1. Horace Smith-Dorrien commanded II Corps at the Battle of Mons, the first major action fought by the BEF, and the Battle of Le Cateau, where he fought a vigorous and successful defensive action contrary to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief Sir John French, with whom he had had a personality clash dating back some years.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was relieved of command by French for requesting permission to retreat from the Ypres Salient to a more defensible position.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was born at Haresfoot, a house near Berkhamsted, in the county of Hertfordshire to Colonel Robert Algernon Smith-Dorrien and Mary Ann Drever.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was the twelfth child of sixteen; his eldest brother was Thomas Smith-Dorrien-Smith, the Lord Proprietor of the Isles of Scilly from 1872 until 1918.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was educated at Harrow and on 26 February 1876 entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was present at the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War on 22 January 1879, serving with the British invasion force as a transport officer for a detachment of Royal Artillery.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was one of fewer than fifty British survivors from the battle, and one of only five Imperial officers to escape it with his life.
Horace Smith-Dorrien took part in the rest of that war.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was promoted captain on 1 April 1882, appointed assistant chief of police in Alexandria on 22 August 1882, then given command of Mounted Infantry in Egypt on 3 September 1882, and was seconded to the Egyptian army.
Horace Smith-Dorrien met Gordon more than once, but his bad knee kept him off the expedition to relieve Khartoum.
Horace Smith-Dorrien's task was to capture nine Arab river supply boats, in order to achieve which he had to exceed his orders by going beyond the village of Surda, making a 60-mile journey on horseback in 24 hours.
Horace Smith-Dorrien then left active command to go to the Staff College, Camberley.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was posted to India, and promoted major on 1 May 1892.
Horace Smith-Dorrien became Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General, Bengal, on 1 April 1893 and then Assistant Adjutant General, Bengal, on 27 October 1894.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was promoted brevet lieutenant-colonel on 20 May 1898 and appointed Commanding Officer of the 13th Sudanese Battalion.
Horace Smith-Dorrien fought at the Battle of Omdurman, where his infantry fired at Devishes from entrenched positions.
Horace Smith-Dorrien commanded the British troops during the Fashoda incident.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was promoted brevet colonel 16 November 1898 and Commanding Officer of the Sherwood Foresters and substantive lieutenant-colonel.
Horace Smith-Dorrien provided covering fire for French's Cavalry Division at Klipsdrift, and played an important role at the Battle of Paardeberg, where he was summoned by Lord Roberts and asked for his views in the presence of Lord Kitchener, French and Henry Colvile.
Horace Smith-Dorrien argued for the use of sapping and fire support, rather than attacking the entrenched enemy over open ground.
At Sanna's Post, Horace Smith-Dorrien ignored inept orders from Colvile to leave wounded largely unprotected and managed an orderly retreat without further casualties.
Horace Smith-Dorrien took part in the Battle of Leliefontein.
On 6 February 1901, Horace Smith-Dorrien's troops were attacked in the Battle of Chrissiesmeer.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was mentioned three times in despatches in the London Gazette, and Ian Hamilton later wrote highly of his performance and his grasp of the men's morale, whilst Roberts thought highly of his South Africa performance.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was at the top of a list of eighteen successful commanders of columns or groups of columns, including Haig and Allenby, whom French commended to Lord Roberts.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was placed in command of the 4th Division in Baluchistan, a post he held from 30 June 1903 until 1907.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was raised to Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1904, made colonel of the Sherwood Foresters in July 1905, and promoted lieutenant general on 9 April 1906.
Horace Smith-Dorrien introduced the staff ride, erroneously attributed by Terraine to Haig.
Horace Smith-Dorrien helped found the Staff College at Quetta in 1907.
Horace Smith-Dorrien remained neutral in the dispute between Kitchener and the Viceroy Lord Curzon.
Horace Smith-Dorrien returned to England and, on 1 December 1907, became GOC of the Aldershot Command.
Unlike many senior generals of the era, Horace Smith-Dorrien could speak to troops with ease and was greatly admired by regimental officers.
Horace Smith-Dorrien later wrote: "one could never become an up-to-date soldier in the prehistoric warfare to be met with against the Dervishes".
Horace Smith-Dorrien improved the frequency and methods of training in marksmanship of all soldiers.
At Aldershot, Horace Smith-Dorrien instituted a number of reforms designed to improve the lot of the ordinary soldier.
Horace Smith-Dorrien abandoned the practice of posting pickets to trawl the streets for drunk soldiers outside the base, more than doubled the number of playing fields available to the men, cut down trees, and built new and better barracks.
Horace Smith-Dorrien's reforms earned many plaudits but were treated as an implied criticism by his predecessor, Sir John French, with whom he had still been on relatively cordial terms at the end of the South African War.
Horace Smith-Dorrien tried to get the army to replace the old Maxim gun with the new Vickers Maxim gun, which weighed less than half as much and had a better water-cooling system but the War Office did not approve the expenditure.
In July 1910, he was made aide-de-camp to King George V He was part of the King's hunt in the Chitwan area of Nepal; on 19 December 1911, Smith-Dorrien killed a rhino and on the following day shot a bear.
Horace Smith-Dorrien had experience of dealing with Territorials for the first time and instigated training on fire-and-movement withdrawals which would prove useful at Le Cateau.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was promoted to full general and raised to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1913.
Unlike a number of British generals of the era, Horace Smith-Dorrien was not a political intriguer.
Lord Kitchener was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war kept him elsewhere, and Horace Smith-Dorrien was sent instead.
Horace Smith-Dorrien arrived at GHQ and formally asked French's permission to keep a special diary to report privately to the King as His Majesty had requested.
Horace Smith-Dorrien told Lanrezac that he would hold his current position for another 24 hours.
When "1914" was published, Horace Smith-Dorrien claimed that French had been "in excellent form" at the meeting and had still been planning to advance.
However, in his own memoirs Horace Smith-Dorrien admitted that French had talked of either attacking or retreating, although he claimed that it had been he who had warned that the Mons position was untenable.
French was awakened at 2am on 26 August 1914 with news that Haig's I Corps was under attack at Landrecies, and ordered Horace Smith-Dorrien to assist him.
Horace Smith-Dorrien replied that he was "unable to move a man".
Horace Smith-Dorrien finally managed to locate Snow, at 5:00 am.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was not under Smith-Dorrien's orders but agreed to assist II Corps.
Horace Smith-Dorrien then cancelled his order to retreat and decided to stand and fight at Le Cateau.
Horace Smith-Dorrien still hoped for assistance from I Corps, which did not reach its intended position to the immediate east of Le Cateau.
Haig, despite believing French to be incompetent, wrote in his journal of Horace Smith-Dorrien's "ill-considered decision" in electing to stand and fight at Le Cateau.
However, the historian John Terraine praised Horace Smith-Dorrien's decision, arguing that despite heavy casualties sustained by II Corps in the action, it materially slowed the German advance.
In fact Horace Smith-Dorrien's staff had held II Corps' formation together, although at a meeting French accused him of being overly optimistic.
Horace Smith-Dorrien recorded that his men were much fitter and had recovered their spirits after the Le Cateau engagement.
II Corps, with its heavy casualties was effectively temporarily broken up in late October 1914 to reinforce I Corps, but Horace Smith-Dorrien was given command of the newly formed British Second Army when it was reconstituted on 26 December 1914.
Horace Smith-Dorrien later recorded that General French inflicted "pin-pricks" on him from February 1915 onwards, including the removal of Forestier-Walker as his chief of staff.
French told Haig that Horace Smith-Dorrien was "a weak spot".
Horace Smith-Dorrien was not always immune to the excessive optimism which British officers were expected to display throughout the war: Aylmer Haldane recorded in his diary on 15 March 1915 that prior to the battle Horace Smith-Dorrien had been claiming that the war would be won in March 1915.
On 27 April 1915, with a French counterattack to the north of the salient materializing later and on a smaller-scale than promised, Horace Smith-Dorrien recommended withdrawal to the more defensible "GHQ Line".
Horace Smith-Dorrien wrote a long letter on 27 April 1915 explaining the situation to Robertson.
Horace Smith-Dorrien received in response a curt telephone message telling him that, in French's view, he had adequate troops to defend the salient.
Horace Smith-Dorrien's offer to resign his command on 6 May 1915 was ignored, and on that same day French used the 'pessimism' of the withdrawal recommendation as an excuse to sack him from command of Second Army altogether.
Horace Smith-Dorrien was raised to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George and was briefly appointed GOC First Home Army.
Horace Smith-Dorrien took no significant military part in the rest of the war.
Horace Smith-Dorrien returned to England in January 1916 and on 29 January 1917 was appointed lieutenant of the Tower of London.
Horace Smith-Dorrien led a campaign in London for moral purity, calling for suppression of "suggestive or indecent" media.
French, partly in response to criticism inspired by Horace Smith-Dorrien, later wrote a partial and inaccurate account of the opening of the war in his book 1914, which attacked Horace Smith-Dorrien.
In 1914 French wrote that this had been written before he knew the full facts, and that Horace Smith-Dorrien had risked destruction of his corps and lost 14,000 men and 80 guns.
Horace Smith-Dorrien's brothers were Henry Crofton Schneider and Major Cyril Crofton Schneider.
Olive Horace Smith-Dorrien was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1918.
Horace Smith-Dorrien retired in September 1923, living in Portugal and finally in England.
Horace Smith-Dorrien devoted much his time to the welfare and remembrance of Great War soldiers.
Horace Smith-Dorrien worked on his memoirs, which were published in 1925.
Horace Smith-Dorrien played himself in the film The Battle of Mons, released in 1926.
Horace Smith-Dorrien died on 12 August 1930 following injuries sustained in a car accident at Chippenham, in Wiltshire; he was 72 years old.
Horace Smith-Dorrien's body was buried at the Rectory Lane Cemetery of St Peter's Church, Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire.
Horace Smith-Dorrien's grave is marked by a tall stone cross, once adorned by a bronze sword of sacrifice which has since been stolen.