Volume 1

The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, 1918-1922

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Among the papers of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson preserved in the Imperial War Museum are some 3000 letters dating from his time as professional head of the British Army. Wilson was Chief of the Imperial General Staff, February 1918 to February 1922, and the correspondence selected for this Army Records Society volume reflects all the principal military concerns of the period. 

With the inclusion of a substantial number of ‘in’ letters from a wide range of correspondents, the selection also provides a ‘cross-section’ of British military and strategic opinion during the years in question. Among the corespondents are leading politicians - Lloyd George, Churchill, Curzon, Milner - and senior British soldiers, notably Haig, Rawlinson, Allenby, Robertson and Harington.

Sir Henry Wilson is remembered as perhaps the most ‘political’ soldier ever to have held high office in the British Army. This reputation is mostly based on Wilson’s diaries which achieved notoriety when Sir Charles Callwell published substantial passages from them in his 1927 official biography. The letters in this volume confirm many of Wilson's trenchant political opinions, but they also complement the private and personal views expressed in the diary, and reflect the professional military concerns with which Wilson had to deal throughout his years as CIGS.