Lord Astor of Hever, the Fellowship’s Patron and Chairman gave the following address to the AGM on 31 January 2025 at RUSI, Whitehall, London.
Good morning, everyone. Once again, I am pleased to see you all here & my thanks to you all for your continued membership of the Fellowship and your attendance today. 2024 has been another successful year for the DHF as you will see.
Our speaker at last year’s AGM was Dr. Christopher Phillips who is a Lecturer in the History of Warfare at Aberystwyth University. He is the author of numerous articles and chapters focused on supply and transportation matters during the First World War, and published a monograph entitled Civilian Specialists at War: Britain’s Transport Experts and the First World War in April 2020. His talk was entitled ‘”With the rearward services rests victory or defeat”: logistics and administration in Haig’s final despatch’.
Previous scholarship on Douglas Haig’s Final Despatch of March 1919 had focused predominantly on Haig’s justification within the despatch of his strategy and approach to operations on the Western Front. This talk reviewed the Final Despatch in light of two other themes that are evident within the document – Haig’s appreciation and acknowledgement of the scale, breadth and complexity of the First World War and a plea by the Field Marshal not to take for granted the plethora of military preparations required to ensure the army of the future could achieve similar results to the army of 1918.
Our Annual Lunch was held on Friday, 21st June and we were delighted to have our 2024 Haig Fellow, Major General (Retd) Mungo Melvin OBE, deliver his talk entitled ‘The Man on the Spot: Some Reflections on Douglas Haig and Mission Command.’
Mungo examined to what extent Haig followed the spirit of Field Service Regulations Part I in advising that ‘It is usually dangerous to prescribe to a subordinate at a distance anything that he should be better able to decide on the spot, with a fuller knowledge of local conditions, for any attempt to do so may cramp his initiative …’ Noting that generating tactical initiative within a framework of operational intent remains a key principle of modern Mission Command, Mungo offered some reflections on the enduring challenges of implementing such a doctrine under the conditions of war from Haig’s time to the present.
I hope that everyone will receive their copy of Records in the next few days. It includes Mungos’s talk. I am sure we would again like to thank John Spencer for producing another outstanding collection of relevant articles and reviews.
We have had a few changes to the Committee in the year: Elspeth Johnatone is stepping down today as Events Secretary and a member of the Committee with her events responsibilities being taken up by Kathy Stevenson. I am sure you will all join me in thanking Elspeth for her very prominent role within the Fellowship over the years and I trust she will enjoy her continued membership from the ranks. Brian Curragh has returned as Honorary Secretary and has also carried out in the interim the responsibilities of the Treasurer.
Once again, I feel that we are very fortunate in having the continued support of our speakers and all our members. Thank you.
The AGM was followed by lunch at which Lord Astor proposed a toast to the Fellowship which was celebrating its 30th anniversary. He praised the late John Terraine for establishing the organisation, and Kathy Stevenson, the current Vice-Chair and Events Secretary, for her commitment to the Fellowship over three decades.
Lunch was followed by a talk by John Hussey, OBE, one of the DHF’s founder members, entitled ‘Not Just Remembering, but Understanding – the Great Simplicities’.
The talk was chaired and introduced by RUSI Distinguished Fellow and former MP the Rt Honourable Tobias Ellwood.
A recording of John Hussey’s talk can be found by a link supplied to members via the Secretary.
After the talk Lord Astor laid a wreath at the Haig Statue on Whitehall on behalf of the Fellowship.
(Photographs by Derek Clayton, Brian Curragh and John Spencer.)