Brigadier General John Charteris (1877–1946) was a British Army officer. During World War I he was the Chief of Intelligence at the British Expeditionary Force General Headquarters from 1915 to 1918. In later life he was a Unionist Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Dumfriesshire.
Early life
Charteris was born on 8 January 1877, probably in Glasgow, son of Matthew Charteris (1840–97), Regius Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Glasgow and Elizabeth Gilchrist (Nee Greer). He was from a distinguished academic family. His uncle was Archibald Hamilton Charteris (1835-1908), Professor of Liberal Criticism at the University of Edinburgh and Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (1892). His older brother, also called Archibald Hamilton Charteris (1874-1940), was Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney, and was suspected with the other brother, Francis James Charteris, was Professor of Materia Medica at the University of St Andrews of the murder of Miss Marion Gilchrist in 1908 .
He received his early formal education at Kelvinside Academy from 1886 to 1891, then spent a year studying Mathematics & Physics at Göttingen University in Germany. He was fluent in the French and German languages.
Early military career
He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in December 1893, and on graduating received a commission into the Royal Engineers in March 1896, and was sent to Asia, where he joined the British Imperial Indian Army. He entered Staff College, Quetta in 1907, and was the outstanding graduate of his year in 1909. Major-General Douglas Haig, then Chief of Staff India, became his patron.
Charteris was a staff captain at India HQ 1909–10, then 1910-12 was GSO2 on the Operations Section of the Indian General Staff. When Haig was appointed to Corps Command at Aldershot in 1912, as Assistant Military Secretary Captain Charteris was one of the trusted officers who found a place in his retinue.
World War I
In August 1914 on the outbreak of World War I, whilst still at the junior officer rank of captain, Charteris was appointed an Aide-de-Camp to Haig, whom he accompanied to France with the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.). In September 1914 Haig issued him with an order to establish an Intelligence Office in I Corps Headquarters, Haig's Command, with the aim of providing operational information on the activities of the Imperial German Army. Despite being fluent in French and German Charteris had no background or formal training in intelligence work. He remained in Haig's retinue engaged in this work when I Corps was enlarged and converted into the B.E.F.'s First Army in December 1914, and then on to the B.E.F.'s General Headquarters, when Haig was appointed Commander-in-Chief in December 1915, where Charteris was promoted by Haig to the rank of brigadier-general in 1915 at 38 years of age. Haig also awarded him the Distinguished Service Order for his work on his H.Q. Staff in 1915.
Charteris was brash, untidy, and liked to start the day with a brandy and soda. He was a sort of licensed jester (known as "The Principal Boy" due to his rapid promotion) amidst Haig's staid inner circle. In Walter Reid's view he comes across as likeable and able in his own writings, including his letters to his much younger wife Noel (the "Douglas" frequently referred to in his letters is their infant son. He is cited by the Quote Investigator as the source for the saying 'Military Intelligence is a contradiction in terms', in his 1931 memoir At G.H.Q.)
Haig's chaplain George S. Duncan later commented on how Charteris' "vitality and loud-mouthed exuberance" made him unpopular. Lord Derby, then Secretary of State for War, began to have doubts about Charteris in the role as the B.E.F.'s Intelligence Chief after an incident in February 1917 when he failed to censor an interview given by Haig to French journalists.
Charteris was sometimes described as Haig's "evil counsellor", and has been blamed by some historians for Haig's errors, with the accusation that he had a propensity in intelligence briefings to provide assessments of the German situation that gave Haig what he wanted to hear. He produced reports of poor German morale based on interviews with prisoners, and of German manpower shortages based on statistical analysis of their paybooks, which gave a German soldier's age and year of callup. These reports were influential in Haig's decisions affecting the conduct of military campaigns, and were increasingly criticised by Major-General Macdonogh, intelligence advisor at the War Office. Haig kept him on after his inadequacies had been exposed.