Field Marshal Douglas Haig (1st Earl Haig)

Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig (1861–1928), commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from December 1915 through the end of World War I. An officer in the 7th Queen's Own Hussars who served at Omdurman and in the Second Boer War, Haig was tasked with managing the largest, most technologically complex mass industrial army in British history.

Haig directed the bloody battles of the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917), which incurred horrific casualties but inexorably depleted the manpower and reserves of the Imperial German Army. In the autumn of 1918, working closely with Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch, Haig directed the victorious Hundred Days Offensive: integrating tanks, rolling artillery barrages, aerial reconnaissance, and infantry, the BEF smashed through the Hindenburg Line, capturing 188,700 German prisoners and forcing the Armistice of November 11, 1918.