Allied Commanders Henri Philippe Pétain, Douglas Haig, Ferdinand Foch, and John J. Pershing. Foch was Allied Commander in Chief, the other men commanders of the French Army, the British Expeditionary Force, and the American Expeditionary Force respectively. From The Memoirs of Marshall Foch by Marshall Foch.
Commanders of the Allies in 1918 and their autographs.Pétain Haig Foch Pershing
"In Britain, questions had begun to be raised about the continuing attrition. Although the Germans were being pushed back a hundred yards here and a hundred yards there, the casualty lists were growing. On September 27 [1917] the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir William Robertson, wrote to Haig: 'I confess I stick to it more because I see nothing better, and because my instinct prompts me to stick to it, than because of any good arguments by which I can support it.' On the following day Haig wrote in his diary, 'The enemy is tottering.' This was his usual argument for continuing."
General Sir Douglas Haig began the Third Battle of Ypres on July 31, 1917 to achieve breakthrough of the German line on the Western Front, to reach the English Channel coast, and end the war. Rain was a factor from the beginning. Artillery bombardments destroyed the drainage of the flat terrain. Water filled shell holes, turning shelter into deathtraps. Haig and his Generals Hubert Gough and Herbert Plumer continued to throw British, Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian troops into the swamp and against German machine guns.
The First World War, a Complete History by Martin Gilbert, page 363, copyright © 1994 by Martin Gilbert, publisher: Henry Holt and Company, publication date: 1994
1917-09-27, 1917, September, Third Battle of Ypres, Third Ypres, Haig, Sir Douglas Haig
