GeneralSir Walter Pipon Braithwaite, GCB (11 November 1865 – 7 September 1945) was a British Army officer who held senior commands during the First World War. After being dismissed from his position as Chief of Staff for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, he received some acclaim as a competent divisional commander on the Western Front. After the war, he was commissioned to produce a report analysing the performance of British staff officers during the conflict.
Early life
Braithwaite was born in Alne, the son of the Reverend William Braithwaite and Laura Elizabeth Pipon.[2] He was the youngest of twelve children.[1] He was educated at Victoria College between 1875 and 1880, and at Bedford School between 1880 and 1884.[3][4]
Military career
Group portrait of officers at the British Staff College at Camberley, England, 1906. Braithwaite, then a lieutenant colonel, is sat in the front row, second on the right.
He gave up this appointment in January 1911 and then went on half-pay.[14] He only had to endure this until March, however, when he was subsequently promoted to temporary brigadier general and named commandant of the Staff College, Quetta,[15] a position he still held at the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914.[1] At this point, the college was closed, and he was again transferred to England and the War Office, this time as director of staff duties, taking over from Major General Francis Davies.[1][16] While serving as commandant, he had been appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1911 Coronation Honours in June 1911.[17]
In March 1915, seven months into the war, he was promoted to temporary major general[18] and appointed chief of staff to General Sir Ian Hamilton,[19] commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF), and served in this role throughout the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.[20] He was regarded by many of the Australians involved in that effort as "arrogant and incompetent".[1]
After the failure of the Mediterranean expedition, Braithwaite, whose rank of major general became substantive in June 1915,[21] was recalled to London.[2] He was, in December 1915, assigned to command of the 62nd (2nd West Riding) Division, a Territorial Force (TF) formation, which was posted to the Western Front in January 1917.[20] Here he experienced considerable success. Although the division struggled to make headway during the Battle of Arras in April 1917, it proved a solid and reliable unit during the German spring offensive in March the following year.[1]
Major-General Walter Braithwaite with his charger which won third prize at the New Zealand Division Horse Show, Pas-en-Artois, France, 16 June 1918.
Following success in repelling German advances at Bullecourt and Cambrai, Braithwaite, made a KCB in June 1918,[22] was promoted to temporary lieutenant general on 27 August 1918[23] and was later given command of IX Corps on 13 September and, much later still, XII Corps.[20] On 29 September Braithwaite's IX Corps was on the southern front line at the village of Bellenglise facing the canal, when the order came from Haig to attack through the Hindenburg Line. The assault was much more successful than earlier American and Australian efforts, encountering as they did, multiple gas attacks. The spearhead was led by the 46th (North Midland) Division, a TF formation. As Major H. J. C. Marshall, a divisional staff officer, recorded that they were not expected to advance far, leaving that to the Americans and Australians to their left. If they could not get a foothold they were had orders to swim across the canal in ice cold water.[24] But divisional HQ had spared no effort to find all necessary equipment to achieve the objective. They advanced one hour later than the Americans under a hail of machine gun bullets and "cyclone of shells". A thick fog came down helping to mask them from German sight. Pushing on through the dawn's early light, a battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment overran the German machine gun positions;[25] the bridge's defenders were shot and killed, as the infantry fixed bayonets and charged. 5,000 German prisoners of war (POWs) were taken.[26] For almost the first time in the war the attack had been an outstanding success. Brathwaite received plaudits from Monash and Rawlinson.[27] The 46th Division recovered over 1,000 machine guns.[28] Weeks later King George V visited Bellenglise, the site where the Hindenburg Line was breached by a Territorial unit.[29]
Braithwaite was devastated by his son's death on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Having no heir, he burnt all his family papers. As successes emerged on the battlefields in late 1918, Field MarshalSir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front, was effusive in praise of his officers' and men's achievement, showing the friendship and esteem for which he was held by Braithwaite all his life.[30]
Post war
After the war, Braithwaite was commissioned by Haig to produce a report evaluating the performance of British staff officers in all theatres of the conflict.[20] Although the decision-making abilities of many staff officers (including Braithwaite) had been seriously questioned during the war, Braithwaite's report was generally favourable.[20]
He died at his home in Rotherwick on 7 September 1945, at the age of 79.[4]
Family
Braithwaite married in 1895 Jessie Ashworth, with whom he had a son, Valentine. Captain Valentine Braithwaite MC was killed in action at Serre while serving with his father's former regiment, the Somerset Light Infantry, on 1 July 1916 aged 20.[36]
Edmonds, Sir John, ed. (1947). Military Operations: France and Belgium 1918, volume IV. London: HMSO.
Sir John Edmonds and R Maxwell-Hyslop (eds.) Military Operations France and Belgium 1918, volume V, London, HMSO, 1947
Walker, Jonathan (1998). "The Blood Tub. General Gough and the Battle of Bullecourt, 1917". E and J Gellibrand Diary, 10 March 1906. Staplehurst: Spellmount.
Paschall, R. (1989). The Defeat of Imperial Germany 1917–1918. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books.
Peaple, Simon (2015). "Mud, Blood and Determination. The History of the 46th (North Midland) Division in the Great War". Wolverhampton Military Studies 14. Helion & Company (15 April 2015. ISBN978-1910294666.
Priestley, R.E. (1919). Breaking the Hindenburg Line: The Story of the 46th (North Midland) Division. London: T Fisher Unwin.
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