The man behind the message that ended the First World War
Lt Col William Dobbie’s remarkable role inspired the nation and his family, says Luke Mintz
In the early hours of Nov 11 1918, Lt Col William Dobbie was on duty at Field Marshal Haig’s headquarters when the remarkable news came through. British, German, and French politicians had signed an Armistice in a railway carriage in the Forest of Compiègne, northern France, with a ceasefire set to commence across the Western Front at 11am – just six hours away. Dobbie, who joined the Army at the age of 18, had fought a gruelling war, leading the fabled retreat from Mons in 1914, when he was allowed only 20 minutes of sleep each day. He was relieved, no doubt, to find it would all soon be over. But first, it was his job to tell the troops. Tapping out an 83-word telegram, m, signed at 6.50am, Dobbie wrote to all British forces on the Western Front: “Hostilities will cease at 1100 today, November 11th. Troops will stand fast on the e line reached at that hour … There will be no intercourse of any description with the enemy until the receipt of instructions from G.H.Q.”
One hundred years later his grandson, Brigadier Ian Dobbie, sits in his central London n military office, beaming with pride as he waves the very same telegram before me: it’s the message that ended the First World War, he says. He’s reminded of the classic poster produced by the Parliamentary Recruitment Committee in 1914, which shows a little girl sitting on her father’s lap, asking him, “Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?” The message – think about what you’ll be able to tell your children and grandchildren in decades to come – resonated with men in the trenches. Dobbie’s grandfather clearly had his own answer well-rehearsed, telling him as a child: “People asked me what I did in the war, and I tell them I stopped the beastly thing.”
Dobbie, 79, whose father died in the Second World War when he was five years old, had a close relationship with his grandfather. He describes him as a “highly disciplined, deeply patriotic, and a committed monarchist and family man”, adding: “Both professionally and spiritually he was very significant in my life.” Between the world wars Maj Gen Dobbie served in British Malaya, warning presciently that the jungle was vulnerable to attack from the Japanese. Tragically, his grandson says, he was ignored. Dobbie himself was inspired to join the Army by his grandfather’s legacy. Despite his uber-tough military persona, Dobbie says his grandfather also showed a sweet, gentle side, recalling a time he visited him in hospital as a child. “He was fairly deaf, and this made him slightly remote, but once people got to know him they found actually there was a warmth, he was very caring. This was one of the things that helped him hold the confidence of the people of Malta.”
The one trait everybody remembered about his grandfather, Dobbie says, was his devout Christianity. He had a “definite conversion experience” as a teenager at Charterhouse School, going on to write extensively about the merits of Godliness to a good Christian soldier. Praising his achievements as Governor of Malta in 1942, Winston Churchill referred to him as a “remarkable man … a Cromwellian figure at a key point, fighting with his Bible in one hand and his sword in the other.”
With 16,000 conscientious objectors refusing to fight in the First World War due to their Christian-inspired pacifism, his grandfather went on to write pamphlets urging Christians to take up arms. “He respected pacifists but of course he didn’t agree with them, because he felt there was a Biblical case that there are times when it is necessary for military force to be deployed. There are Godly men who are soldiers in both the Old and New Testament.”
Looking at the telegram in the cold light of 2018, one particular detail jumps off the page. His grandfather signed the order at 6.50am, but fighting did not actually cease until 11am. Some 10,900 soldiers from all sides were killed in those four hours, estimates historian Joseph Persico. For some, this fact has come to symbolise the absurdity of the whole war, that millions were told precisely when – to the minute – they should stop killing each other, decided by the whims of rulers they had never met.
Dobbie thinks often about the tragedy of those who fell in the final hours, but rejects the idea that it was a pointless massacre. “If we had not prevailed a second Dark Ages would have come over Europe and our own country. And it’s cause for gratitude for those who made the sacrifice.”