A Study in Leadership

Rudolph Lambart, 10th Earl of Cavan, was a Grenadier Guardsman who served in the Boer War, later writing ‘..we heard as many bullets in the whole war as we heard in one day of the 1915–16 battles’. He retired in 1912 to be Master of the Hertfordshire Hunt, where he might have stayed had it not been for the outbreak of war in 1914. He commanded a brigade, then the Guards Division, where he took the young Prince of Wales under his wing, and later an army in Italy. In 1922 he became Chief of the Imperial General Staff, an appointment for which he did not feel qualified. He presided at a difficult time, in an era of public indifference and defense cuts. In 1939 he was back in uniform as a member of the Home Guard.

Cavan was a leader who believed in order, discipline, and the importance of communicating clearly; the perfect Guardsman. He was well-read, learnt languages wherever he went, was charming and showed style, as demonstrated by the occasion when his ‘cigar saved the situation’ in November 1914. Had it not been for The Great War, he would have retired to the hunting field, yet he served throughout the war, becoming a Field Marshal. Then, at the beginning of another war, at the age of 75, he was taking up his spade to dig trenches to defend the approaches to Ayot St Lawrence from the invader.