the 1943 draft "a farrago of malicious nonsense" (he objected particularly to Wynne's suggestion that Gough was allowed both to execute his attacks as he saw fit and to dictate to his corps commanders, without interference from Haig) and wrote that "Haig decided that he wanted a breakthrough and Charteris was always telling him that the Germans were on the verge of cracking. The breakthrough was the policy." Gough denied that Haig had firmly told him to capture the Gheluveld Plateau over lunch on 28 June but it is in Haig's diary. He also accused Cavan of inventing a claim that he had begged Gough to let II Corps "bang through on the right" and a footnote to that effect was deleted from the History, although Cavan's claim is in fact confirmed by letters at the time; Percy Beddington, then GSO1 of a division, later chief of staff Fifth Army, later felt that Gough should have devoted a further two divisions to attacking the Gheluveld Plateau. Gough claimed that it was he who had realised the mistake. Gough also criticised Haig for a poor choice of battlefield, "the worst possible for an offensive operation" – he said Haig should have attacked at Cambrai (Edmonds accepted that attacks of some kind were necessary and felt that Flanders was the best spot, contrary to Gough's opinion), for having a poor team around him (Charteris, Davidson, Lawrence, Kiggell) and for his top-down management style, claiming that Haig issued orders instead of gathering commanders and staff officers to thrash out the issues around a table. Gough also claimed that any entries in Haig's diary urging a step-by-step advance had been "written up after the event". When told of Gough's criticisms Wynne wrote that "both Pilckem and Langemarck were thoroughly bad in their planning, and even the Official History should admit as much – and Gough must lump it. He should have been sacked for them without a pension." However, Wynne praised Gough's "gracious" admission that Haig had been wrong to select him to command the offensive, an admission which eventually appeared in the Official History. Another of the writing team, W. B. Wood, wrote (letter undated but probably in December 1944) that Gough "was at last getting his deserts" for having caused "disasters" by "adhering to his own plans for breaking the German lines over the whole of the Fifth Army front in preference