Henry Rawlinson , 1st Baron Rawlinson General Henry Seymour Rawlinson , 1st Baron Rawlinson , GCB , GCSI , GCVO , KCMG ( 20 February 1864 – 28 March 1925 ) , known as Sir Henry Rawlinson , Bt between 1895 and 1919 , was a British First World War general best known for his roles in the Battle of the Somme of 1916 and the Battle of Amiens in 1918 . Military career . Rawlinson was born in Westminster , London . His father , Sir Henry Rawlinson , 1st Baronet , was an Army officer , and a renowned Middle East scholar who is generally recognised as the father of Assyriology ) . Rawlinson attended Eton College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and entered the Army in 1884 as an officer in the King ' s Royal Rifle Corps in India . His first military experience was serving in Burma during an 1886 uprising . In 1889 , Rawlinson ' s mother died and he returned to England . He transferred to the Coldstream Guards and was promoted to captain . He served on General Herbert Kitchener ' s staff during the advance on Omdurman in Sudan in 1898 , and served with distinction in a field command in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902 . Rawlinson was promoted to Colonel in 1903 and named as commandant of the Army Staff College . He was made Commander of 2nd Infantry Brigade at Aldershot in 1907 and General Officer Commanding 3rd Division in 1910 . Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 , Rawlinson was appointed General Officer Commanding 4th Division in France . He then took command of the IV Corps . Rawlinson wrote to the Conservative politician Lord Derby ( 24 December 1914 ) forecasting that the Allies would win a war of attrition , but it was unclear whether this would take one , two or three years . At the end of 1915 , Rawlinson was considered for command of British First Army , in succession to Douglas Haig , but the command was instead given to Sir Charles Monro . Rawlinson assumed command of the new Fourth Army on 24 January 1916 . as the planned Allied offensive on the Somme . He wrote in his diary : " It is not the lot of many men to command an army of over half a million men . " The Somme was originally conceived as a joint Anglo - French offensive , but owing to the demands of the Battle of Verdun , French participation was greatly reduced , leaving the British , and especially Rawlinson ' s inexperienced army , to bear the brunt of the offensive . Nevertheless , on the eve of the offensive , he " showed an attitude of absolute confidence . " The Battle of the Somme . The Somme offensive was launched on 1 July . It soon became a heavy defeat , with British forces repulsed by the German along most of the front , with the British sustaining nearly 60 , 000 casualties on the first day . The heaviest defeats were in Rawlinson ' s own sector , in front of Pozières and Thiepval . By the afternoon Rawlinson was aware of the scale of the disaster . On the Allied right , the British and French had more success , but Rawlinson would not allow the corps commander , General Walter Congreve , to advance beyond his set objectives : a decision for which he was later criticised . The principal cause of the defeat , however , was the Army ' s miplaced belief that the long and heavy preliminary artillery barrage had destroyed the German barbed wire and trenches . In fact , the German trenches were largely intact , and heavily laden British infantry were required to advance at a slow walk , across a maze of shell holes , into concentrated German machine - gun fire . After the war Rawlinson was held responsible for the tactics followed on 1 July . The historian Martin Middlebrook wrote : " What is certain is that those divisions , Regular or otherwise , which most closely followed Rawlinson ' s advice , suffered the heaviest casualties and achieved the least success . " As the disaster unfolded , however , it was too late for either Haig or Rawlinson to change the set plan . The full extent of British casualties on the Somme were not known to the public until after the war : even Haig and Rawlinson were not fully aware of them . The blame for the defeat was directed mainly at divisional and corps commanders : but only two , Major - General Edward Stuart - Wortley and Major - General Thomas Pilcher , were dismissed . Both were dismissed for not driving their units hard enough - that is for not creating more casualties , rather than for causing too many . To dismiss Rawlinson would have been to admit that the Somme offensive had been defeated , and that it had been incompetently planned and executed , which neither Haig nor the British government was willing to do . Middlebrook writes : " Haig and Rawlinson were protected by the sheer enormity of the disaster . " Middlebrook holds Rawlinson principally responsible for the heavy British casualties on the Somme : " Rawlinson was not to blame for the shortage of heavy artillery , but he had failed to recognise the depth and strength of the German dug - outs it was supposed to destroy . He ignored the doubts of infantry officers on this score . . . By insisting on his own rigid attack plan he robbed his men of any opportunity to use the intelligence and initiative which they surely possessed . Rawlinson must take full responsibility for this , the worst mistake of the day and the one which had caused most of the casualties . " In January 1917 , Rawlinson was promoted to permanent General " for distinguished service in the field " . For a period in 1917 – 18 , he also commanded the Second Army . In February 1918 he was appointed British Permanent Military Representative to the inter - Allied Supreme War Council at Versailles . Battles of 1918 . Rawlinson returned to the Fourth Army in July 1918 for the Allied counter - offensive . By this time the German Army ' s great spring offensive , Operation Michael , had been checked , and the Allies were preparing a counter - offensive . Following the success of the Australian attack at Le Hamel on 4 July , Haig entrusted Rawlinson with planning a larger attack , designed to force the Germans back from the city of Amiens , and also further to damage the German Army ' s weakening morale . Rawlinson had learned from his experiences on the Somme . " The immeasurable superiority of the planning for 8 August 1918 over that for 1 July 1916 testified to the distance the BEF had travelled in the interim . " The attack was to be on a relatively narrow front , with no prior bombardment and limited objectives . To ensure a breakthrough , Haig gave Rawlinson command of virtually the whole British armoured forces . By this stage of the war British manpower was severely depleted , and Rawlinson relied heavily on Australian , Canadian and American troops to achieve the breakthrough . The Allies achieved complete surprise , and the Battle of Amiens proved a striking success . On 8 August , described by General Erich Ludendorff as " the black day of the German Army " , the Allies took 12 , 000 prisoners and captured 450 guns . Both the German and Allied commands were struck by the collapse in German morale and the high number of Germans surrendering without a fight . Nevertheless , the Allies were still cautious about pressing their advantage too far : on 11 August Rawlinson advised Haig to halt the offensive . In September , again commanding a mixed force of British , Australian and American divisions , Rawlinson led his Army in the Hundred Days Offensive , the successful Allied effort to break through the Hindenburg Line of German defences . Rawlinson daringly ordered the Australian commander , General John Monash , to cross the Canal du Nord , a key part of the German defences . The resulting Battle of Canal du Nord saw the Germans decisively defeated . By 30 September , a 50 kilometre stretch of the Hindenburg Line had been taken , and the Germans were in full retreat . Later life . Rawlinson received many honours . He was made GCVO in 1917 and KCMG 1918 . Following the Armistice , Parliament passed a vote of thanks to him for his service . In 1919 , he was raised to the peerage as Baron Rawlinson of Trent in the County of Dorset , and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath ( GCB ) . He was again called on to organise an evacuation , this time of the Allied forces that had been sent to Russia to intervene in the Russian Civil War . In November 1919 he became General Officer Commanding - in - Chief for Aldershot Command . In 1920 , Rawlinson was made Commander - in - Chief , India , a post he held until his death . In 1924 , he was appointed a Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India ( GCSI ) . He died when he was taken ill after playing polo and cricket on his 61st birthday in 1925 . Henry Rawlinson ' s brother Alfred Rawlinson also played a significant role during World War I , but this was mostly confined to the Middle Eastern theatre in Turkey , Mesopotamia and Persia . He was taken prisoner of war by the Turks , which caused some political complications based on his brother ' s position . The story is contained in his book , " Adventures in the Near East , 1918 - 1922 . "