and he stayed at GHQ for the rest of the war, in 1918 becoming deputy engineer-in-chief. He was consulted by Haig, became a mentor of the General Staff and all branches of the engineers, which gave him greater knowledge of transport problems than the supply staffs. At first Edmonds assisted Major Ernest Swinton who had been sent out by the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener (5 August 1914 – 5 June 1916) as a war correspondent, in the absence of news reporters, who had been barred from the front. Edmonds had a fairly quiet war, coming under a fire a few times and once being billeted in a house across from one that was hit by a bomb, killing the two occupants. In 1919 Edmonds retired from the army and was given the honorary rank of brigadier-general. Post-war career "History of the Great War" "History of the Great War" is an abbreviation of The History of the Great War Based on Official Documents by Direction of the Committee of Imperial Defence (sometimes called the British Official History). A formal decision to write an official history was taken in a Cabinet meeting on 26 August 1915, when Maurice Hankey (1 April 1877 – 26 January 1963) the Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence and of the War Council, advocated a series of histories to provide Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener (24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) the Secretary of State for War wanted work begun on a single-volume popular history, to be published soon after the war. Kitchener hoped to maintain public interest in the main series and put the case of the government at the same time as accounts by participants and popular authors. The Treasury gave way and agreed to finance an official history series and popular single-volume works, written by civilian authors to ensure public appeal. Sir John Fortescue (28 December 1859 – 22 October 1933) was chosen as the author of the army volume. Work on the military histories in 1919 was hampered by paucity of resources and bad management, until Edmonds who had joined the Historical Section (Military Branch) in February 1919, was appointed Director on 1 April. Edmonds found documents in un-catalogued bundles on the floor, from which historians had abstracted items and not replaced them. The Fortescue volume was to have covered the war but he wrote so slowly that it