The British army, information management and the First World War revolution in military affairs

ABSTRACT

Information Management (IM) – the systematic ordering, processing and channelling of information within organisations – forms a critical component of modern military command and control systems. As a subject of scholarly enquiry, however, the history of military IM has been relatively poorly served. Employing new and under-utilised archival sources, this article takes the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) of the First World War as its case study and assesses the extent to which its IM system contributed to the emergence of the modern battlefield in 1918. It argues that the demands of fighting a modern war resulted in a general, but not universal, improvement in the BEF’s IM techniques, which in turn laid the groundwork, albeit in embryonic form, for the IM systems of modern armies.

KEYWORDS:

• British Army
• information management
• First World War
• revolution in military affairs
• adaptation

Acknowledgments

An early version of this article was presented at the Institute of Historical Research, Military History Seminar Series (University College London, January 2010). The author is grateful to the participants for their comments and suggestions, and especially to Professor William Philpott and Professor David French for the invitation to speak. The author would also like to thank the Royal Historical Society and the Scouloudi Historical Awards Committee for providing the financial assistance to carry out archival research in the US and Canada, respectively, Thanks are also reserved for Professor Alaric Searle and Dr Jim Beach for reading and commenting on earlier versions of this article, as well as the two anonymous referees for their very helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ J.B. Priestley, Margin Released: A Writer’s Reminiscences and Reflections (London: Mercury Books 1962), 104. For additional context, see Neil Hanson and Tom Priestley (eds.), Priestley’s Wars (Ilkley: Great Northern Books 2008).

² Letters to Beatrice, 13/14 January, 28 February, 17 November 1916; 7 February, 26 May 1917, in Jim Beach (ed.), The Military Papers of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Cuthbert Headlam 1910–1942 (Stroud: History Press for the Army Records Society 2010), 115, 117, 149, 156–7, 167.

³ William Philpott, ‘Military History a Century after the Great War’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online] 20/1 (2015), 2–3, <https://rfcb.revues.org/288>.

⁴ Ian Malcolm Brown, British Logistics on the Western Front 1914–1919 (Westport, CT: Praeger 1998); Jim Beach, Haig’s Intelligence: GHQ and the German Army, 1916–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2013); Paul Harris, The Men Who Planned the War: A Study of the Staff of the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: Ashgate 2016).

⁵ Robert T. Foley, ‘Dumb Donkeys or Cunning Foxes? Learning in the British and German Armies during the Great War’, International Affairs 90/2 (2014), 279–98; Aimée Fox, Learning to Fight: Military Innovation and Change in the British Army, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2018).

⁶ Defined as ‘the assembly of equipment, methods and procedures, and if necessary personnel, organised so as to accomplish specific information, conveyance and processing functions’. JDP 6–00 (Third Edition), Communications and Information Systems Support to Joint Operations (January 2008), 1–1.

⁷ Brian N. Hall, Communications and British Operations on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2017).

⁸ R.E. Priestley, Work of the Royal Engineers in the European War, 1914–19: The Signal Service (France) (first published 1921; new ed., Uckfield: The Naval and Military Press Ltd., 2006); Bill Rawling, ‘Communications in the Canadian Corps, 1915–1918: Wartime Technological Progress Revisited’, Canadian Military History 3/2 (1994), 6–21; Mike Bullock and Laurence A. Lyons, Missed Signals on the Western Front: How the Slow Adoption of Wireless Restricted British Strategy and Operations in World War I (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2010).

⁹ Theo Farrell, ‘The Dynamics of British Military Transformation’, International Affairs 84/4 (2008), 777–807; Jim Storr, The Human Face of War (London: Continuum, 2009), 129–54.

¹⁰ JDP 6–00, Communications, 1–1. For the US perspective, see Joint Publication 6–0, Joint Communications System (June 2015), < http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp6_0.pdf > .

¹¹ David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes, Understanding Command and Control (Washington: CCRP, 2006), 123–50. For a non-military perspective, see Matthew Hinton (ed.), Introducing Information Management: The Business Approach (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2005).

¹² See, in particular, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (2010), Special Issue: The Information Technology Revolution in Military Affairs.

¹³ Jeffrey Collins and Andrew Futter (eds.), Reassessing the Revolution in Military Affairs: Transformation, Evolution and Lessons Learnt (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), esp. 175–80.

¹⁴ Emily O. Goldman (ed.), Information and Revolutions in Military Affairs (London: Routledge, 2005).

¹⁵ Other organisations have been the subject of enquiry: Alistair Black and Rodney Brunt, ‘Information Management in Business, Libraries and British Military Intelligence: Towards a History of Information Management’, Journal of Documentation 55/4 (1999), 361–74.

¹⁶ Jonathan Bailey, ‘The First World War and the Birth of Modern Warfare’, in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of Military Revolution 1300–2050 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2001), 132–53; Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (London: Routledge 2004), 170–221; Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton UP 2004), 28–51.

¹⁷ Jonathan Boff, Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany in 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2012), 5.

¹⁸ Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell, Coalitions, Politicians and Generals: Some Aspects of Command in Two World Wars (London: Brassey’s 1993), 29–30. For the BEF’s intelligence processing methods, see Beach, Haig’s Intelligence, 168–91.

¹⁹ General Staff, War Office, Field Service Regulations Part I: Operations (1909) (Reprinted, with Amendments, October 1914) (London: General Staff, War Office 1914), 25–37.

²⁰ For an aspect of the administrative processing techniques of the army, see John Black, ‘Behind the Scenes with the Pen and Ink Corps! The Role of the Army Pay Services during the Great War in Maintaining the Loyalty of the Fighting Soldier and Preserving the Social Fabric of the United Kingdom’, War & Society 35/3 (2016), 180–203.

²¹ Christopher Dandeker, Surveillance, Power and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 82–90.

²² James Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard UP 1986), 6–16. For an interesting take on how these new communication technologies and associated bureaucratic infrastructures created the ‘technostate’, which in turn facilitated enhanced modes of liberal governance, see Patrick Joyce, The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2013).

²³ Youssef Cassis, Big Business: The European Experience in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford UP 1997), 160–4; Edward Higgs, The Information State in England (London: Palgrave 2004), 12.

²⁴ JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP 1993), xv.

²⁵ JoAnne Yates, ‘Evolving Information Use in Firms, 1850–1920: Ideology and Information Techniques and Technologies’, in Lisa Bud-Frierman (ed.), Information Acumen: The Understanding and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business (London: Routledge 1994), 26.

²⁶ John Orbell, ‘The Development of Office Technology’, in Alison Turton (ed.), Managing Business Archives (London: Butterworth-Heinrmann 1991), 60–83; Arthur L. Norberg, ‘High Technology Calculation in the Early 20th Century: Punched Card Machinery in Business and Government’, Technology and Culture 31/4 (1990), 753–79.

²⁷ Alistair Black, Dave Muddiman and Helen Plant, The Early Information Society: Information Management in Britain before the Computer (Aldershot: Ashgate 2007), 12–26.

²⁸ Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘Data Processing and Technological Change: The Post Office Savings Bank, 1861–1930’, Technology and Culture 39/1 (1998), 1–32; idem, ‘Information Technology and Organisational Change in the British Census, 1801–1911’, in JoAnne Yates and John Van Maanen (eds.), Information Technology and Organizational Transformation: History, Rhetoric, and Practice (London: Sage 2001), 35–58.

²⁹ Martin Campbell-Kelly, ‘The Railway Clearing House and Victorian Data Processing’, in Bud-Frierman (ed.), Information Acumen (London: Routledge 1994), 51–74.

³⁰ Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 B.C. to the Present (New York: Free Press 1989), 153–66.

³¹ Edward Spiers, The Late Victorian Army 1868–1902 (Manchester: Manchester UP 1992), 322.

³² David French and Brian Holden Reid (eds.), The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890–1939 (London: Routledge 2002); Major-General R.F.H. Nalder, The Royal Corps of Signals: A History of its Antecedents and Development, 1800–1955 (London: Royal Signals Institution 1958), 16–17.

³³ Rebecca Robbins Raines, Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the US Army Signal Corps (Washington DC: Centre of Military History 1999), 3–8; Major Paul W. Evans, ‘Strategic Signal Communication: A Study of Signal Communication as Applied to Large Field Forces, Based Upon the Operations of the German Signal Corps During the March on Paris in 1914‘, Signal Corps Bulletin 82 (1935), 24–58; Arden Bucholz, Moltke, Schlieffen and Prussian War Planning (Oxford: Berg 1993).

³⁴ Stephen Broadberry and Sayantan Ghosal, ‘From Counting House to the Modern Office: Explaining Anglo-American Productivity Differences in Services, 1870–1990’, Journal of Economic History 62/4 (2002), 967–98. For a contrasting perspective, see David Edgerton, Science, Technology and the British Industrial ‘Decline’, 1870–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1996).

³⁵ David French, The British Way in Warfare, 1688–2000 (London: Unwin Hyman 1990), 155.

³⁶ L.S. Amery, The Times’ History of the War in South Africa 1899–1902, Vol. III (London: Sampson Low 1902), 298–301.

³⁷ Colonel Hubert du Cane (trans.), The War in South Africa: the Advance to Pretoria after Paardeberg, the Upper Tugela Campaign, etc. Prepared in the Historical Section of the Great General Staff, Berlin (London: John Murray 1906), 169.

³⁸ Captain H. Musgrave, ‘The Army System of Correspondence’, Royal Engineers Journal 2/1 (1905), 47–51.

³⁹ Field Service Regulations Part I, 119, 130.

⁴⁰ General Staff, War Office, Staff Manual (War) (London: General Staff, War Office, 1912), WO32/4731, The National Archives (TNA), Kew.

⁴¹ General Staff, War Office, Field Service Regulations Part II: Organization and Administration (1909) (Reprinted, with Amendments, October 1914) (London: General Staff, War Office 1914), 38–41. For additional context, see Dan Todman, ‘The Grand Lamasery Revisited: General Headquarters on the Western Front, 1914–1918’, in Gary Sheffield and Dan Todman (eds.), Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army’s Experience 1914–18 (Staplehurst: Spellmount 2004), 39–70.

⁴² ‘Report of a Conference of General Staff Officers at the Royal Military College, 13th to 16th January, 1913’, 29, WO279/48, TNA.

⁴³ ‘Notes by Lt-Col. Bird and Maj. Evans on the Working of Ob during the Army Exercise 1913’, 3 October 1913, WO32/4731, ‘Notes by O(b) General Headquarters. Brown Force. On Army Exercise 1913’, 1 October 1913, ‘Sub-Section O(a). Office Arrangements’, 20 October 1913, WO106/51, TNA.

⁴⁴ ‘Notes on Work at General Headquarters, by Capt. Ommanney’, 22 October 1913, WO32/4731, TNA. The hectograph was a device that used a gelatine bed or roll to transfer aniline dye from an original document to up to 100 copies. Yates, Control through Communication, 50.

⁴⁵ Unpublished Memoirs, 15, Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds Papers III/7, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (LHCMA), King’s College London.

⁴⁶ Peter T. Scott (ed.), ‘The View from GHQ: The Second Part of the War Diary of General Sir Charles Deedes’, Stand To! Journal of the Western Front Association 11 (1984), 9. For additional context, see Nikolas Gardner, Trial by Fire: Command and the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 (Westport CT: Praeger 2003).

⁴⁷ J.P. Harris, Douglas Haig and the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2008), 65–6.

⁴⁸ Brigadier-General A.B.R. Hildebrand, ‘Second Army Signals, 1914: From the Personal Diary of Brigadier-General A.B.R. Hildebrand’, Royal Signals Quarterly Journal 6/21 (1938), 131.

⁴⁹ K.W. Mitchinson, The Territorial Force at War, 1914–16 (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2014); Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army: The Raising of the New Armies 1914–1916 (Manchester: Manchester UP 1988).

⁵⁰ Captain Pearson Choate to Sir James Edmonds, 6 April 1936, CAB45/132, TNA; Colonel W.N. Nicholson, Behind the Lines: An Account of Administrative Staff Work in the British Army 1914–1918 (London: Strong Oak Press, 1989), 170.

⁵¹ ‘Notes on the Recent Operations, 19 Division’, 19 July 1916, ‘Some Further Notes on the Recent Operations by the Divisional Commander, Major-General Bridges, 19 Division’, 9 September 1916, ‘9^th (Scottish) Division Report’, 26 July 1916, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd Papers 7/3, LHCMA.

⁵² ‘Headquarters Units with a Division’, 12 December 1918, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Butler Papers 69/10/1, Imperial War Museum (IWM), London.

⁵³ Letter to Beatrice, 26 March 1916, in Beach (ed.), The Military Papers, 118.

⁵⁴ Nicholson, Behind the Lines, 185.

⁵⁵ John Terraine (ed.), General Jack’s Diary: War on the Western Front 1914–1918 (London: Cassell, 2001), 172.

⁵⁶ War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire, 1914–1920 (London: HMSO, 1922), 29–37.

⁵⁷ Lieutenant-Colonel J.H. Boraston (ed.), Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatches (London: Dent, 1920), 56.

⁵⁸ Captain A. Speight, ‘G.H.Q. Signal Office, France’, Post Office Electrical Engineers’ Journal 13 (1920–21), 48–50.

⁵⁹ Peter Scott, 'The Staff of the BEF', Stand To! Journal of the Western Front Association 15 (1985), 54.

⁶⁰ ‘GHQ and Advanced GHQ Signal Offices, August-November 1918‘, GHQ Signal Company War Diary, WO95/127, TNA.

⁶¹ Brigadier-General John Charteris, At GHQ (London: Cassell, 1931), 155.

⁶² ‘XIII Corps Signal Office during the Offensive on the Somme’, n.d., XIII Corps Signal Company War Diary, WO95/906, TNA.

⁶³ Captain V.E. Inglefield, The History of the Twentieth (Light) Division (London: Nisbet 1921), 180.

⁶⁴ ‘Report on Communications During Period 2^nd to 6 October 1918’, 16 October 1918, 2 Australian Division Signal Company War Diary, WO95/3296, TNA.

⁶⁵ ‘Lessons Learnt from Recent Operations by the Third Army (November 20th to December 6th, 1917)’, n.d., WO158/316, TNA.

⁶⁶ ‘XIII Corps Signal Office’, WO95/906, TNA.

⁶⁷ ‘Preliminary Notes on the Operations of the Second Army, June 1917’, 7 July 1917, WO158/302, TNA.

⁶⁸ ‘Third Army No. G.34/659’, 4 June 1918, RG9-III-C-5/4443/7/6, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Ottawa.

⁶⁹ Hildebrand, ‘Second Army Signals’, 135.

⁷⁰ Diary entry, 30 September 1918, Second-Lieutenant H.A.J. Lamb Papers, PP/MCR/187, IWM.

⁷¹ ‘Lecture No. 33. Trench Signal Stations’, 1 May 1918, AEF Army Signal School Files, RG120/405/1794, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Maryland.

⁷² ‘The Great War Diaries of a Signalman’, 9 July 1916, Stapleton Eachus Papers, 01/51/1, IWM.

⁷³ Lieutenant W.J. Gwilliam, ‘A Signal Master on Active Service’, Post Office Electrical Engineers’ Journal 8 (1915–16), 262.

⁷⁴ ‘Notes of a Conference Held at Army Headquarters on 16 April 1916’, Fourth Army Records, Vol. 1, IWM.

⁷⁵ ‘Lecture No. 33’, RG120/405/1794, NARA.

⁷⁶ ‘The Situation Which Often Confronts Brigadiers When Headquarters are Situated Close up to the Front Line’, 26 July 1916, Montgomery-Massingberd Papers 7/3, LHCMA.

⁷⁷ Field Marshal Haig Diary, 14 August 1916, WO256/12, TNA; Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918 (London: Phoenix, 2006), 220.

⁷⁸ Terraine, (ed.), General Jack’s Diary, 172.

⁷⁹ ‘Memorandum for the A.G. on Economy in Personnel Employed in Office Administration’, 8 March 1916, WO95/81, TNA.

⁸⁰ Director of Army Printing and Stationary Services War Diary, 29 December 1914, WO95/81, TNA. On the use of typewriters for the dissemination of British tactical doctrine, see: Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack 1916–18 (London: Yale UP, 1994), 180–81.

⁸¹ ‘Sub-Section O(a)’, 20 October 1913, WO106/51, TNA.

⁸² Director of Army Printing and Stationary Services War Diary, 29 March 1915, WO 95/81; ‘Stationery Services, Lines of Communication, British Expeditionary Force in France: Enlistment of Additional Typewriter Mechanics, 1915’, T1/11846, TNA.

⁸³ The US-made Corona typewriter was used extensively by the British during the war. See Wilfred A. Beeching, Century of the Typewriter (London: Heinemann, 1974), 37.

⁸⁴ Neil Fraser-Tytler, Field Guns in France (London: Hutchinson, 1922), 178.

⁸⁵ Terraine, (ed.), General Jack’s Diary, 29, 265; John Baynes, Morale: A Study of Men and Courage (New York: Avery, 1988), 246–7.

⁸⁶ J.E. Edmonds, Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1916, Vol. 1 (London: HMSO, 1932), 131.

⁸⁷ Director of Army Printing and Stationary Services War Diary, 8 August 1918, WO95/81, TNA.

⁸⁸ These letters were written during the war and published anonymously as: CIX, ‘Letters to an Adjutant’, Army Quarterly, 8/1–2 (1924), 31–44, 274–85.

⁸⁹ Lieutenant G.V. Micklam, ‘The Personal Card Index, or Moderated Methodism’, Royal Engineers Journal, 43 (1929), 636–7.

⁹⁰ Beach, Haig’s Intelligence, 171; Fox, Learning to Fight, 197–9.

⁹¹ Albert Palazzo, ‘The British Army’s Counter-Battery Staff Office and Control of the Enemy in World War 1’, Journal of Military History, 63/1 (1999), 55–74; Sanders Marble, British Artillery on the Western Front in the First World War (London: Routledge, 2013), 167–70.

⁹² Brigadier-General A.G.L. McNaughton, ‘Counter Battery Work’, Canadian Defence Quarterly, 3/4 (1926), 385.

⁹³ ‘Remarks on “Notes on the Work of a Counter Battery Office”’, n.d. [c. 1917], Lieutenant-General Sir Herbert Uniacke Papers U/VIII/9, Royal Artillery Institution (RAI).

⁹⁴ ‘Notes on Counter Battery Work in Connection with the Capture of Vimy Ridge by Canadian Corps, April 9th, 1917’, WO95/1059, TNA.

⁹⁵ Priestley, Work of the Royal Engineers, 64.

⁹⁶ Anon., ‘Complimentary Dinner to Sir Andrew Ogilvie’, Post Office Electrical Engineers’ Journal, 13 (1920–21), 70–71; ‘Organisation of the Signals of an Army when Holding a Sector of Line (Siege Warfare)’, n.d. [c. 1918], Organisation and Work of Signals in WW1 – Papers on Various Subjects, M1599, Royal Engineers Museum Archive (REMA), Gillingham.

⁹⁷ ‘Signal Service, Canadian Corps’, 14 June 1917, RG9-III-C-5/4438/1/1, LAC; ‘War Diary, Month of August 1918, Headquarters Section, Australian Corps Signal Company’, AWM4-22/10/6, Australian War Memorial (AWM), Canberra.

⁹⁸ General Staff, War Office, Manual of Army Signal Service – War (Provisional) (London: HMSO, 1914), 30.

⁹⁹ Corporal Frederick Arthur Sanders, Interview (1984), 008273/04, Department of Sound Records, IWM.

¹⁰⁰ General Staff, War Office, Manual of Army Signal Service, 33.

¹⁰¹ Priestley, Work of the Royal Engineers, 190.

¹⁰² Lieutenant-Colonel William Newton to Sir James Edmonds, [?] 1936, CAB45/136, TNA.

¹⁰³ ‘Position of Corps and Divisional Advanced Report Centres and Observation Stations for Corps and Divisional Commanders’, 12 March 1916, Fourth Army Records, Vol. 7, IWM.

¹⁰⁴ Letter to Margie, 4 July 1916, in Bill Thompson (ed.), General Sir Thomas Morland: War Diaries & Letters, 1914–1918 (Kibworth Beauchamp: Matador, 2015), 148–9; Nugent to his son, 27 June 1916; Nugent to his wife, 30 June 1916, in Nicholas Perry, (ed.), Major-General Oliver Nugent and the Ulster Division 1915–1918 (Stroud: Sutton, 2007), 94–5.

¹⁰⁵ ‘Second Army. O.A. 766. 1217/G’, 19 March 1915, WO157/303, TNA.

¹⁰⁶ ‘Position’, Fourth Army Records, Vol. 7, IWM.

¹⁰⁷ For Messines, see Ian Passingham, Pillars of Fire: the Battle of Messines Ridge, June 1917 (Stroud: Sutton, 1998).

¹⁰⁸ J.E. Edmonds, Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1917, Vol. 2 (London: HMSO, 1948), 43; Charles Harington, Plumer of Messines (London: John Murray, 1935), 101.

¹⁰⁹ ‘Second Army. Report on Army Centre. Battle of Messines, June 1917’, 20 June 1917, WO158/305, TNA.

¹¹⁰ Harington, Plumer, 101.

¹¹¹ Second Army Signal Company War Diary, 28 May-2 June 1917, WO95/288, TNA.

¹¹² Edmonds, Military Operations, 1917, Vol. 2, 43; ‘Second Army Offensive. Xth Corps Instructions. Appendix VII. Corps Advanced Intelligence Report Centre’, 27 May 1917, X Corps War Diary, WO95/852, TNA.

¹¹³ Beach, Haig’s Intelligence, 166.

¹¹⁴ ‘Second Army. Report on Army Centre’, WO158/305, TNA.

¹¹⁵ Ibid.

¹¹⁶ ‘Appendix II. Messages Received and Transmitted During June 7th - Battle of Messines’, WO158/305, TNA.

¹¹⁷ ‘A System in Use by a British Corps for Dealing with Reports’, January 1918, AEF Staff College Files, RG120/362/1978, NARA.

¹¹⁸ ‘Report on Signal Communications During Recent Offensive Operations on IX Corps Front’, n.d., IX Corps Signal Company War Diary, WO95/845, TNA.

¹¹⁹ ‘Tim Harington to Archibald Montgomery’, 6 July 1917, Montgomery-Massingberd Papers 7/35, LHCMA.

¹²⁰ ‘Signal Notes No. 8’, 15 June 1917, Director of Army Signals War Diary, WO95/57, TNA.

¹²¹ Copies of the report can be found in: Montgomery-Massingberd Papers 7/35, LHCMA; and, Sir Arthur Currie Papers, MG30, E100/35/160, LAC.

¹²² ‘Distribution of Duties during Operations’, 15 November 1917, WO158/316, TNA.

¹²³ ‘Battle Instructions No. 19. Liaison’, 6 August 1918, Field Marshal Sir John Dill Papers 1/9, LHCMA. See also: ‘Office Memorandum No. 13. Corps Report Centre’, 6 August 1918, AWM4-22/10/6, AWM.

¹²⁴ Jim Beach (ed.), SS. 135. The Division in the Attack – 1918 (Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, The Occasional, No. 53, 2008), 92–3.

¹²⁵ F.M. Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps in the Western and Eastern Theatres of War 1914–1918 (Sydney: Halstead Press, 1923), 314. See also: H.A. Jones, The War in the Air: Being the Story of the Part Played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Vol. 6 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), 474–5.

¹²⁶ Quoted in Simon Robbins, British Generalship on the Western Front 1914–18: Defeat into Victory (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 36.

¹²⁷ Nicholson, Behind the Lines, 302–3, 22.

¹²⁸ Fox, Learning, 240–50.

¹²⁹ Gary Sheffield, ‘Doctrine and Command in the British Army: An Historical Overview’, E-2, in Army Doctrine Publication (ADP). Operations (2010), <https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/33695/ADPOperationsDec10.pdf>; Brown, British Logistics, 231–40; Boff, Winning and Losing, 249.

¹³⁰ ‘3rd Battle of the Somme. August 8th, 1918-August 13th, 1918’, n.d., RG9-III-D-3/5005/693, LAC.

¹³¹ ‘Lecture No. 3. Handling of Messages’, Officers’ School – First Course, Monday, January 7th, 1918 to Saturday, February 2nd, 1918, RG120/404/2, NARA.

¹³² ‘Lecture No. 1. Signals in the Present War, Officers’ School – Second Course, Monday, 11 February 1918 to Saturday, 23 March 1918’, RG120/404/3, NARA.

¹³³ ‘GSO’ [Frank Fox], GHQ (Montreuil-sur-Mer) (London: Philip Allan, 1920), 230.

¹³⁴ Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1914–1918 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 289–391; J.P. Harris with Niall Barr, Amiens to the Armistice: The BEF in the One Hundred Days’ Campaign, 8 August-11 November 1918 (London: Brassey’s, 1998).

¹³⁵ Foley, ‘Dumb Donkeys’, 279–98; Robert Foley, ‘A Case Study in Horizontal Military Innovation: The German Army, 1916–1918’, Journal of Strategic Studies 35/6 (2012), 799–827.

¹³⁶ Fox, Learning, 242–44. This point is further reinforced by the manner in which the BEF’s first communications doctrine manual, SS.148 Forward Inter-Communication in Battle (March 1917), was developed. See Hall, Communications, 83–6, 303–5. On British doctrine more generally, see Jim Beach, ‘Issued by the General Staff: Doctrine Writing at British GHQ, 1917–1918’, War in History, 19/4 (2012), 464–91.

¹³⁷ ‘3rd Battle of the Somme’, RG9-III-D-3/5005/693, LAC.

¹³⁸ Black and Brunt, ‘Information Management’, 362.

¹³⁹ Hall, Communications, 298–99.

¹⁴⁰ ‘Report of the Committee on the Lessons of the Great War, The War Office 1932’, WO32/3116, TNA.

¹⁴¹ General Staff, War Office, Field Service Regulations, Vol. II. Operations (London: HMSO, 1935), 36.

¹⁴² Simon Godfrey, British Army Communications in the Second World War: Lifting the Fog of Battle (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 126–7, 177.

¹⁴³ David W. Hogan, Jr., A Command Post at War: First Army Headquarters in Europe, 1943–1945 (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 2000), 4–5.

¹⁴⁴ US War Department, Field Service Regulations, United States Army, 1923 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), 28–9.

¹⁴⁵ JCN 2/12, Future Land Operating Concept (May 2012), 2–15.

¹⁴⁶ JDP 6–00, Communications, 1–3-5; Theo Farrell, Sten Rynning and Terry Terriff, Transforming Military Power Since the Cold War: Britain, France, and the United States, 1991–2012 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013), 137–43.

¹⁴⁷ General Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2014), 150–52.

¹⁴⁸ Ministry of Defence, ‘Morpheus Programme: Next Generation Tactical Communication Information Systems for Defence’, last updated 18 April 2018, <https://www.gov.uk/guidance/morpheus-project-next-generation-tactical-communication-information-systems-for-defence>.

¹⁴⁹ Sean Ryan, ‘Finding the Right Answer: Adapting Military Intelligence to the Information Age’, RUSI Journal 160/4 (2015), 50–8; Brad Spiel, ‘Less is More: The Enabled Combat Brigade Headquarters’ (5 January 2018), <https://groundedcuriosity.com/less-is-more-the-enabled-combat-brigade-headquarters/>.

¹⁵⁰ General Sir Nicholas Carter, ‘Dynamic Security Threats and the British Army’ (Speech Given at the Royal United Services Institute, 22 January 2018), <https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/dynamic-security-threats-and-the-british-army-chief-of-the-general-staff-general-sir-nicholas-carter-kcb-cbe-dso-adc-gen>.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brian N. Hall

Dr Brian N. Hall is Lecturer in Contemporary Military History at the University of Salford, UK, where he is Programme Leader for the BA in Contemporary Military and International History. His monograph, Communications and British Operations on the Western Front, 1914-1918, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2017, and was awarded the Royal Historical Society’s 2018 Whitfield Prize.