The man responsible for this tremendous piece of work was Brig-Gen J.E
Edmonds, who was born in 1861 and was commissioned into the Royal
Engineers in 1881.When war broke out he was a colonel, GSO1 of the 4th
Division, but within a few days of arrival in France, during which time the
division fought at le Cateau and began its retreat to the Marne, Edmonds was
found to be medically unfit for front line soldiering and was posted back to
HQ BEF where, by the end of the war, he was one of the two Deputy
Engineer-in-Chiefs. In 1919 he took over as OIC Military Branch,
Historical Section Committee of Imperial Defence where he stayed for the
next thirty years. He died in 1956 at the ripe old age of 95.
He needed a “ripe old age” because it took nearly thirty years for all
the volumes of his meticulously prepared history to see the light of day. The
first volume, 1914/I,was published in 1922 and then there was a delay while
the section with its thousands of boxes of records and maps was re-located
resulting in a belated publication of the second 1914 volume in 1925. By
1932 the two 1915s and the first 1916 were out and then the run fell out of
sequence. For some time, to speed things up, preliminary work on 1916
and1918 had been going on simultaneously but this arrangement came to an
end when there was a reduction in staff for reasons of economy at a time
when the 1918 drafts were in a more advanced state than 1916/II. Given the
particular interest in the story of the German March 1918 offensive it was
decided to publish the first two 1918 volumes dealing with those events as a
priority, and they came out in 1935 and 1937. 1916/II (by Capt W. Miles)
followed in 1938 and I918/III in 1939.The first of the three 1917 volumes
appeared in 1940 but the preparations of next two as well as the last two of
the five 1918 volumes suffered from reductions in staff following the outbreak
of WWII.They came out eventually in 1947 and 1948 respectively.
The real fly in the ointment was the volume dealing with the
occupation of the Rhineland. It was started back in 1930 but then the
Treasury refused to sanction it and Treasury economy continued to hamper
the activities of the Historical Section. Edmonds ploughed on regardless and
the first draft was ready in 1943, to be met with objections and criticism
from the Foreign Office whose remarks he described as trifling or silly and
which he proposed to ignore. He claimed that the views expressed in his
account were his own and not official, which is stated in the preface, and in
spite of his objections the decision was taken to produce only a limited
edition of 100 copies, at the price of accommodating many of the FO’s
demands, printed for ‘Official use’ only; this came out at the end of 1947.
In the Introduction to the first volume (1914 vol I) Edmonds stated
his aim: “This history has been compiled with the purpose of providing
within reasonable compass an authoritative account, suitable for general
readers and for students at military schools, of the operations of the British
Army in the Western theatre of war in 1914 -1918”. In this he has certainly
succeeded , for today, if anyone wants to know about and understand the
British Army of the Great War, its tactics, its battles, changes in organisation,
weapons and its development from a small professional force in 1914 to the
mighty force of five armies in 1916, this history is essential reading.
With a history as long and as detailed as this there were bound to be
detractors and critics, one of the principal objections being that he was too
keen on protecting the reputations of Haig and senior commanders. In the
preface to the volume dealing with Passchendaele (1917 II), for example,
Edmonds notes the damage done to Haig’s reputation by that battle and
mounts a vigorous defence of the Field Marshal, stating, inter alia, that “the
principal items in the indictment against Earl Haig in legend depend on
gross exaggeration of the British casualties and on the misrepresentation that
the whole area of the battlefield was a morass…..” He goes on to point out
that, in contrast, Haig’s reputation in Germany, France and the USA “stands
high.” Military history is indebted to Brigadier General Edmonds whose
stubborn determination saw this great project through to the finish and it
remains his testimony. “Without Edmonds’ devotion, the official history
would never have been completed. It remains an essential text for anyone
wishing to understand the British army during the Great War” Dr J Bourne
Who’s Who In World War One.
“This history has been compiled with the purpose of providing
within reasonable compass an authoritative account, suitable for general
readers and for students at military schools, of the operations of the British
Army in the Western theatre of war in 1914-1918. It is based on the British
official records.” Brig-Gen J.E Edmonds.
The Official History of the Great War was the grandest
official history ever produced in Britain.
Due to the number of full-colour maps bound in each volume and
the separate map cases, previous attempts to reprint in its complete
entirety this valuable reference ether floundered, or were produced
with the maps in monochrome.
At last the acclaimed work of the official cartographers, who had
ninety thousand maps at their command can be examined as they
intended in full colour.