After leaving school in 1873, he became a garden boy in the village rectory, then in 1875 he became a footman in the Countess of Cardigan's household at Deene Park. He was educated at the local church school and as an older child earned 6d a week as a pupil-teacher. Robertson was born in Welbourn, Lincolnshire, the son of Thomas Charles Robertson, a tailor and postmaster of Scottish ancestry, and Ann Dexter Robertson (née Beet). Robertson is the only soldier in the history of the British Army to have risen from an enlisted rank to its highest rank of field marshal. In 1917 Robertson supported the continuation of the Battle of Passchendaele (also known as the Third Battle of Ypres) at odds with Lloyd George's view that Britain's war effort ought to be focused on the other theatres until the arrival of sufficient US troops on the Western Front. While CIGS, Robertson had increasingly poor relations with David Lloyd George, Secretary of State for War and then Prime Minister, and threatened resignation at Lloyd George's attempt to subordinate the British forces to the French Commander-in-Chief, Robert Nivelle. As CIGS he was committed to a Western Front strategy focusing on Germany and was against what he saw as peripheral operations on other fronts. Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Orderįield Marshal Sir William Robert Robertson, 1st Baronet, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, DSO (29 January 1860 – 12 February 1933) was a British Army officer who served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) – the professional head of the British Army – from 1916 to 1918 during the First World War. Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
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