Hubert Gough

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

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

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

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

Gough was born in London on 12 August 1870. He was born into an Anglo-Irish military family, the eldest son of General Charles John Stanley Gough As an infant, Gough went to India with his family late in 1870, but Gough and his brother Johnny were sent to a boarding school in England, and Gough did not meet his father, who was on active service in the Second Afghan War, again until he was sixteen.

Gough was educated at Eton College then at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was gazetted into the 16th Lancers as a second lieutenant on 5 March 1889. He distinguished himself as a rider, winning the Regimental Cup, and as a polo player with many of his horses provided for him by wealthier officers.

Gough was promoted to lieutenant on 23 July 1890, and set out for India that autumn. He was promoted captain on 22 December 1894 at the relatively early age of 24. He served with the Tirah Field Force 1897–98 and on the Northwest Frontier.

Gough returned to England in June 1898, and sat the examination for entrance to the Staff College, Camberley. He married Margaret Louisa Nora Lewes (known as "Daisy") on 22 December 1898.