6. The civilians take over? Sir Eric Geddes and the crisis of 1916

In his post-war memoirs David Lloyd George predicted that when ‘the whole story of British achievement in the sphere of transport during the war’ was charted by historians it ‘would reflect very high credit on those who were responsible for its development, most of all on Sir Eric Geddes’.¹ Sir Douglas Haig had already paid a glowing tribute to Geddes’s contribution, when he reflected in 1919 that:

These commendations from the principal political and military figures in Britain’s war effort, whose ‘opinions diverged more often than they coalesced’ during and after the First World War,³ echoed earlier praise for Geddes’s role in the reorganization of Britain’s military transportation services recorded in the railway press. ‘There is nothing like a war to make or break the reputations of a nation’s leaders’, wrote the Railway Magazine in 1917, ‘and so far as the British Empire is concerned there is no subject of His Majesty the King who has made more remarkable progress in national service and public recognition than Sir Eric Geddes’.⁴

Few civilians could claim to have had a larger, more profound impact on the BEF’s command structure during the conflict than Geddes. In August and September 1916 he investigated and reported upon the existing transport network in France and Flanders. From then until May 1917 he created, populated and directed entirely new transport management hierarchies on the western front and at the War Office. He then bequeathed fully functioning directorates to civilian successors drawn from among the ranks of Britain’s transport experts.

This chapter examines the precarious nature of civil–military relations within the British war effort in the summer of 1916, the conclusions of Geddes’s mission to GHQ and the establishments both of the directorate-general of transportation in France and the directorate-general of military railways in London. Geddes’s unprecedented appointment to the directorships of both organizations – located within the military machine – exemplified Lloyd George’s desire to more thoroughly exploit the skills possessed by Britain’s civilian specialists, and it precipitated an overhaul of the personnel and procedures involved in the supply of British forces dispersed around the world. Yet Geddes’s twin role could not have been conceived, let alone his duties discharged successfully, without the personal and professional support of Britain’s political and military leadership. Lloyd George in London and Haig in France provided Geddes with the institutional assistance required to bring the concept of a centralized transportation service into being. Both protected Geddes from the criticisms and petty jealousies of those within and outside the ‘military trade union’, both understood the weaknesses in the BEF’s supply foundations that were exposed by the battle of the Somme and both worked to ensure that transport requirements received a priority hitherto denied them in a war effort that had been predominantly focused upon the creation of a mass army and the manufacture of ever-larger volumes of firepower. Together they created the platform from which the British army unleashed its ultimately successful war of material.

Military attitudes to civilian ‘interference’ in 1916

On 19 November 1917, Lloyd George, by now the prime minister, delivered a statement in the House of Commons. He claimed during his address that he had acted against the advice of the military high command on just two occasions during the war. In the first instance he had ordered ‘extravagant’ quantities of guns and shells when he was minister of munitions. ‘I was told that I was mad’, he said. ‘The second case where I pressed my advice on soldiers against their will’, he continued, ‘was in the appointment of a civilian to re-organise the railways behind the lines – my Right Honourable Friend (Sir E. Geddes) – and I am proud to have done it’.⁵ Lloyd George reiterated his position on the latter incident in his War Memoirs, taking aim at a War Office that had, he claimed, ‘held the opinion that [transport issues] were purely military matters, into the sanctity of which no profane civilian must be allowed to intrude’.⁶ As the previous chapters have demonstrated, Lloyd George’s enduring image of the British army as a narrow-minded and obstinate institution is not borne out by its multiple interactions with transport experts in the first half of the conflict.

Yet the notion of a British military clique, disengaged from the wider world and reluctant to engage with civilians, was not forged in the aftermath of a controversial battle or in the pages of post-war memoirs. In 1913 the French military attaché Colonel Huguet described the British army as ‘insular and therefore mistrustful of whatever came from outside’.⁷ Politicians were especially likely to raise the suspicions of the army authorities, and an atmosphere of apprehension about Lloyd George’s motives was evident from the moment he became secretary of state for war in July 1916.⁸ Asquith, sensitive that the ‘fluttering of military dovecotes’ could accompany Lloyd George’s appointment, urged the latter to ‘work intimately with the soldiers’ rather than seek confrontation.⁹ Lord Esher, himself no stranger to the inner workings of the military mind, also counselled Lloyd George to exercise ‘care’ in his use of civilian specialists within the army.¹⁰

The new secretary of state for war was not alone in being cautioned to tread carefully. In an ‘unofficial’ chat at the War Office, Auckland Geddes was informed that ‘you can’t do a war-dance on senior officers’ pet corns and expect them not to kick’. Consequently, ‘brother Eric’ was implored ‘not to start a row’ or present himself at GHQ as Lloyd George’s ‘dogsbody’. Instead, Auckland advised his brother to ‘talk the language’ of the army, emphasize his education at the Oxford Military Academy and his experience of working on the railways, and stress to the officers in France that his purpose was to be an expert assistant rather than a civilian usurper.¹¹ Allied to his fraternal pep talk, Geddes’s visit to GHQ was preceded by a letter from Lloyd George to Haig that set out the transport problem in plain terms:

Put simply, Lloyd George felt confident that the colossal firepower demanded by the BEF’s commanders could be produced. However, he could not guarantee that the munitions could be delivered to where they were required in a timely fashion – with obvious implications for the BEF’s effectiveness as a fighting force.

The BEF’s experience at the battle of the Somme reinforced Lloyd George’s concern. From an artillery perspective alone the requirements of the Somme were prodigious. Until mid June 1916 some five to twelve ammunition trains per week were sufficient to meet the BEF’s demand for shells. Yet in the weeks that preceded the offensive the number rose rapidly to between forty-five and ninety trains per week.¹³ The equivalent of thirty-six miles of motor lorries per division were required to shift the forty-nine ammunition trains per week that arrived in the Fourth Army’s area in the period after 5 June.¹⁴ The Ministry of Munitions’ success in raising the output of shells engendered hitherto unprecedented pressure upon the lines of communications behind the western front.

The demands of the Somme offensive exposed the inadequacy of the transport infrastructure in the battle zone, and underlined the subordinate position to which considerations of logistics had been relegated in the first half of the war. According to the official historian ‘the railways were inadequate, [and] the roads in the area behind the front [in Picardy] … were few and indifferent’. In 1916 ‘almost any part of the Arras–Ypres front was better furnished with villages, railways and roads’.¹⁵ Two single-lines to Arras and the double-line between Amiens and Albert, which was within range of the German artillery, represented the only pre-war main line rail communications available in the twenty-three miles between Arras and the River Somme. Furthermore, the undulating countryside made the provision of reliable new railways impractical. Railway construction in the area had been underway since October 1914, and a seventeen-mile line that linked Fienvillers, Candas and Acheux had been handed over to the ROD in April 1916.¹⁶ However, a considerable bottleneck around the key railway junction of Amiens could not be eliminated before the battle’s scheduled start date (see Figure 6.1). The one-mile section heading east from St Roch comprised: the principal rail connection between the zone of operations and the BEF’s southern line of communications (which ran inland from the ports of Dieppe, Le Havre and Rouen); the only inland north to south line between the Béthune coal field and Paris; a heavily worked civilian traffic route; and the vital junction through which any strategic troop movements required during the battle would have to pass. At the Camon–Longueau interchange east of Amiens all the traffic heading to and from the BEF’s Fourth Army crossed the route used by most of the traffic required to supply the French Sixth Army, which operated on the BEF’s right flank during the offensive. To ensure the continued supply of the forces in the area the Camon–Longueau junction had to handle 240 trains each day, expected to intersect each other’s routes at a rate of one train every six minutes.¹⁷

Figure 6.1. The railway lines near Amiens at the time of the battle of the Somme, 1916.

Source: A. M. Henniker, History of the Great War: Transportation on the Western Front, 1914– 1918 (London, 1937). Map drawn by Cath D’Alton.

However, the BEF’s supply trains did not keep to a regular schedule. Thanks to the ongoing problem of congestion at the ports, trains were despatched when they were ready to depart rather than according to a set timetable. Therefore, trains arrived at the Amiens bottleneck from three different directions at largely unpredictable intervals. Coupled with the need to attach extra engines to help heavy supply trains deal with the steep gradients on the so-called Plateau line between Albert and Amiens, delays were inevitable. One eyewitness recalled that ‘eighteen miles of trains under load stood end-to-end waiting to get to railheads’ outside Amiens within a few weeks after zero hour.¹⁸ With so many trains held up on their journey to the front, too few locomotives and wagons were available to clear the docks of the voluminous quantities of material that poured into France every day. With the railways unable to clear the imported stock from the wharves, the quaysides became overcrowded and subsequently reduced the speed with which incoming ships were offloaded and put back to sea.¹⁹

Conditions in front of the railheads were no better. The roads in rural France had originally been constructed upon a chalk foundation to service a traffic that largely comprised farmers’ carts and bicycles. Under the ‘heavy pounding of the army’s mechanical transport’ the foundation of the road broke up, a ‘chalky ooze’ appeared on the surface, the granite setts worked loose, and the entire road began to disintegrate.²⁰ The traffic required to service the battle was incessant. In a twenty-four-hour period in late July – described by the provost marshal as ‘one of the quietest we have had’ – the traffic that passed Fricourt Cemetery was recorded as 26,516 troops, 568 cars, 1,244 lorries and ambulances, 3,832 horse-drawn vehicles, 1,660 motorcycles and cycles and 5,404 horses. In just six hours over 2,500 vehicles passed along the Amiens–Albert road the following day.²¹ When the weather conditions deteriorated, the problems caused by heavy traffic were exacerbated. Horse transport, which ordinarily travelled on open ground next to the roads, was forced to share the limited road space with the army’s mechanical transport. The intensification of the traffic reduced the speed of all vehicles on the roads and made their repair and maintenance increasingly difficult. In a post-war article, Major-General Sir Reginald Buckland recalled having witnessed ‘a man stooping down to spread stone between the feet of a team of horses while traffic was at a standstill, but as a rule congestion of traffic meant cessation of work’.²²

Lloyd George had anticipated such a problem as early as September 1915, when he wrote to Kitchener to enquire whether the French transport network would be able to handle the enormous mass of stores projected to be available by mid 1916.²³ He received assurances at the time that it could.²⁴ The eighteen-mile-long queue of trains outside Amiens proved unequivocally that it could not. The demands of the Somme offensive, particularly the unprecedented scale of artillery expenditure and huge requirements for casualty evacuation, strained the BEF’s transport infrastructure to breaking point.²⁵ However, Haig’s cool response to Lloyd George’s proposal that Geddes visit France to examine the transport situation gave little cause for the secretary of state to be optimistic. Haig replied to Lloyd George that ‘you will, I am sure, realise that everyone behind the army, no less than at the front, is working at such high pressure at present that they will not be able to devote as much time to [Geddes] as we should like’.²⁶

If Haig’s reaction was cool, the attitude of his QMG, Sir Ronald Maxwell, was positively icy thanks in part to the existence of a document that had arrived at GHQ three weeks earlier. Acting on Lloyd George’s behalf, Lord Derby handed Haig a memorandum on the transport situation on 11 July. The report outlined its anonymous author’s concept for a new directorate that ‘would be charged with the general supervision of the dock, rail and canal transport in France … charged with making adequate provision in rail, dock and canal facilities, and with arranging for the necessary material and personnel in connection therewith for the present and future needs of the armies in the field … responsible for the transport of all classes of military traffic’ both to and from the front, and ‘would report directly to the Secretary of State for War’ in London rather than to Haig.²⁷ A note on the file, written by Haig, recorded that the BEF’s commander-in-chief believed the memorandum to have been the work of one of ‘Lloyd George’s men’ – most likely the one who would seek to run the new directorate. No evidence has been unearthed to confirm or allay Haig’s suspicions. Yet as the memorandum drew upon the managerial structures of a large railway company to conceptualize the proposed organization it appears likely that Geddes had a significant influence over the document, which Maxwell dismissed as ‘quite impracticable’.²⁸ Furthermore, in a demonstration of the QMG’s mind set towards external interference in the BEF’s forward planning activities, he noted that: ‘It is not stated [in the memorandum] why the time has arrived to strengthen the transport arrangements of the BEF. So far as the work in France is concerned these arrangements have worked perfectly smoothly and efficiently: 1. in the ports; 2. on the railways and canals; 3. on the roads’.²⁹ As will be demonstrated further below, Maxwell’s attitude was not unique among both the officers in France and those at the War Office.

Maxwell’s reluctance to acknowledge the supply problems that were already manifest by the third week of the Somme was not the catalyst for Haig’s response to Lloyd George. Nor should Haig’s reply be taken as further evidence of an entrenched, insular military elite unwilling to embrace outsiders’ criticisms of their procedures. Instead, the commander-in-chief’s comments were a reflection of the fact that the BEF was engaged in the largest battle in British military history and, as a result, Haig felt unable to guarantee that an investigation into administrative processes and organizational responsibilities could receive priority at GHQ over the unfolding offensive. The emergence of severe logistical challenges during the first month of the battle meant that Haig was ‘anxious to afford Sir Eric Geddes every possible facility for conducting his enquiry’, and was ‘glad to make arrangements for his visit’.³⁰ As Ian M. Brown has demonstrated, Haig’s interest in transport issues was apparent from the moment he replaced Sir John French as commander-in-chief on 19 December 1915.³¹ On his first day at GHQ he met with his adjutant general and QMG before touring the various branches of the general staff, and within his first week he had discussed the railways and roads behind the Third Army with Lieutenant-General Edmund Allenby. Haig followed up his meeting with Allenby by urging ‘the value of improved railway facilities’ behind the Third Army to the French, and ordered Maxwell ‘to hasten, and begin at once to build the railway projected into the Third Army area … I also went into the reasons why the narrow gauge lines in the Second Army area (near Poperinghe) had not been turned to military use’. By 27 December he could write with evident satisfaction that: ‘QMG recorded that work had begun on the railway in the Third Army area. A B[road] G[auge] line in the direction of Contay … It is just four days since I begged Joffre to help us in this matter’.³² Haig’s understanding of the proper place of transportation in the army’s activities – and the continued degradation of the BEF’s lines of communications as the demands of the Somme took their toll on the roads, railways and docks – were sufficient grounds for him to authorize Geddes’s visit to GHQ in late August.³³

Where Haig’s attitude encouraged dialogue between the military and one of Britain’s leading transport experts, the War Office took a far less cordial stance towards Lloyd George’s proposal. Brigadier-General Richard Montagu Stuart-Wortley, the DOM in London, was the chief protagonist behind the War Office’s position. Lord Derby noted that Stuart-Wortley’s ‘intense dislike for Geddes’ had not subsided in the aftermath of their frosty encounter at the start of the war, and his antipathy had been further fuelled by what Stuart-Wortley perceived to be increasing civilian encroachment into the military realm as the war progressed.³⁴

Buttressed by the support of his commanding officer, Sir John Cowans, Stuart-Wortley’s disinclination to support Lloyd George’s proposition threatened to derail the transportation mission before it began. Mindful of the fragility of civil–military relations, and the requirement that his investigations be conducted swiftly, Geddes wished to be accompanied in France by soldiers who could both explain the existing procedures and minimize the inconvenience to GHQ’s staff officers.³⁵ Geddes identified the by now Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Mance, Stuart-Wortley’s deputy DOM, as an ideal companion. Geddes and Mance had worked closely on REC business in the fifteen months that preceded the war, and the civilian wished to exploit the soldier’s past experience of military railway operations – obtained within the railway directorate during the South African War. A letter was despatched from Lloyd George to Cowans, requesting that Mance be temporarily released from the War Office to join Geddes’s team in France. Stuart-Wortley’s response to the letter claimed that he ‘could not possibly spare [Mance] for so long a time as three or four weeks’, as to do so would ‘seriously prejudice the work of my directorate and I do not consider that I can be held responsible for what may occur during his absence’. He described Mance as his ‘head railway advisor’, his technical assistant on ‘all questions which involve dealings with the Railway Executive Committee or with the French and Belgian railways’ and the man responsible for ‘all questions connected with Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Salonika railways’. Stuart-Wortley argued that his deputy had an expertise that nobody within the directorate of movements could match, that he was the ‘designated Acting Director of Movements in the event of an invasion … and [that] he has a knowledge of all home defence schemes which is unique’.³⁶ However, Stuart-Wortley’s pleas and the ongoing threat of invasion, although enough to ensure that an enormous permanent garrison of 1.5 million men was retained in Britain during the war, were not enough to prevent Mance from crossing the Channel with Geddes in late August.³⁷

GHQ in France proved far less obstructive. Haig made no attempt to dissuade Geddes from utilizing the services of Colonel Henry Freeland during his visit, despite the sustained stress on the BEF’s staff as the battle of Somme continued. Like Mance, Freeland was handpicked by Geddes as the civilian had prior knowledge of his abilities. Geddes and Freeland had first met in India when they worked for adjoining railways at the same station – the former for the Rohilkund and Kumaon and the latter as deputy traffic manager with the North-Western. Alongside Geddes’s knowledge of Freeland’s work in India, the latter was deemed valuable as he had studied the methods employed by the French army.³⁸ He had observed the systems in use for the packing of French supply trains early in 1916, and his feedback had helped shape the composition of the BEF’s daily supply trains in the second half of the war.³⁹

The reasons behind Geddes’s identification of Mance and Freeland emphasize the depth of interactions between the army and the railways in the period before the First World War. Both officers were chosen to participate in the transportation mission because of their demonstrable military experience and their pre-existing relationships with the civilian specialist. The railways of India, Africa, the United States and Britain had provided these men with the knowledge of railway operations in peace and war. They now came together on French soil to scrutinise the BEF’s existing transport infrastructure and operating procedures alongside two civilians with whom Geddes was also highly familiar.

The first, Philip Nash, was another example of the diaspora of British expertise throughout the pre-war empire. He had been in India since 1899 and, after a series of promotions, had attained the position of joint secretary of the East Indian Railway (roughly equivalent to the role of assistant general manager) by 1911. It is unclear whether Nash and Geddes’s paths had crossed while the latter was resident on the sub-continent, but they were definitely brought together when Nash was recruited to the Ministry of Munitions in 1915. Nash, as head of the national filling factories, was one of Geddes’s assistants faced with the task of increasing the supply of gun ammunition to the British army. One of Geddes’s other assistants, the North-Eastern Railway’s statistics expert J. George Beharrell, comprised the final component of the civil–military transportation mission.⁴⁰

The civilian members of the mission did not record any difficulties with regards to military attitudes prior to their departure from Britain, but Geddes observed that Mance joined the mission with some hesitancy. Stuart-Wortley’s hostility towards Geddes may partially explain Mance’s trepidation. However, his reluctance was also undoubtedly linked to the difficult position into which the civilian expert thrust his military companions. As Keith Grieves has explained, Mance and Freeland ‘found themselves in the unenviable position of assessing the failure of GHQ to organise the free flow of supplies behind the line’.⁴¹ The organization they were tasked to examine was in large part the creation of officers who outranked them, most notably the IGC, Major-General Sir Frederick Clayton. In 1915 Clayton had proven amenable to the idea of exploiting the SECR’s civilian expertise to improve the BEF’s supply operations at the port of Boulogne, but by the summer of 1916 his attitude towards civilian involvement on the lines of communications had become far less welcoming.

Clayton’s correspondence with Cowans in the twelve months prior to the transportation mission charts both his frustrations at the BEF’s approach to the challenges of trench warfare and his perception that his work as IGC had been underappreciated. He claimed that the ‘combing out’ of men suitable for front line duties in the summer of 1915 had robbed him of ‘all the important trained men’ within his department, and that ‘to send out men and expect them to pick up in a month what others have taken ten months to learn, is asking, in my opinion, a little too much’.⁴² By November 1915 the continued removal of his subordinates for deployments elsewhere inspired Clayton to pen a spirited lament towards the approach taken by his superiors in London:

Clayton’s opinions on another letter within the same file, written by Cowans to Maxwell at the end of May 1916, were either not committed to paper or have not survived. However, as the letter requested the views of the BEF’s senior supply officers on the ‘possibility of transferring men from the Railway Transport Sections for more active duties in the field’ just as the supply services were gearing up for largest battle in British military history, one can surmise that the timing of the request alone confounded Clayton’s frustrations.⁴⁴

In addition to exasperation at the removal of ‘his’ trained men, Clayton perceived himself to be an isolated figure within the BEF’s hierarchy. As his headquarters was located at Abbeville rather than GHQ, he felt cut off from the cluster of officers that surrounded the commander-in-chief. He bemoaned the lack of recognition for his endeavours in a letter to Cowans in February 1916, writing that:

Clayton’s belief that his efforts had been insufficiently acknowledged was exacerbated by the number of investigations into logistical and administrative procedures that took place on the lines of communications during his tenure as IGC. Alongside pointing out that answering queries from soldier or civilian-led parties took up a ‘great deal’ of his and his staff’s time, Clayton asked whether ‘some steps’ could be taken to ‘stop these constant attacks and investigations being made on the lines of communication’. His reaction demonstrated that the aims of such examinations were not adequately understood by all the BEF’s senior officers in the summer of 1916. Clayton’s solitary concern was whether the work of his department had ‘been done to the satisfaction of the C-in-C’.⁴⁶

The IGC’s growing antagonism towards outside interference threatened to jeopardize the efficacy of Geddes’s transportation mission, and his mindset endangered the future of the BEF’s supply operations. His argument, which was summarized in a response to the findings of a commission into the ongoing congestion at the Channel ports led by the shipping magnate Sir Thomas Royden, was that despite the BEF’s colossal expansion over the preceding eighteen months it had ‘been supplied with everything it requires with clockwork regularity; nothing had failed, all demands have been met and nothing but praise has been given to those who have done the work’. In addition:

Clayton was not alone in besmirching the conclusions produced by the myriad examinations of the BEF’s working practices. In April 1916 the director of supplies branded a report into the use of labour at Rouen by Major Ronald Williams of the Dockers Battalion, which had been commissioned by Haig rather than the government, as ‘simply valueless and useless’.⁴⁸ Even Sir William Robertson, whose appreciation of supply questions at the start of the war had helped to sustain the BEF as a fighting force, believed that criticisms from London about congestion at the ports, poor storage practices, neglect of the canal network and the failure to develop railway traffic prior to the Somme were ‘misinformed’.⁴⁹

Until the supply link that reached back from the front line to Britain (and the world beyond) had actually broken down, Clayton believed that it was unfair of the War Office to continue bombarding his department with civilians hell bent on ‘interfering’ with his operations. At the very least his response to the Royden report illustrates that he was unwilling to countenance the potential problems that awaited the BEF should the transport network in France collapse under the weight of goods shipped to the western front. Nothing within Clayton’s correspondence implied that he appreciated how examinations such as Royden’s and Williams’s were undertaken to ensure that catastrophic failure did not occur as the British war effort expanded. Inquiries that only took place after the system broke down – which in Clayton’s view was the correct time for them – would theoretically occur too late to rectify the situation should the BEF wish to remain an effective fighting force.

By August 1916, despite the emergence of fruitful working partnerships between civilian specialists and army officers both prior to and during the initial stages of the conflict, there existed a clear and palpable sense of distrust among those responsible for managing the war effort. The growing stresses of an unfamiliar form of warfare, for which no clear blueprint for success had emerged, ratcheted up tensions between the political and military actors charged with the delivery of victory. Suspicions and reservations within the army over the motives of ‘outsiders’ – particularly those as closely connected to Lloyd George as Geddes – to do anything more than meddle with pre-existing structures and erode the army’s jurisdiction, were mirrored by wariness and doubts over the competence of the soldiers responsible for overseeing the BEF’s umbilical cord. Lord Derby, who was ‘much impressed’ by Geddes, described Clayton as ‘very stupid, conceited and narrow-minded’.⁵⁰ Maxwell, Robertson acknowledged, was not ‘the sort of man who would favourably impress Lloyd George’ due to his ‘hide-bound manner’.⁵¹ As IGC and QMG respectively, Clayton and Maxwell were the BEF’s two senior supply officers and both viewed the transportation mission with naked hostility. However, their superior did not replicate their attitude. Even though Haig had adjudged Clayton’s ‘methodical system’ to be ‘very remarkable’ in December 1915,⁵² the BEF’s commander-in-chief was thoroughly aware that the continued expansion of the British war effort necessitated frequent reassessments of the BEF’s logistical foundations. Consequently, Geddes and his colleagues were received at GHQ on 24 August 1916 and began work the following day.

The transportation mission and the genesis of the directorate-general of transportation

The terms of reference issued to Geddes before his departure for France emphasize the enlarged scope of his mission in comparison to the localized, small-scale investigations of the previous eighteen months. His team were instructed by Lloyd George to: review the existing capacity of the BEF’s transport infrastructure and ascertain whether it was capable of conveying the ‘very considerably increased quantity of ammunition and other stores’ to be despatched from Britain in preparation for the offensives of 1917; identify the repairs, extensions and operational improvements that were required at the docks, on the railways and on both the canal and road networks to render them capable of sustaining an advance towards the German border; and learn ‘all that [was] possible from the very excellent transport arrangements of the French Army’, so that the British could appropriate efficient practices for implementation within the BEF.⁵³ After the investigation had taken place Geddes was to produce both a series of statistical breakdowns, which detailed the quantities of various materials that the BEF were likely to require for future operations, and a number of reports that catalogued the range of variables involved in the transport network’s maintenance and improvement.⁵⁴ In short, Geddes was directed to assess the past and present of the BEF’s supply system before offering recommendations for the future of British transportation on the western front.

The mission began with a series of observational visits. Accompanied by the deputy QMG, Colonel Woodroffe, Geddes’s team undertook a two-day tour of the BEF’s rear areas. Over the course of forty-eight hours they visited ammunition railheads and newly constructed stations and sidings, and Geddes was afforded the opportunity to discuss the supply situation with officers in command of the artillery batteries deployed along the Mametz–Carnoy valley.⁵⁵ In his biography of Geddes, Keith Grieves stated that the tour was ‘largely uninformative’ due to the ‘model’ nature of the sites the civilian specialist was shown.⁵⁶ However, Woodroffe’s account of the trip demonstrates that it provided the inspiration behind many of the improvements that were subsequently made to the transport infrastructure in France. The expedition impressed upon Geddes the immediate need for action to be taken to alleviate congestion and increase economy in the BEF’s ‘tail’. Furthermore, the brief overview of conditions behind the fighting troops provided him with the lines of enquiry upon which his follow-up investigation rested. As Woodroffe recorded:

Following his ‘model’ tour – but before he returned to London – Geddes met with Haig and was asked by the commander-in-chief for his opinion on what he had seen. ‘His reply was guarded’, Auckland Geddes wrote later, ‘to the effect that he had seen plenty to think about but as yet did not know what to think’.⁵⁸ Rather than risk sounding like he had arrived in France with pre-existing judgments, Geddes requested the opportunity to have a ‘free run’ of the BEF’s lines of communications and full access to the statistics and information required to complete his mission. Increasingly concerned by the blockage of supplies around Amiens, Haig acquiesced and notified Maxwell of Geddes’s requirements. Mindful of the QMG’s antipathy towards examinations on the lines of communications, Haig also issued a circular to all armies and administrative departments, which ordered that ‘all necessary information and any statistics required will be placed at the disposal of Sir Eric Geddes … and the C-in-C desires that every facility will be afforded [Geddes] in the conduct of [his] enquiries’.⁵⁹

Geddes’s aspirations for the thoroughness of the ‘free run’ were emphasized by the composition of the party that returned to France in early September. The original team was augmented by the addition of John Blades, a ‘very highly skilled dock superintendent’ employed by the North-Eastern and Hull and Barnsley railway companies.⁶⁰ Blades joined Nash and Freeland at the French Channel ports, where they were tasked to analyse existing conditions and discover the capacities of the docks based on the nature of the goods anticipated to be despatched in support of the 1917 offensives. Meanwhile, Geddes and the remainder of the party surveyed the rest of the transport network with the aim of building up a ‘complete statement’ of the weight of traffic required to supply the BEF.⁶¹ Within a fortnight, he felt sufficiently informed to offer a preliminary view of the situation on the western front to Lloyd George. It is clear from this letter that Geddes remained sensitive to the fragility of relations between his mission and many officers within the BEF. He implored the secretary of state for war not to reveal its contents to anyone in the War Office or at GHQ, as he feared that the criticisms contained within the document would severely jeopardize the remainder of the investigation if circulated.

The letter’s conclusions – formed even before the bulk of the necessary data had been collected, let alone analysed – were an unequivocal condemnation of the BEF’s logistical foundations and the innate reactivity of the force’s administrative echelon. ‘This is a war of Armies backed by machinery and “movement”’, Geddes wrote, ‘and I do not think that “movement” has received sufficient attention in anticipation of the advance. I judge this by the total absence of light railway or road organization, or policy for the use of waterways’.⁶² The fact that canal barges had been returned to civil work even as the French railways continued to be clogged by ever-increasing quantities of road stone exemplified the issue. Rather than operating as an integral component of the BEF’s transport mix, canals were considered as a carrier of last resort – to be requested only when rail transport was not available. The consequence of the BEF’s decision to go to war without an integrated IWT directorate was that, despite Gerald Holland’s efforts to develop capacity and promote waterborne transport, no guiding principles existed for the exploitation of the theatre’s abundant canals and rivers. Holland believed that IWT was capable of transporting far more than had hitherto been requested of it. However, ‘neither [in Britain] nor in France’ could Geddes ‘ascertain what the policy of canal user is. I doubt if one exists’.⁶³

The BEF’s problems were the consequence of insufficient forward planning and coordination, a result of the move towards decentralization instigated when the force began to expand in early 1915. At that time Robertson had acknowledged that the BEF had assumed ‘too great a strength to admit of matters being centralized at GHQ to the extent they are now’.⁶⁴ However, the redistribution of authority over the various components of the transport infrastructure had resulted in the emergence of heavily compartmentalized departments. Officers were only able to adjust working practices in their own sections, and no oversight was in place to ensure that seemingly minor modifications in one area did not adversely affect the operations of other departments whose work was necessarily interconnected. As Colonel Henniker noted, ‘the various transport agencies were a chain, the whole chain being no stronger than its weakest link’. In 1916 the links were not sufficiently connected ‘so as to ensure a smooth uninterrupted flow of traffic’ along the lines of communications.⁶⁵ The geographical barriers between Maxwell’s offices at GHQ in Montreuil-sur-Mer, Clayton’s at Abbeville and Holland’s at St Omer (where IWT had remained following GHQ’s transfer to Montreuil-sur-Mer) were a physical manifestation of an organizational deficiency. In a text on military transportation published after the war, Major-General J. C. Harding-Newman was particularly scathing of the situation. He wrote that Clayton ‘seldom, if ever, saw the QMG’, and claimed evocatively that ‘if ever there was more convincing proof of the dangers of separating the sub-divisions of a Staff, only the memorial to 77,000 unknown officers and men at Thiepval can provide it’.⁶⁶

The BEF possessed no internal structures through which it could regularly review its procedures and consider the future of its transport organization. Facilities had been improved ‘here and there’ when experience proved they were incapable of handling the amount of work required, but no authority had been established to prioritize the distribution of materials and labour so as to ensure the most efficient use of the limited resources in France. The system was a ‘hand-to-mouth’ one, which had not kept pace with the growing demands on it or conducted accurate forward planning activities.⁶⁷ While railway construction in the event of an advance on the Somme had been planned between the DRT and French authorities, the extra quantity of rolling stock required to bridge the extended gap between the depots and the front line had not. Instead, the question had been subjected to ‘rule-of-thumb’ estimates generated within the railways directorate that illustrate the inadequacy of the BEF’s planning mechanisms in 1916. The DRT tasked two officers to identify the number of wagons required to service the BEF’s railway requirements to the border between Belgium and Germany. Lieutenant-Colonel Henniker predicted that 22,501 wagons would be required to work the BEF’s daily traffic under such circumstances, whereas Lieutenant-Colonel Paget believed a mere 11,240 wagons would suffice. The wide discrepancy between the two figures was partly explained by the different parameters the officers had set themselves – Henniker, for example, added a 25 per cent margin to his estimate to take account of traffic dislocation and the unauthorized use of wagons as storage vehicles at railheads and in construction areas – yet neither soldier had based their calculations on a realistic prediction of the composition of the BEF’s likely traffic in 1917. The Somme demonstrated the artillery-intensive nature of the industrial battle, and its failure to dislodge the German army from French soil highlighted that even larger exertions would be required if future operations were to be successful. Geddes’s ‘scrutiny’ of Henniker’s estimate – the larger of the two – revealed that the latter had considerably underestimated both the BEF’s projected strength and the ‘tonnage of certain commodities’ that individual directorates had told the former would be necessary to fulfil their ‘ultimate requirements’ on the western front.⁶⁸

The absence of a comprehensive statement of the BEF’s needs meant that estimates like those produced by Henniker and Paget were at best misguided and at worst essentially worthless. Furthermore, the dearth of accurate forecasts concealed the scale of the challenge that the extant transport infrastructure was going to face in 1917. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the ports responsible for receiving all the BEF’s imported supplies. Prior to Geddes’s departure for France, Stuart-Wortley had provided him with a statement written by Clayton in July 1916, which outlined the ‘tonnage which he was prepared to discharge at the French ports’. The figure of 138,000 tons per week, which the IGC referred to as ‘the ultimate requirement’ for sixty divisions, almost exactly matched the maximum weekly tonnage discharged at the ports during August 1916.⁶⁹ Following a discussion with Geddes on what the civilian referred to as ‘general matters’, Clayton revised his estimate of the ports’ maximum possible discharge upwards to 160,916 tons. For reasons Geddes chose not to speculate upon, between July and September 1916 Clayton’s calculation for the volume of work he believed the BEF’s ports to be capable of increased by over 16 per cent.

Through the production of a comprehensive statement of the BEF’s requirements, acquired from the force’s individual directorates and departments, Geddes discovered that even Clayton’s higher estimate was woefully inadequate for the war the British hoped to fight in 1917. With the provision of a ‘margin for irregular arrivals and for contingencies’, Geddes established a maximum discharge to be provided for at the BEF’s ports of 248,327 tons per week – 40,225 tons every day (see Table 6.1). The provision of an accurate forecast meant that, for the first time, the discrepancy between the force’s demands and its ability to fulfil them was made tangible and clear. To meet the projected requirements for 1917 the capacity of the ports under the BEF’s control would have to increase by over 54 per cent.⁷⁰

Geddes’s almost immediate exposure of the inadequacy of the BEF’s forecasting capabilities convinced him that the transport mission as originally conceived could not continue. The time for investigations, formal enquiries and interviews with overworked officers had passed. ‘Executive action’ was called for on both sides of the Channel – to install a comprehensive, centrally directed policy for transportation that took account of the myriad questions of coordination, resourcing, staffing and expansion which arose in the management of a modern army’s supply arrangements.⁷¹ As Geddes concluded in his private letter to Lloyd George on 15 September 1916:

Table 6.1. Estimate of probable daily requirements for the British Expeditionary Force, 1917.

The BEF’s existing organizational structure was incapable of producing, analysing and interpreting the data streams required to maintain the efficiency – and increase the capacity – of the transport network upon which a vast force was dependent. As far as Geddes was concerned, the mass of special reports and memoranda originally requested by Lloyd George were no longer the priority were the BEF to be capable of successful offensive operations in France in 1917. The secretary of state for war agreed. Crucially, so did Haig.

The common ground between the army’s political head and its senior field commander became a platform both for the restructuring of the BEF’s administrative organization and for the appointment of some of Britain’s leading transport experts into positions of seniority within the military hierarchy. In London, Lloyd George acted quickly upon Geddes’s plea for executive action. On 18 September, just three days after the latter had penned his ‘preliminary opinion’ on matters in France, the secretary of state for war established the directorate-general of military railways at the War Office. The new directorate was initially created ‘with a view to improving transport facilities at present existing in this country and France’, and the position of director-general conceived to act as a deputy to the QMG of the forces. However, the constitution of the new directorate also explicitly stated that the DGMR was to have ‘direct access’ to the secretary of state for war and would attend meetings of the Army Council at which matters of military transportation were under discussion.⁷³

Reasons of both practicality and personality governed this decision. In terms of the former, access to the Army Council and the secretary of state permitted the DGMR to attend conferences with policy makers and argue the case for resources to be made available for military transport rather than other components of the war effort.⁷⁴ Raw materials such as steel were vital to the production of military necessities as diverse as helmets and tanks, and also to the construction of the locomotives, ships and railway tracks necessary to transport supplies and maintain Britain’s connection with the world’s markets. As the DGMR was to ‘assume responsibility for the purchase of material for the construction, equipment, maintenance, repair and working of railways, light railways, canals, docks and roads’,⁷⁵ his success in the role was dependent upon his ability to acquire sufficient money, materials and manpower to fulfil these duties. The success of the wider allied war effort depended upon the successful balance of the many competing demands on the limited pool of resources available.

The personality considerations that influenced the directorate-general of military railways’ position within the military hierarchy centred upon the relationship between Lloyd George’s choice for DGMR and the incumbent officers in the QMG’s department. On 18 September the secretary of state for war offered Geddes the role of DGMR in a letter that made clear that the new directorate would take over responsibility for the directorate of movements from the QMG.⁷⁶ Therefore, Geddes was scheduled to become Stuart-Wortley’s superior. The latter’s thoughts on the matter were gathered by Lord Derby in what was ‘rather a painful interview’:

Lloyd George was prepared for the DOM’s threat, which was backed up by expressions of opposition to Geddes’s appointment from two members of the Army Council. The secretary of state’s response was to issue Geddes with the honorary rank of major-general, a manoeuvre that both reinforced the directorate’s status within the military hierarchy and solidified Geddes’s authority in the army’s command structure; below his nominal superior, Lieutenant-General Sir John Cowans, but above Brigadier-General Stuart-Wortley. The latter reiterated to Lloyd George in a personal meeting that he could not work under Geddes, and a compromise was fashioned. Following Geddes’s acceptance, with ‘some misgiving’, of the post of DGMR on 21 September, the civilian took over the railway supply and IWT branches while Stuart-Wortley and the rest of his staff remained under the QMG’s direct command.⁷⁸ The separation of his command, Stuart-Wortley admitted privately to Henry Wilson, was a necessity – his ‘show had really got too big’ by September 1916.⁷⁹

Geddes’s expertise was not just in demand in London following the transportation mission. One day after the civilian had accepted the post of DGMR, Haig informed Lloyd George that he wanted Geddes to head a directorate-general of transportation in France – created to manage the BEF’s supply lines on the western front. Upon accepting the post of DGT, Geddes became responsible for the provision and maintenance of the logistics network that sustained and equipped the largest military force Britain had ever assembled in the field alongside the acquisition and supply of all the resources required by the transportation services behind all the nation’s globally dispersed expeditionary forces.

The establishment of the two directorates, and the appointment of Geddes at their heads, resulted in a remarkable concentration of power over the army’s future in the hands of a civilian. His possession of a senior military rank was not enough to silence the ‘whispering staff officers’ who perceived Geddes’s appointments to be ‘evidence of the threat which Lloyd George posed to the autonomy of [the] military high command’.⁸⁰ Cowans remarked to Haig after dinner on 14 October that the secretary of state for war had ‘imported an element of distrust into the W[ar] O[ffice] so that one wants “eyes in the back of one’s head” in London’, and stated his belief that Lloyd George sought to place ‘civilians into the military machine wherever he possibly can to replace soldiers’.⁸¹ The abolition of the post of IGC and Sir Frederick Clayton’s subsequent departure from France did nothing to alleviate similar fears among the soldiers on the western front, and his removal was later portrayed as a consequence of his opposition to Lloyd George’s desire to employ Chinese and African labour behind the lines.⁸² The truth was far more prosaic. In late September Haig had noted that Clayton was ‘anxious to retain control of the ports’ in the face of the impending restructure at GHQ.⁸³ However, within a fortnight he had accepted that there was ‘not room for an IGC and QMG in France, and that the proposed amendments with the introduction of Geddes as DGT would work well, and that he would do all he could to assist with them prior to his return home. He was tired, his health was failing and he wanted/needed to go home’.⁸⁴ The strain of active service had caught up with the sixty-one-year-old Clayton, and he returned to Britain to receive the recognition he felt he had earned earlier in the war in the 1917 New Year’s honours.

Haig, while acknowledging the unique nature of Geddes’s position, championed the civilian’s role from the outset. He recognized how important the application of expertise was to the solution of the complex problems the expanding war had generated, and met frequently with the railwayman to discuss transportation matters. Haig believed explicitly in the promotion of the best man for the job in the BEF, regardless of their background or previous military experience:

In the context of an industrialized war that demanded the mobilization and coordination of the British empire’s human and material resources, Haig and Lloyd George both understood that the inefficient use of those resources to placate the sensibilities of the ‘military trade union’ was incompatible with the goal of securing victory over a determined and organized enemy. The employment of a ‘civilian who was unafraid of large-scale planning and had access to the necessary resources’ was far more logical than the continued use of soldiers who were handed transportation work ‘merely because they [were] generals and colonels’.⁸⁶ The commander-in-chief’s enlightened attitude, coupled with the political backing of the secretary of state for war in London, provided Geddes with the support he required to establish functioning directorates on both sides of the Channel.

However, the powerful support of the British war effort’s most prominent figures does not entirely explain the scale of Geddes’s achievement. The directorate-general of transportation’s organizational chart provided fourteen departmental heads – each with their own hierarchical management structure and units dispersed throughout the BEF’s rear areas – with direct access to the DGT. To coordinate the various forms of transport under his control, to balance the conflicting priorities and competing demands of these groups, and to direct them towards the realization of Haig’s strategic goals called for a man of exceptional organizing capacity. Geddes combined the fulfilment of these responsibilities in France with equally monumental duties in London, where he commanded the department charged with providing sufficient personnel and equipment to satisfy the seemingly insatiable demands of Britain’s global war. The tasks that confronted the DGT and DGMR in October 1916 were Herculean. Geddes was a ‘Hercules’.⁸⁷ But he did not undertake his labours alone. In the aftermath of the battle of the Somme, Geddes was able to draw the skills of Britain’s transport experts even more deeply into the prosecution of the First World War.

The population of the transport directorates

Geddes’s key appointments to the directorates in London and France demonstrate his appreciation of the need for civilian and military elements to exist in close harmony. Working relationships on both sides of the Channel heavily influenced his decision to install Ralph Wedgwood as director of docks. The responsibility for ships despatched from Britain remained with the DOM until the vessels arrived at their destination port. Therefore, the docks directorate on the western front received goods straight from the care of Stuart-Wortley’s department. The two directors had to work collaboratively to agree the composition of traffic to be moved across the Channel each month and to ensure the maintenance and improvement of communications either side of the sea.⁸⁸ In October 1916 Geddes reported that telegraphic advices received in France contained incomplete details as to the cargo on board each ship, did not state the departure time of the vessel and often did not arrive at the relevant dock before the ship had crossed the Channel – a problem encountered by Francis Dent eighteen months earlier at the Bassin Loubet.⁸⁹ To rectify such inefficiencies it was imperative that the working relationship between the principal officers involved in the operations of the docks was not hampered by the personal animosity that had characterized Geddes’s interactions with Stuart-Wortley.

In Wedgwood, Geddes identified a civilian with whom Stuart-Wortley had ‘always got on well’ and a man with the necessary professional experience to take on the job.⁹⁰ He was the first graduate of the North-Eastern Railway’s traffic apprenticeship scheme and had succeeded Geddes in the role of chief goods manager in 1912. He had been released for service with the railway transport establishment soon after the outbreak of war but,⁹¹ like Brigadier-General Philip Nash and Lieutenant-Colonel J. George Beharrell – who were issued with honorary military ranks and appointed deputy DGT and assistant DGT (statistics) respectively – Brigadier-General Wedgwood was yet another railwayman with scant military experience parachuted into a senior military position in the autumn of 1916. The trend led Lord Northcliffe to observe cynically that ‘we have brought to France a considerable portion of industrial England’.⁹²

Northcliffe was not the only observer to be perturbed by the outflow of prominent railwaymen to France. The departure of Nash, Beharrell and Geddes from the Ministry of Munitions was felt keenly, if somewhat melodramatically, by Lloyd George’s successor as minister. As Edwin Montagu wrote to Lloyd George on 11 October 1916:

Just two days later, and ‘despite the fact’ he found it ‘very difficult to spare him’, Montagu agreed to Wedgwood’s release.⁹⁴

The ‘curious coincidence’ to which Montagu referred was a consequence of the North-Eastern’s progressive approach to management before the First World War. Geddes, Beharrell and Wedgwood were all graduates of the company’s managerial apprenticeship programme, and had proven themselves adaptable to the diverse challenges of wartime administration. The directorate-general of transportation’s establishment permitted these senior executives to refocus their energies from munitions production to a more recognizable challenge: the provision of a reliable and efficient transportation system. However, the North-Eastern was far from the only British railway company to contribute personnel to the new military transport hierarchies created in France and London.

The discussions that surrounded the appointment of Sir Guy Granet as Geddes’s deputy in London illustrate the delicate balance between civilian and military demands that the British war effort could not irrevocably upset. As Geddes anticipated that the scale of the task in France was likely to occupy most of his time, he sought out a highly qualified man to oversee affairs at the War Office. In Granet he doubtless saw many of his own qualities. Both had experience outside the railway industry – Granet having initially trained as a barrister – and both had experienced a rapid rise to positions of seniority. Just six years after entering the railway industry Granet took over as general manager of the Midland Railway, an ‘undertaking rather living on its past reputation’.⁹⁵ The company had become known for the ‘easy-going regard to the virtue of punctuality’ embraced by its 66,000 employees.⁹⁶ However, assisted by a good team of senior managers – which from 1907 included the future ROD commanding officer, Cecil Paget, as chief operating officer – Granet rapidly cultivated a systemic change in the Midland’s organizational culture that was officially acknowledged with the award of a knighthood in 1911. His readiness to employ new methods, such as the train control system discussed below, and his high standing within the profession doubtless encouraged Geddes to choose Granet as his deputy in October 1916. Yet Granet was also already well known within the War Office thanks to his membership of the ERSC and REC, and Sir John Cowans offered his ‘hearty approval’ to Granet’s appointment.⁹⁷ Even Stuart-Wortley found the Midland’s general manager to be a ‘nice fellow’,⁹⁸ a further demonstration that his animosity towards Geddes was fuelled by personal dislike more than professional jealousy.

The soldiers’ enthusiasm for Granet’s appointment was not shared by his employers. As the correspondence between Lloyd George and the Midland’s chairman demonstrates, Geddes’s request for Granet’s services created substantial difficulties for a company that had already endured serious privations thanks to the war’s incessant demands. In response to Lloyd George’s appeal for Granet to be released, George Murray Smith wrote:

Lloyd George’s appreciation of the company’s ‘patriotic action’ and his ‘regret’ at the Midland’s ‘inconvenience’ did nothing to ameliorate the pressures under which the railway operated during the war.¹⁰⁰

The Midland, like many of its colleagues, found it difficult to replace highly skilled officials such as Granet easily during the war. The absence of his experience and ability while on governmental duties created further discomfort for the railway servants who remained in post as the demands on the British network grew in line with the expanding war effort. In the heaviest year of the war, the Midland carried eighteen million more passengers and 3,220,000 tons more goods than it had in 1913, despite having lost 29 per cent of its male staff to the armed forces.¹⁰¹ Under such testing conditions, the Midland’s decision to permit Granet’s release for service in the directorate-general of military railways underlines the continued existence of the cooperative spirit fostered between the railways, government and armed forces prior to the outbreak of the war.

The accommodating responses to governmental requests from railway companies such as the Midland and the North-Eastern were not matched by all of Britain’s transport enterprises. For the Port of London, domestic requirements prevailed over the demands of the western front. Geddes sought to employ a man with ‘practical knowledge’, particularly of the mechanical engineering aspects of dock work, to act as a deputy to Wedgwood in France and help improve the Channel ports’ throughput rates.¹⁰² He considered Cyril Kirkpatrick, the Port of London’s chief engineer – and a future president of ICE – to be the perfect candidate as he was ‘a very strong man and a pusher’. Kirkpatrick and Wedgwood knew one another from the former’s tenure as city engineer and town surveyor in Newcastle upon Tyne before the war, and Geddes believed Kirkpatrick to be ‘quite glad’ of the opportunity to go to France. However, the Port of London refused to release him, as he was engaged on the construction of what became the King George V Dock on the Thames. Undeterred, Geddes wrote to Lloyd George that ‘if the ports over here are to be worked satisfactorily it is essential that we should have not the third or fourth class men from the British ports but the best’. The port continued to resist, even after the secretary of state for war despatched a letter to its chairman that stressed the ‘national importance’ of Kirkpatrick’s proposed role ‘to help forward to a satisfactory solution the vital question of transportation in France’.¹⁰³ Clearly then, the later assertions of the official historian – that Geddes received everything he desired following his appointment – were misguided. The ongoing requirements of the domestic transport industry limited Geddes’s access to the best men that civilian enterprise could provide.

From the winter of 1916–17 onwards the higher organization of the BEF’s transport requirements was administered by a synthesis of civilian and military expertise. The influx of civilians into military roles did not lead to the wholesale replacement of soldiers. Where the incumbent – whether a general, colonel or otherwise – had proven themselves capable of discharging their duties, Geddes understood the benefits of retaining their services. Following Mance’s performance on the transportation mission he returned to the War Office, was rewarded with a promotion to brigadier-general, and handed responsibility for sourcing the material and personnel required for the army’s enlarged road, railway and light railway departments. Colonel Collard, who had acquired responsibility for the provision of men and material for the army’s IWT services in January 1915, also kept his job.¹⁰⁴

The explanation given to Granet for the two soldiers’ retention demonstrates Geddes’s appreciation of the crucial role to be played by military experience within the directorate-general of military railways. ‘Our chief difficulty’, he wrote, ‘will be to get things “through” the War Office’. Mance and Collard understood the army’s bureaucracy and were ‘very wise’ to the ‘minor tricks of the trade’ that had to be deployed in aid of the directorate’s goals. According to Geddes, once a paper reached the War Office it passed beyond ‘the wit of man to get it out again’. It was ‘only by knowing the ropes and knowing where the snags’ were, ‘and how either to get round them or knock them out of the way’, that Geddes believed anyone could ‘get anything done at all’.¹⁰⁵ In addition, in recognition of the multitude of concerns with which both he and Granet were likely to be bombarded as the directorate evolved, Geddes stressed that Mance and Collard were able to run their own departments and work confidently without the need for close supervision from above.¹⁰⁶ Mance remained in post for the rest of the war and ultimately became a highly respected author on international transportation matters, while Collard was taken to the Admiralty by Geddes in May 1917 and appointed as deputy controller of auxiliary shipbuilding. Geddes was not alone in admiring Collard’s talents. Sir Sam Fay recalled in his memoirs that Collard was ‘an extraordinary man, full of energy, very able, and prepared to take on anything from the construction of a battleship to the manufacture of a watch’.¹⁰⁷

Geddes was also keen to retain Stuart-Wortley, at least in the short-term. Regardless of the obvious disdain the DOM had shown towards him, three factors combined to persuade Geddes not to immediately seek the replacement of Stuart-Wortley with a more compliant personality. First, over the summer of 1916 comments that questioned the veracity of placing civilians in key positions of authority began to appear in the pages of the Northcliffe press. Lord Northcliffe and Lloyd George had ‘mysteriously drifted apart’ earlier in the year,¹⁰⁸ and the former argued in articles for The Times that civilians should ‘leave it to the service chiefs to decide strategy and the soldiers to die in battle’. As Lloyd George was facilitating Geddes’s mission to France in August, Northcliffe warned that ‘we must make changes [to the command structure of the army] with caution’.¹⁰⁹ On a related note, in order to ensure the smoothness of operations while the directorate-general of military railways was bedded in, Geddes was keenly aware of the need to maintain the good will of the professional soldiers in the War Office – many of whom were longstanding colleagues of Stuart-Wortley’s. The king was ‘glad to hear’ that Stuart-Wortley remained as DOM in early October 1916, ‘and that he and Sir Eric Geddes [were] working in complete harmony’ despite their personal animosity.¹¹⁰ At a more practical level, the backing of Sir John Cowans – Stuart-Wortley’s most fervent supporter – was critical to the project’s overall success. As Fay discovered when he eventually took over as DOM in early 1917, the removal of Cowans’s friend elicited an emotional response from the QMG:

Cowans’s outburst was highly uncharitable towards one of the pre-war British railway industry’s most respected figures. But it also demonstrated the second reason why Geddes was loath to dispense with Stuart-Wortley’s services straight away. Put simply, the latter’s experience and understanding of his role made him temporarily indispensable. The process of replacing him threatened the directorate’s efficiency, and had to be handled carefully. As Fay himself acknowledged after shadowing Stuart-Wortley for a week before he took over, nobody could have ‘run the show’ as well as the outgoing DOM had to that point.¹¹²

Finally, Geddes was more interested in the creation of efficient, functional departments than the settling of any personal scores. Stuart-Wortley was not removed because of the animosity between him and Geddes, but as a result of a decision made by Lloyd George’s replacement as secretary of state for war. Had the organizational fudge created to accommodate Stuart-Wortley’s desire not to serve under Geddes worked then it would doubtless have remained in place for the remainder of the war. However, Lord Derby was convinced that the pseudo-subordination had not been a success. He announced to Haig that Geddes recognized how Stuart-Wortley ‘had played the game … and nobody could have behaved better’, but the separation of the directorate of movements had ‘prevented things going smoothly’.¹¹³ Stuart-Wortley’s sustained refusal to serve under Geddes saw him replaced as DOM by Sir Sam Fay in early January 1917. Following an unsuccessful stint on the western front, where he served briefly in command of a brigade and even more briefly as a divisional commander, Stuart-Wortley ended the war as deputy QMG in Mesopotamia.

Alongside friction in London, Geddes’s appointment as DGT and the corresponding restructure of the BEF’s organization generated passionate opposition in France. Sir Ronald Maxwell, Haig’s QMG, failed to reach agreement on the relationship between his department and Geddes’s new directorate, and threatened to resign if the new organization was ‘forced’ on him.¹¹⁴ On 30 October 1916 Haig made a personal intervention in an attempt both to assuage Maxwell’s fears that Geddes had been sent to France by Lloyd George to replace him and to establish a ‘workable scheme … suitable to the personalities who had to work it’. The commander-in-chief held a conference with his senior staff officers, which included Maxwell and Geddes at separate times, ‘in order to try and ascertain what [the QMG’s] objections to the scheme really were’. To Haig it was soon evident ‘that there was [sic] no solid grounds for disagreement’ between the two men, and the chief of the general staff sketched out the boundaries between the QMG’s and DGT’s responsibilities that evening. Haig’s support for Geddes’s position, alongside his affirmation that the civilian had not been imposed upon the BEF by Lloyd George, were sufficient to convince Maxwell to withdraw his resignation. In addition, he ‘said that he would tell his Directors to stop their criticism’ of Geddes’s appointment as DGT. That such an action was required illustrates the depth of military hostility towards the British war effort’s new direction in the winter of 1916–17.

However, the existence of military apprehension with regards to the structural and personnel changes within the BEF and the War Office should not be taken as evidence of a concerted attempt to assert civilian dominance over the army. Geddes, with the full support of both Haig and Lloyd George, sought to merge the talents of Britain’s transport experts with the bespoke knowledge acquired by soldiers through two years’ practical experience of industrial war. His correspondence on the subject of Colonel M. C. Rowland, whose name was forwarded to Geddes for consideration in December 1916, illustrates the qualities he demanded from candidates for employment in the directorate-general of transportation. Upon the document outlining Rowland’s skills and aptitudes, Geddes underlined the following: control of mechanical transport, rail and sea transport; record work; and recruiting.¹¹⁵ Where professional soldiers had demonstrated their possession of such qualities they were retained. Where they fell short of the competencies necessary to discharge their duties – as in the case of the DRT, Brigadier-General John Twiss – they were swiftly removed. In November 1916 Geddes complained to Haig that Twiss had failed to pursue orders that had been placed for the railway equipment necessary to prepare the BEF for its intended offensive operations in early 1917. Furthermore, the DRT had relied upon ‘one of Geddes’s men’ to identify the correct estimates for the force’s requirements in terms of locomotives and miles of track. Twiss, Haig recorded, ought to either have argued against Geddes’s projections or resigned. He had done neither, nor demonstrated sufficient mastery of the details of his brief to retain the confidence of his superiors.¹¹⁶

With two entirely new departments to populate and the majority of the army’s most skilled administrators already employed either at home or abroad, Britain’s transport companies were the most logical source of talent for Geddes to exploit in 1916–17. Suitably skilled civilians were identified, appointed and applied to the challenges of wartime transportation at both senior executive and junior management levels following his appointments as DGT and DGMR. Approximately one half of the technical officers under the DGT’s control ‘were furnished by the British railway companies or on recommendation of the Railway Executive Committee, and the other half were men from overseas employed on Colonial or foreign railways who offered their services’.¹¹⁷ Brigadier-General Geoffry Harrisson, who oversaw light railway operations from February 1918 onwards, exemplified the latter. Harrisson served with the Royal Engineers in South Africa between 1901 and 1902, but had abandoned a civil engineering post with the LNWR to work in Argentina before the war. From 1907 onwards he had worked for the Argentine North-East Railway at Concordia, and the outbreak of the conflict occurred when he was building a railway in Brazil. Harrisson’s experience of railway construction and military discipline made him an obvious candidate for service within the upper echelons of the transport directorate.¹¹⁸

Yet expertise was required throughout the organization, not just at managerial levels of the command hierarchy. The large-scale transport challenges that confronted the BEF from 1917 onwards necessitated the enlistment of huge numbers of men with the practical skills to undertake and supervise varied construction and operation duties effectively. Where Geddes lacked personal familiarity with the requirements of a role, he followed the template provided by the Ministry of Munitions earlier in the war and employed men who possessed the requisite skills and contacts. When Henry Maybury, the chief engineer of the road board, was appointed director of roads in France he was provided with a free hand to recruit suitable officers for the technical work of road construction. Around 2,600 men were selected from lists that comprised both serving officers and civilians, while a further 400 men were offered temporary commissions as officers in the Labour Corps. Maybury used his peacetime position to convene conferences of the chief officials of the local road authorities immediately after his appointment, and raised a number of complete companies of 250 men drawn from the same local area – a lines-of-communications-equivalent of the front-line ‘Pals battalions’.¹¹⁹ Already by 1 December 1916 Haig could record in his diary that 1,200 over-age men had been made available for road-related duties, and 1,800 ‘expert road men’ were in the process of being enlisted.¹²⁰

The commander-in-chief’s diary entry that day also emphasized the scale of the railway recruitment process that took place after the creation of the directorate-general of transportation. Geddes had secured 12,000 railwaymen from the British railways ‘to improve the BEF’s capacity on the mainline railways’ ahead of the 1917 campaigning season.¹²¹ The wartime career of Company Sergeant Major L. W. Conibear provides just one example of the skills sets that ordinary railway servants contributed to the BEF’s transport services in the second half of the war. An employee of the Great Western Railway at Bristol, Conibear joined the ROD in January 1917 and was in France by 4 February. Over the next five months he undertook a range of duties on board trains, including those of brakesman, guardsman and signalman, and was employed on clerical tasks such as organizing traffic and maintaining the orderly room. By July 1917, just six months after he had enlisted in the army, Conibear took over responsibility for all the administrative work in the Fifth Army’s light railways department. He dealt with

Conibear occupied this role until, following the dislocation and confusion caused by the German spring offensive in March 1918, his versatility proved invaluable to the BEF in the conflict’s final months. After a period of ‘considerable roaming’ when the Fifth Army disintegrated, Conibear was placed in charge of sixty men attached to the Canadian Railway Troops and tasked with broad gauge reconstruction. He was responsible for the building of lines until the Fifth Army was reconstituted at the end of June, when he took on the job of central traffic controller. For the remainder of the war Conibear oversaw the ‘movement of all power, wagons and traffic’ in the Fifth Army, under the direction of the superintendent of the line.¹²³

Conclusion

‘Warfare’, Haig wrote to Geddes in September 1916, ‘consists of men, munitions and movement. We have got the men and the munitions, but we seem to have forgotten the movement’.¹²⁴ The BEF had increased tenfold from the small, professional force that had left Southampton in the summer of 1914, while the firepower amassed behind the front line dwarfed that collected together in any previous British conflict. The quantity of shells, supplies and myriad stores consumed by the BEF in 1916 were insufficient to overcome the German resistance on the Somme. However, they were sufficient to illuminate the profound weaknesses in the transport infrastructure upon which any allied advance depended. As one corps’ chief engineer (the future DGT, Major-General Sir Sydney Crookshank) admitted after the war, ‘on the Somme the British Army was practically immobile’.¹²⁵ Had Haig’s much desired break through occurred, the BEF was in no position to take advantage for much of the battle.

The army’s largest military engagement in history to that point emphasized the need for a holistic examination of the BEF’s road, rail and waterborne resources. Sir Eric Geddes undertook that investigation, and the character of the British war effort for the remainder of the war was shaped by his response to the unfolding crisis in Picardy. He argued for the centralization of transport policy on the western front, and accepted responsibility for the creation, population and direction of entirely new organizations in France and London. Upon his appointment as DGT and DGMR, the civilian railway expert obtained ‘a position of most unusual authority and power’. The concentration of such remarkable control in the hands of a non-military actor engendered jealousy from professional soldiers on both sides of the Channel, emotions that coloured post-war interpretations of what took place after Geddes’s transportation mission had been completed. As the Royal Engineers’ history of the war observed, ‘no QMG or Brigadier-General of Railways in France would ever have been allowed the power and the resources’ showered upon Geddes in the autumn of 1916.¹²⁶

Auckland Geddes provided a retort on his brother’s behalf. He asserted that ‘until experts, with experience of the transport problems – both rail and road – of crowded industrial England, were on the spot in charge of supply movement, fully adequate provision for the fighting men had proved impossible’.¹²⁷ This conclusion misrepresents the civil–military dynamic within the transport directorates created by his brother in France and London. From the very outset the directorate-generals of military railways and transportation were conceived and staffed in a way that took advantage of both military and civilian transport expertise. Geddes’s recognition of the importance of technical and administrative experience was as manifest in his retention of talented soldiers like Collard and Mance as it was in his appointment of civilian railway managers such as Granet and Fay to responsible positions in the War Office.

The successful integration of civilian and military elements owed much to Haig’s unequivocal support for Geddes. The motivations behind the commander-in-chief’s backing of the civilian were twofold. First, as Keith Grieves identified, Geddes’s employment symbolized Haig’s acknowledgement of the ‘forgotten interrelationship of strategy and transport’ on the western front.¹²⁸ Second, Geddes’s appointment was viewed as an opportunity for the BEF’s senior field commander to influence the higher direction of the war. As Haig recorded in his diary after a conference with Lloyd George on the subject of light railway materials:

Haig’s comment carries more than a hint of post-war observations about the government’s willingness to act upon the advice of businessmen rather than soldiers. It also demonstrates his recognition that a war for human and material resources took place within the British war effort as well as between the belligerents on either side of no man’s land. And for the remainder of the conflict, a union of military and industrial experience provided the means and methods by which the British army employed those resources to prosecute warfare on a truly industrial scale.

______________

¹ D. Lloyd George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (6 vols., London, 1933; 2 vols., London, 1938), i. 479.

² D. Haig, Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatches (December 1915–April 1919), ed. J. H. Boraston (London, 1919), p. 351.

³ K. Grieves, ‘Haig and the government, 1916–1918’, in Haig: a Reappraisal 80 Years On, ed. B. Bond and N. Cave (Barnsley, 2009), pp. 107–27, at p. 121.

⁴ TNA, ZPER 39/41 The Railway Magazine, vol. xli, ‘British railway service and the Great War’ [xvli], 1917, p. 186.

⁵ Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 5th ser., xcix (19 Nov. 1917), col. 904.

⁶ Lloyd George, War Memoirs, i. 471.

⁷ E. Greenhalgh, Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War (Cambridge, 2005), p. 7.

⁸ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW/2/83/65, Hutchinson to Wilson, 7 July 1916.

⁹ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/3/14/26, Le-Roy Lewis to Lloyd George, 8 Nov. 1916; LG/E/2/23/2, Asquith to Lloyd George, 6 July 1916.

¹⁰ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/2/11/2, Esher to Lloyd George, 13 Aug. 1916.

¹¹ A. C. Geddes, The Forging of a Family: a Family Story Studied in Its Genetical, Cultural and Spiritual Aspects and a Testament of Personal Belief Founded Thereon (London, 1952), pp. 233–5.

¹² TNA, WO 32/5163, appointment of Sir E. Geddes and others to investigate transport arrangements in connection with the British Expeditionary Force at home and overseas, Lloyd George to Haig, 1 Aug. 1916.

¹³ I. M. Brown, British Logistics on the Western Front, 1914–1919 (London, 1998), p. 120.

¹⁴ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/106, diary entry, 5 June 1916.

¹⁵ J. E. Edmonds, History of the Great War. Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1916 (2 vols., 1932), i. 271. Even in the more understated words of Colonel Henniker, ‘the railways serving [the Somme] … were not good’. See A. M. Henniker, History of the Great War: Transportation on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London, 1937), p. 120.

¹⁶ Edmonds, France and Belgium, 1916, i. 273.

¹⁷ Brown, British Logistics, p. 184; Henniker, History of the Great War, pp. 136–7.

¹⁸ J. C. Harding-Newman, Modern Military Administration, Organization and Transportation (Aldershot, 1933), p. 16.

¹⁹ For a broader account of the events discussed in this passage, see C. Phillips, ‘The changing nature of supply: transportation in the BEF during the battle of the Somme’, in At All Costs: the British Army on the Western Front 1916, ed. S. Jones (Warwick, 2018), pp. 117–38.

²⁰ History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, ed. H. L. Pritchard (11 vols., Chatham, 1952), v. 293.

²¹ TNA, WO 95/441, the Fourth Army. Deputy adjutant and QMG war diary, Census of traffic at Fricourt Cemetery, 24 July 1916; Amiens–Albert road, census of traffic, 24 July 1916.

²² R. U. H. Buckland, ‘Experiences at Fourth Army headquarters: organization and work of the R.E.’, Royal Engineers Journal, xli (1927), 385–413, at p. 389.

²³ TNA, WO 107/15, IGC, general correspondence, Cowans to Maxwell, 10 Sept. 1915.

²⁴ TNA, WO 107/15, IGC, general correspondence, Maxwell to Cowans, 12 Sept. 1915.

²⁵ Brown, British Logistics, p. 109.

²⁶ TNA, WO 32/5163, appointment of Sir E. Geddes, Haig to Lloyd George, 4 Aug. 1916.

²⁷ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/215Q, memorandum (received from Lord Derby), 11 July 1916, pp. 1–2.

²⁸ The memorandum proposed that the directors of railways and IWT ‘should occupy very much the same position to the [director-general of the new directorate] as superintendents of British railways occupy to the general managers’. See NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/215Q, memorandum, 11 July 1916, p. 1.

²⁹ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/215Q, memorandum by Maxwell, 17 July 1916, p. 1. Emphasis added.

³⁰ TNA, WO 32/5163, appointment of Sir E. Geddes, Haig to Lloyd George, 4 Aug. 1916.

³¹ Brown, British Logistics, p. 104.

³² NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/104, diary entries, 22–27 Dec. 1915.

³³ TNA, WO 32/5164, facilities and arrangements for Sir E. Geddes in conducting his investigation on transport arrangements in connection with the British Expeditionary Force at home and overseas, Haig to Lloyd George, 22 Aug. 1916.

³⁴ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/1/1/6, Derby to Lloyd George, 15 Sept. 1916; K. Grieves, ‘The transportation mission to GHQ, 1916’, in ‘Look to Your Front!’ Studies in the First World War by the British Commission for Military History, ed. B. Bond et al. (Staplehurst, 1999), pp. 63–78, at p. 71.

³⁵ TNA, WO 32/5164, facilities and arrangements for Sir E. Geddes, Geddes to Lloyd George, 10 Aug. 1916.

³⁶ TNA, WO 32/5164, facilities and arrangements for Sir E. Geddes, Stuart-Wortley to Cowans, 7 Aug. 1916.

³⁷ D. Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (London, 2011), p. 260.

³⁸ TNA, WO 32/5164, facilities and arrangements for Sir E. Geddes, Geddes to Lloyd George, 10 Aug. 1916.

³⁹ TNA, WO 95/76, branches and services: Director of supplies, diary entry, 11 Jan. 1916.

⁴⁰ ‘Philip Arthur Manley Nash’, Grace’s guide to British industrial history, 2016 <http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Philip_Arthur_Manley_Nash> [accessed 7 Dec. 2016]; K. Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes: Business and Government in War and Peace (Manchester, 1989), pp. 19–24; Grieves, ‘The transportation mission’, p. 65.

⁴¹ Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes, p. 30.

⁴² TNA, WO 107/15, IGC, general correspondence, Clayton to Cowans, 8 July 1915.

⁴³ TNA, WO 107/15, IGC, general correspondence, Clayton to Cowans, 23 Nov. 1915. For further missives on the same theme, see Clayton to Cowans, 4 Dec. 1915 and 7 Jan. 1916.

⁴⁴ TNA, WO 107/15, IGC, general correspondence, Cowans to Maxwell, 31 May 1916.

⁴⁵ TNA, WO 107/15, IGC, general correspondence, Clayton to Cowans, 10 Feb. 1916.

⁴⁶ TNA, WO 95/3969, headquarters branches and services. Inspector general, Clayton to Maxwell, 14 June 1916. Emphasis added.

⁴⁷ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/14, remarks on the report of the commission sent out by the shipping control committee, 30 July 1916. Emphasis added. The conclusions of Royden’s report are summarized in Pritchard, History of the Royal Engineers, v. 610.

⁴⁸ TNA, WO 95/76, director of supplies war diary, diary entry, 24 Apr. 1916. Haig considered Williams to be ‘broad minded and sensible’. See NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/105, diary entry, 28 March 1916.

⁴⁹ LHCMA, Robertson papers, 7/6/60, Robertson to Haig, 28 July 1916.

⁵⁰ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/1/1/3, Derby to Lloyd George, 30 Aug. 1916.

⁵¹ LHCMA, Robertson papers, 7/6/60, Robertson to Haig, 28 July 1916.

⁵² NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/104, diary entry, 30 Dec. 1915.

⁵³ TNA, WO 32/5164, facilities and arrangements for Sir E. Geddes, Lloyd George to Haig, 16 Aug. 1916; Lloyd George to Roques, 23 Aug. 1916.

⁵⁴ A complete list of the statistics, projections, and reports originally demanded from the transportation mission is given in Appendix I.

⁵⁵ IWM, Woodroffe papers, 3/38/1/2, notes and reports, 25 Aug. 1916.

⁵⁶ Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes, p. 29.

⁵⁷ IWM, Woodroffe papers, 3/38/1/2, notes and reports, 25 Aug. 1916.

⁵⁸ Geddes, The Forging of a Family, p. 232.

⁵⁹ TNA, WO 95/31, branches and services: quarter-master general, circular to all armies, IGC and engineer-in-chief, 3 Sept. 1916.

⁶⁰ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/4, Geddes to Lloyd George, 15 Sept. 1916, p. 2.

⁶¹ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/102. memorandum by Geddes, pp. 2–3.

⁶² UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/4, Geddes to Lloyd George, 15 Sept. 1916, pp. 7–8.

⁶³ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/4, Geddes to Lloyd George, 15 Sept. 1916, pp. 2–3.

⁶⁴ LHCMA, Robertson papers, 2/2/63, Robertson to Cowans, 8 Jan. 1915.

⁶⁵ Henniker, History of the Great War, p. 192.

⁶⁶ Harding-Newman, Modern Military Administration, p. 16.

⁶⁷ Henniker, History of the Great War, p. 184.

⁶⁸ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/155, railway arrangements for advance through Belgium, 28 Oct. 1916, pp. 1–2.

⁶⁹ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/102, memorandum by Geddes, p. 2. In the week ending 20 Aug. 1916 a total of 138,897 tons were discharged at the ports allocated to the BEF. The weekly average over the four weeks ending 27 Aug. was 129,024 tons.

⁷⁰ Henniker, History of the Great War, p. 185.

⁷¹ Grieves, ‘The transportation mission’, p. 65.

⁷² UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/4, Geddes to Lloyd George, 15 Sept. 1916, p. 9.

⁷³ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/62, Attachment A, Brade to Geddes, 18 Sept. 1916.

⁷⁴ Grieves, ‘The transportation mission’, p. 67.

⁷⁵ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/62, Attachment A.

⁷⁶ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/62, Attachment A.

⁷⁷ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/1/1/6, Derby to Lloyd George, 15 Sept. 1916.

⁷⁸ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/51, memorandum to Granet, p. 7; Grieves, ‘The transportation mission’, p. 67.

⁷⁹ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/84/34, Stuart-Wortley to Wilson, 7 Oct. 1916.

⁸⁰ Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes, p. 31.

⁸¹ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 14 Oct. 1916.

⁸² P. Fraser, Lord Esher: a Political Biography (London, 1973), pp. 332–3.

⁸³ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 29 Sept. 1916.

⁸⁴ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 10 Oct. 1916.

⁸⁵ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 27 Oct. 1916. Emphasis in original.

⁸⁶ Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes, p. 32; NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 27 Oct. 1916.

⁸⁷ Pritchard, History of the Royal Engineers, v. 617–18.

⁸⁸ S. Fay, The War Office at War (London, 1937), p. 23; ‘Directorate of inland waterways and docks’, Royal Engineers Journal, xxix (1919), 338–64, at p. 354.

⁸⁹ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/102, memorandum by Geddes, p. 10.

⁹⁰ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/51, memorandum to Granet, pp. 7–8.

⁹¹ R. Bell, Twenty-Five Years of the North Eastern Railway, 1898–1922 (London, 1951), p. 40. Wedgwood was recalled to Britain for service in the Ministry of Munitions in 1915.

⁹² Quoted in Grieves, ‘The transportation mission’, p. 68.

⁹³ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/2/19/8, Montagu to Lloyd George, 11 Oct. 1916.

⁹⁴ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/2/19/9, Montagu to Lloyd George, 13 Oct. 1916.

⁹⁵ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/10/1/40, ‘A maker of railway history’, Railway Gazette, 22 Oct. 1943 (press cutting).

⁹⁶ C. Hamilton Ellis, The Midland Railway (London, 1953), p. 144.

⁹⁷ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/4/2, Geddes to Cowans, 20 Oct. 1916.

⁹⁸ IWM, Wilson papers, HHW 2/84/68, Stuart-Wortley to Wilson, 25 Oct. 1916.

⁹⁹ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/4/9, Murray Smith to Lloyd George, 19 Oct. 1916. The Midland had placed Granet at the Board of Trade’s disposal in March 1916.

¹⁰⁰ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/4/7, Lloyd George to Murray Smith, 20 Oct. 1916.

¹⁰¹ E. A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War: Organisation, Efforts, Difficulties and Achievements (2 vols., London, 1921), ii. 1048–50.

¹⁰² PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/1/5/16, Geddes to Lloyd George, 19 Nov. 1916.

¹⁰³ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/1/5/18(B), Lloyd George to Devonport, 27 Nov. 1916.

¹⁰⁴ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/51, memorandum to Granet, pp. 1–3.

¹⁰⁵ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/49, Geddes to Granet, 19 Oct. 1916.

¹⁰⁶ UWMRC, Granet papers, MSS. 191/3/3/51, memorandum to Granet, p. 5.

¹⁰⁷ Fay, The War Office at War, p. 167.

¹⁰⁸ J. M. McEwen, ‘Northcliffe and Lloyd George at war, 1914–1918’, Hist. Jour., xxiv (1981), 651–72, at p. 657.

¹⁰⁹ ‘The army behind the army’, The Times, 7 Aug. 1916, p. 7.

¹¹⁰ PA, Lloyd George papers, LG/E/2/16/3, Stamfordham to Lloyd George, 5 Oct. 1916.

¹¹¹ Fay, The War Office at War, p. 26.

¹¹² Fay, The War Office at War, pp. 26–8.

¹¹³ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/109, Derby to Haig, 27 Dec. 1916.

¹¹⁴ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 30 Oct. 1916. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations in this passage are taken from this source.

¹¹⁵ TNA, ADM 116/1805, Sir Eric Geddes – private correspondence, Colonel M. C. Rowland: QMG: Union Defence Forces. statement of colonial service, 24 Dec. 1916.

¹¹⁶ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/109, diary entry, 9 Nov. 1916.

¹¹⁷ ‘Organisation and work of the transportation directorate’, Railway Gazette: Special War Transportation Number, 21 Sept. 1920, pp. 14–20, at p. 18.

¹¹⁸ S. Damus, Who was Who in Argentine Railways, 1860–1960 (Ottawa, ON, 2008), pp. 236–7 <http://www.diaagency.ca/railways/WWW_sample.pdf> [accessed 13 Nov. 2014].

¹¹⁹ ‘Organisation and work’, pp. 18–19; The Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War, 1914–19: the Organization and Expansion of the Corps, 1914–18 (Uckfield, 2006), p. 31.

¹²⁰ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/109, diary entry, 1 Dec. 1916.

¹²¹ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/109, diary entry, 1 Dec. 1916p

¹²² BLSC, Liddle collection, papers of Major L. W. Conibear, LIDDLE/WW1/GS0346, particulars of service with the colours, 23 July 1917.

¹²³ BLSC, Conibear papers, LIDDLE/WW1/GS0346, particulars of service.

¹²⁴ Haig to Geddes, quoted in W. J. K. Davies, Light Railways of the First World War: a History of Tactical Rail Communications on the British Fronts, 1914–18 (Newton Abbot, 1967), p. 27.

¹²⁵ Crookshank, ‘Transportation with the B.E.F.’, p. 194.

¹²⁶ Pritchard, History of the Royal Engineers, v. 614.

¹²⁷ Geddes, The Forging of a Family, p. 238.

¹²⁸ Grieves, ‘The transportation mission’, p. 67.

¹²⁹ NLS, Haig papers, Acc. 3155/108, diary entry, 12 Sept. 1916.