The General: The Classic WWI Tale of Leadership. Max Hastings

      The General

      C. S. Forester

      With an introduction by Max Hastings

       Copyright

      William Collins

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.com

      First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2014

      Copyright © C. S. Forester 1936

      Introduction © Max Hastings 2014

      C. S. Forester asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      ‘The General’ and ‘Base Details’ copyright Siegfried Sassoon, reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

      Source ISBN: 9780007580057

      Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007580064 Version: 2017-09-08

      Table of Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       INTRODUCTION

      No warrior tribe in history has received such mockery and contempt from posterity as have been heaped upon Britain’s commanders of the First World War. They are deemed to have presided over unparalleled carnage with a callousness matched only by their incompetence. They are perceived as the high priests who dispatched a generation to death, their dreadful achievement memorialised for eternity by such bards as Siegfried Sassoon:

       ‘Good morning; good morning!’ the General said

       When we met him last week on our way to the line.

       Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,

       And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

       ‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack,

       As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

       But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

      Two generations later, Sir John French, C-in-C of the wartime British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, together with his successor