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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Lt.Col. Alan Roderick Haig-Brown DSO.
British Army 23rd Btn. Middlesex Regiment
(d.25th Mar 1918)
Col Alan Haig-Brown, Commanding Officer, 23rd Battalion Middlesex Regiment, as seen by his adjutant Capt George Smith.
An infantry colonel gives orders: his adjutant sees that the orders are carried out. With a good colonel it is, perhaps, the best job in the army: with a bad colonel, who doesn't back you up, it can be hell.
I was lucky. Haig-Brown was all that is implied in the term gentleman. I wasn't alone in almost worshiping him. The men loved him, he believed that they should know the reason for orders and treated them as human beings, not just cannon fodder. He was always available to hear protests or complaints from anyone at all. The fact that under Colonel Ash, he had been attached to higher commands paid handsome dividends. He knew the people there personally and was popular with them too. When we got some damn fool order, as too often we did, he could pick up the phone to Brigade, Division, or Corps and say, "Is that you, Bill? What the deuce is this last foolishness?" and get it ironed out in a matter of minutes.
There was always a certain competition to go round the trenches with him during the day and again at night, we called it The Bus: the call would go out, "Who's for The Bus?" and various members of H.Q. would join us. I went as a matter of course, it was my job. I've seen him look into a mirror, put his tie and hat straight as he said, "Dammit. If we're going to be killed well die like gentlemen!" He hated wearing a tin hat, wore it on his elbow, hanging by the strap, to be quickly whipped onto his head if something burst too close, holding it there until the bits had finished falling. He was welcome everywhere and usually left the men laughing.
Out of the trenches he believed in battalion drill as the best way of getting the men to feel, after the isolation of the trenches, that they belonged to a unit. On parade, if I did something daft, he would damn me to hell in front of everyone: afterwards, in the mess, he would put his arm round my shoulders and say, "Sorry, Georgie, but you were a damn fool, weren't you," and there were no hard feelings. I think he had run the O.T.C. at Lancing. Anyway, he knew his job. And he could handle English: his letters were a joy.
Once we got a complaint from the Brigade School that the explosion of a Bangalore torpedo had broken the windows in an adjoining farmhouse and asking that we pay for the damage. He raised his eyebrows at me and asked, "Is that anything to do with us?" I said, "Nothing whatever, sir." "You're sure?" "Quite sure, sir." He replied courteously, regretting the accident, but saying that he "could no more accept financial responsibility than if an S.O.S. rocket fired from the East Coast had landed on the roof of The Crystal Palace", ending as usual "I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant". We got an abject apology in a matter of hours.
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