Hubert Gough

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Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough
Hubert Gough in 1917
Born	(1870-08-12)12 August 1870 London, England
Died	18 March 1963(1963-03-18) (aged 92) London, England
Buried	Camberley, Surrey, England
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1888–1922
Rank	General
Commands held	Fifth Army I Corps 7th Division 3rd Cavalry Brigade 16th (Queen's) Lancers
Battles/wars	Tirah Campaign Second Boer War Siege of Ladysmith Relief of Ladysmith First World War Battle of Loos Battle of the Somme Third Battle of Ypres Operation Michael
Awards	Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order
Relations	Sir Charles Gough (father) Sir Hugh Gough (uncle) Sir John Gough (brother)

General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough GCB, GCMG, KCVO (/ɡɒf/ GOF; 12 August 1870 – 18 March 1963) was a senior officer in the British Army in the First World War. A controversial figure, he was a favourite of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, and the youngest of his Army commanders.

Gough was educated at Eton and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before commissioning into the 16th Lancers in 1889. His early career included notable service in the Second Boer War, and a more controversial role in the Curragh Incident, in which he was one of the leading officers who threatened to accept dismissal rather than deploy into Protestant Ulster.

Gough experienced a meteoric rise during the First World War, from command of a cavalry brigade in August 1914, to division command at the First Battle of Ypres that autumn, to a corps at the Battle of Loos a year later. From mid 1916 he commanded the Reserve (later renamed the Fifth) Army during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. His tenure was marked by controversy around his leadership style, his perceived reputation as "a thruster",^[1] and the efficiency of the organisation of his Army, especially relative to the reputation for caution and efficiency of Herbert Plumer's Second Army. Fifth Army bore the initial brunt of the German spring offensive in March 1918, and Gough was relieved of his command.

After the war, he briefly held a command in the Baltic until retirement in 1922, and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. Thereafter, after a brief spell at farming he made a new career for himself as a company director. Gough gradually re-emerged as an influential figure in military circles and public life, writing two volumes of memoirs. He was a senior commander in the London Home Guard in the Second World War and lived long enough to be interviewed on television in the early 1960s. Historians continue to study Gough's career as a case study of how the BEF coped with rapid expansion, with officers commanding forces far larger than during their peacetime experience, of the degree of initiative which should be granted to subordinates, and of the evolution of operational planning under stalemate conditions, from an initial emphasis on achieving breakthrough (with attrition regarded as preliminary "wearing out") to a stress on cautious advances under cover of massive, concentrated artillery fire.