John Charteris - Career

Career

Charteris was a Scot, son of a Senior Professor of Materia Medica at Glasgow University. He was fluent in French and German. He did not go to Camberley, but was the outstanding graduate of Quetta in 1909. When Haig was appointed to Corps Command at Aldershot in 1912, the then Captain Charteris was one of the trusted officers (known as "the Hindoo Invasion") whom he brought from India with him.

He was brash, untidy, and liked to start the day with a brandy and soda. He was a sort of licensed jester (known as "The Principal Boy" due to his rapid promotion) amidst Haig’s staid inner circle. He comes across as likeable and able in his own writings, including his letters to his much younger wife Noel (the “Douglas” frequently referred to in his letters is their infant son!)

Haig’s chaplain G.S. Duncan later commented on how his “vitality and loud-mouthed exuberance” made him unpopular. He was sometimes described as Haig's "evil counsellor". Burgess, who became his secretary late in 1916, called him “really a horror of a man” and by the end of 1917 he was known as “the U-Boat”.

He was not trained in military intelligence, and is sometimes blamed for Haig's errors as he may well have told Haig what he wanted to hear. Haig kept him on after his inadequacies had been exposed. His intelligence reports - particularly predictions of German manpower and morale based on interviews with prisoners and statistical analysis of their paybooks (which gave a German soldier's age and year of callup) - were crucial in strategic decisions and were increasingly criticised by Major-General Macdonogh, intelligence advisor at the War Office, and by politicians and, after Cambrai, the press. "During the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) and at Cambrai, Charteris was certainly guilty of being overly optimistic with regard to the Allies' chances of success at both set-piece battles."

Haig was later forced to dismiss Charteris after Charteris angered Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for War. In January 1918 Brigadier-General Edgar William Cox was recalled to France to replace Charteris. Charteris' final intelligence reports correctly predicted a German offensive in Spring 1918. Charteris was moved to the job of Deputy Director of Transportation at GHQ.