Major-General Sir Harold Goodeve Ruggles-Brise (17 March 1864 – 24 June 1927) was a British Army officer in the Second Boer War and First World War, and an amateur cricketer.
Early life Harold Ruggles-Brise was born in Essex in Spains Hall, Finchingfield on 17 March 1864, the fifth son of Sir Samuel Brise Ruggles-Brise, of Spains Hall, Essex, and his wife Marianne Weyland Bowyer-Smith, daughter of Sir Edward Bowyer-Smith, 10th Baronet, of Hill Hall, Essex.Burke's Landed GentryWho Was Who.Obituary, Times (London) 27 June 1927. His eldest brothers were Archie (who inherited Spains Hall) and Evelyn (later Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, chairman of the Prison Commission).'Sir Evelyn John Ruggles-Brise', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 30 May 2013. Unlike his elder brothers who went to Eton College, Harold was educated at Winchester College, where he was in the Rev J. T. Bramston's House, and where he "thrived at the school, becoming head of his house and Captain of the 1st XI, known as 'Lords', in 1882", and at Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford, Ruggles-Brise obtained a Second Class in Classical Moderations, "long regarded as one of the hardest examinations in the world", and his cricket Blue in 1883.
Early military career
After Oxford, Ruggles-Brise, having "long aspired to a military career", entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1884, passing out in 1885, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards in May 1885.Quarterly Army List: Part I: Gradation List, various dates After serving with the 2nd Battalion of his regiment, first at Chelsea Barracks, then from October 1886 at Richmond Barracks in Dublin, he served with the battalion, becoming the adjutant of the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards, from 1893–94,Hart's Army List, 1894. and as adjutant of the Guards Depot at Caterham in 1895.Hart's Army List, 1896.
He then studied at the Staff College, Camberley, from 1897 to 1898, earning his psc.Hart's Army List, 1897 & 1898. His fellow students there included many men who would later rise to prominence in the next few decades, the most notable among them being the future field marshal, "Wully" Robertson, George Barrow and Archibald Murray, both full generals, Herbert Holman a lieutenant general, while Henry Joseph Everett, Colin Mackenzie and Oliver Nugent would all retire as major generals and Frederick Lionel Banon, Reginald Oxley and Harry Dupré Tuson as brigadier generals.
Second Boer War
Promoted to captain in October 1897, Ruggles-Brise served with the 2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards at Gibraltar before being appointed brigade major to the infantry brigade at Gibraltar in March 1899. In October that year he and his brigadier, Sir Henry Colville, were transferred to Cape Colony as part of the troop build-up for the Second Boer War. This war would be "Harold's first 'hands-on' experience of the battlefield and command in wartime", with his time in South Africa going on to "shape his development as a soldier, and ultimately forge him into the caring and courageous leader of men in the Great War. Colville took command of the 1st (Guards) Brigade in Major-General Lord Methuen's 1st Division, with Ruggles-Brise as his brigade major.Creswicke.
Advancing to relieve Kimberley at the beginning of the war, Methuen attempted a night attack at Belmont on 22/23 November 1899. He sent Colville off with his brigade to assault Gun Hill: although 'They were guided by my Brigade Major, Captain Ruggles-Brise, who led them to the exact spot', Colville admitted that he had miscalculated the distance, and that the commanding officer (CO) of the 3rd Grenadier Guards attacked the wrong hill. Neither error was Ruggles-Brise's fault and he received his first mention in dispatches for his work that night.Anglo-Boer War.com He distinguished himself again at the Battle of Modder River and was present at the Battle of Magersfontein.
When Colville was promoted to command the 9th Division, Ruggles-Brise went with him as his deputy assistant adjutant general (DAAG). However, in May 1900, while Lord Roberts was closing in on Johannesburg, a yeomanry battalion under Colville's command was cut off and forced to surrender, Colville was made a scapegoat and sent home.Kruger, pp. 310–2. Ruggles-Brise remained in South Africa until the end of the year, when he was re-appointed as a brigade major in Home District (London).
Interwar years Ruggles-Brise was promoted to the brevet rank of major on 9 November 1900, and became a regimental major by seniority on 11 October 1902. On 1 April 1903 he became brigade major of the Brigade of Guards, and simultaneously of the 9th Infantry Brigade.
Promoted to lieutenant colonel on 20 July 1907, Ruggles-Brise became commanding officer (CO) of the 3rd Battalion, Grenadier Guards, taking over from Lieutenant Colonel Sir Charles Fergusson, which he commanded for the next four years. The battalion was initially stationed at Victoria Barracks, Windsor.
After completing this term he was then briefly placed on half-pay. Having turned down a job as an instructor at the Staff College, and having been promoted to colonel on 30 August 1911, he was next appointed commandant of the School of Musketry at Hythe in Kent, in succession to Colonel Walter Congreve, a Victoria Cross (VC) recipient who had been a contemporary at Sandhurst many years before.
In 1909 the School of Musketry had advocated that each British infantry battalion should be equipped with six instead of two machine-guns. This had been turned down on grounds of cost, so the decision had been made to train the infantry in rapid-fire musketry to make up for the lack of automatic weapons.
During Ruggles-Brises's command the school played a crucial role in training the instructors who in turn taught the British Regular Army to shoot so effectively that in the early part of the First World War German reports repeatedly credited them with possessing large numbers of machine guns.Edmonds, France & Belgium 1914, Vol II, pp. 462–3. Conversely, Ruggles-Brise has been criticised for delaying the development of anti-aircraft machine-guns in 1912.
First World War Brigade commander Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Ruggles-Brise was promoted to temporary brigadier general (15 September) to command a brigade composed of the last three infantry battalions of the Regular Army left in Britain after the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) went to France. They constituted the 20th Infantry Brigade which, together with the 21st and 22nd infantry brigades and supporting units, formed part of the 7th Division, commanded by Major General Thompson Capper, and assembled at Lyndhurst, Hampshire. Although not officially designated a Guards brigade, it contained two Guards battalions (1st Grenadiers along with the 2nd Scots Guards, together with the 2nd Border Regiment; it was joined by the 2nd Gordon Highlanders, which returned from Cairo just before the brigade sailed from Southampton).Becke, pt 1, p. 82.
The 7th Division landed at Zeebrugge on 7 October 1914, intended to assist the Belgian Army in the defence of Antwerp. In the event all it could do was help to cover the Belgian retreat and then take up defensive positions at Ypres where they were joined by the rest of the BEF after the race to the Sea. Thereafter the 20th Brigade was engaged in heavy fighting at Langemarck and Gheluvelt during the First Battle of Ypres.Edmonds 1914, Vol II.Farrar-Hockley, Ypres. Like several other senior officers who got out among their units to exercise personal command during this confused fighting, Ruggles-Brise was wounded, having "sustained dreadful wounds to both arms and his shoulder blade and was stretchered back half dead, leaving Major Cator in command. In hindsight maybe he was lucky for his Irish Guards contemporary, Brigadier-General Charles FitzClarence VC, was killed outright nine days later when leading the 1st Guards Brigade in a counterattack at Veldhock". He was carried back 'half dead of a dreadful wound on a stretcher' on 2 November.Farrar-Hockley, Ypres, p. 180.
Home service in England During his lengthy convalescence in England he reverted to his substantive rank of colonel and the half-pay list, but after returning to active duty in July 1915 he was once again made a temporary brigadier general and appointed brigadier general, general staff (BGGS), at the Aldershot Training Centre, taking over from Brigadier General Cameron Shute.
On 14 September, while still in this role, Ruggles-Brise received a letter from Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, soon to be appointed as the chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) and formerly a fellow student at the Staff College almost twenty years earlier. Murray, in his letter, wrote to his former Camberley classmate: "I want to get you a Division. Are you practically fit now or is it 'light duties' only?" On 21 September Ruggles-Brise "went up before my medical board and I think they passed me fit for general service" but, he believed, "that does not mean I shall go abroad. They thought I had made a wonderful recovery". Of the possibility of his receiving a division, he believed "it is too good to be true".
The Bantams On 25 September 1915, having been "passed fit for general service", Ruggles-Brise was promoted to the temporary rank of major general and appointed to command the 40th Division as its first general officer commanding (GOC).Becke, pt 3b, pp 101–8. This was a new formation, the second last of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener's 'New Army' divisions, and by the time it was organised the flow of volunteers had slackened and the army had to reduce its height requirement for infantry in an effort to attract recruits. This led to the creation of so-called 'bantam' battalions of smaller men. The 40th Division's 119th Infantry Brigade was the Welsh Bantam Brigade composed of 'well-knit, hardy Welshmen', but 'the men of the other two brigades (120th and 121st) contained a large proportion of under-developed and unfit men, and a drastic weeding-out became necessary'. 'It was estimated that only two serviceable battalions could be formed from the existing four in each brigade, consequently the 120th and 121st brigades would each require two new battalions to complete it to war establishment. Early in 1916 Ruggles-Brise recommended that four new battalions should be sent, to prevent the departure of the division overseas being indefinitely postponed. The four battalions of the 118th Infantry Brigade, part of the 39th Division, were transferred to complete his brigades. The reorganisation was completed in February 1916 and the division, by now "said to be half English, one third Welsh and one sixth Scottish" due to its new composition, was fully mobilised by the end of May.
The 40th Division under Ruggles-Brise embarked for France in late May and early June and took its place on the Western Front to join in the continuous trench warfare. One of his three brigades assisted another division in the Battle of the Ancre (the last phase of the Battle of the Somme) in November 1916,CWGC: Ancre and the division followed up the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917, but the whole division's first offensive actions came in April and May 1917. On 21, 24 and 25 April, the 40th Division captured 'Fifteen Ravine' (a valley originally bordered by 15 distinctive trees), Villers-Plouich and Beaucamp. Today, Fifteen Ravine British Cemetery stands in Farm Ravine, which was captured by the 12th (Service) Battalion, South Wales Borderers, while Villers-Plouich was captured by the 13th (Service) Battalion, East Surrey Regiment.CWGC: Fifteen Ravine British Cemetery, Villers-PlouichCWGC: Villers-Plouich Communal Cemetery
Home defence