Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow, KCB, KCMG (5 May 1858 – 30 August 1940) was a British Army officer who fought on the Western Front during the First World War.

He played an important role in the war, leading the 4th Division in the retreat of August 1914, and commanding VII Corps at the unsuccessful diversion of the Attack on the Gommecourt Salient on the first day on the Somme (1 July 1916) and at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917.

[2][1] After attending and later graduating from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Snow obtained a commission in the 13th Regiment of Foot in 1879,[3][4][1] taking part in the Anglo-Zulu War in South Africa the same year.

[6] Snow was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel, and in April 1899 he became the second-in-command of the 2nd Battalion, Northamptonshire Regiment,[4][1] and was posted to India, causing him to miss out on service in the Second Boer War.

[1] On the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, Snow was still in command of 4th Division,[4] which was initially deployed for home defence on the eastern coast, headquartered in Suffolk.

[10] When the division arrived at the front (25 August) Snow's orders were to help prepare a defensive position on the Cambrai-Le Cateau position, as General Headquarters (GHQ) had no idea of the seriousness of the situation facing II Corps (this being at a time when I and II Corps were retreating on opposite sides of the Forest of Mormal, and the British Expeditionary Force's Chief of Staff, Archibald Murray, was about to collapse from strain and overwork).

[1] The diary of Lieutenant-General Horace Smith-Dorrien, the GOC of II Corps, recorded: I learned in the course of the morning that the 4th Division (General Snow, now Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow) had reached Le Cateau from England, and was delighted to hear that the Chief [that is, Field Marshal Sir John French, commanding the BEF] had immediately pushed it out to Solesmes, about seven miles north-west of Le Cateau, to cover the retirement of the Cavalry and 3rd Division.

[12] Snow later wrote "the retreat of 1914 was not, as is now imagined, a great military achievement, but rather a badly bungled affair only prevented from being a disaster of the first magnitude by the grit displayed by the officers and the men".

[13] Brigadier-General Aylmer Haldane, who commanded the 10th Brigade under Snow in 1914, was highly critical of him, although he also thought many other officers of the division not up to the standards of competence required in war.

In November, after partially recovering (he required further treatment for the rest of the war), he took command of the 27th Division,[4] then being raised at Winchester for deployment to the front at the end of the year.

[4][20] VII Corps delivered an attack upon the German-held trench fortress of the Gommecourt salient on 1 July 1916, as a part of the opening of the Battle of the Somme offensive.

[24] Despite being in pain from his injured pelvis, Snow surveyed his positions from Ronssoy-Epehy Ridge each day and warned his superiors that a German counter-attack was brewing for 29 or 30 November.

[26] Bryn Hammond describes Snow at Cambrai as a "safe pair of hands" on account of his experience but also "tired and relatively old" at the age of 59.

[27] After criticism of British leadership during the German counter-attack, and along with several other BEF corps commanders, he was replaced largely on grounds of age on 2 January 1918.

[1] He had also been mentioned in dispatches six times, appointed a Commander of the Legion of Honour by the French Government and made a Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold from Belgium.