High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! General Sir Archibald James Murray, GCB, GCMG, CVO, DSO (23 April 1860 – 21 January 1945) was a British Army officer who served in the Second Boer War and World War I. He was Chief of Staff to the BEF in August 1914 but appears to have suffered a physical breakdown in the retreat from Mons, and was required to step down from that position in January 1915. After serving as Deputy Chief of the Imperial General Staff for much of 1915, he was briefly Chief of the Imperial General Staff from September to December 1915. He was then Commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force from January 1916 to June 1917, in which role he laid the plans for the ultimate defeat of the Turks in Palestine.