Haig’s very uncommunicativeness allowed civilians and soldiers alike to read into the man the qualities they wanted to see. “Haig was a silent man. . . . You had to learn a sort of verbal shorthand made up of a series of grunts and gestures,” wrote his aide-de-camp Desmond Morton. Of one such instance Morton recalled, “The briefing lasted about twenty minutes and consisted of Haig with a pointer in front of a large-scale map of the battle pointing at various spots and making grunting noises with a few words interspersed. ‘Never believed . . . petrol . . . bridge gone . . . where cavalry?’ and
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