High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Lieutenant General Sir Edwin Alfred Hervey Alderson KCB (8 April 1859 – 14 December 1927) was a senior British Army officer who served in several campaigns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the First World War he was placed in command of the Canadian Expeditionary Force during the first half of the war but made enemies amongst the Canadian political and military elite and suffered disastrous casualties during operations in 1915 which forced his sidelining and eventual retirement from service.