined with his infinite capacity for attention to detail,
made him a commander who, but for his untimely death, would
have achieved even greater successes in war than the defeat of
the Turks in Mesopotamia. His sad end, coming as it did at the
height of his achievements, was an irreparable loss to the Empire,
for it is to the skill and tenacity of such men as Maude that we owe
in a large measure our successes in the Great War.
His was no hght task in Mesopotamia. He assumed command
of the Force at a critical time and under difficult conditions. After
long-sustained and unsuccessful efforts, suffering from heat, priva
tion and sickness, the Force over which he assumed command was
well-nigh exhausted. But the morale was there. The tradition
of the unbeaten 6th Dirision of Kut fame still remained, and within
three months Maude infused fresh determination into his troops,
who in their unbounded confidence in their great leader were pre
pared to respond to any call, however arduous, that he made upon
them. His briUiant advance, including the capture of Kut,
Baghdad and Samarra, constituted the most glorious stage of the
Mesopotamian Campaign which, commencing with the capture
of Basrah by the 6th Division, terminated in the destruction of
the Turkish Army near Mosul.
During the heats of a particularly torrid summer season
there was probably no single man between the Jebel Hamrin
Hills and the Persian Gulf who worked so hard and so con
tinuously as did the Army Commander. Purposeful, method
ical and untiring, his reserves of energy astonished all who
were brought into contact vrith him ; and of the results of
his labours it might, when the cold weather at last arrived,
vrith justice have been said, si monumentum quaeris, circum-

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X

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 305
spice. Baghdad was a transformed city. A railway con
nected the place with Kut. Agricultural pursuits were
flourishing in the surrounding country, as they had not flour
ished since the setting up of Osmanh power in this historic
region centuries before. The troops abode in comfort, in so
far as comfort was obtainable in what is one of the hottest
regions on the face of the globe. The magnetism of his
personality had brought it about that all heads of departments
and services, together with their subordinates, vied vrith
himself in their enthusiasm for furthering the common cause,
and delighted to carry into execution any suggestion with
regard to their labours which he might happen to make. In
so far as the medical side of the administration arrangements
in connection vrith the army was concerned, their efficiency
manifested itself in the admirable state of health in which the.
rank and file, both British and Indian, found themselves when
the season approached for resuming active operations. Speak
ing of the labours of Colonel Willcox, his consulting physician,
to Colonel Dickson, the Controller of Local Produce, one day,
Maude said, ' I consider his work in improving the health of my
forces equal to two divisions. Whatever it costs in work and
money you must see that the country provides everything
that Willcox thinks necessary.' Nor did the commander-in-
chief confine his attention in respect to the well-being of his
men to matters concerning their comfort and their health.
The ample provision made for their recreation bore the mark
of encouragement, of foresight and of incessant driving power
exercised at the top.
' It is true he centraUsed,' Maude's Deputy Adjutaiit-General,
General Ready, writes of him, ' but his general miUtary know
ledge both of principles and of details was so great that this,
combined vrith his wonderful energy and unique capacity for
work, surmounted all difficulties. His power of concentration was
remarkable. Even during operations when the closest attention
to the situation was necessaiy, he was able to discuss questions of
minor administrative work with enthusiasm.
In disciplinary cases he gave full waming as to how he would
deal with serious offences, but he always took a " human " view
of what might be called errors of judgment or offences due to
excitement or impetuosity. Slackness he would never tolerate.
Nothing could submerge his sense of humour. It was his in
variable habit before operations commenced to reriew the arrange
ments made for the transport and care of the wounded. His
U

306 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
soUcitude for those in hospital was evident to all who knew his
daily hfe.
He often spoke to me even early in 1917 of the acute shortage of
man-power, which would arise from the prolongation of the war,
and the necessity of continuaUy making efforts to ensure that
every available fighting man should be with the units in the field.
He was a deeply religious man ; few, if any, Sundays passed that
he did not attend an early celebration of the Holy Communion.'
' As his successes increased,' writes Sir W. Gillman, who was
appointed Chief of the General Staff to Sir W. MarshaU shortly
after Maude's death, ' so did the area over which he had charge.
But his hand remained ever the guiding one. The control of one
brain over troops fighting astride the Tigris, as well as of the
initial superrision of the measures for pacifying the newly
conquered Irak, brought about decisive success and at the same
time ensured a continuity of policy that proved of the utmost
value later. When he died, the pulse of the army stopped for
quite an appreciable time. The guiding hand had gone, and as
he seldom confided his plans to others, the blank caused by his
death took a long time to fill up.'
It has been said of him that he did too much himself, that
he left too little initiative to his subordinates, that he central
ised staff work to an undesirable extent, and that by doing
so he created a dangerous system of undue dependence on
one single man. The proof of the pudding is after all in the
eating. His campaign in Mesopotamia, lasting from August
1916 to November 1917, stands for one of the most uniformly
successful sets of military operations recorded in the annals
of war, and when he was of a sudden struck down and dis
appeared from the scene of his triumphs, no serious collapse
of organisation of any kind occurred and after a pause the
army carried on. In his despatch of the 29th of August 1918,
Sir W. Marshall summed up the services of his predecessor
in a paragraph which the whole of that army vriU have
warmly endorsed, except the reference to Maude's loss being
irreparable in the theatre of war. The foundations had been
too surely laid for that by the chief who was gone.
' General Maude,' he wrote, ' whose genius had altered the whole
face of affairs in Mesopotamia, was an almost irreparable loss.
He had taken over an army whose morale had been severely tried
by the failure of their efforts to reheve Kut, whose health had been
sapped by a very trying chmate, and he consequently had a very
difficult task in restoring its fighting efficiency. But in a few

CONSOLIDATING THE CONQUEST 307
inonths, by his hard work and his great gifts of organisation, clear
sightedness, determination, and above aU by his sympathy with
and love of his soldiers, a very different state of affairs had come
into being. Strongly backed by His Excellency the Viceroy and
the Government of India, and by the War Office, he thoroughly
reorganised the transport serrices, and the troops were as well
fed and made as comfortable as circumstances permitted, though
training and disciphne were never relaxed. When he considered
that all was ready, and not till then, he moved, and from that time
the force never looked back. When therefore I had the honour
of being appointed his successor the army was magnificent, whilst
organisation and training had reached a high state of efficiency.'
Moreover, even granting that Maude was disposed when in
chief command in Mesopotamia to centralise staff work and
administration in himself to a somewhat unusual extent, as
had been his practice when at the head of the 14th Brigade
and of the 13th Division and also when holding certain appoint
ments in peace time, no soldier in high position was ever more
generously emphatic in giving the credit for all that was
accomplished under his orders to his subordinates, and in
refusing to take any to himself. Just as he would never
admit that his own foresight and the impulse given by him
to a successful operation influenced the result, so also was it
according to him the skill, the resource and the organising
ability of his various directors and their staffs, not of himself,
that made it possible for a great army, amply supplied vrith
war material of all kinds, to conduct a brilUant campaign in
a theatre of war where nature was a more formidable and a
more insidious enemy than was the opposing host.

CHAPTER XV
THE DEATH OF MAUDE
AxTHOUGH he had never spared himself and had worked in
cessantly, vrith no alleviation other than that provided by
the evening rides to which he always looked forward or by
visits of inspection, during weeks of broiling sunshine followed
by nights of suffocating heat, Maude had kept in fairly sound
health all the summer, while others amongst his entourage,
even when not seriously ill, were often somewhat out of sorts.
Thanks, no doubt, to the possession of a vigorous constitu
tion and exceptional strength of will, thanks also perhaps to
his custom since boyhood of always keeping himself more or
less in training by regular habits and by exercise in so far as
circumstances permitted, he withstood the trying cUmate of
Mesopotamia in the hot weather better than the majority of
the British personnel at Baghdad and of the army under his
command. His devoted personal staff always tried their
utmost to make things easy for liim. But they received
scanty encouragement if they ever suggested that he should
slacken the strain that he was constantly placing on himself,
or that he should take better care of his own health while ever
solicitous as to the health of others.
A charming host, determined to make the stay of such
visitors as came to put up in his house — the house in which
Von der Goltz had died — pleasant for them, his letters home
nevertheless indicate that he did not always welcome the
presence of outsiders at his personal headquarters. They
inevitably trenched to some extent upon his time. It so
happened however that a proposal emanating from Lord
WiUingdon, the Governor of Bombay, who was an old friend
of his, came to hand in Baghdad to the effect that a lady,
Mrs. Egan, who represented an important syndicate of Ameri
can newspapers, should be permitted to proceed to Mesopo
tamia and to the headquarters of the Anglo-Indian Army.
The proposal had the approval of Simla and also of Sir W.
wa

THE DEATH OF MAUDE 309
Robertson. The United States were now associated vrith
the Entente in the contest with the Central Powers, although
Washington was not at war with the Subhme Porte, and from
the pohtical point of view there was much to be said for making
the pubhc in the Western Hemisphere acquainted with the
position of affairs in the one theatre of war where fighting
forces on the side of the Alhes had unquestionably gained the
upper hand. So Maude consented, and Mrs. Egan duly
arrived on the 11th of November to stay with the Army
Commander. All that was possible was done for the visitor's comfort.
Maude interested himself personally in ensuring that she
should see all that was worth seeing in and around Baghdad,
and in her book The War in the Cradle of the World, she pro
vides us with a sympathetic and animated description of the
Army Commander's mode of hfe and of his bearing as it
appeared to her. He was anxious that she should be made
acquainted with the condition of hfe in the great oriental city
under British governance, and he arranged to take her one night
to a singular variety and theatrical entertainment got up by
a Jevrish school, which (as it turned out, although he was un
aware of it beforehand) had been arranged especially in his
honour. Of this she gives a vivacious account, as also
of the elaborate precautions for guarding the route that she
noted. In the course of the proceedings coffee was brought for
Mrs. Egan and her host. He took milk vrith it and she did not.
Two days later, on Friday the 16th of November, Maude
when he went to the office at Army Headquarters as usual
in the morning felt and looked unwell, and at 7.45 a.m. he sent
for the Staff Surgeon, Lieutenant Moloney, I.M.S., who pre
scribed quiet with milk diet. After returning home at lunch
time the Army Commander remained in his room during the
afternoon, although he did some work, dictating correspondence
to his confidential clerk. The Staff Surgeon brought Colonel
Willcox, the Consulting Physician to the Forces, with him
when he called in to see the patient at six o'clock, and Colonel
Willcox then firmly vetoed Maude's proposal to fulfil an
engagement to dine that evening vrith Colonel Dickson,
although at that time no serious symptoms were present. But
when the Staff Surgeon called in again a little later he noted
with concern that 9, change for the worse had t?iken place in

310 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
the condition of the sick general, and Colonel Willcox was
summoned afresh. They took a serious view of the case, and
the malady was definitely diagnosed to be cholera in a virulent
form. Maude had refused to let himself be inoculated against
this fell disease, although insisting on his staff submitting to
the process ; Mrs. Egan had on arrival been inoculated at his
express vrish, but it may be observed that this would afford
no protection for fourteen days ; his excuse as regards himself
always was that a man of his age was immune. The medical
assumption is that the Army Commander was infected by
the milk that he had taken vrith the coffee at the Jewish
school entertainment.
Colonel Willcox gives the following account of the course
of the illness :
About 7.45 P.M. an acute attack of cholera commenced
with great suddenness, and in a few minutes a state of extreme
collapse occurred. Without delay immediate treatment was
adopted, and everything possible was done to combat the acute
symptoms. Lieutenant Moloney and myself as consulting phy
sician remained with General Maude throughout his illness.
Colonel Legg, A.M.S., and Colonel Hugo, I.M.S., consulting sur
geons to the force, were called into consultation and remained in
attendance during the illness. Miss Walker, the matron of No. 31
British Stationary Hospital, and four speciaUy selected nurses
carried out with the greatest care and devotion their nursing duties.
A slight improvement followed and some of the acute symptoms
were alleviated, but the condition of extreme cardiac weakness
remained throughout, and there was httle if any hope of recovery
from the very onset of the symptoms of cholera. No permanent
improvement followed on the intravenous saline treatment, which
was carried out vrithout delay from the onset of the acute symptoms.
General Maude retained his mental activity in spite of his great
weakness until two hours before the end. He instinctively knew
after the onset of the acute symptoms that he was suffering from
cholera, and his first request was that none of his staff should run
any risk of infection. During his illness his constant thought was
the army under his command ; he anxiously inquired as to certain
recommendations for awards to his men which he had made, and
it was necessary for him to be assured that these had been forwarded.
Within a few hours of his death he received a telegram from Lady
Maude and dictated an encouraging reply.
At 4.30 P.M. on Sunday, November 18th, 1917, unconsciousness
supervened, and he passed peacefully away at 6.25 p.m. The cause
of death was cardiac failure consequent on the toxaemia of a very
severe cholera injection.
Some mmours occurred in Baghdad, and I beheve in England, as

THE DEATH OF MAUDE 311
to the possibihty of General Maude's illness being due to poison.
I would Uke most emphatically to contradict the possibihty of this
haying been the case. Throughout the illness most careful bac
teriological examinations were made at the Central Laboratory,
Baghdad, and most definite evidence was obtained of the presence
of a very virulent infection of cholera, thus confirming entirely the
chnical diagnosis. As regards the date of infection, it seems very
probable that this was contracted on Wednesday evening, November
14th, 1917. At the performance he partook of some hght refresh
ment and had coffee with which he took some milk. In that area
of the city at that time it would be very hkely that the milk would
be infected vrith cholera organisms, and it seems very probable that
the actual infection occurred in this way. There is no reason to
suspect that the infection of the milk was otherwise than an acci
dental infection from the water of the area, which was known to be
under great suspicion at the time, cholera being present in that
part of the city.
' I was vrith him during the last hours of his life,' writes the
Rev. A. C. E. Jarris. ' Of some of these things I cannot write ;
but what follows should be placed on record, for the passing of the
first Christian conqueror of Baghdad was a triumphal entry into
the presence of his Lord and Master. He died as he had lived.
The simplicity of his life was reflected in everything about him,
the ordinary camp bed, the army blankets — he never carried more
than the normal officer's kit allowance. For physical reasons he
could not partake of the elements of the Sacrament ; but, deUrious
and semi-deUrious as he was for the greater part of the time, he
knew that he was in the presence of the Reserved Sacrament ;
he joined in all the prayers and, suffering as he did, the calm joyous
peace light which irradiated his face betokened that, whilst tem
poral shadows were receding, the glory of the spiritual world was
already becoming more real.
At the end it was all very beautiful. His immediate personal
staff, the doctors, nurses and orderly stood round the bed. Out
side the measured tread of the Ghurka guard. A peaceful calm
fUled the room. I began the serrice of Commendation at five
minutes past six, and at twenty-five minutes past, just as I was
uttering the words :
"Rest Eternal grant to him, O Lord,
And let Light Everlasting shine upon him,"
he peacefully entered Paradise. Thus our beloved commander
left us, victor, as always, over the last great enemy.'
The news of this sudden and tragic termination to a great
career aroused profound concern throughout the Empire.
Maude's continuous record of success in the field had sounded a
trumpet call of encouragement at a juncture when the Alhes'

312 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
prospects of final victory in the world contest had been affected
most adversely by the disastrous consequences of the Russian
Revolution. The transformation which had taken place in
a theatre of operations where British arms had been signally
worsted vrith deplorable results to the troops concerned, had
fired the imagination of his countrymen. Sheafs of letters,
scrawled in pencil by officers and rank and file amid dust-
storms and downpours in a distant land, had been testifying
for months past to the extent to which the triumphs in Irak
were the direct and immediate handiwork of the commander-
in-chief himself. In his message to Sir W. Marshall, who had
been summoned in haste to Army Headquarters as senior
lieutenant-general on the spot, the King voiced not only his
own sentiments, but also those of the nation at large :
November 19th. I have just heard with the deepest regret of
the death under such sad and tragic circumstances of General
Maude, who has rendered incalculable services to India, the Empire
and the AlUes. I join with My Army in Mesopotamia in mourning
the loss of their gallant and beloved commander, but I am con
fident that his memory will ever be an incentive to the completion
of the work for which he laboured and died. George, R.I.
General MarshaU issued the following Special Order of the
Day: It is with feehngs of the deepest regret and sorrow that I announce
the sad death from cholera on the afternoon of the 18th November,
1917, of Lieut-General Sir F. S. Maude, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O.,
General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, of this Force.
Lieut.-General Sir F. S. Maude gave nearly thirty-four years of
distinguished service to the State, and it is due to his remarkable
ability, unwearying energy and admirable example that the Army
in Mesopotamia gained its successes in the past and is to-day so
grandly upholding the traditional glories of our Empire.
He will be mourned by the nation, the Army and by all ranks in
Mesopotamia, as a great soldier, who rendered valuable and devoted
serrice both in the Army and the State.
W. R. Marshall, Lieut.-General,
Commanding-in-Chief
Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force.
General Headquarters, Baghdad,
19th November 1917.
Lady Maude received telegrams and letters of sympathy
from all quarters of the Empire, from the Kin^ and Queen,

THE DEATH OF MAUDE 313
from the Government of India, from the Army Council, from
many public bodies, and from numberless private individuals,
and two of these messages may perhaps be quoted. The
Under Secretary of State for India wrote :
In pursuance of a resolution passed to-day by the Council of
India, I am requested to state that the Council have received with
the profoundest regret intelligence of the sudden and lamentable
death of your gaUant and distinguished husband, Sir F. S. Maude,
K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., and that they desire respectfully to express
their deep sympathy with you in your great bereavement. The
Council have followed with the UveUest interest the achievements
in Mesopotamia of the army under his leadership, and the series
of brilliant victories which have restored the fame of British arms
in that region. They have frequently noted with pleasure the
tributes which at various times he paid to the valour and endurance
of the Indian troops serving under him, and they feel assured that
the Indian Army deeply deplores the loss of a wise and skilful
commander who ever had their fuUest confidence and affection.
The Premier of Canada cabled :
My colleagues and I desire to express to you on our own behalf
and that of all Canadian people the deep sorrow felt universally
throughout the Dominion at the untimely death of your gallant
husband, whose career has been so splendid and whose serrice to
the Empire has been so conspicuous.
A special memorial service was held on the 4th of December
at St. Paul's, under arrangements made by the Order of
St. Michael and St. George, of which Maude was a Commander.
It was attended by representatives of the King and Queen
and of Queen Alexandra, by the Duke of Connaught and a
special contingent of officers and men of the Guards, by the
War Cabinet, by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs in state, and
by numbers of officers and public men of note. The musical
portion of the service was provided by the Coldstream Guards.
But if grief at the death of an eminent public servant
was general in the United Kingdom, in India, in the British
Dominions and Colonies beyond the seas, and in the theatres
of war in France, in Egypt and at Salonika, where Maude's
fellow-soldiers had been following the course of events on the
Tigris with interest and admiration, the distress was incom
parably more pervading and deep-seated amongst the troops
who had actually lost their own immediate leader and chief.
The evil tidings of the Army Commander's grave condition

314 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
had travelled fast through the encampments on the Saturday
and Sunday ; the news that all was over gave rise to an out
burst of emotion. For in some undefinable way Maude had
come to be regarded even amongst the lowest grades of the
thousands who obeyed his behests, and who looked up to him
trustfully for guidance, as a friend. While the numberless
letters received by Lady Maude from Mesopotamia a few
weeks later, many if not most of them emanating from soldiers
and others vrith whom she was unacquainted, contained
eloquent tributes to what he had accomplished, they almost
vrithout exception sounded the prevailing note of personal
loss. To make a selection from them or to quote extracts
would be out of place. Suffice it to say that they represent
in themselves a not unworthy memorial to the commander
who was gone.
The proposal that the country should make a special grant
to the widow and family of Sir Stanley Maude afforded re
presentative statesmen an opportunity, a few months later,
for paying striking tributes to the memory of the victorious
general who had one day steamed quietly up to a wharf on
the riverside of the City of the Caliphs, and had stepped out
without ceremony to take possession on behalf of his country
of one of the most important places in all Asia.
' The services which Sir Stanley Maude rendered to the Empire,
notably in Mesopotamia,' said Mr. Lloyd George as Prime Minister
in the House of Commons, ' were distinguished, far-reaching and
permanent in their effect. He found British prestige at a very low
ebb in a quarter of the globe where prestige counts for much. The
British Army in the East had suffered a series of severe reverses.
One great enterprise on which a good deal of the strength of the
Empire had been concentrated had to be abandoned. One British
Army had surrendered to the Turkish forces, after another British
Army had been defeated in a series of attempts to relieve it. In
Egypt we had a large force sheltering behind the desert and the
Canal from an inferior Turkish Army. This tale of discomfiture
and humiliation spread throughout every bazaar in the East, and,
hke a tree, grew as it spread. Before it ran into irreparable mis
chief for the Empire the genius of Sir Stanley Maude had changed
and restored the position. I know well how much of this success
was due to the reorganisation of the transport service by Sir John
Cowans and his able staff, the reorganisation of the medical service
by Sir Alfred Keogh and his assistants, and the reinforcements
brought in by Sir WilUam Robertson and Sir Charles Monro. But
the enemy also had time to reinforce, and to strengthen his forces.

THE DEATH OF MAUDE 315
The ground lent itself to entrenchments. Those entrenchments
were constructed under the adrice and direction of German en
gineers. The Turk was fighting at his best in a chmate which
suited him and did not suit us. But against aU these obstacles
the leadership of Sir Stanley Maude and the valour of his army
triumphed. The highest proof of generalship is not so much in the vrinning
of a victory as in its exploitation. No general ever made better
or wiser use of his victory than did Sir Stanley Maude. The re
lentless pursuit of the defeated army, which ultimately destroyed
it, and ended in the dramatic capture of Baghdad, sounded
throughout the East. These were amongst the finest feats in
military history, and they had a magical effect on the fame and
position of Britain throughout the whole of the East. The Germans
realised it. Sir Stanley Maude's achievements had destroyed
their cherished dream. They sent one of their ablest generals
there to effect a reconquest, and I do not think it is too much to
say that their abandonment of that enterprise was due very largely
to their appreciation of the fact, when they came there, that they
were confronted by a leader of exceptional resource and power.
But Sir Stanley Maude's real greatness was displayed in the use
which he made of the victory after it had been obtained. He
showed as much vrisdom as an administrator as he displayed skill
as a general. Every great general has a strain of statesmanship,
and Sir Stanley Maude exhibited great gifts of statesmanship in
his administration of that difficult country. Whilst ruling vrith
a firm hand, he won the esteem and affection of that gifted but
suspicious race, not merely by the equity of his rule, but by the
intelUgent sympathy which he displayed. He possessed that rare
tact which is a blend of gentleness and understanding, and the
article that appeared in an Arab paper after his death, and which
was, I think, reproduced in the British Press last week, is the
highest tribute that could have been paid to his great qualities
as a governor and a man. . . .
Sir Stanley Maude vrill always be remembered as one of the great
figures of this War, not merely for what he achieved, but for what
he was. I know not what destiny may have in store for the famed
land which he conquered, but of two things I am certain. The
first is, that the whole course of its history will be changed for the
better as a result of the victory and the rule of Sir Stanley Maude ;
and the second is, that his name will always be cherished by the
inhabitants of that land as that of the gentlest conqueror who
ever entered the gates of Baghdad.'
' In 1916,' said Earl Curzon of Kedleston, the Lord President
of the Council, in the House of Lords, ' General Maude was sent
with his dirision to Mesopotamia, and there he took part in the
arduous operations that were then in course of being carried out
for the rehef of the beleaguered garrison of Kut. As your Lord
ships vrill remember, that place feU after an heroic defence by

316 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
General Tovmshend and his brave men ; and in August of that
year General Maude succeeded Sir Percy Lake as Commander-in-
Chief of the British Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia. It was
a dark moment in the history of the war. It was a critical moment
in the fortunes of Great Britain in the East. The issues of the con
fUct themselves trembled in the balance, and the prestige of the
British Empire may be described not unfairly as having been at
stake. General Maude had to deal vrith an enemy fiushed with
victory, entrenched in a position of exceptional strength, prorided
vrith aU the scientific mihtary resources which he had received from
his European aUy. The advance upon Baghdad in the month of
December 1916, the dramatic crossing of the Tigris, the forced
evacuation of Kut by the Turks, the disorderly retreat of the fleeing
enemy upon Baghdad, the rapid pursuit by General Maude and
his men, constituted a mihtary achievement of no mean order.
But General Maude was by no means content with his initial
victory ; he was not the kind of man to rest upon his laurels.
FoUowing the Turks vrith great speed up the Diala River in one
direction, up the Tigris in another, and, at a later date, up the
waters of the Euphrates, he infUcted upon them a series of cmshing
defeats which rendered them incapable of any further sustained
military effort. He lifted the danger which overhung the Persian
border, and which might, unless arrested, have reacted, through
Persia, upon Afghanistan and upon India itself, and he occupied
the whole of the Baghdad vilayet. And be it remembered that
he carried out the series of operations which I have described,
labouring under a sense of bitter disappointment at the failure of
our Russian Allies, who were at that time in the north-western
part of Persia, to extend to him the support which he had reason
to expect.
The last few months of General Maude's life were devoted to
the task of organising and administering the territories which he
had won ; and there in November 1917, in an act of unthinking
courtesy, he contracted that fatal pestilence which always broods
behind the atmosphere of the East, and in a few hours had passed
away. Thus in a few months of time it was given to General,
Maude to achieve what many military commanders do not attain
in a lifetime. He retrieved a great disaster ; he won a resounding
victory ; he recovered a prorince — almost a country — once one
of the gardens of the East, which had mouldered for centuries under
the bhght of Turkish misrule. Nay, more. By a single stroke,
or series of strokes, he may be said to have altered the history of
the world. It is surely inconceivable that the inhabitants of those
fair regions can ever be thrust back into the servitude from which
General Maude and his forces succeeded in emancipating them.
And then in the hour of his triumph the General was stricken down,
not, indeed, on the battlefield, but, as I have pointed out, by a
death not less honourable and infinitely more pathetic.
My Lords, if we turn from the contemplation of the soldier to that

THE DEATH OF MAUDE 317
of the man, there is a consensus of opinion among those who knew
General Maude vveU — of whom, unfortunately, I was not one —
that not merely did he possess the genius of a mihtary commander,
but that he had many of those quahties of personal character
which endeared him to aU those vrith whom he was associated.
The soul of chivalry, he was not less strict in the disciphne that
he apphed to himself than he was in that which he apphed to others.
A non-smoker, almost a total abstainer, he set an example of con
scientious abnegation and self-control which profoundly affected
the conduct of those whom he either commanded or who served
under him. At the same time, he was kind and thoughtful to a
degree of his soldiers, and, as abundant testimony confirms, he
was exceptionaUy considerate to the native inhabitants of the
countries that had passed under his sway. Thus I think we may
say of the departed general that in manifold respects he fulfiUed
the ideal of the Happy Warrior which was drawn for us in such
moving terms by one of the greatest of our poets more than a
century ago.'
' My Lords, this motion is so sure of receiring the universal assent
of your Lordships' House,' said the Marquess of Crewe, ' that it is
really more for my own satisfaction as a very old friend of General
Maude — shaving faiown him in the days when he was a subaltern
in the Coldstream Guards — that I rise to say a word in its support,
although, indeed, that is not necessary after the eloquent statement
which has been made by the noble Earl who leads the House.
General Maude was a man who was always greatly regarded and
beloved by his friends. He was a quiet and dignified man even
in his younger days. He had the reputation of being a most
excellent regimental officer, and he also became a careful student
at the Staff College. I know very well that the senior officers of
that day always looked upon him as a man who, if the time of test
came, would prove himself to be in all respects an admirable
soldier. How the test would come, and how severe it would be,
of course nobody in those days could foretell ; but that it was met
not merely with the gallantry which everybody would have ex
pected of General Maude, but also with a degree of mihtary skill
which was to a great degree the reward of the hard work that he
had exercised in his younger days, will not be denied by anybody.
As the noble Earl has stated, the circumstances of General
Maude's death were singularly pathetic. He knew, of course, the
admiration which his conduct and that of his troops had won from
his fellow-countrymen, but he was not spared to receive at home
those tributes of respect and affection which would have been
larished on him had he returned here. We all, I am certain, feel
that this small tribute is the least that the country can pay to his
memory.' The burial took place on the afternoon of the 19th in the

318 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
desert cemetery beyond the North Gate. Every officer and
man who could be present was there to pay a last tribute of
respect and affection to their departed chief, the pall-bearers
were commanders who had over and over again led their men
to victory under his supreme control, a special contingent of
officers from his old division, far away, contrived to arrive in
time, the people of the city assembled in great numbers to do
honour to their liberator and patron. ' Coming generations,'
says Mr. Candler, ' will perhaps class General Maude as a
great leader with Alexander and Julian, who conquered the
ungrateful soil and became its victims. He fixed a memorable
link in the continuity of history when he entered Baghdad ;
and one may safely predict that his name will be associated
with a more lasting and beneficent change in the fortunes of
the country than can be credited to Roman, Persian, or Greek.
But at the moment, the men who helped him to make history
were not concerned vrith posterity. The thought that troubled
them, recurring at all hours, was that of the two or three new
graves in the British cemetery, one covered the bones of the
man they least could spare, of the commander whose quiet
and confident smile was an assurance that no sacrifice that he
demanded of them would be in vain.'
The following lines written by Lieutenant J. G. Fairfax,
serving in the army which expelled the Osmanlis from Meso
potamia, are proof of the respect and affection in which its
commander was held : —
'AVE ATQUE VALE'
F. S. M.
Hail and farewell, across the clash of swords !
Hail and farewell, all laurels to the dust,
So soon returned, so bitterly ; farewell !
The dark clouds. Sisters to the solemn hour.
Wait on thy passing, and the heavy air
Bears, as we bear our sorrow silently.
The leaden burden, and there is no voice —
Mute, with bent heads, before the open grave.
We stand, and each one feels his pulses ache,
And his throat parches, and the unspoken grief
Closes an iron hand upon his heart.
Three times the volley strikes the solemn vault
Of that imprisoning arch, and piercing clear
The bugles cry upon the dead. ' Arise 1 '

THE DEATH OF MAUDE 319
And thou shalt rise, yet we turn sad away :
The scarlet and blue pennants droop ; the night
Draws darkly on, and dawn, when dawn shall come,
Throws a drear light upon the Eastern sky.
And Dome and Minaret wake ghostly grey,
And in the trees a little wind will sigh.
Hail and farewell ! the laurels with the dust
Are levelled, but thou hast thy sure crown,
Peace and immortal calm, the victory won.
Somewhere serene thy watchful power inspires ;
Thou art a living purpose, being dead.
Fruitful of nobleness in lesser lives,
A guardian and a guide ; Hail and farewell !
A simple cross marks the spot where Maude of Baghdad lies,
surrounded by the last resting-places of soldiers whom he
loved and who loved him. Monuments to his memory may
take, and have taken, various forms. A statue of their
famous chief is to be set up in the capital of Mesopotamia by
the army which he led. Roads especially laid out beyond the
North Gate and an arch, the cost defrayed by subscriptions
of its citizens, are a tribute of the chief place in Irak to
the man who freed the city from the Turkish yoke. Hospitals
and schools, erected by the inhabitants of other towns vrithin
the liberated territory, commemorate what he achieved and
stand for tokens of gratitude to a benefactor and a friend.
An obelisk erected by the 13th Division towers amongst the
rocky fastnesses of the Jebel Hamrin, coupling Maude's name
vrith the names of all ranks belonging to the division who laid
down their lives for their country in the far-off land of the
Two Rivers. Yet the finest memorial perhaps to the con
queror is to be found in a redeemed region and a contented
people, which have taken the place of territories that he found
waste and desolate and of races who had been for ages victims
of oppression and misrule.

CHAPTER XVI
AN APPRECIATION
When endeav^ouring to sum up the salient features in the char
acter, the qualifications and the methods of Sir Stanley Maude
as soldier and man, the biographer enjoys this great advan
tage : the achievements of the subject of this Memoir were
so conspicuous, his popularity amongst those who came into
close contact with him was so unquestionable, and his nature
was so unselfish, that there is no temptation to gloss over such
minor shortcomings as ought in the interests of truth and of
example to be touched upon. Where assets are so rich and
overflowing, there is no excuse for concealing a few liabilities.
Maude's fellow-countrymen will ever regard him primarily
as a soldier, and it is in his capacity of soldier that he will in
the flrst instance be discussed here. Nor can an examination
of his attributes as an officer be more appropriately initiated
than by indicating certain points in his disposition and in his
normal procedure which lay him open to some tempered dis
paragement. Reference has already been made to them in
passages scattered through earlier chapters of this volume.
By nature Maude was exceedingly tenacious — an invaluable
trait for a soldier to possess in many situations. As one of his
warmest friends indeed says of him in the striking apprecia
tion quoted on p. Ill : ' When he did speak he put the pros
and cons clearly and concisely and gave a decided opinion,
from which nothing would turn him.' (The italics are the
author's.) Fixity of purpose was one of his most valid pro
fessional resources, because he was generally right. But no
man can always be right, and if Maude by any chance hap
pened to be wrong, this characteristic of his lost its merits — as
is illustrated by an incident which occurred when he was
serving as a regimental subaltern in the Coldstream Guards.
One day during the progress of some field operations that
were being carried out vrith other troops, Maude was in com
mand of his company; it was engaged alongside another
S20

AN APPRECIATION 321
company of his battahon under charge of a captain, an officer
senior to himself and admittedly an extremely capable soldier.
A tactical situation arose in the course of the proceedings
which suggested to this captain that it would be well for
Maude's company to do a certain thing, so, neither the com
manding officer nor the second-in-command happening to be
about, he expressed a vrish that Maude should carry out the
movement. Maude however demurred. The captain pressed
the matter. Maude remained obdurate. Finally the captain
formally ordered Maude to execute the movement, and Maude,
equally formally, refused. Now, the senior may perhaps have
acted a little tactlessly in the first instance, and it is conceiv
able that impartial observers would have ruled that in the
existing situation on the field of manoeuvre the senior's project
was miUtarily unsound. But in deliberately refusing to
obey an order given under such circumstances by a superior
officer, Maude put himself entirely in the wrong, disciplin
arian as he was. Some commanding officers holding rigid
views on the subject of military subserviency would be dis
posed to take a very serious view of an episode of this
kind when it was reported to them — as this episode of
course was.
Instances of what practically amounted to obstinacy on
Maude's part have cropped up occasionally in the narrative
of his career recorded in foregoing chapters. Thus he could
not be induced to remain on the sick list so long as his medical
advisers prescribed after the accident that befell him at Drie
fontein, and the result was that his shoulder gave him serious
trouble during several subsequent months of strenuous work
in the field, when he needed to be at his best ; it indeed never
wholly recovered from the injury. The fact would seem to be
that he regarded sickness as a sign of weakness which would
be overcome by the individual exercise of wUl-power. At
the same time, if medical advice was forcibly put and was
clearly based on grounds of reason, he accepted it readily.
For instance, he allowed himself to be persuaded not to under
take a journey by ' glisseur ' from Baghdad to Basrah in the
heat of summer, on Colonel Willcox urging that he would run
great risk of heat stroke were he to venture on such an
expedition. When at the head of the 14th Brigade, he turned a deaf ear
X

322 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
to the friendly suggestions of his divisional commander and
his corps commander concerning the undue exposure of his
headquarters near Neuve Eglise ; and when he was at last
ordered to move them, he moved them nearer to the enemy
instead of further away as had been intended. When the
arrangements vrith regard to the evacuation of Anzac and
Helles were being debated, he was almost the only one of the
generals concemed who advocated retiring to an inner Une ;
and it proved hard to persuade him that the course actuaUy
adopted was the right one, although when the question had
been decided against him he executed the alternative plan to
admiration. But it must be remembered that it was this
same obstinacy — ^to repeat a somewhat disagreeable word —
which was at the root of Maude's confidence in himself and
in his plans, and that it was this confidence in himself and in
his plans which kept him undisturbed and of good cheer when
the temporary discomfitures, the heavy losses, and the un
toward conditions of weather which chequered the course of
the confUcts to the south of Kut, might have caused a less
resolute commander than him to hold his hand.
Accounts practically all agree that paper-work took up
much of his time and that he was always thoroughly at home
in the labours of an office. As adjutant, and later as brigade-
major, he developed a propensity for issuing numerous and
somewhat lengthy memoranda, and (although opinions are
not unanimous on this point) his orders in the field — ^which
while a brigade commander and a divisional commander he
generally prepared himself, contrary to the normal practice —
would seem to have inclined towards prolixity at times. AU
those who were associated vrith him while he was holding staff
appointments testify to his rare powers of work, and enlarge
on the long hours that he was in the habit of passing at his
desk ; but there are indications that his indefatigable efforts
in this field of endeavour may not invariably have been
profitable efforts, and that he may even occasionally have
made work — as many soldiers proficient in office pursuits have
a tendency to do. Seeing that he was by bias the very reverse
of an indoors man, the amount of time that he was in the habit
of spending in his bureau during these periods is at all events
evidence of a single-minded devotion to duty ; but miUtary
men of experience will not perhaps be quite so favourably

AN APPRECIATION 323
impressed with this particular feature in his mode of life as
outsiders have been.
The truth is that, if Maude had not been a most earnest
student of his profession in all its branches, had he not been a
particularly keen and effective exponent of tactical procedure
out in the open, had he not been an enthusiastic trainer of
troops and ever ready to take part in exercises and manoeuvres,
flnally, had he not proved himself to be a rare leader of men
when his opportunity came, he would have run considerable
risk of being set down as an ' office man ' by brother-soldiers.
But this tendency had the result that when he was on active
service he was tireless in writing letters, not only to his family
and to friends but also to military authorities to whom the
letters were as useful as they were interesting. Constant
practice had given him a facility of expressing himself clearly
and to the point, and, considering the difficulties and discom
fort under which his correspondence was carried out in France,
at Suvla and during the earlier part of his time in Mesopotamia,
his letters from the front must be acknowledged to be ex
tremely informative documents. Nor should it be forgotten
that, while he was in command of a brigade and of a division
in presence of the enemy, Maude never failed to communicate
his regret and his sympathy to the relatives of any officer
under his command who had died for his country, and un
happily he had only too many of such letters to write.
But the characteristic of Maude which was the most strongly
marked and was the most open to objection from the soldier's
point of view was his tendency to centralise, his almost
irrepressible instinct for doing whatever had to be done him
self, his plan of keeping everything in his own hands. That
this was his habit is notorious and is acknowledged by those
who knew him best and who admired him most. ' If he had
a fault,' writes Sir W. Lambton, ' it was that of centralising
and of attempting too much himself.' All who came into
contact vrith him officially vouch for his abnormal dihgence,
and depose to the protracted hours which he spent on his
military duties ; but if you db everybody's work as well as
your own you must labour abundantly or the machine will come
to a standstill. Special mention must be made of this, and
the objections to such procedure when practised by a staff
officer or a commander pointed out, because the very great-

324 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
ness of Maude's triumphs in the field might induce the idea
that his methods in this respect were methods to be imitated.
The fact that gratifying results have been arrived at in spite
of a thing having been done the wrong way, does not make
the wrong way right.
This bent for absorbing control and administration in him
self displayed itself constantly during his military career, and
it manifested itself in connection vrith almost every form of
question with which he had officially to deal. In Canada his
duties were scarcely of a military nature ; but he kept aU
details in connection with the Governor-General's tours and
entertainments and public observances in his own grip. When
holding high appointment on the War Office staff, his sub
ordinates were deprived of the initiative and of the responsi
bility usually permitted to individuals occupying their posi
tions. It was the same when he was in command of a brigade
and of a division on active service. It was to a great extent
the same when he was at the head of a mighty host fitted out
with all the impedimenta found necessary by a modern army
when on the war-path. But what was perhaps most remark
able about this feature in Maude's character and disposition
was that the centralisation which he practised was not the
outcome of any desire for self-advancement. It was wholly
disinterested and altruistic. Having done what it was a
subordinate's business to do, he gave all the credit to the
subordinate and he took none for himself. His abnegation,
his modesty, and his ready and chivalrous recognition of the
services of those working under him, sugared the pill, and
induced capable and self-reliant officers under his orders, who
at the outset were disposed to resent his system, to accept it
loyally in the long run and to prove themselves his compliant
assistants. The objections to the practice of centralisation are a matter
of common knowledge. Some of them are indeed obvious.
The commander, or the superior staff officer as the case may
be, who keeps all the strings in his own hands is subject just
as others are to the ills that flesh is heir to, and he may break
down temporarily or permanently at some critical juncture.
He may, again, happen to be absent on some special duty just
at the moment when a vital problem unexpectedly arises
which, owing to his system, cannot be solved without his

AN APPRECIATION 325
presence. Undue dependence upon any individual is in the
nature of things unsound, and it may become a grave peril.
Centralisation moreover inevitably discourages the efficient
subordinate, while it is apt to serve as a cloak conceahng the
unfltness of an incompetent underhng. It in reahty sets
at deflance the fundamental principles upon which command
and administration in the mihtary world are supposed to be
conducted. It is an obstacle in the path of the junior officer
who desires to learn his work and who hopes to quahfy him
self for rising to higher grades, and on this point Maude
by his methods was, without perhaps reahsing it himself,
contravening his own theories.
For he always took the utmost interest in the training of
the staff in peace time, and in promoting its efficiency for pur
poses of war. His standard of efficiency was moreover a very
high one. In his diaries kept during the South African Cam
paign and during the Great War, frequent entries occur
condemning the staff work, as its practice on active service
came to his notice. Even in the early days of the operations
of the British Expeditionary Force in France in 1914, at a
juncture when the highly trained and specially selected staff
vrith the troops was probably as competent as the staff of any
army in the field in existence, he finds grounds for disapproba
tion at times — and, no doubt, reasonably, seeing that there is
no such thing as perfection in such matters. But unless there
be judicious decentralisation, unless the various individuals
who form the aggregate of the staff in brigades, or divisions,
or army corps, or armies, are allowed to perform the duties
which they are supposed to perform, and are trusted by those
set over them until found wanting, the staff as a whole does
not enjoy the practice nor does it acquire the experience, in
the absence of which that body cannot be expected adequately
to fulfil its functions.
Situations will arise in war, it is true, and they may some
times even arise in time of peace, where it is expedient and
where it may even be imperative for a superior officer to take
the entire control of matters into his own hands and to trans
form his subordinates for the time being into virtual ciphers.
When Maude was called upon to assume supreme control over
the operations in Mesopotamia, the machine as a whole was
running none too smoothly, some of its parts were the worse

326 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
for the wear, certain new devices had to be introduced, nor
was the available driving power being effectually exercised
throughout the whole of the complicated works. A man in
sound health and of inexhaustible energy, a man immune from
the lassitude which a debilitating climate is apt to induce, a
man fitted out with ample knowledge concerning the bulk of
the questions that called for investigation and settlement, and
fortified by a clear conception of what objects the army could
and should fulfil in the early future, was needed ; and the
newly appointed Army Commander was most fully justified
in going himself thoroughly into every detail of organisation
and administration before he committed his troops to an
offensive campaign. Whether it was indispensable for him
to retain the close control that he did over the administration
at a later date, when all was in working order and proceeding
satisfactorily, seems open to question. But in the first in
stance, centralisation would appear not only to have been
permissible, but to have been in the highest degree appropriate.
There is also this to be said. Centralisation is in principle
fundamentally unsound. It to all intents and purposes
sets army regulations at defiance. In the case of an officer
who has passed through the mill of staff training its practice
ignores precepts that have always been strongly inculcated
at Camberley. Nevertheless Maude's custom of doing himself
so much that ought properly to have been done by his subor
dinates does afford convincing testimony of his having been
equipped with other precious and engaging qualifications.
The fact that in spite of suffering from this drawback he should
have accomplished such great things, serves to prove how
deft an organiser, what an ardent worker, and what a com
petent master of the art of war he must have been. The way
that he managed to get the best out of capable men holding
positions of responsibihty under him who found themselves
in a manner thrust on one side, is clear indication of the
confidence which he inspired, of the knowledge of his pro
fession that made itself apparent to all who were associated
with him, and of his own magnetic charm.
It may be observed here that in many eulogistic references
to him that appeared when he was carrying all before him on
the Tigris, and in those which saw the hght after untimely
death at Baghdad had robbed his country of his services,

AN APPRECIATION 327
reference is constantly and with justice made to the fact that
no detail was too small for him to interest himself in. That
is a most valuable quahty in an administrator and in a com
mander, always provided that it is, as in his case, combined
with a sense of proportion. He never allowed his concern
for questions of second and third rate importance to stand in
the way of attention to matters of major moment. Nor must
vigilance in respect to detail be confused with centralisation.
By making inspections take the most searching form possible,
a superior officer ensures that duties are being correctly carried
out in all their various branches. Suggestions from a high
quarter in connection with even trivial points act as a tonic.
Maude's heedf ulness and sohcitude in connection with in
considerable questions was combined vrith a very thorough
knowledge of military requirements and of the best method
of meeting them, which was the result of years of study, of
constant application to professional pursuits, and of the pos
session of an exceptionally retentive memory. He indeed to
a strange extent resembled in some vital respects the greatest
of all modern soldiers.
Widely as they differed in general character and in their
outlook upon life, Maude in his military capacity had much in
common with Napoleon. Both of them were signalised by
an almost uncanny familiarity with the details of the require
ments of an army, both were pertinacious students of the
principles and practice of prosecuting hostilities, both were
gifted with unusual powers of concentration on the thing in
hand, both could lay claim to abnormal memories, both were
by instinct and by habit centralisers, both had mastered the
closeness of the connection which exists between adequate
preparation for operations in the field and their effective
execution, neither of them shrank from incurring reasonable
losses if by incurring those losses gains might be achieved,
neither of them hesitated to run risks when the occasion
caUed for it, both must be classed as egregiously sedulous
workers, both — from dissimilar causes and as a result of
different methods — contrived to vrin and to retain in ex
ceptional measure the confidence and the affection of the
men whom they led, and both were absolute masters of the art
of controlUng hosts to good purpose in a theatre of war.
In one notable respect however Maude was almost the

328 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
antithesis of the illustrious Corsican. He was business-like
to a degree, and punctuaUty vrith him amounted almost to a
rehgion. Napoleon, on the other hand, although his mind
acted systematically, was the very reverse of methodical in
his dealings vrith others, and was so irregular — and even so
irresponsible — in regard to his hours for meals and his hours
for work as often to cause his staff and his suite grave per
plexity. That combination of instinctive orderliness with
briUiant gifts of leadership, which was one of Maude's char
acteristics, is indeed somewhat unusual in a Great Captain.
To compare Maude to Napoleon as a tactician, to contrast
them as handlers of legions actually on the field of battle,
woidd be absurd. The whole aspect of combat has been
transformed since the days of Austerlitz and Jena. Progress
in armament has created conditions which deprive the superior
commander as a rule of openings for disclosing genius in this
connection. No opportunity for his manifesting tactical
aptitude of a high order ever presented itself to Maude while
a simple brigadier. His masterly withdrawals from Suvla
and from Helles were the result of forethought and of effectual
administration, and no affrays took place during their critical
stages. Even on the occasion when, at Felahieh, he was
suddenly faced with a situation for which no elaborate pre
paration had been, or could be, made and his division gained
so gratifying a victory, the Turks who were opposed to him
were not in truculent mood and they offered no very spirited
resistance to his troops. During the course of that trium
phant series of operations which carried his army from Es
Sinn to Baghdad, actual tactical direction was in the hands
of subordinates even if he was giving the impulse to the
combinations. A staff officer whom Mr. Candler quotes sums up Maude's
qualifications as a commander in the field very aptly :
' There are three things necessary for carrying on a campaign.
You want the fighting man whose genius is strategy and
tactics, and you want the man who understands everything
about staff work ; but these may be wasted without the brain
for organisation and the interior economy of the army. I
don't think that I had ever struck a man who combined two
of these quahties, certainly not three, until I met Maude.'
But the staff officer omitted two other attributes, to both oi

AN APPRECIATION 829
which Maude could lay claim and which are almost as valuable
to a commander in the field as those indicated — sympathy
with those commanded, and serenity of temper in the hour of
adversity. A successful commander will always enjoy a certain popu
larity amongst those serving under his orders, no matter what
his personahty may be. Unsympathetic as he was by nature,
despising sentiment, a stem disciplinarian who v/as economical
of praise and who troubled himself httle concerning the com
fort of his troops, Wellington, although not exactly beloved,
was nevertheless looked up to by his men in the Peninsula and
could always get the very best out of them so l-ong as fighting
was actually in progress. Napoleon, on the other hand, not
merely fired the enthusiasm of the soldiers vrith whom he
overran Europe by the splendour of his victories, but he lost
no opportunity of appealing to the emotional side of the Gallic
character ; his custom was ever to pose as chief and to be the
central figure in skilfully staged pageants ; but he combined
this with the display of keen interest — which may or may not
have been feigned — ^in the welfare of his men, and he won
them by his camaraderie and apt chaff when he moved about
unceremoniously amongst the bivouac fires or rode alongside
columns on the line of march. Maude's personality exercised
its influence after another fashion, and he had acquired the
confidence of those under him before he had made his mark
as a leader in the field. No triumph was registered by the
14th Brigade while he was their brigadier ; nor, until its tail-
most echelons had slipped quietly away by night from Suvla
Bay, had the 13th Division accomphshed anything especially
noteworthy under his command ; and yet the brigade and the
division, alike, elected to put their trust in him, one had almost
said, on sight.
He no doubt enjoyed certain natural advantages in pos
sessing a tough frame, a strong constitution and a commanding
figure. But his inexhaustible energy and his frequent ap
pearances amongst them made him also familiar to the troops
under his orders. His unaffected solicitude concerning their
food, their clothing and the alleviation in so far as this was
practicable of their ordeals, won the hearts of the rank and file,
both British and Indian. His practice of always getting his
own way impressed those who saw him at close quarters. His

830 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
sanguine disposition infected others vrith his own confidence.
His insensibility to danger and his wont of frequently visiting
the most advanced trenches and of traversing the most ex
posed approaches when he was a brigadier and a divisional
commander, were warmly appreciated by those under him,
even if they caused some apprehension in those over him.
That absence of pose which came natural to him fitted in
with the temper of British troops, just as Napoleon's liis-
trionic procedure suited the French. While his devotion
to duty, his ability and his exhaustive knowledge of his pro
fession aroused the admiration of his staff and of those senior
officers vrith whom questions of importance had to be discussed,
his sympathetic bearing and his cheery greetings delighted
non-commissioned officers and men whom accident brought
momentarily into close relations with him, and these spread
the tidings far and wide.
His letters are evidence of the genuine affection that he
felt for the regimental officers and the rank and file serving
under him in the field, and of his eager appreciation of their
work. A commander always gives credit to his troops in his
official despatches for any success that may have been achieved.
That goes without saying. Most commanders perhaps vidU
do so even in their private letters. But Maude was con
stantly expressing his warm admiration of his troops, not only
to outsiders but also to himself, i.e. in his diaries. There never
was any pretence or make-believe about it — he wrote down
just what he felt. On the one occasion when his men, or some
of them, undoubtedly failed him, it is noteworthy that he
would seem to have been unwilling to fully admit this even
to himself; the passage is quoted on p. 210. Officers and
rank and file soon came to realise his feeling towards them
and to reciprocate it, because although by nature undemon
strative he had a particularly happy way with him when
proposing to show friendliness to subordinates, especiaUy
when off duty.
An inherent buoyancy of temperament in Maude assumed
the form of an unconquerable spirit when dangers gathered
thick. His attitude at the moment when the attack of the
18th Division on the Sannaiyat Unes miscarried is a striking
example of that. Unruffled demeanour in the chieftain is
the first step towards repairing defeat when fortune has been

AN APPRECIATION 331
unkind in war, and his habitual self-possession and his fortitude
were priceless assets during the dark days of April 1916 on
the Tigris. Although they could not change the aspect ot
affairs even in respect to his own division, his troops noted
and remembered them ; and other divisions which had met
with discomfiture hke unto his heard tell of this general whom
his men all swore by. So, when the Tigris Army Corps learnt
that Maude was their commander, and when it became
known a few weeks later that he was supreme chief in Meso
potamia, the Anglo-Indian forces welcomed with enthusiasm
the appointment of a leader whom most of them had never
seen and whom many of them four months before had never
even heard of. His personahty had already put new life into
the army before the influence of his reforming activities and
of his energetic administration had made themselves felt
outside of Army Headquarters on the Shatt-el-Arab.
In the estimation of posterity, Maude vrill inevitably be
judged by the campaign which virtually gave him Mesopo
tamia. That campaign was a masterpiece. Its salient features
have been discussed in previous chapters, and they need not
be dealt with further. Suffice it to say that, recognising from
the outset how neither skill nor valour in the absence of
effective organisation vrill command success, the Army Com
mander invariably made strategy and administration move
hand in hand throughout its progress. The plan was bold ;
some of its details — the crossing of the Tigris at Shumran, for
instance — might be characterised as audacious. But it was
as comprehensive as it was bold, and its designer ever had the
destruction of the foe for objective rather than mere winning
of territory or the achieving of some local triumph. Victory,
until hostile resistance had been beaten down, was not victory
to him. The Turks were appalled by the relentless energy
of this formidable antagonist, who was as vehement in tread
ing a fugitive enemy underfoot as he had been calculating in
his preparations for putting the antagonist to fUght. Maude
was as thorough as a conqueror as he had been thorough in
elaborating his scheme for making himself master in the theatre
of war, and this, more perhaps than anything else, singles him
out as one of the foremost soldiers of his time.
But it was not only when the enemy was actually in the
gate that Maude gave indications of an instinct for war.

832 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
Frequent references have occurred in foregoing pages to his
zeal for military study ; but that he also closely foUowed the
progress of international events and that he foresaw clearly
whither they were leading, is made evident by quotations
from his diary and from his conversations which have been
given. That talk of his with Doctor Peatling one evening at
Carshalton which is mentioned on p. 100, his insistence that the
Territorials ought to be warned that they would all be needed
for war work overseas when the national emergency arose,
point unmistakably to his conviction that a great European
war was impending ; and they prove furthermore that he
entertained no illusions as to the immensity of the struggle's
scope when it should come. Moreover even at an earlier date,
during those years immediately after his return from Canada
— somewhat lean and discouraging years in so far as his pro
fessional prospects were concerned — a prophetic instinct
seems to have moved him at times to foresee that one day he
might play a great part in the affairs of his country. Most
thinking officers in the United Kingdom no doubt perceived
what was looming ahead, and deplored the inadequacy of
the Government's preparations for meeting the storm. Few
of them, however, visualised the situation which was to arise
quite so clearly as did Maude.
But we have not here to consider him only in his capacity as
a soldier and commander in the fleld. He was a type of man
bound to make his mark in any walk of life as a consequence
of natural ability, of exceptional application, and of being
governed by a lofty sense of duty. The sense of duty in him
was moreover fostered by strong religious convictions, to
which Mr. Vaux of Carshalton has paid a remarkable tribute
in the passages quoted on p. 107. Maude's diaries bear indirect
testimony to this. Even during the most strenuous days of
his experiences in the fleld from 1914 onwards, he scarcely ever
missed attendance at the early celebration of a Sunday mom
ing, and he always made a point of joining in at least one other
service if it could possibly be managed. Although it was
impossible to make the Sunday a day of rest when in presence
of the enemy, Maude tried to preserve it as a day set apart by
devoting his spare hours to visiting the sick and wounded
when a brigadier ; and at a later date when he came to occupy
higher military positions he made it his day for going round

AN APPRECIATION 333
hospitals. He gave every possible encouragement to the
army chaplains who were at different times serving under
his orders, as also to others vrith whom he happened to come
into contact, frequently mentioning them by name in his
diaries. In no department indeed did he take a warmer and
more practical interest than in that which is devoted to the
spiritual welfare of the troops. His principal chaplain in
Mesopotamia, the Rev. A. C. E. Jarvis, who was with Maude at
his death, writes of the Army Commander in eloquent terms :
For many months I acted as Church of England Chaplain at
General Headquarters. It was during this period that, outside of
official intercourse, the veil was hfted and that I got to know more
of the man. He was very reserved, the innermost was not revealed,
and it was thus that some misunderstood him. To me he was great,
and great because he was good. He was an essentially good man.
He was not ashamed of his rehgion ; he did not make a parade of
it, but it formed a vital part of a wholly disciplined life, always
simple, always devout. He never missed a Communion — ^not
once, and he was a very busy man, while frequent celebrations
were the rule in Mesopotamia.
In an indefinable way he differed from any man I have ever
known. Of him it may truly be said that he possessed a distinctive
and unique personality. At the Memorial Serrice held at Baghdad
the week after his death, in trying to find one word to express it,
I chose the word ' intense.' His virihty, his simplicity, the
thoroughness with which he did everything, are all summed up in
that word — intensity of thought, intensity of insight, intensity of
action. He was a strong man, quiet, self-effacing, but it was the
strength of the great flood which, moving, seems asleep. Careless
ness and slackness he abhorred, and he had no mercy on offenders ;
yet he was essentially generous and kind. In thousands of lives
at home, in India and in the East, he lives enshrined for ever — a.
great soldier, a keen sportsman, a typical Enghsh gentleman, a
good man.
' His splendid abilities as a soldier,' Maude's old chief of
Home District days. Lord Methuen, wrote of him after his
death to Lady Maude, ' were apparent to all from the time
when he was the best of adjutants. But there are other men
who have risen to height in the Army, but yet have not suc
ceeded in gaining the love of all as he did. No one ever
grudged him his glory. There are some like him — I vrish
there were more — who never seek their own interests, who
play the game, and in whose minds jealousy finds no place.
As Burke puts it, " to bring dispositions that are lovely in

334 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
private hfe into the service and conduct of the commonwealth ;
so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen." This is
why so many feel they have lost a friend that cannot be re
placed, and why we feel so much for you and yours in your
grief.' ' Having been closely associated with him all his life,
I think that the cause of his success was his thoroughness in
whatever he undertook,' is the view of his old friend Sir W.
Lambton ; ' whether it was soldiering or sport he threw his
whole heart and energy into what was on hand. No detail
was too small for his notice, and no trouble too great, and that
he achieved so much was due to the charm of his character as
well as to his driving power. He had an intense love for his
old school, Eton, and for his Regiment, and however great
might be the stress of work at any time he always managed
to keep touch with his old comrades.'
It was those who knew him the most intimately who re
spected him the most highly and who liked him best. His
old schoolfellows remember him as ever intent upon whatever
he happened to be engaged on, and yet a bright and merry
lad withal. The sunny side of his disposition came to be less
apparent to those who met him casually or to mere acquaint
ances, as he grew older ; but it was there all the time, although
cloaked by a form of reserve and held in check by absorption
in official duties and in the cares of life. As a man he required
knowing ; and yet no one who came into contact with him could
fail to be struck by his courtesy, his accessibility and his
readiness to enter vrith interest into any matter put before
him. He liked to take the measure of any new acquaintances
before granting his confidence or acquiescing in intimacy;
but amongst those admitted to his friendship he unbent
entirely and proved to be a most attractive companion. His
quiet sense of humour came to his aid alike with acquaintances
and vrith friends ; it was turned to account to smooth over
difficulties in the one case, and it made association with him
all the more agreeable in the other case.
His addiction to sport of all kinds commended him alike to
equals and to inferiors, and he was moreover of the class of
sportsmen who prefer performing — even performing indiffer
ently — ^to looking on. Running vrith him was a natural gift ;
but he made the most of the gift by his abstemiousness, and
this self-denial also aided him in his feats on the river as a

AN APPRECIATION 335
young man and in later days. Although he played most out
door games he had no special aptitude for those demanding
skiU ; he was, however, a good shot, considering that he was
too intent on his military duties from the time of his leaving
Sandhurst to devote much time to this form of sport. Omng
to his weight and to the expense involved he only hunted
occasionally, but when he did he went well to hounds. Most
mounted officers got falls during the South African War ovring
to the treacherous nature of the ground, but were little the
worse ; the fact that Maude met with two accidents and
suffered considerable damage each time, viz. at Driefontein
and on the day before Diamond Hill, suggests that he was a
somewhat reckless horseman, as he had excellent sight.
Thorough in all things, he was also thorough in respect to
sport so long as he was actually engaged in it — whether he
was playing lawn tennis, or was foUovring the beagles, or was
taking part in a sculling match at Maidenhead — and he always
inculcated this same wholeheartedness in others.
An appreciation of this distinguished public servant would
be incomplete without some brief reference to his home life.
He was one of those men whom brains, character and the
force of circumstances thrust into the limelight ; but who
nevertheless are happiest in the domestic circle, for he was
wrapped up in his family. That they were ever in his thoughts
is made manifest by his diaries. In moments of stress and
worry in the field he would remember that it was the birthday
of one of his children and would note it down. If a mail
arrived at the Dardanelles or in Mesopotamia which, owing
to those accidents that are ever occurring in postal arrange
ments on field service, brought him no letter from Mardale,
he was much put out. Devotion to his military duties never
prevented his settling down in the temporary homes that he
occupied and, glad as he was on Service grounds to quit
Plymouth and to exchange Carshalton for the Curragh, he
hated leaving his retreat on the shores of the Stonehouse
creek and shrank from bidding good-bye to his garden at
' Greengates.' He ever loved to be with those nearest to him,
sharing alike their pleasures and their troubles.
Take him for all in all, soldier, student, thinker, sportsman,
gentleman, friend, Maude was an arresting and in many respects
a fascinating figure. He proved himself a man of war. He

336 SIR STANLEY MAUDE
left no stone unturned to ensure his mastery of any subject
which he felt he ought to fathom. He took the long view in
questions which the statesman too often hesitates to grapple
with. He played the game through life as he had played it as
a fag in Cornish's House at Eton. He won the regard and
admiration of those who saw most of him and were best fitted
to appraise his merits, and only those who enjoyed the privilege
of his friendship realised how great that privilege was. Few
men of the day have set a more shining example for the rising
generation to follow, have consecrated themselves more whole
heartedly to the service of their country without thought of
self, and have left a deeper and a more enduring footprint
on the sands of time.

INDEX

Abu Roman, 13th Division at, 212.
iEgean, the, references to, 159, 160.
Afghan frontier, events on, accelerate
decision as to Sudan, 20.
Afghan War, Sir F. F. Maude in, 3, 4.
Ahwaz, Maude visits, 241 ; reference to,
288.
Aisne, passage of the, 120 ; battle of
the, 121-123 ; reference to the, 151.
Alaska, difficulty concerning the boun
dary of, 82.
Aldershot, ist Coldstream at, 13 ; 2nd
Coldstream at, 25 ; Maude's move to,
87 ; reference to, 96.
Alderson, Lieut.-General Sir E. A., at
the Staff College, 27.
Aldis House, Maude goes to school at,
S-
Aleppo, reference to, 281.
Alexander, reference to, 318.
Alexandria, 1st Coldstream at, 20 ;
drafts go to, 168 ; Maude reaches,
189.
Ali Gharbi, arrival of Cossacks at, 225.
Aliwal North, references to, 64, 65.
Allahabad District, Sir F. F. Maude in
command of, 3.
AUenby, General, at the Staff College,
27 ; expected advance of, 293.
Altham, Lieut.-General Sir E. A.,
letter from Maude to, 75.
Amarah, references to, 235, 250, 251 ;
13th Division proceeds back to, 238 ;
railway from Kurna to, 243 ; Sir C.
Monro inspects 13th Division at, 248 ;
Maude presents V.C. ribbons at, 249,
250.
Anglo-Persian oilfields, Maude visits,
248, 249.
Antony, Maude stays at, 90.
Antwerp, question of, 125 ; fall of, 125,
126.
Anzac, operations at, 159; Maude arrives
at, 160; 13th Division leaves, 162;
principle of retirement from, 172;
General Godley in command at, 172 ;
part of, force moves into Maude's
sector on last night, 173 ; final with
drawal from, 176 ; reference to, 322.
Arabian Sea, reference to, 194.

Arabs, trouble caused by, 225, 227, 233,
2S4. 255, 285 ; turn on the Turks,
269 ; influenced by Maude's victories,
269, 270 ; effect of capture of Baghdad
on, 280 ; punitive expedition against,
in Diala valley, 287, 288.
Ardgillan Castle, reference to, 24.
Armenia, situation in, 285, 293, 298.
Armenti^res, occupation of, 128 ; 3rd
Corps headquarters at, 129, 131.
Army Commander. See Sir S. Maude.
Army Corps —
1st, under Sir D. Haig, 115; move
ments of, 118, 128 ; some of, pass
through Hazebrouck, 128 ; gradual
detraining of, 128 ; at First Battle
of Ypres, 134.
2nd, under Sir J. Grierson, 115; Sir
H. Smith-Dorrien takes command
of, 117; movements of, 117, 121,
126, 128 ; moves north, 124 ; placed
in Second Army, 144 ; supports the
First Army, 147.
3rd, Maude appointed G.S.O. i of,
115; position of, 1 17; crosses the
Marne, 118; follows the 2nd Corps,
119; uncomfortable position of,
120; on the Aisne, 121; moves
north, 124 ; arrives at St. Omer,
125 ; Maude's services with, 130,
131 ; placed in Second Army, 144.
4th, arrives, 126; moving southward
from Bruges and Ostend, 128.
5th, in Second Army, 144; composi
tion of, 144.
6th, proposal as to Maude joining staff
of, 147.
Sth, composition of at Helles, 168.
gth, references to, 159, 160.
15th, 13th Division joins, in Egypt,
189.
Indian, in France, begins to arrive,
133-
Tigris, composition of, 197 ; condition
of, 197 ; difiiculties of, 212 ; trying
time of, after surrender of Kut, 220 ;
improved position of, after the
retreat of the Turks from Es Sinn,
224 ; Maude assumes command of,
227 ; composition of, 230, 231 ;
337

388

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Army Corps {continued) —
command of, handed over by Maude
to General Cobbe, 235 ; references
to, 238, 239, 303, 331 ; split in
two, 250.
Ist Indian, constituted under General
Cobbe, 250 ; attacks Khaidiri Bend
works, 256 ; advances on Baghdad,
274; portion of, moves against
Ramadi, 292.
3rd Indian, constituted under General
Marshall, 250 ; advances, 254 ;
pushes on beyond Baghdad, 276 ;
defeats Turkish 13th Corps, 283.
Arnold-Forster, Mr., letter from Maude
to private secretary of, 78 ; Maude
becomes private secretary to, 87 ;
resignation of, 88.
Artillery, Maude on German, 122, 146,
153 ; Maude's attention to, 148 ;
Maude dissatisfied with arrangements
in Gallipoli ' Peninsula, 165 ; Maude
gets his own way as to, 1 65 ; Maude's
anxiety as to, during final evacuation
of Suvla, 173.
Asquith, Mr., becomes War Minister,
113- .
Austerlitz, reference to, 328.
Australians, reference to, 160.
Austria-Hungary, demands of, on Serbia,
"S-
Avoca, S.S., Maude sails to South Africa
in, 34-
Aylmer, General, in command of Tigris
Corps, 197 ; attack on Dujaila Re
doubt, 200 ; reference to, 201.
Azizieh, advanced troops reach, 265 ;
halt at, 268-270 ; references to, 271,
277.
Baghdad, references to, 2, 159, 190,
209, 26s, 268, 271, 273, 275, 277,
279, 280, 285, 288, 295, 301, 308,
321 ; General Townshend's advance
on, 190 ; guarded approval of Govern
ment for advance on, 270 ; occupation
of, 274 ; Maude's entry into, 274 ;
enthusiasm over capture of, 278 ; rail
way from Kut to, 285 ; heat of, 292 ;
effect of fall of on enemy side, 293 ;
caravan route from, to Mosul, 298 ; a
changed city, 305 ; memorials to
Maude at, 319.
Bailleul, references to, 128, 129, 131 ;
14th Brigade in billets in, 139 ; Maude
spends night at, 155.
Bakuba, capture of, 276 ; references to,
288, 294, 296.
Balfour, Mr., references to, 89, 91.
Banff, stay made by the Royal Party at,
74-

Baratoff, General, references to, 225 ;
Maude to arrange direct with, 281.
Barberton, capture of, 60 ; references to,
61, 62.
Basingstoke, Maude conducts staff tour
at, 86.
Basrah, Maude arrives at, 194 ; refer
ences to, 198, 199, 200, 232, 234,
236, 239, 246, 247, 288, 321 ; General
Lake quits, 237 ; improvements to
port of, 241, 243 ; work of Maude at,
242-247, 249 ; climate of, 242.
Beatty, Sir D., Maude receives message
of congratulation from, 278.
' Beetles,' the, description of, 182.
Beit Aiessa, fighting at, 212-214; refer
ences to, 215, 216, 217, 221, 223,
225, 257.
Beled, reference to, 283.
Belfast, occupied by i ith Division, 60.
Belgians, position of, 126 ; reference to,
133-
Bell,, Major A. C. Morrison-, on Maude,
74, 81 ; conversation of, with Maude,
104.
Belmont, action of, 34.
Berber, proposed railway to, 14.
Berkshire Downs, Maude at cavalry
exercises on, 89.
Bergendal, action of, 58.
Bethulie, reference to, 65.
Bidassoa, passage of, 262.
Birdwood, General, operations of, at
Anzac, 159 ; takes over command from
Sir I. Hamilton, i66 ; in command of
the Dardanelles Arniy, 168 ; Maude
meets, at Mudros, 177 ; appreciation
of Maude by, 186.
Bisshopp, Very Rev. Sir G., Sir F. F.
Maude marries the daughter of, 2.
Black Watch capture terminus of Sa
marra railway, 274.
Blizzard, the great, in the Gallipoli Pen
insula, 168, 169.
Bloemfontein, references to, 37, 51 ; ad
vance on, 40 ; occupation of, 42 ;
pause at, 44-46 ; epidemic at, 44 ;
advance from, 46 ; Guards Brigade
headquarters moves to, 63.
Boer Executive moves to Machadodorp,
SI-
Borden, Sir F., Minister of Militia, 77.
Boscawen, Lieut.-Colonel Hon. E. See
Falmouth, Lord.
Botha, General Louis, in command of
Boers, 49 ; sends in despatch riders,
50 ; in position east of Pretoria, 51,
52 ; position of, near Belfast, 57 ;
retires on Lydenburg, 59.
Boulogne, reference to, 124 ; Maude at,
150, 152, iss-

INDEX

839

Boyne, Maude at brigade training on the,
109.
Braemar Castle, s.s., 3rd Corps staff
cross the Channel in, 117.
Brandfort, advance to, 47.
Brandwater Basin, General Hunter's
success in, 56.
Brigade —
Guards, sent to Suakin, 15 ; at Hash-
in, 17 ; proceeds to Tofrek, 18 ;
proceeds to Cyprus, 20 ; formed to
go to South Africa, 32 ; advance of,
to Modder River, 34; remains on
Modder, 39 ; moves to Klip Drift,
39 ; moves up to Poplar Grove,
40 ; reaches Bloemfontein, 42 ;
headquarters at Bloemfontein, 44 ;
included in nth Division, 45 ; in
operations east of Bloemfontein, 46 ;
advance of, to Karee Siding, 46 ;
marches into Kroonstad, 48 ; halts
at Germiston, 50 ; at Diamond Hill,
52, 53 ; returns to Pretoria, 54 ;
goes back to, near Diamond Hill,
55 ; on the railway, 56 ; moves north
from Belfast, 59 5 moves to Water
val Onder, 60 ; moves on Komati
Poort, 60, 61 ; distributed along
Orange River, 64.
Ist, Brig.-General F. Lloyd in com
mand of at Aldershot, 88.
7th, attack on, 133.
8th, 14th Brigade relieves, 137.
nth, crosses the Marne, 1 20; forces
passage over the Aisne, 120.
I2th, crosses the Marne, 120.
13th, in the 5th Division, 108 ; attack
on, 133 ; 14th Brigade changes
places with, 141.
14th, in the 5th Division, 108 ; Maude
appointed to command, 129 ; Maude
joins, 132 ; Maude's previous ex
perience of, 132 ; constitution of,
132; condition of, 134, 136; re
lieved by Garwhal Brigade, 136;
goes back into the trenches, 137 ;
relieved by 8th Division, 137 ;
take over line near Wulverghem,
138; in billets, 139; inspected by
the ICing, 140 ; good work of, 140 ;
returns to front, 141 ; operations of
near Wytschaete, 143 ; goes back
into billets, at Bailleul, 143 ; Sir
H. Smith-Dorrien's association with,
151 ; gas reaches, 154 ; Maude
gives up command of, 155 ; Maude's
services with, 156, 157 ;. high stan
dard of efficiency of, 157 ; references
to, 163, 187, 197. 307, 321, 329-
15th, in the 5th Division, 108 ; refer
ence to, 112.

Brigade [continued) —
19th, joins the 3rd Corps, 117 ; driven
back near the Lys, 129.
3Sth, under Maude's orders, 221.
38th, composition of, 161 n ; in right
sector, 174; under Brig.-General
O'Dowda, 189 ; embarkation of,
at Port Said, 193 ; moves up river
from Basrah, 199 ; at Sheikh Saad,
201 ; moves to Wadi, 204 ; relieves
7th Division, 204 ; General Lake
commends, 207.
39th, composition of, 161 n ; comes
under General Fanshawe, 174;
arrives at Helles, 178 ; under Brig.-
General Cayley, 189 ; reaches Sheikh
Saad, 201 ; marches to Wadi, 204 ;
General Lake commends, 207 ;
attack of at Beit Aiessa, 214.
40th, composition of, 161 k; in right
sector, 174 ; arrives at Helles, 178 ;
under Brig.-General Lewin, 189;
moves up river, 201 ; reaches Sheikh
Saad, 20I ; relieves 7th Division,
204 ; detects retirement of Turks,
223 ; moves back to Wadi, 225.
Brigade of Guards, Maude appointed
brigade-major of, 28 ; peculiar organ
isation of, 31.
Brooking, Maj.-General Sir H. T.,
leaves Sandhurst with Maude, 11 ; in
command of 15th Division, 239 ;
Maude visits, 249 ; reference to, 270 ;
capture of Ramadi by, 296.
Brown, Sir Sam, reference to, 2.
Brownrigg, Lieut.-Colonel W. D.,
Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-
General of the 13th Division, 163 ; on
Maude, 163, 164, 194, 208, 211, 227.
Buckingham Palace, Maude at, 152.
Buffs, The, Sir F. F. Maude's career in,
2, 3-
Bulford, headquarters of the 33rd Divi
sion, 158 ; reference to, 160.
Buller, Sir R. , army of, in Natal, 34,
43 ; to unite with Lord Roberts, 56 ;
approaches Belfast, 57 ; left south of
the railway, 58 ; attacks Bergendal,
58 ; sent to Lydenburg, 59 ; reference
to, 76.
Bullock, General, Maude visits the Ter
ritorial division of, 103.
Buluwayo, reference to, 34.
Burke, quotation from, 333-334.
Burton's Court, reference to, 13.
Bushire, detachment at, 239.
Byng, Lieut.-General Sir J., Maude
visits Territorial division of, 103 ;
Maude meets at Taranto, 160 ; Lord
Kitchener visits, at Suvla, 168 ;
praises 13th Division, 168 ; approves

340

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

plans for special works, 170 ; confer
ence between, and General Godley,
172.
'C Beach, reference to, 170.
Calais, reference to, 124.
Calgary, Royal Party at, 73.
Camberley, Maude at, 26-28 ; references
to, IOI, 326.
Cambridge, Duke of, gives Maude a
nomination for the Staff College, 25.
Cambridge, 6th Division concentrates at,
Campbell, Sir W. Pitcairn, in command
of the 5th Division, 108 ; on Maude,
109 ; succeeded by Sir C. Fergusson,
109.
Canada, Maude offered post of M.S. in,
55, 56 ; Maude proceeds to, 70 ; Lord
Minto's position in, 7 1 ; public opinion
in, as to defence, 77 ; telegram from
Premier of, to Lady Maude, 313 ;
reference to, 324, 332.
Canadian defence, ' question of, 76, 78,
79-
Candler, Mr. , reference to, 202 ; on the
13th Division, 206 ; witnesses attack
of 7th Division on Sannaiyat, 216 ; on
Maude, 246 ; an eye-witness of pas
sage of Tigris at Shumran, 262 ; on
reconstruction of the army's communi
cations, 269 ; on Maude's intention all
along to advance to Baghdad, 270 ;
appreciation of Maude, 318 ; quotes
staff officer's summing up of Maude,
328.
Cape Colony, danger to, 64 ; invasion
of, 65-68 ; reference to, 1 14.
Cape Town, reference to, 32, 43 ; Maude
arrives at, 34 ; Maude leaves, for home,
68.
Capper, Maj.-General Sir T., at the
Staff College, 27 ; promoted for service
in the Sudan, 32 ; reference to, 49 ;
in command of 13th Brigade, 108 ; at
staff ride, 109.
Carlow, manoeuvres in, abandoned, 109.
Carshalton, Maude settles at, 95 ; life at,
99, 100 ; Maude's regret at leaving,
iq6 ; references to, 332, 335.
Carter, Maj.-General Sir E., at the Staff
College, 26 ; appreciation of Maude
by, 28.
Castelnau, General, reference to, 123.
Cavagnari's Mission, destruction of, 4.
Cavalry Division formed, 250 ; advances,
254 ; enabled to find water, 259.
Cayley, Maj.-General J. de S., reference
to, 169 ; in command of 39th Brigade,
189 ; takes command of 13th Division,
228, 230.

Cely-Trevilians, Maude spends his
holidays with, 5.
Censorship, the, in Mesopotamia,
Maude on, 202, 203 ; relaxed by
General Lake, 219.
Centralisation, Maude's inclination for,
31, 98, 112, 140, 141, 194, 229, 230,
292, 30s, 306, 307, 323-326.
Chailak Dere, Maude visits troops in,
162.
Chaplain's Department, Maude's interest
in, 291.
Chatham, Maude at siege operations at,
89.
Chatham, H.M.S., Maude proceeds to
Mudros in, 185.
Chehala lines, position of, 223 ; evacuated
by Turks, 223.
Chelsea Barracks, references to, 13, 21,
25, 9°-
Cheshire, 5th, in 14th Brigade, 133.
Chocolate Hill, 13th Division takes over
trenches north of, 163 ; taken over by
Maude, 165; reference to, 164, 174.
Cholera, epidemic of, in spring 1916,
221 ; Maude seized with, 310.
Christian Victor, Prince, death of, 63.
Cirencester, brigade staff tour near, 88.
Clonmel, Maude at staff ride at, 109.
Cobbe, Lieut.-General Sir A. S., re
places General Younghusband in com
mand of the 7th Division, 230 ;
Maude discusses situation with, 231 ;
farewell message of, to General Lake,
237 ; references to, 248, 283, 286 ; to
command 1st Corps, 250 ; on Maude,
252 ; bombards Sannaiyat, 254 ;
attacks works in Khaidiri Bend, 256 ;
unsuccessful attack of, on Sannaiyat,
261 ; capture of Sannaiyat by, 262,
263 ; defeats Turks at Mushaidieh,
276 ; defeats Turks at Tikrit, 298,
299; appreciation by, of Maude, 301,
302.
Coblentz, Maude at, 5.
Codrington, Sir A., in 1st Coldstream,
12.
Coldstream Guards, Maude joins istBn.,
12 ; 1st Bn. proceeds to Suakin, 15 ;
1st Bn. in the convoy fighting near
Tofrek, 18 ; ist Bn. returns to Sua
kin, 18 ; 1st Bn. proceeds to Handub
and Otao, 19 ; ist Bn. proceeds to
Cyprus, 20 ; ist Bn. returns home,
20 ; 1st Bn. at Windsor, 21 ; Maude
adjutant of ist Bn., 22 ; Maude joins
2nd Bn., 24; 3rd Bn. raised, 30; 1st
and 2nd Bns. proceed to South Africa,
30 ; Maude joins 2nd Bn., 34 ; 1st
and 2nd Bns. at Diamond Hill, 54;
Maude second - in - command of 1st

INDEX

341

Bn., 85 ; 1st Bn. leaves for Aldershot,
87 ; Maude's regret on leaving, 93 ;
losses in, 1 19 ; ist and 2nd Bns. arrive
at Hazebrouck, 128 ; band of, at
Memorial Service, 313; reference to,
320.
Colesberg, reference to, 41.
Colley, Sir G., reference to, 9.
Colvile, Sir H. E., in command of
Guards Brigade for South Africa, 32 ;
appointed to command 9th Division,
37-
C.M.G., Maude receives, 75.
C.B., Maude receives, 147, 152.
Compiegne, Forest of, reference to, 1 18 ;
3rd Corps entrains near, 124.
Compton, Lieut.-Colonel C. W., takes
over 14th Brigade from Maude, 155.
Connaught, Duke of, attends the Memo
rial Service, 313.
Constantinople, references to, 166, 293.
Corbett, Mr. J., Maude attends lectures
by, 93. 94-
Cornish, Mr., letter of, to Miss Alice
Maude, 6.
Cornish's House, Maude in, 6 ; reference
to, 336.
Corps. See Army Corps.
Corry, Colonel Hon. H. W., in com
mand of 2nd Coldstream, 24.
Cossack sotnia, arrival of at Ali Gharbi,
225 ; Maude's reference to, 226.
Cowans, Sir J., succeeds General Mac
kinnon, 102 ; Quartermaster-General
at the War Office, 244.
Cowper, Maj.-General M., Deputy
Adjutant-General, 238.
Cox, Sir P., Political Officer, 238; and
a local magnate, 251.
Craig's Court, Maude's office in, 95, 96.
Crewe, Marquess of, on Maude, in the
House of Lords, 317.
Crimea, Sir F. F. Maude in the, 2, 3.
Cronje, General, entrenched near the
Modder River, 36 j operations against,
on the Modder River, 37 ; retreat of,
38 ; surrounded at Paardeberg, 39 ;
surrender of, 39 ; arrives at Clip
River, 39.
Ctesiphon, defeat of Turks at, 190 ;
references to, 243, 272 ; Turks evacu
ate, 271.
Curragh, the, Maude goes to, 106 ;
references to, 108, no, 112, 335.
Curzon, Earl, on Maude in the House
of Lords, 317.
Cyprus, Guards Brigade in, 20.
'D' Force, references to, 197, 232, 235,
236; composition of, 197; last victory
of, lender Mwde, 299.

Dahra Bend, fighting in the, 257, 258 ;
reference to, 263.
Dardanelles, Maude ordered to, 158 ;
Maude's hopes of vigorous policy in,
position of army in, 166 ; reference to,
335-
Davies, Lieut.-General Sir F. J., in
command at Helles, 177 ; receives
order to evacuate, 178 ; letters from
Maude to, 179, 180, 183, 184.
Dawson, Maj.-General Vesey, joins
Guards Camel Corps, 14 ; in command
of 2nd London (Territorial) Division,
94 ; Maude with, 95-97 ; on Maude,
97, 98.
De Aar, .references to, 64, 67, 68.
De la Rey, at Driefontein, 41.
De Montalt, Barons, record of, i.
De Wet, approaches Paardeberg, 40 ;
retires from Poplar Grove, 41 ; east
of Bloemfontein, 46 ; cuts communica
tions near Kroonstad, 52 ; reference
to, 59 ; to proceed to Cape Colony,
67 ; the ' Great, Hunt,' 67, 68.
Debden Hall, Maude spends holidays
at, 5.
Deccan,s.s., 1st Coldstream leave Suakin
in, 20.
Deltawa, references to, 288.
Dervishes. See Hadendowa.
Devonport, reference to, 91.
Devons, ist, in the 14th Brigade, 133 ;
at Hill 60, 152, 153.
Dewetsdorp, operations near, 45, 46.
Diala River, cavalry reaches, 271 ; pas
sage of the, 272, 273 ; references to,
276, 277, 283, 287, 297.
Diamond Hill, action of, 52, 53 ; refer
ence to, 335.
Diamond Jubilee, references to, 4, 72 ;
Maude at, 29, 30.
Dick - Cunyngham, Lieut. - Colonel,
brigade-major of the 14th Brigade,
133 ; on Maude, 135, 141, 142, 157.
Dickson, Colonel E., appointed Local
Produce Controller, 280 ; conversation
of Maude with, 305 ; Maude to dine
with, on the evening he fell ill, 509.
D.S.O., Maude receives the, 69.
Division —
South Africa —
Ist, Lord Methuen commands, 32,
34.
5th, Major Capper with, 49.
Sth, under General Kelly-Kenny,
37 ; advance of, 38 ; at Driefon
tein, 41.
7th, under General Tucker, 37 ;
advance of, 38 ; at Karee Siding,
45 ; in centre column, 46 ; at
S^nd River, 48 ; march past of,

842

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Division (continued) —
in Johannesburg, 50 ; prepares to
attack near Pretoria, 50.
9th, under General Colvile, 37 ;
advance of, 38.
nth, under General Pole-Carew,
45 ; operating east of Bloemfon
tein, 45, 46 ; advances to Karee
Siding, 46 ; to remain in centre,
46 ; halt at Brandfort, 47 ; at the
Zand River, 48 ; reaches Ger
miston, 49 ; march past in Johan
nesburg, 50 ; prepares to attack
near Pretoria, 50 ; halts at Pre
toria, 51 ; moves ^ast, 52 ; at
Diamond Hill, 53 f advances, 56 ;
guards railway, 56, 57 ; occupies
Belfast, 57 ; end of, 63.
Territorial —
2nd London, Maude joins, 94 ;
references to, 96, 97, 103.
Home, Regulars —
5th, Maude appointed G. S. O. i of,
at the Curragh, 105 ; composition
of, 108 ; at manoeuvres, 109,
no; Maude leaves, no.
6th, at inter-divisional manoeuvres,
no.
Great War —
3rd, position of, near the Lys, 132 ;
obliged to fall back, 135 ; before
Messines, 142 ; delivers attack,
147.
4th, to await events, 117 ; proceeds
to France, 117 ; General Pulteney
inspects, 117; difficulties of, on
the Marne, 119, 120; part of,
crosses the Lys, 128.
5th, sails from Ireland, 117 ; posi
tion of, on the Lys, 132 ; General
Morland in command of, 132 ;
Sir H. Smith-Dorrien's associa
tion with, 150 ; question of retir
ing, 153, 154 ; Maude tempo
rarily in command of, 154.
6th, to sail from Ireland, 117 ; con
centration at Cambridge, 117;
arrives at the front, 121 ; crosses
the Lys, 128.
7th, operating alongside the 1st
Corps, 134.
Sth, relieves the 14th Brigade, 137.
loth, reference to, 1 59 ; leaves for
Salonika, 164, 165.
nth, references to, 159; in the
ISth Corps, 189; takes over Canal
defences from 13th Division, 193.
13th, Maude assumes command of,
160; properly part of the 9th
Corps, 160 ; condition of, wlien
Maude took over, 160, 161 ; Sir

Division {continued) —
I. Hamilton on, 160 ; composition
of, 161 n; in reserve at Suvla,
162 ; replaces the S3rd Division,
163 ; takes over trenches on Choco
late Hill, 165 ; Maude becomes a
familiar figure in, 167 ; during
the great blizzard, 168, 169 ;
much of impedimenta got rid of
before definite order for evacua
tion, 172; to relieve 42nd Divi
sion, 177; plan for withdrawal of ,
from Helles, 180; Turks attack,
180, 181 ; at Mudros, 185 ; pro
ceeds to Egypt, 189 ; arrives at
Port Said, 189 ; inspection of, by
Sir A. Murray, 192 ; re-equip
ment of, 193 ; nth Division takes
over defences from, 193 ; high
opinion of Maude entertained in,
199 ; complete at Sheikh Saad,
201 ; dependence of the troops of
the relieving force on, 206 ; Mr.
Candler on, 206 ; casualties in,
207 ; relieved by 7th Division
after capture of Felahieh, 207 ;
attack of, on Sannaiyat, 210;
casualties in, 210 ; crosses the
Tigris, 212 ; comes to support of
3rd Division during the Turkish
nocturnal counter-attack at Beit
Aiessa, 213; relieves the 3rd
Division at Beit Aiessa, 213; fails
in attack, 214 ; cholera in, 221 ;
position of, in May, 221 ; General
Lake inspects, 221 ; at Sheikh
Saad, 227 ; Maude and the, 228-
230 ; to move back to Amarah,
235 ; directly under Army Head
quarters, 238 ; Sir C. Monro in
spects, 248 ; Maude presents V.C.
ribbons to, 249, 250 ; in 3rd
Corps, 250 ; passage of the Diala
River by, 272, 273 ; references to,
289, 307 ; obelisk erected by, in
the Jebel Hamrin, 319 ; references
to, 329, 330.
27th, in 5th Corps, 144 ; withdrawn
near Ypres, 1 52 ; attacked,
IS3-
28th, in 5th Corps, 144 ; withdrawn
near Ypres, 152 ; attacked, 153 ;
gas attack on, 154.
29th, reference to, 168 ; at Helles,
179; to embark at 'W' Beach,
180.
31st, in 15th Corps, 189.
33rd, Maude in command of, 15^;
moves to Salisbury Plain, 159.
42nd, reference to, 168 ; 13th Divi
sion relieves at HeUes, 177.

INDEX

343

Division {continued) — |
52nd, reference to, 168 ; at HeUes,
179.
SSrd, 13th Division replaces, 163;
references to, 164, 174.
S4th, takes over trenches at Anzac
from the 13th Division, 162.
Royal Naval, reference to, 168 ; at
Helles, 179.
2nd Mounted, reference to, 174.
Indian —
3rd (Lahore), arrives at Estaires,
133 ; in Tigris Corps on the right
bank of the Tigris, 197, 204 ; gains
ground on right bank of the Tigris,
209, 210 ; fight of, at Beit Aiessa,
213 ; relieved by 13th Division,
213; approaches Es Sinn, 216;
on the left of the 13th, 221 ; occu
pies Es Sinn, 223 ; position of,
230 ; in the Ist Corps, 250 ;
in Khaidiri Bend operations,
256.
6th, shut up in Kut, 197 ; reference
to, 304.
7th (Meerut), begins to arrive, 136 ;
in Tigris Corps, 197, 204 ; in
front of Hannah, 204 ; relieved
by 13th Division, 204 ; work done
by, before Hannah, 206 ; relieves
13th Division, 207 ; defeated in
attack on Sannaiyat, 208, 209 ;
second attack of, on Sannaiyat,
215; near achieving success, 216;
brigade of, brought across Tigris,
216 ; position of, in 1st Corps,
250 ; captures Samarra, 284 ;
highly appreciates Maude's visit
by air, 289.
14th, formed, 225 ; references to,
231 ; position of, 231 ; correspon
dence of Corps headquarters with,
234 ; in 3rd Corps, 250.
15th, General Brooking in command
of, at Nasirieh, 239 ; references to,
249, 270 ; ordered forward to the
front, 285 ; capture of Ramadi
by, 296.
Dominion Government, and defence, 76,
77 ; difficulty with the United States
over Alaska boundary, 82 ; and Lord
Dundonald, 83.
Dongola, reference to, 200.
Douglas, Sir C, at manoeuvres in Ire
land, 109 ; becomes Chief of the Im
perial General Staff, 113.
Douro, passage of, 262.
Driefontein, action at, 41 ; references to,
44, ISO, 321, 335- ^ . .
Drummond-Hay, Colonel J. A. G., ]oms
Coldstream, 12.

Dublin, Maude's early days in, 4 ;
Maude stationed at, 23, 25.
Du Cane, Brig.-General H. J., at the
Staff College, 26 ; at Cape Town, 34.
Du Cane, Brig.-General J. P., Chief of
General Staff of the 3rd Corps, 115;
goes to Harrow, 117.
Dujaila Redoubt, references to, 197,
223, 226, 231, 234; General Aylmer's
attack on, 200.
Duke of Cornwall. See Prince of Wales.
D.C.L.I., 1st, in the 14th Brigade, 132 ;
reference to, 153.
Dundonald, Earl of, arrives in Canada,
76 ; success of, 77 ; dismissal of, 83 ;
appreciation of Maude by, 83, 84 ;
letter to, 273.
Dundrum, reference to, 9.
Dunvegan Castle, s.s., Maude proceeds
home in, 68.
Durnford, Mr. W., in charge of Army
Class at Eton, 9.
East Lancs, Maude commends, 214.
East London, reference to, 43.
East Surreys, ist, in 14th Brigade, 132 ;
reference to, 145, 153 ; at Hill 60,
152.
Eccleston Square, Sir F. F. Maude
settles in, 4, 13, 24.
Edenburg, General Pole-Carew at, 43 ;
reference to, 45.
Edward in., reference to, 1.
Egan, Mrs., visit of, to Baghdad, 308,
309 ; inoculated against cholera, 310.
Egerton, Maj.-General R. C, commands
the 14th Division, 230.
Egypt, references to, 14, 185, 192, 193,
202, 225, 313.
Ehrenbreitstein, Maude gets access to, 5.
Empress qf India, s.s.. Royal Party pro
ceed to Vancouver Island in, 74.
Enniskillen, reference to, 2.
Enslin, action at, 34.
Esquimault, Regular garrison in, 71.
Es Sinn, references to, 197, 213, 241,
248, 280, 328 ; Turkish position at,
223 ; evacuation of, by the Turks,
223 ; Maude inspects, 231.
Estaires, 3rd Corps reaches, 128'; Lahore
Division arrive at, 133.
Eton, Maude goes to, 6 ; Maude's life
at, 6-10; Maude's affection for, 10,
334; references to, 11, 13, 22, 27,
109, 298, 336,
Eton College Chronicle, quotation from,
7-
Euphrates, 15th Division on the, 239 ;
Maude makes short trip up by steamer,
249 ; references to, 270, 276, 280, 292,
296.

344

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Eustacius de Monte Alto, founder of
the Maude family, i.
Expeditionary Force, Maude accom
panies, 113, 117; organisation of, lIS,
117 ; plans for transfer of, to France,
1 16 ; reconstituted, 144.
Fairfax, Lieut. J. G., lines by, 318-
319-
Falkenhayn, General von, to take charge
of the Turks in Palestine and Meso
potamia, 293.
Falmouth, in Plymouth command, 90.
Falmouth, Lord, commands Guards
Camel Regiment, 14 ; in command of
2nd Coldstream, 24.
Fanshawe, Maj.-General E. A., proceeds
to Dardanelles with Maude, 160 ; in
charge of Suvla Point evacuation, 174.
Farquhar, Lieutenant F., A.D.C. to
General Pole-Carew, 37.
Felahieh, position at, 205 ; capture of,
207, 208; references to, 210, 211,
328.
Feluja, occupation of, 276, 280 ; refer
ences to, 292, 296, 301.
Ferdinand, Archduke, assassination of,
"3-
Fergusson, Sir C, on Maude's running,
7 ; in Army class with Maude, 9, 10 ;
dealings with Maude as regards Terri
torials, 99 ; succeeds to command of
5th Division, 109 ; on Maude as a
staff officer, no, in; no longer in com
mand of 5th Division, 132 ; given com
mand of 2nd Corps, 144 ; visits Maude
in hospital, 149 ; Maude writes to,
150; tells Maude about Hill 60, 152.
Finance Branch of the War Of&ce,
Maude on, 99.
Flanders, situation in, in October 19 14,
133-
Flint, reference to, i.
Foch, General, efforts of, to outflank
enemy, 133.
Follett, Colonel, on Maude, 20 ; in com
mand of 1st Coldstream, 23.
Fortescue, Leiut. -Colonel C, Maude in
company of, 15.
Fourth Hussars, Maude with, 108 ; refer
ence to, 1 12.
Fremantle, Maj.-General Lyon, com
mands Guards Brigade at Suakin, 15.
French, Lord, advance of, on Klip Drift,
38; relieves Kimberley, 38; cuts Cronje's
line of retreat, 39 ; cuts across railway
near Bloemfontein, 42 ; in operations
east of Bloemfontein, 45, 46 ; outflanks
Botha, 50 ; at Diamond Hill, 52, 53 ;
occupies Middelburg, 56 ; in touch with
Sir R. Buller, 57 ; moves north, 58 ;

sent south, 60; occupies Barberton,
60; inspection of, at Aldershot, 89;
Maude attached to staff of, 89 ; Army
Manoeuvres under,. 99 ; resigns position
of Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
113; position of army of, 118; refer
ence to book by, 119; keeps 6th
Division in general reserve, 121 ; hopes
of turning movement on the Aisne,
123 ; orders infantry of 3rd Corps to
hurry forward, 126; abandons hope of
immediate offensive, 122 : efforts of,
to outflank the enemy, 133 ; reference
to, 156.
Frensham, Maude has house at, 25 ; 2nd
Division at, 89.
Gallipoli Peninsula, references to, 3,
6, 16, 134, 160, 162, 168, 190, 202,
224 ; position in the, 159 ; Sir C.
Monro recommends the evacuation of,
166 ; great storm in the, 168, 169 ;
final evacuation of, 182-185.
Gandamak, Peace of, reference to, 4.
Garwhal Brigade relieves 14th Brigade,
136.
Gatacre, General, advance of, from Cape
Colony, 42 ; General Pole-Carew and
Maude meet, 43.
Gazette, the, Maude disappointed about
the publication of his despatch in, 294,
¦ 295.
Germiston, references to, 49, 50, 55.
Ghurkas, references to, 160, 206 ; success
of two companies of, in the Dahra
Bend, 258.
Gibraltar, Sir F. F. Maude at, 3 ; Maude
born at, 3 ; 2nd Coldstream proceed
to South Africa from, 32; reference
to, 151.
Gillman, Maj.-General Sir W., G.S.O. i
of the 13th Division, 162 ; leaves the
13th Division, 165 ; on Maude, 230,
306 ; takes command of the 17th
Division, 297.
Gladstone, Mr., Government of, 14.
Gleichen, Brig.-General Count, in com
mand of the 15th Brigade, 108.
Glen Imaal, reference to, 109.
'Glisseur,' Maude supplied with, 290.
Godley, General, in command at Anzac,
172 ; conference with, 172, 173,
Gordon, General, at Khartum, 14.
Gorringe, General, relieves General
Aylmer, 201 ; accepts Maude's pro
posals, 204 ; Maude consults witb,
204 ; commends Maude, 206 ; refer
ences to, 212, 217, 218 ; order of, as
to sentries at night, 227.
Gough, Brig.-General H., reference to,
1X2.

INDEX

345

Government, the, Maude on, Ii6 ;
vacillation of, as regards the evacua
tion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, 170,
176, 177 ; decides to move a division
from Egypt to Mesopotamia, 192.
Graham, Sir Gerald, arrives at Suakin,
l6 ; makes reconnaissance to Hashin,
16, 17 ; advances against Hashin, 17 ;
advances against Tamai, 19.
Graham, Captain H., appreciation of
Maude by, 80.
G.C.B., Sir F. F. Maude receives, 4.
'Greengates,' Maudes settle at, 95;
Maude regrets leaving, io6 ; reference
to, 33S-
Grenadiers, 3rd, proceed to Suakin, 15 ;
proceed to South Africa, 32 ; escort to
Paardeberg prisoners, 40 ; move by
rail towards Norval's Pont, 42 ; false
alarm about, going home, 63.
Grenfell, R., joins Coldstream, 12.
Grierson, Sir J., in command of 2nd
Corps, 115; death of , 117.
Guards Camel Regiment, formation of,
14.
Gully Beach, proposal to use, for evacu
ating the 13th Division, 180; Maude's
difficulties at, 182, 183 ; last detach
ments move from, to ' W' Beach, 183,
184.
Gunboats, moor off Kut, 263 ; defeat
Turkish flotilla, 265 ; assist at Mushai
dieh, 276.
Gwalior Campaign, Sir F. F. Maude in
the, 2.
Hadendowa, the, nature of, 15 ; posi
tion of, 16 ; at Hashin, 17 ; attack of,
on convoy, 18 ; damage of railway
by, 19.
Hai. See Shatt-el-Hai.
Hai bridgehead, operations against, 255-
257-
Haig, Sir D., at the Staff College, 27 ;
promoted for service in the Sudan, 32 ;
¦ reference to, 49 ; takes command of
the mobile columns in Cape Colony,
66 ; in command of the 1st Corps,
115; troops of, on the Aisne, 123;
given command of the First Army,
144; Maude receives telegram of con
gratulation from, 265.
Haking, Lieut. -General Sir R. C. , at the
Staff College, 27.
Haldane, Lord, succeeds Mr. Arnold-
Forster, 88 ; starts his Territorial
scheme, 91 ; references to, 98, 103 ;
appreciation of Maude in the House
of Lords, 105, lo6.
Halifax, Regular garrison in, 71 5 the
Ophir starts from, 74.

Hall, Colonel R. S., in command of 1st
Coldstream, 21.
Hamilton, Royal Party at, 74.
Hamilton, General Hubert, Maude visits
Territorial division of, I03.
Hamilton, Sir I., operating east of
Bloemfontein, 45, 46 ; outflanks
Botha, 50 ; at Diamond Hill, 52-54 ;
reinforcements reach, 159 ; asks for
fresh generals, 159 ; headquarters of,
at Imbros, 160 ; on the 13th Division,
160 ; gives up command of the Medi
terranean Expeditionary Force, 166 ;
appreciation of Maude by, 166 ; men
tions Maude in despatches, 188.
Hand grenades, Maude's interest in, 201.
Handub, occupation of, 19.
Hannah, references to, 196, 204, 231 ;
position at, 205 ; capture of, by the
13th Division, 206, 207.
Hartington, Lord, Maude's A.D.C,
163 ; invalided, 189.
Hashin, reconnaissance to, 17 ; action
of, 17.
Hatfield, staff exercise at, 97.
Hawarden Castle, Barons de Montalt
of, I.
Hawarden, Viscount, Sir C. Maude
created, 2.
Hawarden, Viscount, Maude stays with,
9-
Hawarden, Viscount, killed, 1 19.
Hawke, Lord, on Maude as his fag, 6.
Hawtrey, Rev. J. , Maude goes to school
of, 5, 6.
Hazebrouck, 3rd Corps moves to near,
126 ; Maude at, 128 ; Coldstream
Guards at, 128.
Helles, references to, 16, 26, 168, 201,
206, 221, 322, 328; 13th Division at
first in, area, 160; 13th Division to
go to, 176; situation at, 177; Maude
leaves his division to go on to,
177 ; Government inclined to cling to,
178 ; principle of withdrawal from,
180 ; Government decide to abandon,
178; evacuation of, 182-185.
Hemming, Maj.-General F. W., married
to Sir F. F. Maude's eldest daughter,
21.
Henderson, Lieut.-General Sir D., at
the Staff CoUege, 26.
Henderson, Colonel G., at the Staff
College, 26.
Henley, Maude disappointed of rowing
at, in the Eight, 8 ; Maudes at, 85,
86.
Henniker-Major, Colonel Hon. A., on
staff of Home District, 29 ; in com
mand of 2nd Coldstream, 36.
Henry, General St. G,, reference to, 57.

346

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Henry II., reference to, i.
Herbert, Colonel I. See Treowen, Lord.
Hertzog, irruption of, into Cape Colony,
.'^5,. 66.
Higginson, General Sir G., appreciation
of Maude by, 25, 26.
Hildyard, General Sir H. J. T., Com
mandant of the Staff College, 26.
Hildyard, Brig.-General R., G.S.0.1
of the 13th Division, 167 ; goes home,
189 ; appreciation of Maude by, 229.
' HiU 60,' fighting at, 151, 152.
Hindustani, Maude learns, 303.
Holdsworth, Brig.-General G. L. , head
of Remount Department, 242 ; refer
ence to, 288.
HoUebeke, reference to, 142.
Home District, Maude appointed brigade-
major of, 28 ; staff of, 28 ; references
to, 30, 333-
Hopwood, Colonel H. R., becomes
Maude's Chief of the General Staff,
292.
Home, Lieut.-General H. S., in com
mand of the 15th Corps, 189 ; informs
Maude that he is to go to Mesopotamia,
192.
Hospitals. See Medical Service.
Hunter, General, successful operations
of, in the Brandwater Basin, 56 ; in
command at Bloemfontein, 63, 64, 65.
Hutton, General, occupies Middelburg,
56.
Imaal Mansur, reference to, 234.
Imbros, Sir I. Hamilton's headquarters,
162 ; Maude proceeds to, 176 ; arrives
at, 185.
Isabella, Queen, reference to, I.
Jacobsdal, reference to, 38.
Jarvis, Rev. A. C. E., appreciation of
Maude, 229, 230 ; on Maude, 261,
290, 291 ; account of Maude's death
by, 311 ; appreciation of Maude, 333.
Jebel Hamrin, Turkish 1 8th Corps in,
283 ; references to, 283, 298, 304 ;
clearing of, 297 ; obelisk erected in
the, 319.
Jena, reference to, 328.
Jewish school, Maude's visit to, at
Baghdad, 309.
Joffre, General, ready for counter-stroke,
118; hopes of, of successful turning
movement on the Aisne, 123.
Johannesburg, occupation of, 50.
Johnstone, Hon. G., on Maude at Haw-
.trey's, 5 ; tells Maude he is not to row
in the Eight, 8.
Jones, Maj.-General I., takes command
of Guards Brigade, 45 ; will not let

Maude go to Canada, 62 ; at Norval's
Pont, 64 ; in charge of Western Area
of Cape Colony, 65 ; placed in charge
of sedentary troops, 66.
Julian, reference to, 318.
Julnar, unsuccessful attempt of, to reach
Kut, 216.
Kalaya, s.s., Maude sails for Basrah in,
193 ; arrives at Basrah, 1 94.
Karee Siding, fight at, 55 ; Guards ad
vance to, 46.
Karun River, troops guarding the, 239 ;
Maude makes trip up the, 248 ; refer
ences to, 280.
Keary, General, in command of the 3rd
Division, 204 ; letter of, to Brig. -
General O'Dowda, 214 ; reference to,
230 ; in charge of the ' Khanikin
Column,' 281.
Keir, General, in command of the 6th
Division, 117.
Kelly-Kenny, General, commands the 6th
Division, 37, 41.
Kemmel, reference to, 148.
Kermanshah, references to, 280, 281.
Keyser, Miss, Maude in hospital of,
70.
Khaidiri Bend, reference to, 253 ; enemy
hold on to, 255 ; ist Corps attacks
works in, 256 ; clearing of, 256.
KhaHl Pasha, references to, 224, 286.
Khanikin, references to, 281.
' Khanikin Column,' formation of, 281.
Khartum, Gordon invested in, 14 ; fall
of, 14 ; reference to, 20, 32.
Kifri, reference to, 287, 298.
KiggeU, General, letter of Maude to,
175, 176.
Kimberley, siege of, 34 ; reference to,
37, 68, 220 ; relief of, 38.
King Edward, funeral of, 101.
King George, visit of, to Canada, 7I-74 i
inspects 14th Brigade, 140; invests
Maude with the C.B., 152; Maude
receives telegram of congratulation
from, 265 ; Maude receives message of
congratulation from, 278 ; telegram
from, to Sir W. Marshall on death of
Maude, 312 ; represented at Memorial
Service, 313.
King's Own, Maude commends, 210.
K.O.S.B., Maj. McNeile in command of,
battalion, 6 ; 2nd, in the 14th Brigade,
132.
K.O.Y.L.I., 2nd, in the 14th Brigade,
132.
Kingston, Royal Party at, 74.
Kirkpatrick, Lieut.-General Sir G. M.,
at the Staff CoUege, 26 ; reference to,
286 ; on Maude, 301.

INDEX

347

Kirkuk, Maude contemplates line of
operations towards, 298.
Kitchener, Lord, references to, 32, 87 ;
arrives at Modder River, 36 ; Maude
takes despatch riders to, 50 ; takes up
command in South Africa, 64 ; unable
to let Maude return home, 67 ; anxie
ties of, as to Cape Colony relieved,
68 ; visit of, to Suvla, 168.
Kizil Robat, references to, 282.
Klip Drift, cavalry move on, 38 ; the
Guards move to, 39.
Klosters, Maude family at, 105.
K.C.B., Sir F. F. Maude given the, 4;
Maude given the, 228.
Knox, Brig.-General H. O., appointed
Deputy Quartermaster-General, 242.
Komati Poort, Lord Roberts decides to
move on, 55 ; Pole-Carew advances
on, 60, 61 ; occupation of, 61.
Korti, reference to, 200.
Kritzinger, invasion of Cape Colony by,
6s, 66.
Kurdistan, reference to, 298.
Kurna, references to, 243, 280.
Kroonstad, occupation of, 48 ; halt at,
49; references to, 51, 52.
Kruger, President, at Machadodorp, 59 ;
to proceed to Europe, 59.
Kut, General Townshend's column ad
vances from, 190 ; invested by the
Thrks, 190; critical conditions at,
196 ; General Townshend's position
at, 196, 197 ; risks run as regards
supphes in attempting the relief of,
205; references to, 203, 211, 215,
219, 223, 231, 232, 234, 252, 258,
265, 270, 280, 322 ; flat nature of
ground adds to difficulty of relief of,
204 ; Sannaiyat, key to, 204 ; doubt
as to how long, can hold out, 212 ;
Julnar attempts to reach, 216, 217 ;
surrender of, 217 ; Turkish defences
around, 253 ; General Cobbe reaches
vicinity of, 263 ; gunboats moor off,
263.
La Bassee, reference to, 132.
La Fert^ sous Jouarre, fighting at, 119,
1 20.
Lajj, fight at, 271.
Lake, Sir P., appointed Chief of General
Staff in Canada, 83 ; Maude reports
to, at Basrah, 194 ; army under, 197 ;
work of, at Basrah, 198 ; arrives at
the front, 201 ; relaxes censorship,
203 ; risks run by, as regards supplies,
205 ; commends Maude, 207 ; refer
ences to, 211, 243, 244; determines
to try the right bank of the Tigris,
212 ; on fight of 17th of April, 213 ;

determines to try a break-through on
the left bank, 215 ; despatch of, report
ing failure to relieve Kut, 219 ; inspects
13th Division, 221 ; health of, 221 ;
Maude on, 232 ; inspection of front by,
232 ; appreciation of Maude by, 235 ;
Maude to replace, 235 ; Maude takes
over from, 237 ; leaves Basrah, 237 ;
work of, at Basrah, 243, 245.
Lala Baba, 13th Division in reserve at,
162 ; special works designed at, 162,
170; references to, 174, 175.
Lambton, Colonel A., commands ist
Coldstream, 1 2 ; insists on his young
subalterns accompanying battalion to
Suakin, 15.
Lambton, Maj.-General Hon. Sir W. ,
joins Coldstream, 12; senior to Maude,
12 ; on Maude as stroke, 21 ; on Maude
as adjutant, 23 ; on Maude as second-
in-command, 90 ; as Sir J. French's
Military Secretary, 147 ; tells Maude
he is to be B.G.G.S. in the 6th Corps,
147 ; informs Maude he is to have a
New Army division, 155; letter from
Maude to, 287 ; on Maude's tendency
to centralise, 323 ; appreciation of
Maude, 334.
Lankhof Chateau, reference to, 149.
Laurier, Sir W. , references to, 75, 13.
Lausanne, reference to, 104.
Lawley, Sir A., description by, of
Maude's operations beyond Azizieh,
273, 274-
Lawrence, General Hon. Sir H. A., at
the Staff College, 26 ; Maude has dis
cussions with, at Helles, 179 ; in charge
of embarkation at Helles, 179 ; a lyric
fathered upon, 184 k.
Le Cateau, reference to, 136.
Le Roy Lewis, Colonel, on Maude as his
fag, 6.
Leach, Sir J. , in command at Plymouth,
90.
Legge, Colonel Hon. Sir H., adjutant
of the Ist Coldstream, 12 ; on Maude
at time of joining the Coldstream, 13.
Legion of Honour, Sir F. F. Maude,
Knight of, 3 ; Maude Commander of,
188.
Lewin, Brig. -General A. C. , in command
of 40th Brigade, 189.
Lille, Allies' front to be extended beyond,
124.
Liman von Sanders, Marshal, references
to, 176, 181.
Lloyd, Lieut.-General Sir F., in com
mand of 1st Brigade at Aldershot, 88,
89.
Lloyd George, Mr., speech of, on Maude
in the House of Commons, 314, 315.

348

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Local Produce Control, work of, 295.
Local Produce Controller, Colonel E.
Dickson appointed, 280.
London, Maude in, 13, 150-152, 158,
159-
Longley, Maj.-General J. R., in com
mand of the 14th Brigade, 132 ; on
Maude, 145.
Loos, reference to, 152.
Lord Chief Justice, on the Alaskan
Boundary Commission, 82, 83.
Lord Mayor, sends Maude congratulations,
278 ; attends Memorial Service, 313.
Loyal North Lancashire force a passage
over the Diala, 272, 273.
Luristan, reference to, 298.
Lusitania, s.s., Maude sails for Canada
in, 70.
Lydd, Maude at, 96.
Lydenburg, Botha retires to, 59 ; Sir R.
Buller moves on, 60.
Lys, operations on the, 128, 129.
Lyttelton, General, in Cape Colony, 67 ;
conducts staff ride in North Wales, 87.
Machadodorp, Boer Executive pro
ceeds to, 57 ; references to, 52, 60,
62 ; President Steyne arrives at, 59.
Mackensen, General, reported to be
taking command of the Turks in
Palestine and Mesopotamia, 293.
Mackenzie, Maj.-General SirC, Maude
at staff ride under, 87 ; in command
of 3rd Division, 135.
McKinley, President, assassination of, 73.
Mackinnon, General Sir H., on staff of
Home District, 28 ; at Diamond
Jubilee, 29 ; quits the Home District,
32 ; replaces Colonel I. Herbert, 33 ;
Maude hears from, as to an appoint
ment with the Territorials, 94 ; Maude
with, at the War Office, 97-102 ; leaves
the War Office, 102 ; appreciation by,
of Maude, 102 ; letter from Maude to,
199 ; reference to, 244,
MacMunn, Maj.-General Sir G., Inspec
tor-General of Communications, 238 ;
Maude's confidence in, 251 ; meeting
of, with Maude near Azizieh, 268 ;
brings up supplies, 268 ; points out
that halt is necessary, 268 ; appreciation
of Maude by, 302, 303.
McNeile, Major J., in Cornish's House
and the Coldstream with Maude, 6.
McNeill, Sir J., at Tofrek, 17.
MagiU, Colonel, anxious about Maude's
shoulder, 62 ; letters from Maude to,
217, 218, 222, 233, 239, 240.
Magersfontein, action of, 36 ; reconnais
sance to, 38.
Mahratta War, reference to, 30.

Majuba, references to, 9, 39.
Malta, Sir F. F. Maude at, 2.
Manchesters, 2nd, in the 14th Brigade,
132 ; reference to, 153.
Manorah, s.s., 1st Coldstream sail in, 15.
Mansfield, Maude at, 158.
' Mardale,' Maudes take, 112; references
to, 158, ass-
Marker, Major, reference to, 87.
Marlborough, Maude at cavalry man
oeuvres near, 93.
Marne, 3rd Corps crosses the, 118; diffi
culty as to passing the, 119, 120.
Marne, Battle of the, references to, 118,
121, 151, 278.
Marshall, Lieut.-General Sir W., in
charge of embarkation in Maude's
sector at Suvla, 174; selected for
Corps command in Mesopotamia, 250 ;
advance of, 254; attacks the Hai
bridgehead, 256 ; victory of, in the
Dahra Bend, 258 ; portion of, com
mand to cross the Tigris at Shumran
Bend, 259 ; defeats Turks within
the Shumran Bend, 262, 263 ; presses
enemy vigorously, 265 ; advances from
Azizieh, 270, 271 ; operations of,
against the Turkish I3tii Corps, 283;
forces the Shatt-el-Adhaim, 283 ; de
feats the Turkish 13th Corps decisively,
284 ; references to, 286, 302 ; refer
ence to Maude in despatch, 306, 307 ;
telegram from the King to, 312 ;
General Order of, on death of Maude,
312.
Maude, Andomar, exploits of, 1.
 Miss Alice, reference to, 5, 6.
 ¦ Miss Beryl, birth of, 28.
 Sir Cornwallis, becomes Viscount
Hawarden, 2.
 Capt. Hon. C, killed on Majuba
Hill, 9.
 E. F., birth of, 30 ; goes to school,
89 ; goes to Lancing, 105 ; at Mar
dale, 159 ; passes for Woolwich, 222.
 family, origin of, I.
 General Sir F. F. , career of, 2-4 ; in
the Crimea, 2-3 ; receives the V.C,
3 ; goes to India, 3 ; in the Afghan
War, 3-4; K.C.B., 4; returns home,
4, 9 ; G.C.B., 4 ; death of, 4, 30.
 Sir G. A. , record of, 2.
 Rev. John Charles, father of Sir
F. F. Maude, 2.
 Lady, marriage of, 24 ; Maude
consults as to the MUitary Secretary
appointment in Canada, 56 ; proceeds
to Canada, 70 ; accompanies the Royal
Tour, 75 ; climate of Plymouth does
not suit, 93 ; serious iUness of, 97 ;
goes abroad, 97 ; in charge of Meso-

INDEX

349

potamian Comforts Fund, 287; tele
grams and letters of S3mipathy to, 312;
letter to, from the India Office, 313 ;
telegram to, from the Premier of
Canada, 313; letter to, from Lord
Methuen, 333.
Maude, Robert, founds the Irish branch of
the Maude family, i.
Maude, Sir Stanley, birth of at Gibraltar,
3 ; as a small boy in Dublin, 4 ; to go
to Eton, S ; at Mr. Hawtrey's school,
5 ; holidays of, at Debden Hall, 5 ;
goes abroad and to Coblentz, 5 ; Hon.
G. Johnstone on, 5 ; goes to Eton, 6 ;
early days at Eton, 6 ; Colonel Le
Roy Lewis on, 6 ; athletic successes
of, 7 ; on the river, 7, 8 ; JMr. F. I.
Pitman on, 8, 9 ; joins Volunteer
Corps, 9 ; often asked to stay at Dun
drum by Lord Hawarden, 9 ; in the
Army Class, 9, 10 ; elected to ' Pop,'
19 ; goes to Mr. Northcote's, 10 ; joins
the R.M.C, 10 ; makes his mark at
Sandhurst, 10, 1 1 ; passes out of Sand
hurst, II ; joins the ist Coldstream,
12; known as 'Joe' Maude, 13; in
London, 13 ; Sir W. Pulteney on, 13 ;
sails with the Ist Coldstream for
Suakin, 1 5 ; experience of, of naval
searchlights at Suakin, 15 ; in action
at Hashin, 17 ; keeps fit during the
campaign, 19 ; returns home, 20 ; re
ceives the medal and Khedive's star,
21 ; stationed at Windsor, 21 ; death
of eldest sister, 21 ; Sir W. Lambton
on, as stroke, 21 ; appointed adjutant,
22 ; Sir W. Lambton on work of, as
adjutant, 23 ; stationed in Dublin, 23 ;
death of his mother, 23 ; joins 2nd
Battalion, 24 ; marriage of, 24 ; works
for Staff College, 24 ; receives a nomi
nation for the Staff College, 25 ; joins
at Camberley, 25 ; Lord Rawlinson's
appreciation of, as a regimental officer,
25 ; Sir G. Higginson's appreciation of,
25, 26 ; contemporaries of, at the Staff
CoUege, 26, 27 ; promoted captain,
27 ; second year of, at the Staff Col
lege, 27 ; bent of, for making military
appreciations, 28 ; Sir E. Carter's ap
preciation of, 28 ; appointed brigade -
major of the Brigade of Guards, 28 ;
labours of, in connection with the Dia
mond Jubilee, 29 ; death of father of,
30 ; present at great parade at Aider-
shot, 30 ; birth of son, 30 ; work as
brigade-major, 31 ; suffers heavy finan
cial losses, 31, 32 ; promoted major,
32 ; disappointed of going out to South
Africa as brigade-major, 32, 33 ; sees
Coldstream off at Nine Elms, 33 ;

ordered to South Africa, 33 ; sails, 34 ;
joins 2nd Coldstream at Modder River,
34 ; health suffers at first, 36 ; quota
tion from diary, 36 ; becomes brigade -
major of Guards Brigade, 37 ; discovers
departure of' Cronje, 38 ; accompanies
reconnaissance to Boer position, 38 ;
anxiety as to sanitation, 39 ; gets bad
fall at Driefontein, 41 ; entry in diary,
41 ; returns to work, 42 ; entry in
diary, 42 ; staff officer to General Pole-
Carew on expedition to Norval's Pont,
42 ; note of, as to Norval's Pont, 42 ;
suffers from effect of fall, 44 ; rides out
to see fight near Karee Siding, 45 ;
GeneralPoIe-Carewasksfor,asA.A.G.,45 ; Sir W. Pulteney on, 47 ; quotation
from diary, 48 ; dissatisfied with the
staff work in general, 48, 49 ; quota
tion from diary, 49 ; takes despatch
riders from General Botha to Lord
Kitchener, 50 ; quotations from diary,
50, 51 ; enters Pretoria 50, 51 ;
disappointed with the advance, 51 ;
gets another fall, 52 ; account of
Diamond Hill from diary, 53, 54 ; his
action on day of Diamond jfill, 54 ;
experience at a farm, 55 ; offered post
of Military Secretary to Lord Minto,
55, 56 ; consults Mrs. Maude and ac
cepts, 56 ; quotations from diary, 57,
58 ; comment on description by, of
fight north of Belfast, 59 ; work of,
during advance on Komati Poort, 60,
61 ; Sir W. Pulteney on, 61 ; returns to
Pretoria, 62 ; War Office order home,
but he is kept, 62 ; trouble with shoul
der at Pretoria, 62 ; staff officer of
column sent west, 62 ; Sir R. Pole-
Carew's appreciation of, 63 ; makes
arrangements for Prince Christian Vic
tor's funeral, 63 ; proceeds to Bloem
fontein, 63 ; anxious to go home, 64 ;
fear of invasion of Cape Colony, 64 ;
holds important position at this time',
65 ; very hard work gone through by,
at Naauwpoort, 66 ; extract from diary,
67, 68 ; ordered home, 68 ; services
of, in South Africa, 68 ; action of, in
agreeing to go to Canada, 69 ; receives
the D.S.O., 69 ; arrives home and
goes into hospital, 70 ; proceeds to
Canada, 70 ; nature of appointment in
Canada, 70, 7 1 ; work of, in connection
with the Royal Tour, 71-75 ; criticisms
of, in the local Press, 72 ; Major Mor
rison-Bell on, 74 ; receives the C. M. G. ,
75 ; letter to Major Altham, 75 ; in
terested in Canadian defence, 76, 77 ;
letter to Mr. Arnold-Forster's private
secretary on defence and Militia ques-

350

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

tions, 78, 79 ; Sir J. Pope on, 79 ;
social duties, 80 ; in charge of cere
monial matters, 80 ; Captain H. Gra
ham on, 80 ; runs with the harriers,
81 ; at winter sports, 81 ; trips by
water, 81 ; visits the United States,
82 ; Lord Dundonald's appreciation
of, 83, 84 ; on the prairies with Lord
Minto, 84 ; returns to England, 84 ;
second-in-command of ist Coldstream,
85 ; applies for command of Transvaal
Volunteers, 85 ; at Henley and Oak
ham, 85, 86 ; practice of, to study the
district, 86 ; conducts regimental tour,
86 ; at Pirbright, 86 ; applies for ap
pointment of Military Secretary to
Lord Minto in India, 86 ; at a staff
ride in North Wales, 87 ; becomes
private secretaryto Mr. Arnold-Forster,
87 ; quotation from diary, 88 ; thinks
of going to Macedonia, 88 ; conducts
a tour, 88 ; on staff of brigade at
brigade staff ride, 88 ; goes to Oke
hampton, 89, 90 ; views of, on artillery,
89 ; rides to Berkshire downs to see
cavalry manoeuvres, 89 ; on Aldershot
Command staff at annual exercises, 89 ;
appointed D.A.A. and Q.M.G. at
Plymouth, 89; quotation from diary,
90 ; Sir W. Lambton on, at this time,
90 ; first experiences of Plymouth, 90 ;
finds difficulty about house, 90 ; not
impressed with his new work, 91 ; in
terested in naval matters, 91 ; com
ments of, on the start of the Territorials,
91, 92 ; decides to ask for a half-pay
lieut. -colonelcy, 92 ; re-drafts the Ply
mouth defence scheme, 92 ; regret at
leaving the Coldstream, 93 ; at siege
manoeuvres at Chatham, 93 ; visits
artillery camp on Salisbury Plain, 93 ;
on staff of Southern Command for
manoeuvres, 93 ; on Aldershot Com
mand staff for manoeuvres, 93 ; attends
naval lectures, 93, 94 ; appointed to
staff of the 2nd (Territorial) London
Division, 94 ; quotation from diary,
94 ; settles into office at Craig's Court,
95 ; quotation from diary, 95 ; arranges
tactical exercises for the Territorials,
95 ; visitsthe annual trainings at various
places, 96 ; quotation from diary, 96 ;
on Directing Staff of the Aldershot
Command, 96 ; meets Brig. -General
Robertson, 96 ; office work of, with
the 2nd London Division, 96, 97 ; at
the General Staff Conference at Cam
berley, 97 ; goes to the War Office as
Assistant Director of the Territorial
forces with the rank of colonel, 97 ;
General Vesey Dawson on, 97, 98 ;

goes to War Office, 98; impression
of the War Office, 98 ; tendency to
centralise, 98 ; attends some divisional
trainings, 98 ; Sir C Fergusson on,
99 ; on the Umpire Staff at Army Man
oeuvres, 99 ; views of, on the Finance
Branch of the War Office, 99 ; at Car
shalton, 100 ; runs with the Worcester
Park beagles, 101 ; Dr. Peatling's ac
count of an interview with, loi ; quota
tion from diary, loi ; at General Staff
Conference, 10 1 ; at the funeral of
King Edward, loi ; opinion of, con
cerning the Territorials, 101 ; offered
appointment in Lord Chamberlain's
office, IOI ; Sir H. Mackinnon's ap
preciation of, 102 ; comes under General
Cowans, 102; never takes leave, 103;
at the Coronation, 103 ; visits a number
of Territorial divisions at training, 103 ;
Major Morrison-Bell on, 104 ; at the
Swiss Manoeuvres, 104; quotation
from diary, 104 ; views of, on compul
sory training, 104, 105 ; attends the
General Staff Conference, 105 ; makes
a trip to Klosters, 105 ; Lord Haldane
on, in the House of Lords, 105, 106 ;
offered the appointment of G.S.O.i
with the Sth Division, 105 ; leaves
Carshalton, 106 ; Rev. G. Vaux' ap
preciation of, 106-108 ; lives with tlie
4th Hussars at the Curragh, 108 ; likes
the Curragh, 108 ; visits the north of
Ireland, 109 ; at a divisional staff ride,
109 ; Sir W. Pitcairn CampbeU on,
109; hunts with the Kildare, no;
offered the appointment of G.S.O.i
in the training branch of the War
Office, which he accepts with regret,
no; SirC. Fergusson's appreciation
of, iio-ili ; under Sir W. Robertson,
III; tendency to centralise at his new
work. III, 112; preparing for the
annual Army Manoeuvres, 112; saved
from the unpleasantness at the Curragh
about Ulster, 112; Lord Rawlinson
on, 113; position of, in the army at
the time of the outbreak of the Great
War, 114; informed that he is to be
G.S.O.I of the 3rd Army, 115; sees
that he ought to have been left at his
post in the War Office, 115 ; quotation
from diary, 116 ; goes to Harrow with
Sir W. Pulteney, 116 ; embarks on the
Braemar Castle, 117; extract from
letter, 118; experiences during the re
treat, 118; hears of casualties amongst
friends, 119 ; extract from letter, 119;
anxious to find a crossing place over
the Marne, 119; note in diary, 120;
disappointed in his hopes of an effec-

INDEX

351

tive French turning movement on the
Aisne, 122 ; extracts from letters, 122,
123, 124; proceeds to St. Omer, 125;
extract from letter, 125 ; extract from
letter, 126 ; chafes over slowness of
advance to the Lys, 128; disappointed
at withdrawal of Corps headquarters
from Armentieres, 129 ; extract from
letter, 129 ; appointed to command the
14th Brigade, 129 ; Sir W. Pulteney
on, 129, 130 ; work of, with the 3rd
Corps, 130, 131 ; keenness of, for
offensive action, 131 ; instincts of, those
of a fighter, 131 ; joins the 14th Bri
gade, 132 ; extract from diary, 133 ;
takes stock of brigade, 134; ordered
to deliver counter-attack under difficult
conditions, 135 ; extract from diary as
to fight near Neuve Chapelle, 135 ;
Lieut. -Colonel Dick-Cunyngham on,
135-136; attack by, 136; extract from
letter, 136; remains temporarily under
Sir J. WiUcocks, 136 ; extract from
letter, 137; the troops under, 138;
sees to the comfort of his men, 139 ;
receives visits from the Prince of Wales,
139; extract from letter, 139; brigade
inspected by the King, 140 ; works his
brigade very hard, 140 ; orders issued
by, open to some criticism, 140-141 ;
arranges for a great development of
trenches, 142 ; extract from letter, 142 ;
in offensive operations near Wytschaete,
143 ; extract from letter, 143, 144 ;
visits hospitals and attends funerals,
144 ; has entirely new trenches dug,
144; Maj.-General Longley on, 145;
to take up a section of trenches perma
nently, 145 ; extracts from diary and
letter, 145, 146 ; exposed headquarters
of, at Neuve Eglise, 146 ; disturbed
on hearing that he is to be appointed
to the staff, 147 ; given the C.B., 147 ;
readiness of, to recognise good service
of subordinates, 147; hears his brigade
is to be moved north, 148 ; extract
from letter, 148 ; interest of, in artil
lery, 148, 149 ; extract from letter,
149; wounded, 149; receives letter from
SirH. Smith-Dorrien, 149-150; anxiety
lest he should lose his brigade, 150; pro
ceeds to London, 150; at Lady Ridley's
hospital, 150 ; Sir H. Smith-Dorrien's
appreciation, 151 ; hears of good work
of his brigade at HiU 60, 152; invested
with the C.B., 152; returns to the
front, 152 ; extract from letter, 152 ;
strongly opposed to the idea of retiring
the line, 153 ; extractfrom diary, 153-
154 ; gas reaches headquarters of, 154 ;
extract from diary, 154; temporarily

in command of the 5th Division, 154 ;
hears that he is to take over command
of a New Army division at home, 155;
promoted major-general, 155 ; makes
his farewells tothe 14th Brigade, 155 ;
farewell order, 155, 156; work of, as a
brigadier, 156, 157 ; General Morland
on, 157; returns home, 158; in com
mand of the 33rd Division, 158; letter
to Sir A. Murray, 158 ; ordered to the
Dardanelles, 158 ; leaves Salisbury
Plain, 158 ; starts on journey from
London, 159; arrives at Imbros, 160;
joins the 13th Division at Anzac, 160 ;
start of, with his division, 162 ; writes
his own orders, 162 ; worried about
artillery, 162 ; extract from letter,
163 ; Lieut.-Colonel Brownrigg on,
163, 164 ; inculcates the offensive
spirit, 164 ; extract from letter, 164-
165 ; handwriting of, 165 « ; Choco
late Hill under control of, 165 ; hopes
to move to Salonika, 165; and Colonel
Gillman, 165 ; hopes that arrival of
Sir C. Monro will mean assumption of
offensive, 166 ; Sir Ian Hamilton's
appreciation of, 166 ; meets Sir C
Monro, 167 ; extract from diary, 167 ;
good health of, 167 ; does not see
Lord Kitchener, 168 ; starts evacuating
stores, 168 ; services of, during the
great blizzard, 168-170; extract from
diary, 169 ; extract from letter, 169 ;
busy on the problem of withdrawal,
169, 170; extracts from diary, 170;
habit of writing, 171 ; doubtful as to
plan of evacuation decided upon, 172,
173; extract from diary, 173; busy
on defence works, 173 ; anxious about
the artillery stopping too long, 173 ;
sector told off to, 1 74 ; tactical position
at Suvla at the end, 175 ; final with
drawal from the right sector, 175, 176 ;
extract from diary, 175 ; proceeds to
Imbros, 176 ; letter to General Kig
geU, 175-176; proceeds to Mudros,
176 ; learns that his division is to go
to Helles, 176 ; leaves for Helles,
177 ; uncomfortable position of, at
HeUes, 177 ; has discussions with
General Lawrence, 179 ; distressed at
the amount of stores remaining to be
evacuated, 179 ; extract from letter to
General Davies, 179-180 ; division
attacked, 180, 181 ; extract from
diary, 180- 181 ; move off from Gully
Beach to W Beach, 182, 183 ; letter
to General Davies, 183-184; 'Come
into the lighter,' 184 «; deplores loss
of stores, 185 ; proceeds to Mudros,
185 ; embarks for Egypt, 185 ; ser-

352

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

vices of, at the Dardanelles, 186-188 ;
General Birdwood on, 186; mentioned
in despatches, 188 ; receives the Legion
of Honour, 188 ; learns that his divi
sion is to go to Port Said, 189 ; pro
ceeds to Port Said, 189 ; glad to have
the whole of his command collected
under him, 189 ; Captain Ogilvie-
Forbes's description of Maude, 189-
190 ; informed that he is to go to
Mesopotamia, 192 ; satisfaction of, at
news, 192 ; extract from letter, 192 ;
confidence of, in his division, 193 ;
satisfied as regards progress of re-
equipment, 193 ; proceeds to Suez,
193 ; embarks on the Kalaya, 193 ;
letter to Sir A. Murray, 193; Lieut.-
Colonel Brownrigg on, 194 ; studies
Mesopotamia on board, 194 ; arrives
at Basrah, 194 ; extract from diary,
198 ; anxiety as to small-arms ammu
nition, 198 ; action of, in case of a
court-martial on officers, 199 ; im
pressed with the new conditions, 199 ;
letter to Sir H. Mackinnon, 199 ;
starts up the river, 199; reaches Wadi
and meets General Gorringe, 201 ;
returns to Sheikh Saad, 201 ; extract
from diary, 201 ; pleased to find good
training ground at Sheik Saad, 201 ;
keenness of, about hand grenades,
201 ; anxiety owing to non-receipt of
letters from home, 202 ; on the censor
ship in Mesopotamia, 202, 203 ; pre
paring for the offensive to be under
taken by his division, 204 ; goes round
the 7th Division trenches, 204 ; goes
up to Wadi, 204 ; extract from diary,
204-205 ; grateful for work done by
the 7th Division, 206 ; attack of, on
Hannah and Felahieh, 206-208 ; ex
tract from diary, 206-207 ; praise of
work of, by Generals Gorringe and
Lake, 207 ; Lieut. -Colonel Brownrigg
on, 208 ; to attack Sannaiyat, 209 ;
extract from diary as to failure at San
naiyat, 210 ; Lieut.-Colonel Brownrigg
on, 211 ; Captain Ogilvie-Forbes on,
211-212; letters from, to relatives of
fallen officers, 212 ; called upon by the
3rd Division for help during Turkish
nocturnal counter-attack, 213 ; not
quite satisfied wtth work of division,
213 ; commends certain battalions,
214; complimentary order by, 214;
supports attack of 7th Division on
Sannaiyat by gun-fire, 215, 216; ex
tracts from diary, 215, 216 ; had
favoured advance on right bank, 216 ;
discussion with General Lake as to
possibility of further effort to save Kut,

216 ; General Gorringe informs, that
Kut is to be surrendered, and asks if
he thinks any more can be done, 217 ;
considers that no more can be done,
217 ; extract from diary, 217 ; letter
of, to Colonel MagiU, 217, 218 ; han
dicapped during operations by doubt
as to how long Kut could hold out,
218; diary of, comes to an end, 219;
effect of relaxation of censorship on
letters, 219 ; previous experience of
sickness setting in during pause after
active operations, 220 ; care of, for his
men's health in connection with
cholera epidemic, 221 ; letter to Colonel
MagiU, 222 ; living in single-fly tent,
222 ; hears of son passing for Wool
wich, 222 ; action of, on hearing of
Turkish retirement from Es Sinn, 223 ;
criticism of staff work by, 224, 225 ;
rides over ground evacuated by the
Turks, 225 ; letter home, 225-226 ; at
Sheikh Saad, 227 ; appointed to com
mand the Tigris Corps, 227 ; services
of, as divisional commander, 228 ;
appreciations of, by Brig.-General
O'Dowda, an officer of R.E., Brig.-
General Hildyard, Sir W. Gillman,
and the Rev. A. C E. Jarvis, 228-
230 ; becomes lieutenant-general auto
matically, 230; energy of, 231; in
spects Es Sinn, 231 ; meets General
Lake, 232 ; on General Lake, 232 ;
extract from letter home, 232 ; extract
from letter to Colonel MagiU, 233-
234 ; realises the unwieldiness of his
charge, 234 ; memorandum by, on
active defence, 234 ; appreciation of,
by General Lake, 235 ; directed to
take up command of army, 235 ;
meeting with General Cobbe, 235 ;
proceeds to Basrah, 235 ; reason for
appointment, 235, 236 ; sympathy
of, for General Lake, 237 ; letter of,
to Colonel MagiU, 239-240 ; desire of,
to be well up to the front, 240 ; deter
mines to deal fully with organisation
at Basrah, 241 ; instructions to troops
at the front, 241, 242 ; infuses energy
at the base, 242 ; takes up question of
river transport, 243 ; deals with the
landing problem, 243 ; takes up
question of labour, 243, 244 ; re
models staff, 244 ; telegram to Sir W.
Robertson, 244 ; help received by,
from the War Office, 244 ; letter home,
244, 245 ; deals with the various de
partments, 24s ; goes closely into all
detaUs, 246 ; hesitation of, to get rid
of inefficient subordinates, 246 ; finds
that he must remain longer at Basrah

INDEX

358

than he had intended, 246 ; glad of
Sir C. Monro's visit, 247 ; accom
panies Sir C. Monro during inspec
tion, 247, 248 ; unwell, 248 ; Colonel
Willcox on, 248 ; visit to the Karun,
248 ; description of trip, 248, 249 ;
visits Nasirieh and Ur, 249 ; proceeds
tothe front, 249; presents four V.C.
ribbons to the 13th Division, 249 ; re
organises his 'order of battle,' 250;
delighted to be at the front again, 250 ;
varied nature of questions, has to deal
with, 251 ; extract from letter, 251 ;
confidence of, in success, 25 1 ; General
Cobbe on, 252 ; plan of, for offensive,
253 ; letter of, describing advance,
254-255 ; extract from letter as to
fighting in the Khaidiri Bend, 256 ;
confidence of, 256 ; pleased at success
of old division, 257 ; letter of, describ
ing the fighting in the Dahra Bend,
257-258 ; praise of work of troops in
the Dahra Bend, 258 ; trust placed by,
in his troops, 259 ; first three phases
of plan of, completed, 259 ; plan of,
to force the Tigris in the Shumran
Bend, 259 ; Order of the Day by, 260 ;
Rev. A. C. E. Jarvis on, 261 ; on the
passage of the Tigris, 262 ; on the
fighting at Sannaiyat, 263 ; decides to
follow up success, 263 ; brilliancy of
operations, 264 ; receives warm con
gratulations, 265 ; letter from, 267-
268 ; General MacMunn and, 268 ;
receives guarded approval to advance
on Baghdad, 270 ; always had Baghdad
in mind, 270 ; theory and practice of
making war, 270 ; letter home, 271-
272 ; on passage of Diala River, 273 ;
Sir A. Lawley on, 273-274 ; letter
from, describing the occupation of
Baghdad, 274 ; arrival in the city,
27s ; pushes troops after enemy, 276 ;
comments on campaign of Baghdad,
276-278 ; receives messages of con
gratulation from the King and others,
278 ; promoted substantive lieut. -
general, 278 ; preoccupations of, after
the occupation of Baghdad, 279 ;
makes the most of local resources, 279,
280 ; anxious for Russian co-operation,
280, 281 ; to make arrangements
direct with General Baratoff, 281 ;
constitutes the 'Khanikin Column,'
281 ; letters home, 282, 284 ; visited
by two Russian generals, 285 ;
arrangements made by, for hot
weather, 285 ; genius of, for organisa
tion, 286 ; letter home, 286 ; calls a
halt for his troops, 287 ; anxious about
health of array, 287 ; letter to Sir W.

Lambton, 287 ; visits Samarra, 288 ;
in railway accident, 288 ; visits Del
tawa and Bakuba, 288 ; anxious to
visit base but unable to, 288 ; extracts
from letters, 288-289 ; fiies to Sam
arra, 289 ; close toucii kept by, with
troops, 289 ; visits of, to hospitals,
289 ; Rev. A. C. E. Jarvis on, 290 ;
supplied with a 'glisseur,' 290; exer
cises general civil control, 290;
Colonel Willcox on, 290-291 ; interest
of, in the Chaplain's Department, 291 ;
Rev. A. C E. Jarvis on, 291 ; orders
attack upon Ramadi, 292 ; disapproval
of, of officers going on leave, 292 ;
realises that no reliance can be placed
on the Russians, 293 ; confidence of,
as to the future, 293 ; disappointment
of, as regards the publication of his
first despatch, 294 ; work of, at
Baghdad, 295 ; letter home, 295-296 ;
Captain Musgrave on, 296 ; turns
attention to his right flank, 297 ; flies
to Ramadi, 297 ; letter home, 297 ;
the orderlies attending, 297 ; personal
safety of, 297, 298 ; eyes of, turned
upon Kifri and Kirkuk, 298 ; deter
mines to deal with the Turks beyond
Samarra, 298 ; Tikrit the last victory
of Force ' D ' while under, 299 ; refer
ence to death of, 299 ; task of, nearly
finished, 299 ; confidence of superiors
in, 299 ; Sir W. Robertson's apprecia
tion of, 300 ; understanding between,
and subordinate commanders, 300,
301 ; General Kirkpatrick on, 301 ;
General Cobbe on, 301-302; Sir G.
MacMunn on, 302-303 ; overcomes
difficulty as to Hindustani, 303 ; appre
ciation of, by Sir C Monro, 304;
labours of, during the hot weather,
304, 305 ; affection of troops for, 305 ;
anxiety of, as to health of troops, 305 ;
General Ready on, 305-306 ; Sir W.
GiUman on, 306 ; note on centralisa
tion practised by, in Mesopotamia,
306 ; Sir W. Marshall's reference to,
in his first despatch, 306-307 ; credit
always given by, to his subordinates,
307 ; health of, during the summer,
308 ; as a host, 308 ; Mrs. Egan visits,
309 ; visit of, to the Jewish school,
309 ; taken ill, 309 ; illness and death
of, 310, 311 ; grief throughout Empire
at deatli of, 311, 312; telegram from
the King to Sir W. Marshall as to,
312 ; Sir W. Marshall's General Order
conceming, 312 ; Memorial Service
to, in St. Paul's, 313 ; grief of Meso
potamian army at death of, 313, 314 ;
Mr. Lloyd George on, in the House of

854

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Commons, 314-315 ; Earl Curzon on,
in the House of Lords, 315-317 ;
Marquess of Crewe on, in the House
of Lords, 317; burial of, 317, 318;
lines on,3i8-3i9;graveof, 319; memo
rials set up to, 319 ; tenacity of, 320 ,
a story of, when he wag a subaltern,
320-321 ; inclined to regard illness as
a sign of weakness, 321 ; readiness to
accept medical advice when forcibly
put, 321 ; instances of fixity of pur
pose of, 322 ; in the office, 322, 323 ;
tendency of, to centralise, 323-326 ;
Sir W. Lambton on, 323 ; credit
always given by, to subordinates, 324 ;
interest of, in staff training, 325 ;
centralisation of, in Mesopotamia in
general justifiable, 325, 326 ; attention
of, to detail, 326, 327 ; comparison
of, with Napoleon, 327, 328 ; as a
tactician, 328 ; a staff officer on, 328 ;
confidence in, placed by troops under
him, 329 ; sympathy between, and
his troops, 329, 330 ; serenity of, in
adversity, 330-331 ; campaign of, in
Mesopotamia a masterpiece, 331 ;
determination of, to make the most of
victory, 331 ; foresight of, 331, 332 ;
religious side of character of, 332,
333 ; Rev. A. C E. Jarvis's apprecia
tion of, 333 ; Lord Methuen on, 333-
334 ; Sir W. Lambton on, 334 ; affec
tion with which he was regarded by his
friends, 334 ; addiction of, to sport,
334, 335 ; as a horseman, 335 ; home
life of, 235 ; final appreciation of,
335-336.
Maude, Miss Stella, birth of, 25 ; refer
ences to, 81, 158.
Maunoury, General, references to, 118,
123.
Medical services, Maude's interest in,
39, 143, 144, 14s, 208, 221, 245, 287,
290, 291, 295, 305 ; satisfactory
working of, 257, 305.
Mediterranean Expeditionary Force,
Mudros the base of, 160 ; Sir C
Monro takes command of, 165, 166.
Megasis, references to, 217, 223, 231,
261.
Mendali, occupation of, 296.
Mesopotamia, references to, 3,9, n , 28,
39, 114, 134, 162, 190, 209, 225, 228,
244, 259, 278, 290, 291, 293, 306,
308, 314, 323, 331, 335; situation in,
190, 194-198 ; Maude informed he is
to go to, 192 ; censorship in, 202,
103 ; tactical effect of flatness of, 205 ;
question of Army Commander in, 235,
236 ; effect of Maude's victories on
Lower, 269, 270.

Mesopotamia Commission, reference to,
202.
Mesopotamian Comforts Fund, reference
to, 287.
Messines, references to, 138, 143, 146.
Meteren, occupation of, 126, 128.
Methuen, Lord, in command of Home
District, 28 ; at the Diamond Jubilee,
29 ; at Aldershot, 30 ; succeeded by
Maj.-General Trotter, 30; commands
1st Division in South Africa, 32 ; ad
vance of, to the Modder River, 34 ;
duty of, during Lord Roberts' advance
into the Orange Free State, 37, 38 ;
reference to, 220 ; appreciation of,
of Maude, 333-334.
Middelburg, occupation of, 56.
Midland Division, Maude offered staff
appointment with, 94.
Military Training, Directorate of, Maude
joins the, in.
Militia, Canadian, references to, 71, 76,
77,. 78, 79-
Militia Act, Canadian, new, introduced,
77 ; Maude on the new, 78, 79.
Militia Council, creation of, in Canada, 83.
Minto, Lady, accompanies the Royal
Party, 73 ; remains at Banff with the
Duchess of York, 74.
Minto, Lord, offers Maudepostof Military
Secretary, 55 ; position of , 7 1 ; accom
panies the Roj^l Party, 73 ; appoint
ment of, extended, 82 ; farewell tour
of, 84 ; leaves Canada, 84 ; Governor-
General ih India, 86.
Modder River, fighting on the, 34 ;
Maude reaches, 34 ; references to, 38,
220.
Mold, corruption of Montalt, i.
Moloney, Lieutenant, attends Maude
during his illness, 309, 310.
Money, Maj.-General A. W., Chief of
General Staff in Mesopotamia, 238 ;
goes on leave, 288 ; invahded, 292.
Monro, Sir C, takes command of the
Mediterranean Expeditionary Force,
166 ; decides that evacuation of the
Gallipoli Peninsula is imperative, 166 ;
Maude meets, 167 ; delegates com
mand of the Dardanelles Army to
General Birdwood, 168 ; Maude meets
at Mudros, 177 ; mentions Maude in
despatches, 188 ; visit of, to Meso
potamia, 247, 248 ; dislikes Maude's
fiying trips, 289; appreciation of
Maude, 304.
Mons, losses in retreat from, 119; refer
ence to retreat from, 151.
Montalt, Barony of, i.
Montreal, reference to, 70 ; Royal Party
arrives at, 73.

INDEX

355

Moorefield Lodge, Maudes settle at, 109.
Morland, Lieut.-General Sir T. L. N.,
in command of the Sth Division, 132 ;
Maude visits, 132 ; visits of, to Maude,
145 ; insists on Maude's headquarters
being shifted from Neuve Eglise, 146 ;
visits Maude in hospital, 149 ; Maude
writes to, 150; goes home on leave,
154 ; appreciation of Maude, 157.
Mosul, references to, 281, 304.
Mount Edgcumbe, Lord, reference to,
91.
Mudros, base of the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force, 160 ; Maude
proceeds to, 176 ; 13th Division at,
177 ; Maude moves to, from Imbros,
185; 13th Division quits, for Egypt,
189.
MuUingar, Maude visits, 109.
Murray, Sir A., letter from Maude to,
158; inspects the 13th division, 192;
pressed by the War Office to get the
13th Division off, 193 ; letter to
Maude, 193; Maude receives telegram
of congratulation from, 265.
Musgrave, Captain F. P., A.D.C. to
Maude, 189; remains with Maude on
his becoming Army Commander, 238 ;
on Maude, 296.
Mushaidieh, General Cobbe's victory at,
276.
Naauwpoort, headquarters of General I.
Jones, 65 ; Maude's work at, 65, 66 ;
Maude leaves for home, 68.
Napoleon, comparison of Maude with,
327, 328 ; enthusiasm of his soldiers
for, 329.
Nasirieh, 15th Division at, 239 ; Maude-
visits, 249 ; references to, 285, 288.
Natal Army, advanced troops of, reach
Germiston, 55.
Nebrunesi Point, references to, 173, 174.
Nelson, doctrines of, followed by Maude,
278.
Nenagh, sth Division trains near, no.
Neuve Chapelle, attempt to retake, 136 ;
references to, 137, 147, 148, 156.
Neuve Eglise, Maude's headquarters at,
141, I4S, 322.
New South Wales contingent at Suakin,
18, 19.
New Zealanders, reference to, 160.
Niagara, Royal Party visits, 74.
Nicholas, Grand Duke, Maude receives
message of congratulation from, 278.
Nicholson, General Sir W., at Staff
College Conference, 97.
Nile Expedition, references to, 14, 200.
Nine Elms, Maude sees 1st Coldstream
off at, 33.

Norfolks, 1st, join the 14th Brigade,
138.
North Gate, cemetery near, 318 ; memo
rial at, 319.
North Lancs, Maude commends, 210.
North Wales, Maude attends a staff ride
in, 87.
Northcote, Mr., Maude at educational
establishment of, 10.
Norval's Pont, railway through, 37 ;
occupation of, 43 ; Maude's description
of, 43 ; importance of, 44 ; General I.
Jones' headquarters at, 64 ; reference
to, 67, 68.
Oakham, the Maude family at, 86.
O'Dowda, Brig.-General J. W., in com
mand of the 38th Brigade, 189; letter
of General Keary to, 214 ; on Maude,
228.
O'Grady Haly, General, in command of
the Canadian Militia, 71.
Ogilvie-Forbes, Captain, A.D.C. to
Maude, 189 ; first interview of, with
Maude, 189, 190; on Maude, 211,
212 ; remains with Maude as Army
Commander, 238.
Okehampton, Maude at, 81, 89.
Ophir, S.S., Royal Party cross the
Atlantic in, 73.
Orange Free State, references to, 37, 55,
56, 63, 67, 68 ; Lord Roberts' in
vasion of the, 38.
Orange River, references to, 34, 37, 42,
44 ; defence of the line of the, 64, 65 ;
Boers cross the, 65, 67 ; Boers re-
cross, 68.
Orange River Colony. See Orange Free
State.
Orders, Maude's methods in connection
with^ 47, HI, 141, 162, 208, 229.
Orontes, s.s., 1st Coldstream in the,
20.
Osmanli. See Turk.
Osnaburgh House, Maudes settle at, at
Camberley, 26 ; Miss Beryl Maude
born at, 28.
Otao, 1st Coldstream at, 19.
Ottawa, Maude arrives at, 70 ; Royal
Party arrives at, 73 ; departure of Lord
Dundonald from, 83; reference to,
114.
Ottawa Harriers, Maude attends meet of,
81.
Ottawa Riv*, boating on the, 81.
Paardeberg, Cronje surrounded at, 39 ;
references to, 56.
Paget, Sir A., at inter- divisional man
oeuvres in Ireland, 1 10.
Palestine, expected campaign in, 293.

356

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

Peatling, Doctor, account of talk with
Maude, lOO ; reference to, 332.
Pentagoii, the, reference to, 234.
Persia, references to, 194, 280, 281, 293,
298.
Persian Gulf, references to, 239, 299,
304.
Petit Morin River, reference to, 119.
Pirbright, 1st Coldstream at, 21, 23 ;
Maude at, 86.
Pitman, Mr. F. I., appreciation of, of
Maude as an Etonian, 8, 9.
Pleydell-Bouverie, Colonel, in command
of 1st Coldstream, 85.
Plumer, General, in Cape Colony, 68.
Plymouth, Maude appointed to staff at,
89 ; references to, 90, 91, 94, 335 ;
Maude and the defence scheme, 92.
Pole-Carew, Lieut.-General Sir R., in
1st Coldstream, 12; in command of
Guards Brigade in South Africa, 37 ;
undertakes reconnaissance to Magers
fontein, 38 ; moves on Norval's Pont,
42, references to, 43 ; given command
of nth Division, 45; at Vet River,
47 ; at Diamond HUl, 53 ; occupies
Belfast, 57 ; to take the central line
beyond Machadodorp, 60 ; advances
on Komati Poort, 60 ; occupies Komati
Poort, 61 ; appreciation by, of Maude,
63 ; Maude stays with, at Antony, 90.
' Pop,' Maude elected to, 10.
Pope, Sir J., on Maude, 79.
Poplar Grove, Guards move forward to,
40; operations at, 41.
Port Elizabeth, reference to, 37, 43.
Port Said, Maude proceeds to, 189 ;
animals loose in, 193; nth Division
takes over defences near, from the
13th Division, 193 ; Maude leaves,
193-
Portugal, King of, celebration of birth
day of, at Komati Poort, 62.
Pretoria, references to, 32, 46, 55, 57 ;
operations before, 50 ; Maude rides
into, 50 ; occupation of, 50 ; Guards
return to, from Komati Poort, 62.
Prince of Wales, The, visits Maude at
his brigade headquarters, 139; present
with the King at the inspection of the
14th Brigade, 140.
Pulteney, Lieut.-General Sir W., on
Maude as a runner, 13 ; on Maude as
a staff officer in South Africa, 47 ; on
Maude's work during the advance to
Komati Poort, 61 ; in command of
3rd Corps, IIS; remains in London
at first, 116; goes to Harrow, 117;
crosses to France, 117; advance of.
Corps, 118; withdraws headquarters
from Armentieres to Bailleul, 129 ;

on Maude, 129, 130 ; compliments
Maude on condition of his trenches,
148.
Punjabis, reference to, 304.
Punniar, Sir F. F. Maude at, 2.
Quebec, Royal Party arrives at, 73.
Queen Alexandra, Maude attends, at
funeral of ICing Edward, 101 ; repre
sentative of, attends Memorial Service
at St. Paul's, 313.
Queen Mary visits Canada, 71-74;
remains at Banff, 74 ; Maude attends,
at funeral of King Edward, loi ;
represented at the Memorial Service,
313.
Queen Victoria, Sir G. A. Maude Crown
Equerry to, 2.
Queen Victoria's Rifles attached to
Maude's Brigade, 141.
Raglan, Lord, reference to, 2.
Railway, project to construct, from Suakin
to Berber, 14 ; force advances along,
19 ; project of Suakin-Berber, aban
doned, 20 ; from De Aar to Buluwayo,
34 ; General French's troops reach,
near Bloemfontein, 42 ; to Nerval's
Pont, 42 ; break in, at Nerval's Pont,
43, 44 ; Lord Roberts decides to clear,
to Portuguese frontier, 55 ; Guards on
the, 56 ; start of, from Sheikh Saad
to front, 226 ; references to Sheikh
Saad-Es Sinn, 232, 250, 285; from
Kurna to Amarah, 243, 293; from
Kut to Baghdad, 285, 293 ; accident
on the Samarra line, 288.
Rajputs, reference to, 304.
Ramadi, unsuccessful attack on, 292 ;
capture of, 296 ; Maude flies to, 297.
Ramleh, 1st Coldstream encampments
at, 20.
Rawal Pindi District, Sir F. F. Maude
in command of, 4.
Rawlinson, General Lord, in Cornish's
House with Maude, 6 ; leaves R.M.C.
with Maude, n ; appreciations of
Maude, 25, 113, 114; references to, 27;
promoted for services in Sudan, 32 ;
in command of the 4th Corps, 128.
Ready, Maj.-General F. F., Deputy
Adjutant - General in Mesopotamia,
242 ; appreciation of Maude, 305,
306.
Redan, the, Sir F. F. Maude at, 2, 3.
Reed, Major-General H. L., on Maude's
memoranda at Suvla, 171, 172.
Regina, Royal Party at, 73.
Richebourg, the 14th Brigade near, 132.
Rideau Canal, the Maudes visit the, 81.
Rideau Cottage, Maudes settle in, 70.

INDEX

357

Rideau Lakes, the Maudes visit, 8i.
Ridley, Lady, Maude in hospital of, 150.
Riet River, operations on the, 37.
Rifle Brigade, Maude lives with the, at
Devonport, 90.
River transport, inadequacy of, in Meso
potamia, 198, 206, 23s, 242, 243 ;
Maude goes into question of, 242, 243;
development of, 245 ; works admir
ably, 259; references to 279, 285,
296.
Roberts, Lord, at the Diamond Jubilee,
29 ; arrives at Modder River, 36 ; plan
of advance into the Orange Free State,
37 ; orders up the Guards Brigade, 39;
decides to make a dash for Bloemfon
tein, 40 ; enters Bloemfontein, 42 ;
plans of, for advance, 46 ; halts at
Kroonstad, 49 ; entry of, into Johan
nesburg, 50; entry of, into Pretoria,
50; orders of, for the operations at
Diamond HUl, 52 ; intention of, to
advance to Komati Poort, 54, 55 ;
preparations of, completed, 56 ; moves
to Belfast, 57 ; leaves for home, 64 ;
references to, 76, 220.
Robertson, Sir W"., Maude meets at man-
CEuvres, 96 ; Maude under, at the War
Office, in ; action of, in connection
with Mesopotamia, 226, 227 ; recom
mends Maude for Army Commander,
237 ; Maude's telegram to, 244 ; Maude
asks for a Corps Commander, 250 ;
appreciation of Maude by, 300 ; refer
ence to, 308-309.
Rochester House, Maude at, 10.
Rosapena, Maude visits, 109.
Ross of Bladensburg, Colonel Sir J. , in
Ist Coldstream, 12 ; account of, of the
attack on the convoy near Tofrek,
18.
Royal Irish Fusiliers, Maude attached
to, 99-
R.M.C, Maude goes to the, 7, 10;
Maude's record at, 10, II; references
to, 12.
Royal Party in Canada, tour of the, 73-
75-
Royal Toiir in Canada, 73-75.
Russians, references to, 194, 225, 301 ;
Russian co-operation, hopes of, 280 ;
forces opposed by Turkish 13th Corps,
281 ; fail to come up at Khanikin,
282 ; visits of two generals to Maude,
285 ; still dominating Armenia, 285 ;
inefficient offensive by, 287 ; little hope
of assistance from, 293 ; influence of
revolution on, in Persia, 298.
St. Eloi, 14th Brigade moves to near,
149.

St. George's Road, Sir F. F. Maude re
sides in, 4.
St. John's, Royal Party at, 74.
St. Julien, gas attack at, 151.
St. Michael and St. George, Order of,
arranges the Memorial Service at St.
Paul's, 313.
St. Michael's School, Maude goes to, 5.
St. Omer, Maude proceeds to, 125 ; 3rd
Corps arrives at, 125.
St. Paul's, Memorial Service at, 313.
St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, Maude's mar
riage at, 24.
Salisbury, Maude at manoeuvres near,
93-
Salisbury Plain, Maude with the Terri
torials on, 96 ; the 33rd Division pro
ceeds to, 158.
Salonika, loth Division proceeds to, 165;
Maude hopes to go to, 165 ; reference
to, 168, 313.
Salt Lake, reference to, 170.
Samarra, railway to, 283 ; capture of,
284 ; references to, 283, 301, 304 ;
Maude visits, 288 ; Maude flies to,
289 ; advance from, 298, 299.
Sandhurst, references to, 10, 11, 13, 25,
27, 239.
Sanitation. See Medical Services.
Sannah's Post, fight at, 45.
Sannaiyat, position at, 205 ; references
to, 209, 213, 215, 231, 241, 253, 254,
262, 330 ; attaclc of 7th Division on,
208 ; General Gorringe regards, as key
to Kut, 2og ; importance of, 209 ; at
tack of 13th Division on, 209, 210;
7th Division remains facing, 212;
second attack of 7th Division on, 215,
216 ; Maude believed Kut could only
hold out four days when he attacked,
218; importance of, 224; General
Cobbe bombards, 254 ; General Cobbe's
unsuccessful attack on, 260, 261 ; cap
ture of, 261, 263.
Sari Bair, references to, 159, 160, 206.
Scots Guards, 2nd proceed to Suakin,
15 ; 1st proceed to" South Africa, 32 ;
1st move by rail towards Norval's Pont,
42 ; 1st at Diamond Hill, 53.
Serajevo, assassination of the Archduke
Ferdinand at, 113.
Serbia, demands made upon, 115.
Sevastopol, Sir F. F. Maude at, 3, 4.
Sharaban occupied, 294 ; reference to,
297.
Shatt-el-Adhaim, Turks withdraw to,
282 ; Turkish I Sth Corps on line of,
283 ; operations of General Marshall's
forces near, 283, 284; reference to,
301.
Shatt-el-Arab, Kalaya reaches, 194 ; re-

858

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

ferences to, 235, 243, 279, 331 ; ques
tion of landing facilities in, 243.
Shatt-el-Hai, references to, 196, 197,
2*3, 257 ; Maude's cavalry reach the
vicinity of, 253 ; Turkish bridge over,
253 ; passage of the, 254 ; fighting on
the, 256.
Shaw, General, invalided, 160.
Sheikh Saad, Turks advance to, 196 ;
references to, 201, 221, 225, 232, 235,
239, 241, 254 ; Maude returns to, 201;
13th Division arrives at, 201 ; 13th Divi
sion at, 227 ; railway from, started, 226.
Sherborne, Maude conducts staff ride
near, 91.
Sherbrook, the Royal Party at, 74.
Shumran, the Peninsula, 253 ; the Bend,
! - 261 ; passage of the Tigris at the Bend,
t]262; fighting in the Bend, 262, 263 ;
(¦references to, 263, 272, 331.
Sickness. See Medical Services.
Sikhs, reference to, 304.
Sixteenth Lancers, reference to, 112.
Sixth Indian Cavalry Brigade, reference
to, 230.
Skeffington-Smyth, Captain, references
to, 24, 50.
Slieve Bloom Mountains, manoeuvres
near, 113.
Sloane Street, the Maudes settle in, 25 ;
Maude purchases lease of house in, 29.
Small-arms ammunition, Maude's diffi
culty about, for his division, 198, 199.
Smith-Dorrien, Sir H., Maude with, 96 ;
succeeds Sir J. Grierson in command
of 2nd Corps, 117; troops of, on the
Aisne, 123; Maude visits, 132; Prince
of Wales staying at headquarters of,
139 ; given command of 2nd Army,
144 ; letter from, to Maude, 149 ;
Maude writes to, 150 ; appreciation of
Maude by, 151 ; gives up command of
the 2nd Army, 151 ; report as to tak
ing command at Salonika, 165.
Snow, General, 4th Division under, 117.
South Wales, Army Manoeuvres, 1914, to
take place in, 112.
South Wkles Borderers, Maude commends
the, 214.
Southampton, Maude sails for South
Africa from, 33 ; Maude lands at, 68.
Springfontein, reference to, 64.
Staff College, references to, 10, 31, 113,
179; Maude goes up for, 24; Maude
receives nomination for, 25 ; staff of,
26 ; Maude's contemporaries at, 26,
27.
Staff work, Maude's criticisms of, 48, 49,
130, 224, 225 ; comments on, 141, 325.
Steyne, President, arrives at Macha
dodorp, 59.

Stokes mortars, Maude and the, 231.
' Stone HaU,' Maudes settle at, 91.
Stonehouse, reference to, 91.
Stuart Wortley, Maj.-General R., be
comes D. Q.M.G. in Mesopotamia,
297.
Suakin, force sent to, 14 ; the 1st Cold
stream arrive at, 15 ; references to, 16,
1 7, 3°3 ; the campaign abandoned, 20.
Suez, Maude embarks at, 193.
Suez Canal, defences of, 189 ; nth Divi
sion takes over defences of, 193.
Suvla, the landing at, 159 ; 13th Division
proceeds to, 162 ; situation at, 162 ;
troops at, suffer especially from the
blizzard, 168 ; preparations for evacua
tion of, 170 ; principle of withdrawing
from, 172 ; strong position at, formed
by Maude, 173 ; final withdrawal
from, 174-176 ; reference to, 201, 206,
322.
Suvla Point, reference to, 168; north
ern sector to embark at, 174; General
Fanshawe in charge of evacuation at,
174 ; guns from Maude's sector sent
to, 175-
Suwaikieh marshes, strategical import
ance of, 196, 205 ; references to, 209 ;
overflow from, 215; reconnaissance of,
231.
Swiss Manoeuvres, Maude attends, 104.
Tamai, Sir J. McNeill advances towards,
17 ; occupation of, 19.
Taranto, reference to, 160.
Taylor, Miss C See Lady Maude.
Taylor, General Sir R., Governor of the
Royal MUitary College, 10 ; high opinion
formed of Maude by, 1 1 ; Miss C
Taylor niece of, 24 ; Maude married
from house of, 24.
Taylor, Right Hon. Colonel T. E., re
ference to, 24.
Tel-el-Kebir, reference to, 10.
Territorials, organisation of, started, 91,
92 ; Maude joins the staff of, 94 ; re
ferences to, 95, 104, 105 ; Maude be
comes Assistant Director of, 97.
The Long Road to Baghdad, references
to, 202, 262.
The War in the Cradle of the World, re
ference to, 309.
Thesiger, Colonel G., temporarily in
command of 14th Brigade, 152.
Thirteenth Hussars, fight of, at Lajj, 271.
Thousand Islands, the, visit of the
Maudes to, 81.
Tidworth, reference to, 158.
Tigris, General Townshend's advance
up, 190 ; references to, 196, 199, 200,
209, 210, 216, 219, 247, 251, 253,

INDEX

859

256, 276, 326, 331 ; rising of, in
March, 197 ; in flood, 201 ; General
Lake determines to try attack on right
bank of, 212 ; effect of direction of,
between the Megasis Bend and Beit
Aiessa, 223 ; Turkish bridges over,
231 ; Kurna-Amarah an awkward
stretch of, 243 ; Maude proceeds up
from Basrah, 249; Turks cut the
bunds of, 259 ; passage of the, at
Shumran, 262 ; bridges constructed
over, 271, 273, 279; floods of, give
less trouble than had been feared, 285 ;
getting very low, 285.
Tikrit, General Cobbe defeats the Turks
at, 298 ; the last victory won in
Mesopotamia under Maude's general
command, 299.
Times History of the War in Sotith
Africa, quotation from, 46, 47.
Tofrek, action of, 17 ; Guards Brigade
moves to, 18 ; references to, 19, 303.
Toronto, the Royal Party at, 74 ; Lord
Dundonald's speech at, 83.
Torquay, death of Sir F. F. Maude at,
30-
Townshend, General, advances up the
Tigris, 190 ; references to, 194, 198,
209, 243, 264 ; instructed to enter into
negotiation with Turks, 217.
Treasury and War Office, relations
between, 99.
Treowen, Lord, succeeds Colonel Mac
kinnon in the Home District, 32 ;
leaves for South Africa, 33.
Troodos, 1st Coldstream at, 20.
Tucker, General, in command of the 7th
Division, 37.
Tunisian, s.s., Maude returns from
Canada in, 84 ; headquarters of the
13th Division proceed to Egypt in,
189.
Turkish 13th Corps opposes the Russians,
281 ; constitution of, 281 ; unites
with the Turkish 18th Corps, 282;
advances suddenly from Jebel Hamrin
and is defeated, 283 ; completely de
feated by General Marshall beyond
the Shatt-el-Adhaim, 264.
Turkish i8th Corps, constitution of, 281 ;
opposes the 'Khanikin Column,' 281 ;
holds the line of the Shatt-el-Adhaim,
283.
Turko-Persian frontier, references to,
225, 296.
Turks, action of, during the Suvla fight,
159; references to, 165, 173, 176,
182, 223, 25s, 256, 258, 296; have
strong forces about the Dardanelles,
171 ; attack of, on the Helles positions,
180, 181 ; defeated at Ctesiphon, 190;

invest Kut, 190 ; advantageous position
of, at Kut, 196, 197 ; preparations of,
at Hannah and Felahieh, 205 ; well
prepared at Sannaiyat, 205 ; counter-
stroke of, at Beit Aiessa, 213 ;
retirement of, from Es Sinn, 223 ;
positions of, about Kut, 253 ; show
signs of demoralisation, 259 ; counter-
stroke of, at Sannaiyat, 261 ; collapse
of, 265 ; defeat of flotUla, 265 ;
evacuate Ctesiphon, 271, 272 ; propose
to cut the bunds above Baghdad, 276 ;
retire up the Euphrates, 280 ; , Von
Falkenhayn to command, 293 ; north
of Samarra, 298 ; defeat of, at Tikrit,
299.
Ulster, the trouble about, 108.
Under Secretary of State for India, letter
of, to Lady Maude, 313.
United States, Maude visits the, 82 ;
associated with the Entente, 309.
Upper Cromwell Road, Maude in the, 4.
Ur of the Chaldees, Maude visits, 249.
'V Beach, references to, 179, 183.
Vaal River, reference to, 46, 52 ; the
army crosses the, 49.
Vancouver, the Royal Party at, 73.
Vancouver Island, the Royal Party
visit, 74.
Vaux, Rev. G., appreciation of Maude
by, 106-108; reference to, 332.
Vet River, i ith Division reaches, 47.
Viceroy of India, Maude receives message
of congratulation from, 278.
V.C, Sir F. F. Maude awarded the, 3;
ribbons of, presented by Maude to the
13th Division, 249, 250.
Victoria, the Royal Party at, 74.
Victoria (Station), Maude starts east from,
159.
Volunteer Corps, Maude joins, 9.
Von der Goltz, references to, 302, 308.
Von Kluck, General, references to, 118,
119.
'W' Beach, references to,, 179, 182, 183 ;
29th Division and part of the 13th
Division to embark at, 180 ; difficulties
of embarkation at, 184, 185 ; Maude
leaves, 184.
Wadi, the, references to, 196, 225 ;
Maude reaches, 201 ; Maude's troops
move up to, 204.
War Cabinet attends Memorial Service
in St. Paul's, 313.
War Council decides to appoint Maude
Army Commander in Mesopotamia,
236, 237 ; selects General Cobbe for
the command of the Tigris Corps, 237.

860

SIR STANLEY MAUDE

War Office, references to, 33, 77, 97,
99, 158, 159, 192, 23s ; Maude uses
the library of the, 87 ; Maude becomes
Assistant Director in, 98 ; Maude joins
the Training Branch of, 1 1 1 ; Maude
reports at, 158; takes over general
charge of the Mesopotamian campaign,
197 ; making itself felt in Mesopotamia,
226 ; good understanding between
Maude and, 244, 245 ; Maude receives
message of congratulation from, 265 ;
action of, in connection with Gazettes,
294, 295.
Warwicks, General Lake commends,
207.
Waterval Onder, the Guards Brigade
occupy, 60.
Watford, Maudes settle at, 112; Maude
goes to, 155, 159.
Wellington, passage of the Douro and
Bidassoa by, 261, 262 ; reference to,
329-
Wellington Barracks, references to, 13,
15, 22, 23, 24, 85.
Welsh Fusiliers, Maude commends, 210.
Wemyss, Sir R., message of congratula
tion from, 278.
Wepener, siege of, 45, 46.
WiUcocks, General Sir J., in command
of Indian contingent, 137 ; reference
to, 137-
Willcox, Colonel W. H., on Maude at
Basrah, 248 ; on the work of Maude,
290 ; importance of labours of, 305 ;
with Maude during his illness, 309,
310; account by, of Maude's illness,
316, 311 ; Maude abandons trip to
base on advice of, 321.
WiUiam the Lion, reference to, i .
Williams, Lieut.-Colonel L. G., Maude's
military secretary, 238.
WiUingdon, Lord, references to, 202,
308.
Wilts, Maude commends the, 210, 214.

Winchester, Maude at manoeuvres near,
96.
Winchester, Lord, Maude spends part of
honeymoon at place of, 24.
Windsor, Maude at, 21 ; Maude rows in
races at, 89.
Winnipeg, the Royal Party at, 73.
Wolseley, Lord, reference to, 10; com
mands the Nile Expedition, 14 ; visits
Suakin, 20 ; reference to action of, in
going ahead of his army to Dongola,
200.
Woolwich Cadets, Maude defeats, at
Annual Sports, 11.
Worcesters, 3rd, in the 14th Brigade,
132; General Lake commends, 207;
Maude commends, 214.
Wormald, Captain, references to, 163,
189.
Wulverghem, 14th Brigade in trenches
near, 138.
Wyndham, Rt. Hon. G., in 1st Cold
stream, 12 ; Colonel Follett on,
20.
Wytschaete, operations near, 142, 143.
X-RAYS, Maude examined by, at Ypres
and Boulogne, 150.
York, Duchess of. See Queen Mary.
York, Duke of. See King George.
Younghusband, General, in command of
7th Division, 204 ; relieved by General
Cobbe when invalided, 230.
Ypres, First Battle of, 134; hard fight
ing near, 1 36 ; enemy hold high ground
round three sides of, 143 ; severe
fighting near, 134, 136, 151 ; reference
to, 148, 150; anxious position about,
153.
Zakka Khel Afridis, Sir F. F. Maude
in charge of expeditions against, 4.
Zand River, fight on the, 47, 48.

Frinted by T. sind A. Constable, Printers to His Maiesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

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