Lieutenant General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston: 'A slashing man of action' at the Somme.

Hailed by General Sir Ian Hamilton as ‘a slashing man of action’, Aylmer Hunter-Weston began the Great War as one of the British Army’s rising stars. His subsequent reputation resembles that of a pantomime villain – a general who threw away troops the way lesser men ‘tossed away socks’. This talk examines his performance at the Somme where his corps suffered the worst losses of any engaged on the first day of the battle. Rejecting a simplistic ‘butchers and bunglers’ approach, it argues that Hunter-Weston was an intelligent and highly professional soldier, whose failures can best be understood by reference to the structural challenges of modern war on a mass scale. His personal flaws may have contributed to his woeful image, but he was also confronted by a battlefield in which managerial skills had become more important than heroic personal leadership. 

Elaine McFarland is Emeritus Professor of History at GCU. She is currently Editor of the Scottish Historical Review Monograph Series and Chair of the Ayrshire Federation of Historical Societies.