Edward Spears

Major-General Sir Edward Louis Spears, 1st Baronet, (7 August 1886 – 27 January 1974) was a British Army officer and Member of Parliament noted for his role as a liaison officer between British and French forces in two world wars. Spears was a retired Brigadier General of the British Army, and served as a Member of the British House of Commons. From 1917 to 1920 he was head of the British Military Mission in Paris.

Family and early life

Spears was born of British parents at 7 chaussée de la Muette in the fashionable district of Passy in Paris on 7 August 1886; France would remain the land of his childhood. His parents, Charles McCarthy Spiers and Melicent Marguerite Lucy Hack, were British residents of France. His paternal grandfather was the noted lexicographer, Alexander Spiers, who had published an English-French and French-English dictionary in 1846. The work was extremely successful and adopted by the University of France for French Colleges.

Edward Louis Spears changed his name from Spiers to Spears in 1918. He claimed that the reason was his irritation at the mispronunciation of Spiers, yet it is possible that he wanted an English looking name – something more in keeping with his rank as a brigadier-general and head of the British Military Mission to the French War Office. He denied that he was of Jewish stock, but his great-grandfather had been an Isaac Spiers of Gosport who married Hannah Moses, a shopkeeper of the same town. His ancestry was no secret. In 1918 the French ambassador in London described him as "a very able and intriguing Jew who insinuates himself everywhere."

His parents separated while he was a child, and his maternal grandmother played an important role during his formative years. The young Louis (the name used by his friends) was often on the move, usually with his grandmother – Menton, Aix-les-Bains, Switzerland, Brittany and Ireland. He had contracted diphtheria and typhoid as an infant and was considered delicate. However, after two years at a tough boarding school in Germany, his physical condition improved and he became a strong swimmer and an athlete.

Army service before First World War

In 1903, he joined the Kildare Militia, the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. In the mess, he acquired the nickname of Monsieur Beaucaire after a novel about an urbane Frenchman. The nickname stuck and he was called this by both of his wives, the first of whom would often shorten it to B. In 1906 he was commissioned in the regular army with the 8th Royal Irish Hussars. Spears did not conform to the conventional image of a young army officer. In the same year that he was commissioned, he published a translation of a French general's book, ''Lessons of the Russo-Japanese War''. His upbringing with a succession of tutors meant that he had not learned to mix, and so he did not easily adapt to life in an officers' mess. He could be tactless and argumentative and became an outsider – something he would remain all his life. In 1911, he worked at the War Office developing a joint Anglo-French codebook. In 1914, he published ''Cavalry Tactical Schemes'', another translation of a French military text. In May of the same year, he was sent to Paris to work alongside the French at their Ministry of War with orders to make contact with British agents in Belgium. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, on the orders of his colonel at the War Office, Spears left Paris for the front. Later he would proudly claim that he had been the first British officer at the front.

First World War

Mutual misunderstanding

Cooperation between the French and British armies was severely hampered by a lack of linguistic competence among British and French officers. General Henry Wilson, a staff officer acting as a liaison officer to the French Army, had been said to declare that he saw 'no reason for an officer knowing any language except his own'. According to one story, when Field Marshal Sir John French, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force at the start of the First World War, had spoken (then as a general) from a prepared French text at manoeuvres in France in 1910, his accent was so bad that his listeners thought he was speaking in English.

During the First World War, British soldiers unable to pronounce French words came up with their own (often humorous) versions of place names – the town of Ypres (''Ieper'' in Flemish) was known as 'Wipers'. Yet French place names were also a problem for senior officers. In the spring of 1915, Spears was ordered to pronounce French place names in an English way otherwise General Sir William Robertson, the new Chief of Staff, would not be able to understand them.

On the French side, few of the commanders spoke good English with the exception of Generals Robert Nivelle and Ferdinand Foch. It was in this linguistic fog that the bilingual young subaltern, made his mark. Although only a junior officer (a lieutenant of Hussars), he would get to know senior British and French military and political figures (Winston Churchill, Sir John French, Douglas Haig, Joseph Joffre, Philippe Pétain, Paul Reynaud, Robertson etc.) – a fact that would stand him in good stead during later life.

First liaison duties – French Fifth Army

Sent first to the Ardennes on 14 August 1914, his job was to liaise between Field Marshal Sir John French and General Charles Lanrezac, commander of the French Fifth Army. The task was made more difficult by Lanrezac's obsession with secrecy and an arrogant attitude towards the British. The Germans were moving fast and the allied commanders had to make decisions quickly, without consulting each other; their headquarters were also on the move and could not keep their counterparts up to date with their locations. In today's age of radio communication, it is hard to believe that such vital information was often relayed personally by Spears, who travelled by car between the headquarters along roads clogged with refugees and retreating troops.

Commanders were aware that wireless communications were insecure and so often preferred the traditional, personal touch for liaison work. And as far as the telephone was concerned, Spears refers to 'exasperating delays'; sometimes, he was even put through to the advancing Germans by mistake. On these occasions he pretended to be German to extract information, but failed as his German was not sufficiently convincing.

An army is saved

On 23 August, General Lanrezac made a sudden decision to retreat – a manoeuvre that would have dangerously exposed the British forces on his flank. Spears was able to inform Sir John French in the nick of time – the action of a young liaison officer had saved an army. The following day, Spears amazed himself by his audacious language when urging General Lanrezac to launch a counter-attack, "Mon Géneral, if by your action the British Army is annihilated, England will never pardon France, and France will not be able to afford to pardon you." In September, Spears again showed that he was not afraid to speak his mind. When General Louis Franchet d'Espèrey, Lanrezac's successor, had heard (incorrectly) that the British were in retreat, the French officer said 'some unacceptable things concerning the British commander-in-chief in particular and the British in general'. Spears confronted Franchet d'Esperey's chief-of-staff for an apology, which was duly given. At the suggestion of his young liaison officer, Sir John French visited Franchet d'Esperey a few days later to clear up the misunderstanding. Spears remained with the French Fifth Army during the First Battle of the Marne, riding on horseback behind Franchet d'Esperey when Reims was liberated on 13 September.

Liaison duties – French Tenth Army

Spears remained with Franchet d'Esperey after the Battle of the Marne until his posting at the end of September 1914 as liaison officer with the French Tenth Army, which was now under General Louis de Maud'huy near Arras. The two men got on well – Maud'huy referring to him as 'my friend Spears', and insisting that they ate together. It was at the recommendation of the new commander that Spears was made a 'Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur'. In January 1915, he was wounded for the first time and repatriated to convalesce in London. He was mentioned in dispatches and again commended by Maud'huy – as a result he was awarded the Military Cross.

Meets Winston Churchill – a friendship is forged

Again at the front in April 1915, he accompanied Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, on a tour of inspection.Egremont, p. 81. Frequently the only Englishman in a French officers' mess, Spears could feel lonely and isolated and had to endure criticism of his country. The general feeling in France was that Britain should be doing more.

When he returned to France after treatment for a second wound which he had incurred in August 1915 (there would be a total of four during the war), he found General Sir Douglas Haig, who was in command of the British First Army, and General Victor d'Urbal, the new commander of the French Tenth Army, at loggerheads; it was his task to improve the relationship. Then on 5 December, the Dardanelles Campaign having failed, Winston Churchill arrived in France seeking a command on the western front. He had lost his post of First Lord of the Admiralty and wanted to temporarily leave the political arena. The two men became friends and Churchill suggested that if he were to be given command of a brigade, Spears might join him as his brigade major. However, Churchill was instead given command of a battalion. In any case, Spears' work in liaison was too highly valued and there was no question that he would be allowed to join Churchill.

Fear of mental breakdown

He got to know General Philippe Pétain, who had distinguished himself at the Battle of Verdun in 1916 and said of him, "I like Pétain, whom I know well." Prior to the Battle of the Somme, he hoped that he would no longer have to face criticism of the British. However, when the British failed and took heavy losses, there were hints that they could not stand shell fire. He began to doubt his fellow countrymen – had they lost the vigour and courage of their forebears? In August 1916, subjected to emotional buffeting from both sides, he feared he might suffer a breakdown.

General Staff – liaison between French Ministry of War and War Office in London

In May 1917, Spears became a major and was promoted to General Staff Officer 1st Grade prior to taking up a high-level appointment in Paris, where he was to liaise between the French Ministry of War and the War Office in London. In less than three years, this young officer had got to know many influential figures on both sides of the Channel. He found Paris full of intrigues, with groups of officers and officials conspiring against each other. Spears exploited the confusion to his advantage and created an independent position for himself.

Within days, Spears was dining at the French War Ministry with a group of VIPs – the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, General Philippe Pétain, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Sir William Robertson, Admiral Jellicoe, War Minister Paul Painlevé and Major-General Frederick Maurice, who was the British Director of Military Operations. His brief was to report directly to the War Office in London, bypassing the military attaché. On 17 May, General Pétain, the new French Commander in Chief, told Spears that he wished Lt-General Henry Wilson, who had been closely associated with Petain's disgraced predecessor Nivelle, to be replaced as the chief British liaison officer. Realising this would make Wilson his enemy, Spears protested but was overruled.

Reports on French mutinies and resentment

By 22 May 1917 he had learned of the mutinies in the French Army and travelled to the front to make an assessment. The mutinies had first rumbled during the slaughter at Verdun the previous year (especially during the costly counterattacks by Nivelle and Mangin) and had erupted in earnest after the failure of the Nivelle Offensive in the spring of 1917. Spears was called to London to report on French morale to the War Policy Cabinet Council – a heavy responsibility. Spears recorded in a 1964 BBC
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