Leadership was central to the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front. Even Haig, who most often has the blame for the conduct of the war laid at his feet, realised the importance of leadership and training. There was an absolute ‘need for the training of battalion commanders’, he wrote in February 1918, ’who in their turn must train their company and platoon commanders. This is really a platoon commanders’ war’ Nevertheless, popular history today reviles British generals of the Great War as callous and negligent. The background for such perceptions is decades old and lies in the prose of a generation of war poets who wrote prolifically in the aftermath of the conflict. An infantry officer in 1917, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland where he wrote extensively. The difficulties faced by British commanders on the Western Front were significant and numerous. After 1916, the British high command was required to regenerate an army, grow a competent officer corps and develop and disseminate the doctrine necessary to win the war. Australian leadership shaped these events in the development of Australian infantry on the Western Front.