How can an officer be "an admirable captain, an adequate major", but become "a barely satisfactory colonel and a disastrous general"?
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I'm quoting from Redvers Buller's Wikipedia page, but I'm not just asking about him. I'm asking in general about such officers who excelled as company/company-grade officers, but who floundered as field officers. Why?
Please answer in simple English; I have no military training. I'm just a curious laywoman.
Historian Richard Holmes "Richard Holmes (military historian)") comments that Buller has gone down—not entirely fairly—as "one of the bad jokes of Victorian military history", and quotes a famous verdict that he was "an admirable captain, an adequate major, a barely satisfactory colonel and a disastrous general" [boldening mine]. Viscount Esher called him "a gallant fellow but no strategist".[21] Wolseley praised his "stern determination of character". At least one recent historian has been kinder to his reputation:
Buller's achievements have been obscured by his mistakes. In 1909, a French military critic, General Langlois, pointed out that it was Buller, not Roberts, who had the toughest job of the war — and it was Buller who was the innovator in countering Boer tactics. The proper use of cover, of infantry advancing in rushes, co-ordinated in turn with creeping barrages of artillery: these were the tactics of truly modern war, first evolved by Buller in Natal.
— Thomas Pakenham "Thomas Pakenham (historian)"), [22]
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