Adrian Grant Duff

Lieutenant Colonel Adrian Grant Duff, C.B. (29 September 1869 – 14 September 1914), was a British officer and administrator. He was responsible for creating the "War Book", the British Army's plan to deploy to the European continent, and commanded the 1st Battalion the Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) during the opening months of World War I.

Leben

Born in London on 29th September 1869, the son of Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff, he was educated at Wellington College and the Royal Military College(Sandhurst), commissioning into the 2nd Battalion the Black Watch in 1889. He served in various peacetime roles around the British Empire and saw action during the Tirah Campaign and the Second Anglo-Boer War, before being seconded to the War Office as Assistant Secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1910. Here he wrote 'Coordination of Departmental Action on the Occurrence of Strained Relations and on the Outbreak of War', commonly known as the 'War Book', which highlighted numerous flaws in the British Government's preparations for a European War and formed the basis for the British Expeditionary Force's plan to deploy to France and Belgium in 1914 .

In 1913 he returned to the 1st Battalion the Black Watch and commanded the battalion in France and Belgium throughout the Retreat from Mons and the Battle of the Marne, before being killed in action at the Battle of the Aisne on 14th September 1914.