Wilson's War: Sir Henry Wilson’s Influence on British Military Policy in the Great War and its aftermath (Wolverhampton Military Studies)

John Spencer has converted his PhD on Sir Henry Wilson’s impact on British policy into this useful and engaging book. Spencer was a career a journalist ending up as the managing editor of the Press Association. This book then has a clarity and drive often missing from most unreadable academic studies.Like many others, I have long been very sceptical as to the competence, character, motives and supposed achievements of Henry Wilson. The publisher’s blurb states he is the archetypal ‘love him or hate him’ character but, outside of a section of the Irish unionist movement, there have been few that really admired him. His contemporaries rarely trusted him, and the biography by Charles Callwell (Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: His Life and Diaries) did him no favours by including copious extracts from Wilson’s private diaries that demonstrated a venomous spleen directed against friend and foe alike.This nuanced book sets out to restore Wilson’s reputation. Spencer points out that private diaries are not really the window to the soul, but more a scrapbook of fleeting impressions, reflecting the day’s irritations, with its transitory emotions and the frustration of arguing with people who seemed impervious to his arguments. It was Wilson’s misfortune that he excelled in vituperative abuse and died before he had the opportunity to provide a more reflective account of events.Overall, Wilson’s War is a welcome corrective to some of our over-simplified views of Wilson, often gained through the prism of studying the far more dignified figures of Haig and Robertson, men with whom Wilson was often in conflict. The book builds on the work Keith Jeffery in his Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson: A Political Soldier and The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 1918-1922. Spencer starts by analysing Wilson’s political and military networks, but also pointing out the existing tradition of ‘political’ soldiers which stretched back to the ‘rings’ of officers surrounding the likes of Roberts, Kitchener and Wolsley. One man’s intrigue is another man’s exertion of legitimate influence it would seem. He also points out that a political blunder over the Curragh Incident, earned Wilson the lasting enmity of Asquith which effectively hamstrung his career for the first three years of the war. The Irish question was always Wilson’s blind spot - and would indeed be the death of him.Most important of all is Wilson’s ability to negotiate with the French, based on his amicable relationship with Foch and other French leaders. One chapter deals with Wilson’s crucial pre-war role as Director of Military Operations, when he visited France on numerous occasions and was central to making the case for the abandonment of Britain’s traditional maritime orientated role and the resulting despatch the BEF to fight alongside the French on the Western Front in August 1914. The die was cast.Once war began, Wilson proved invaluable in an official - and unofficial - capacity as a deputy chief of staff to Field Marshal Sir John French in ameliorating the stresses imposed in alliance warfare. Pouring balm on troubled waters, defusing tense situations and using his considerable powers of persuasion, this important role had previously evaded my attention. In December 1915, Wilson’s hopes he would be made Chief of the Imperial General Staff were thwarted by his old nemesis Asquith, and an unsuccessful period as a corps commander followed in 1916. After a period as senior liaison officer at the French Grand Quartier General he was appointed to the Eastern Command. His career was in the doldrums.Wilson was then plucked from relative obscurity by Prime Minister Lloyd George who looked to him and Sir John French to provide alternative strategic advice to the government. Lloyd George found the well-argued views of Wilson refreshingly different from the pragmatic Western Front orientation of both the CIGS Robertson and - of course - Haig. Wilson’s strategic paper played a vital role in the establishment of the Supreme War Council, which was designed to better co-ordinate Allied military strategy, but was really also Lloyd George’s stalking horse to destabilise and force the resignation of Robertson.Wilson flung himself into the work of the Supreme War Council and was rewarded by the coveted role of CIGS on Robertson’s resignation. There is much of value to digest on this period in Spencer’s review of the various SWC initiatives. Nevertheless, I still feel that most of Wilson’s policy initiatives were either irrelevant, or wrong-headed, while the ‘stupid’ Haig and Robertson seem to be better grounded in the realities of war. However, Wilson did succeed in enforcing new strategic priorities, although they eventually proved similar to the old ones, in prioritising the Western Front – much to Lloyd Georg’s disappointment. Wilson also played a bigger than I thought part in having Foch appointed to the supreme command on the Western Front.In the ferocious ‘cockpit’ of war on the Western Front in 1918, Wilson played a vital role in assuaging various diplomatic crisis between the politicians and senior army commanders of Britain, France and America. Despite all that had gone before he certainly forged a reasonable pragmatic understanding with Haig, and Spencer illustrates that time and time again that Wilson had British - and not French interests as his detractors alleged – closest to his heart. He had his eye set on finishing the war in 1919, but as Haig said of Wilson’s plan, ‘Words! Words! Words! Lots of words! And little else!’ By then Haig was intent on playing his part in Foch’s brilliant linked series of offensives up and down the Western Front, which drained the last strength from the German Army and won the war in 1918 ahead of Wilson’s schedule. In the final stages of the war Wilson, was engaged in trying to secure and shape Britain’s imperial future, recommending measures to concentrate resources and secure the heartland of the Empire.A fascinating book about a strange man, riddled with contradictions, but one who played a vital part in the direction of the Great War. Wilson cannot be written-off and this book will surely make you think. Recommended.