scholarly journals Beyond the Western Front: The Practice of Inter-Theatre Learning in the British Army during the First World War

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimée Fox-Godden
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
British Army ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

scholarly journals Detecting the need for change: How the British Army adapted to warfare on the Western Front and in the Southern Cameroons

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Michael A. Hunzeker ◽  
Kristen A. Harkness
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Feedback Loops ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
British Army ◽  
World War ◽  
Adaptive Process ◽  
Western Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Abstract This article addresses a gap in the literature on military adaptation by focusing on the first step in the adaptive process: detecting failure. We argue that institutionalised feedback loops are a critical mechanism for facilitating detection. Feedback loops are most effective when they filter information and distribute lessons learned to senior tactical commanders. In turn, effective filtration depends on incorporating frontline soldiers and specialists into intelligence cells while creating a protected space for dissent. We evaluate our theory against both irregular and conventional wars fought by the British Army: the counterinsurgency campaign in the Southern Cameroons (1960–1) as well as the evolution of British assault tactics on the Western Front of the First World War (1914–18).

scholarly journals Information management in the Intelligence Branch of Britain’s War Office, 1873-1914: ‘All information flows toward it, or returns to it, in a form worked up into shape’

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-105
Author(s):  
Alistair Black
Keyword(s):  
Information Management ◽  
First World War ◽  
Information Flows ◽  
British Army ◽  
World War ◽  
Rational System ◽  
Strategic Intelligence ◽  
The First World War ◽  
National Archives ◽  
First World

AbstractIntelligence has always been an aspect of organized warfare. It was not until 1873, however, that the British Army recognised this formally by establishing an explicitly named unit, under the auspices of the War Office, dedicated to the development of strategic intelligence: the Intelligence Branch. Based on documents held in the National Archives (UK), this study explores the ways in which the work of the Intelligence Branch developed before the First World War in response to imperial and foreign military challenges and the growing awareness of the importance of strategic intelligence and planning. The Branch’s steam-age origins should not disguise the intensity and sophistication of the information management that underpinned its operations. Attention is paid to the type of information management methods that were employed. The existence of a rational system of information management is revealed, consisting of planned phases for the collection, processing, storage, organisation, analysis and dissemination of information.

scholarly journals The British Army and the First World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Beckett ◽  
Timothy Bowman ◽  
Mark Connelly
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
British Army ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War.

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
D. E. Canjar ◽  
Ian F. W. Beckett ◽  
Keith Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Study ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Army ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

The East Wind

2018 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Andrew Glazzard
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
East Wind ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Holmes’s words to Watson at the end of ‘His Last Bow’ (1917) express an idea of warfare that sits uneasily with our contemporary perception of the First World War. Today we are accustomed to associate that war with the horrors of the Western Front: the battles of the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917) loom large in our cultural memory as paradigms of unnecessary bloodshed and strategic incompetence. But this was not how Conan Doyle saw it – and he saw the Western Front at first hand, while both his brother, Brigadier-General Innes ‘Duff’ Doyle, and his son Kingsley were in the thick of the action. At the invitation of the War Office, Doyle toured the British, Italian and French Fronts in 1916, and the Australian Front in 1918, using his authority as Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey to don an improvised khaki uniform ‘which was something between that of a Colonel and Brigadier, with silver roses instead of stars or crowns upon the shoulder-states’.1

scholarly journals The Secret of Efficiency? Social Relations and Patronage in the British Army in the Era of the First World War*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimée Fox
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
First World War ◽  
British Army ◽  
Hierarchical Systems ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Abstract In recent years, the social history of armed forces has done much to reconstruct the experience of soldiering. However, remarkably few studies focus explicitly upon the social and political relations that play a central role in how armies behave. This article aims to understand the British Army in the era of the First World War in terms of its informal and formal organisation, exploring and interrogating the connections and relationships between individuals and the structures within which they operate. Using the concept of patronage as a lens, it will demonstrate how social relationships were able to offer alternatives to purely hierarchical systems of administration. Rather than simple favouritism, for a variety of reasons these processes functioned along meritocratic lines, enabling the Army to adopt pragmatic and innovative solutions to the challenges of the First World War.

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