become the first man to rise from private to field marshal, and become Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the highest position in the army. Brian had three younger siblings: his sisters Rosamund, born in 1901, and Helen, born in 1905, and a younger brother, John, who was born in 1909. An older brother, Hubert, died in infancy. Like most military families, they moved frequently as his father was posted on various assignments. Robertson was educated at Tanllwyfan, a prep school in Wales. In 1908, he transferred to Pinewood School, which was then in Hampshire, and was a feeder school for Winchester College. Given the family's financial situation, Robertson's only chance of attending Winchester was to win a scholarship. This he failed to do; but he secured a £39 per annum scholarship to Charterhouse in 1910. The scholarship was good only until he turned sixteen, but in 1912 he was awarded a senior scholarship, and moved on to the Army Division of the sixth form, to study for the entrance examination for the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, the British Army's academy for engineers and gunners. His father believed that this would prove a better military education than the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, which trained officers for the infantry and cavalry, in an Army and a century dominated by technological change. At Charterhouse he joined the Rifle Corps, a school cadet unit that provided some military training. He passed the Woolwich entrance examination in 1913, ranked tenth. Great War The outbreak of the Great War in August 1914 caused the course at Woolwich to be truncated, and Robertson, who graduated fourth in his class, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers on 17 November 1914. On 29 November he reported to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham for a two-month course in military engineering. He was then sent to Aldershot for a 12-week course at the Signals Depot. On completion of this training in April 1915, his father, now the Chief of Staff of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front, had him assigned to his own staff as an aide de camp (ADC). This provided a good introduction to the workings of a military staff. When his father left in December 1915 to become the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Robertson became an aide to the Commander-in-Chief of the BEF, General Sir Douglas