It was the summer of 1927 and Haig the elder, accompanied by his friend General Sir Noel Birch, had motored down from the family pile at Bemersyde in the Borders to attend a Conservative party rally at nearby Floors Castle. The speaker was Winston Churchill, who had just published The World Crisis, his history of the first world war, in which he slammed Douglas Haig’s role in the battle of Passchendaele, during which 448,000 allied soldiers were killed or wounded.
The subject was not raised at the rally and Churchill accepted Haig’s invitation to tea. But as Churchill trundled up the Beech-lined avenue to Bemersyde in his own car, the mood inside Haig’s vehicle was splenetic. “I was perched between my father and Sir Noel and the atmosphere positively crackled with fury,” recalls George Haig, who was only nine at the time of the meeting. “I thought the car was going to explode. I distinctly remember my father saying that Winston did not understand what had happened or why the battle had to be fought.”
Then they arrived, the sun broke through the clouds, and “my father welcomed Churchill as a friend and behaved as a warm host should”.
Churchill did not voice antagonism either. Perhaps he was impressed by the plaque fixed inside the door of Bemersyde’s 15th-century entrance hall. It declares: “People of the British Empire have vested this place in Field Marshal Douglas Baron Haig as an emblem of his distinguished services to humanity in a cause which by divine grace victorious has triumphed in support of right and justice.” Dated 1919, it serves as a potent reminder to a generation raised on tales of lions led by donkeys that Douglas Haig returned from war a national hero.
That reputation would appal modern-day leaders of the Shot at Dawn campaign, who seek posthumous pardons for the 306 British soldiers executed for cowardice in the first world war. For them Haig was a monster who squandered human lives as if they were pheasant on his estate.
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As the senior allied commander from December 1915 onwards, Haig signed the death warrants for most of the men shot by firing squad. But following the government’s decision to reverse decades of support for the legitimacy of wartime executions and grant pardons, his son is determined to rescue a reputation he believes has been unfairly maligned.
George Haig, now 88, points to a portrait of the field marshal that has pride of place in the drawing room. “Look at his eyes. He was a warm and compassionate man. He was very kind to me. My mother was much tougher.”
Haig says every death warrant caused his father agonies of doubt. “My mother told me that one of his worst duties was having to support the sentence of death,” he says. “Every time he received a warrant he walked up and down in his room at night desperately trying to think of a way out. Whenever he could find grounds for mercy he commuted the sentence — the majority of death sentences were commuted. But he had to listen to advice from commanders on the ground.
“The Shot at Dawn campaign has prospered in the light of criticism of my father, but it is wrong.
Those who served alongside the men who were executed would not sympathise.”
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This is not entirely accurate. Ernest Tuttle, the Labour MP and a war veteran, began campaigning for the executed soldiers shortly before Douglas Haig died in 1929.
George Haig is not just a sentimental son dedicating the final years of his own life to repairing the reputation of his beloved father. Some military historians have already started to rehabilitate Douglas Haig’s reputation, arguing that his tactics were necessary and ultimately successful.
George Haig cannot be accused of insensitivity about the horror of the death penalty. Better known for his career as an artist, he is one of the few Britons alive who has endured the imminent threat of summary execution. Captured by the Germans in North Africa in July 1942 after his tank suffered a series of direct hits, “brewed-up” Captain Haig of the Royal Scots Greys was soon identified as his father’s son. On November 11 1942, Haig found himself incarcerated at Colditz Castle as a member of the group Hitler called the “prominente.”
The Nazi plan was to exploit these well-connected prisoners as hostages to extract concessions from the allies. As invading American forces approached Colditz in 1945, Haig was moved to Königstein. Hitler had given the order that the prominente should be shot. Haig credits his survival to the bravery of one German officer, Oberst Hesselman, who shielded him from the clutches of Hitler and the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler.
Hesselman’s ceremonial dagger lies on a dressing table at Bemersyde, where Haig put it on his return home in 1945. Above it are numerous press cuttings, photographs and mementos recording the hero’s welcome his father received on his return from war.