Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard
Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard, was a British military officer who was instrumental in establishing the Royal Air Force. He has been described as the "Father of the Royal Air Force".
During his formative years, Trenchard struggled academically, failing many examinations and only just succeeding in meeting the minimum standard for commissioned service in the British Army. As a young infantry officer, he served in India; with the outbreak of the Boer War, he volunteered for service in South Africa. While fighting the Boers, he was critically wounded; as a result of his injury, he lost a lung, was partially paralysed and returned to Great Britain. On medical advice, Trenchard travelled to Switzerland to recuperate, but owing to the boredom he suffered, took up bobsleighing. After a heavy crash, he found that his paralysis was gone and that he could walk unaided. Following further recuperation, he returned to active service in South Africa.
After the end of the Boer War, Trenchard saw service in Nigeria, where he was involved in efforts to bring the interior under settled British rule and quell intertribal violence. During his time in West Africa, he commanded the Southern Nigeria Regiment for several years.
Trenchard learned to fly in summer 1912, and gained his aviator's certificate on 31 July, flying a Henry Farman biplane of the Sopwith School of Flying at Brooklands. He was subsequently appointed as second-in-command of the Central Flying School. He held several senior positions in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, serving as the commander of the Royal Flying Corps in France from 1915 to 1917. In 1918, he briefly served as the first Chief of the Air Staff before taking up command of the Independent Air Force in France. Returning as Chief of the Air Staff under Winston Churchill in 1919, Trenchard spent the following decade securing the future of the Royal Air Force. He was Metropolitan Police Commissioner in the 1930s and a defender of the RAF in his later years. He is recognised today as one of the early advocates of strategic bombing.
Early life
Hugh Montague Trenchard was born at 6 Haines Hill in Taunton, England, on 3 February 1873. He was the third child and second son of Henry Montague Trenchard and his wife Georgiana Louisa Catherine Tower Skene. Trenchard's father was a former captain in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry who was working as an articled clerk in a legal practice and his mother was the daughter of the Royal Navy captain John McDowall Skene. Although in the 1870s the Trenchards were living in an unremarkable fashion, their forebears had played significant roles in English history. Notable ancestors were Sir Thomas Trenchard, a High Sheriff of Dorset in the 16th century and Sir John Trenchard, the Secretary of State under William III.When Hugh Trenchard was two, the family moved to Courtlands, a manor house in Norton Fitzwarren, less than three miles from the centre of Taunton. The country setting meant that he could enjoy an outdoor life, including spending time hunting rabbits and other small animals with the rifle he was given on his eighth birthday. It was during his junior years that he and his siblings were educated at home by a resident tutor, whom Trenchard did not respect. Unfortunately for his education, the tutor was neither strict enough nor skilful enough to overcome the children's mischievous attempts to avoid receiving instruction. As a consequence, Trenchard did not excel academically; however, his enthusiasm for games and riding was evident.
At the age of 10, he was sent to board at Allens Preparatory School near Botley in Hampshire. Although he did well at arithmetic, he struggled with the rest of the curriculum. However, his parents were not greatly concerned by his educational difficulties, believing that it would be no impediment to him following a military career. Georgina Trenchard wanted her son to follow her father's profession and enter the Royal Navy. In 1884 he was moved to Dover where he attended Hammond's, a cramming school for prospective entrants to HMS Britannia. He failed the Navy's entrance papers, and at the age of 13 he was sent to the Reverend Albert Pritchard's crammer, Hill Lands in Wargrave, Berkshire. Hill Lands prepared its pupils for Army commissions and, as before, Trenchard did not apply himself to his studies, preferring sports and practical joking.
In 1889, when he was 16 years old, his father, who had become a solicitor, was declared bankrupt. After initially being removed from Hill Lands, the young Trenchard was only able to return thanks to the charity of his relatives. He subsequently failed the Woolwich examinations twice and was then relegated to applying for the Militia which had lower entry standards. Even the Militia's examinations proved difficult for Trenchard, and he failed in 1891 and 1892. During this period he underwent a period of training as a probationary subaltern with the Forfar and Kincardine Artillery. Following his return to Pritchard's, he achieved a bare pass in March 1893. At the age of 20, he was gazetted as a second-lieutenant in the Second Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers and posted to India.
Early military career
India
Trenchard arrived in India in late 1893, joining his regiment at Sialkot in the Punjab. Not long after his arrival, he was called upon to make a speech at a mess dinner night. It was common practice for the youngest subaltern to make such a speech, and he was expected to cover several highlights of the Royal Scots Fusiliers' history. Instead he simply said: "I am deeply proud to belong to this great regiment", followed by "I hope one day I shall live to command it." His 'speech' was received with hoots of incredulous laughter, although some appreciated his nerve.Young officers stationed in India in the 1890s enjoyed many social and sporting diversions, and Trenchard did little militarily. While every regiment was required to undertake a period of duty beyond the Khyber Pass, for the most part conditions of peace and prosperity were evident and he was able to engage in various sporting activities. In early 1894 he won the All-India Rifle Championship. After his success at shooting, he set about establishing a battalion polo team. Being of the infantry, his regiment had no history of playing polo and there were many obstacles to overcome. However, within six months the battalion polo team was competing and holding its own. It was during a polo match in 1896 that he first met Winston Churchill, with whom he clashed on the field of play. Trenchard's sporting prowess saved his reputation among his fellow officers. In other respects he did not fit in; lacking social graces and choosing to converse little, he was nicknamed "the camel", as like the beast he neither drank nor spoke.
It was during this period of his life in India that he took up reading. His first choice was for biographies, particularly of British heroes, and he kept the long hours he spent reading unobtrusive, but in so doing succeeded in providing himself with an education where the service crammers had failed. However, in military terms Trenchard was dissatisfied. He failed to see any action during his time in India, missing out on his regiment's turn at the frontier, as he was sent to England on sick leave for a hernia operation.
With the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899, he applied several times to rejoin his old battalion, which had been sent to the Cape as part of the expeditionary corps. His requests were rejected by his colonel, and when the Viceroy Lord Curzon, who was concerned about the drain of leaders to South Africa, banned the dispatch of any further officers, Trenchard's prospects for seeing action looked bleak. However, a year or two previously, it had so happened that he had been promised help or advice from Sir Edmond Elles, as a gesture of thanks after rescuing a poorly planned rifle-shooting contest from disaster. By 1900, Elles was Military Secretary to Lord Curzon, and Trenchard sent a priority signal to Elles requesting that he be permitted to rejoin his unit overseas. This bold move worked, and he received his orders for South Africa several weeks later.
South Africa
On his arrival in South Africa, he rejoined the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and in July 1900 he was ordered to raise and train a mounted company within the 2nd Battalion. The Boers were accomplished horsemen and the tactics of the day placed a heavy strain upon the British cavalry. Accordingly, the British sought to raise mounted infantry units and Trenchard's polo-playing experiences led to him being selected to raise a mounted unit for service west of Johannesburg. Part of the newly formed company consisted of a group of volunteer Australian horsemen who, thus far being under-employed, had largely been noticed for excessive drinking, gambling and debauchery.Trenchard's company came under the command of the 6th Brigade which was headquartered at Krugersdorp. During September and early October 1900, it was involved in several skirmishes in the surrounding countryside. On 5 Brigade, including Trenchard, departed Krugersdorp with the intention of drawing the Boers into battle on the plain where they might be defeated. However, before the brigade could reach the plain it had to pass through undulating terrain which favoured the Boer guerrilla tactics. The brigade travelled by night, and at dawn on 9 October the Ayrshire Yeomanry, who were in the vanguard, disturbed a Boer encampment. The Boers fled on horseback and Trenchard's company pursued them for. The Boers, finding themselves unable to shake off Trenchard's pursuit, led them into an ambush. The Boers rode up a steep slope and disappeared into the valley beyond. When Trenchard made the ridge he saw the Dwarsvlei farmhouse with smoke coming from the chimney. It appeared to him that the Boers thought they had got away and were eating breakfast unawares. He placed his troops on the heights around the building and after half an hour's observation led a patrol of four men down towards the farmhouse. The remainder of the company were to close in on his signal. However, when Trenchard and his patrol reached the valley floor and broke cover the Boers opened fire from about a dozen points and bullets whistled past it. He pressed forward reaching the sheltering wall of the farmhouse. As he headed for the door, Trenchard was hit by a Boer bullet to the chest. The rest of the company, seeing their leader fall, descended from the heights to engage the Boers at close quarters in and around the farmhouse. Many of the Boers were killed or wounded, a few fled and several were taken prisoner. Trenchard being critically wounded was medically evacuated to Krugersdorp.