Background
Hubert Gough was born in London on August 12, 1870, the son of Sir Charles J. S. Gough, a Victoria Cross winner.
Hubert Gough was born in London on August 12, 1870, the son of Sir Charles J. S. Gough, a Victoria Cross winner.
Gough attended Eton College, and according to his autobiography Soldiering On he was terrible at Latin. But he was good at sports such as football and rugby. After leaving Eton, Gough gained entrance to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1888. He was gazetted into the 16th Lancers as a second lieutenant on 5 March 1889. Although not particularly wealthy compared to other cavalry officers – he had a parental allowance of £360 a year on top of his official salary of just over £121 – he distinguished himself as a rider, winning the Regimental Cup, and as a polo player. Many of his horses were provided for him by other officers.
Gough served with the Tirah expedition in 1897/1898, and was severely wounded during the Boer War. From 1904 to 1906 he was assigned a professorship at the Staff College, Camberley, and in 1907 he began four years service as commander of the Sixteenth Lancers. Early in 1914 he headed the Third Cavalry Brigade and during the Curragh mutiny expressed to Prime Minister Herbert Asquith his and his officers' unwillingness to compel Ulster to accept home rule for Ireland. Gough was widely unpopular in the army, being known especially for his arrogant manner.
In France in 1914 Gough commanded first the Third Division and in 1915 was given the Second Cavalry Division; later that year he was transferred to head the Seventh Division. Early in 1916 Gough was entrusted with the I Army Corps, Sir Douglas Haig's old unit, and then rapidly promoted to command the new British Fifth Army. In July 1916, Gough's forces were heavily blooded in the war of attrition at the Somme. Gough, noted for his dash and "cavalry spirit," (Liddell Hart), desired quick results regardless of the cost, and he launched his army against the enemy at Pozieres. Heavy rains combined with bombardments to turn the battlefield into a giant morass over which even the lightly armed infantry could move only with difficulty, but the Germans were finally displaced from the high ground at the Somme. The British frivolously gambled away this temporary advantage by foresaking the high ground and pursuing the Germans down the ridge into the valley beyond, where the troops were to spend the winter of 1916 in flooded trenches. Even so, Gough was knighted in 1916.
On July 31, 1917, General Haig launched another massive attack against the enemy at Ypres and, as in 1916, once again the slapdash work of his staff greatly exacerbated Gough's task. Moreover, the commander's persistence that the quantity of shell was the key to success vitiated any initial successes scored: the British bombardment ruined the drainage system at Ypres, which, compounded by heavy rains, turned the field of battle into a swamp, in which countless soldiers drowned. By November the British had bogged down near Passchendaele, having lost almost 400,000 casualties. General Herbert Plumer's Second Army finally took over the Ypres sector of the front in what was the one bright spot in the British picture.
General Erich Ludendorff's so-called Michael offensive in France broke against Gough's Fifth Army on March 21, 1918, dangerously stretched thin in the Somme sector. Forced to yield ground at considerable loss, Gough's forces retreated over the old battlefields at the Somme, and the cabinet in London laid the blame solely on Gough, forcing his removal from command of the Fifth Army.
General Gough was appointed chief of an Allied mission to the Baltic in 1919, and he retired from active service in 1922 with the rank of general to become chairman of Siemens Bros. During the Second World War, Gough was appointed colonel and zone commander, Home Guard, to 1942. He died in London on March 18, 1963, at age ninety-two.
He married Margaret Louisa Nora Lewes (known as "Daisy") on 22 December 1898 (postponed from April). He married at an unusually early age for a serving officer. Gough’s son Valentine died in infancy shortly after his return from South Africa. He and his wife then had four daughters: Myrtle Eleanore born 4 April 1904, Anne born 1906, Joyce born 6 November 1913, and Denise born 26 March 1916. Myrtle married Major Eric Adlhelm Torlogh Dutton, CMG, CBE, in 1936.[4] Gough's wife died in March 1951.