Couple of Issues

Firstly, when trying to command my troops I keep getting a timeout error message. By the time I've finished the whole system of retrying to connect, restarting the app and finally restarting my phone, it can seriously affect the outcome of an attack.

Secondly, when I try to read the war report it just exits he app and takes me to the iPhone main page. Every time I try to read my mail it does this. It's not constantly but I've been having this problem with this for a while. I don't know how to fix this one.

Try deleting and reinstalling the app. That should hopefully fix it

I've done that repeatedly over the course of the last week, and by repeatedly we're talking between 15 and 20 times.

Have you noticed anything in common with the war reports that cause you to crash. Same enemy, similar times? Anything like that?
Collect as much info as you can and post it here. Also send it to kingdomsupport@haypi.com. Hopefully they will be able to resolve it for you. Also, if you can think of any changes (new acct, app update, os update, etc) when you started having this problem, it may be useful.

Contacting support is your best shot at resolving these issues right now. Be sure to include which device you're playing on as well as everything Caladan mentioned.