This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The men who planned the war A study of the Staff of the British Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 Harris, Paul Martin Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 23. Sep. 2021 THE MEN WHO PLANNED THE WAR A study of the Staff of the British Army on the Western Front 1914-1918 Paul Harris Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2013 King’s College London 1 Abstract The historiography of the First World War has produced few systematic studies of the staff officers of the British army on the Western Front. The work of the staff and their development during the war has largely been overshadowed by the debate over the quality of generalship. As a consequence the picture of the command function is incomplete. This thesis aims to fill the gap in understanding through a detailed analysis of the characteristics of the staff and their evolution over four years of war. It will evaluate changes in the profile of the staff and assess the implications for command performance. The staff will be subjected to scrutiny over several strands of analysis including training, staff duties, origins and experience, career paths and turnover and the differences evident between formations. The research will also explore how the staff addressed the considerable challenges that confronted them to emerge as part of a war-winning army. This study will refute the popular view that the staff were largely incompetent and ignorant of front-line conditions. 2 Contents Page List of figures 4 Acknowledgments 5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction The Missing Element 8 Chapter One Origins, Duties and Training 39 Chapter Two The Staff go to War 76 Chapter Three The Life of the Staff 112 Chapter Four Wartime Learning and Experience 153 Chapter Five The Changing Staff 191 Chapter Six Teams and Careers 236 Conclusion Setting the Record Straight 280 Biographical Notes 295 Appendices 300 Bibliography 331 3 List of Figures 1. G staff structure 28 2. Career paths of Beddington and Braine 94 3. Total G posts each year-end 193 4. Total G, A & E posts each year-end 193 5. G, A & E staff posts across Army, Corps and Division each year-end 194 6. Total staff – all branches and all levels 196 7. Percentage of psc officers on the G staff by year 199 8. Number of new joiners with psc on G staff by year 200 9. Percentage of G staff with psc by grade 208 10. Changing G Staff – Percentage of regular officers by year 211 11. Number of regular officers on G staff of six regular divisions 213 12. Number of regulars on G staff of selected Territorial and New Army 214 divisions 13. G Staff by regimental type 242 14. G staff with pre-war battle experience 244 15. Average age of G staff by year 245 16. ‘Staff pyramid’ – total G staff that served at each grade 254 4 Acknowledgments Many people have given generously of their time and knowledge in helping me produce this work. I would first like to thank my supervisor Bill Philpott for his insight and advice throughout the course of my three years of study. Special thanks are also due to Tony Cowan, Charles Messenger and Simon Robbins for the considerable time and information they have provided. I would like to thank James Beach, Brian Bond, John Bourne and Peter Simkins who assisted in the development of the initial proposal for this study. At King’s College, Brian Holden Reid together with Andy Simpson, Tom Thorpe, Tony Vines and other members of the ‘Coal Hole Club’ military operations study group sustained my momentum and were always prepared to assist with requests for material. I would also like to thank David French from the military history group at the Institute of Historical Research in London for his helpful suggestions. Current and former contacts from the University of Birmingham have also provided assistance and useful information. I would like to acknowledge the staff of all the institutions that have permitted the use of their archives including the Bodleian Library Oxford, the British Library, Churchill College Cambridge, the Imperial War Museum, the Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham, the Liddle Collection at the University of Leeds, the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, the National Archives at Kew, the National Army Museum and the National Library of Scotland. I am grateful to Elspeth Johnstone, Simon Justice, and Jon Palmer for their support. Final thanks are due to my wife for all her suggestions and help with editing. 5 Abbreviations A Adjutant Staff branch ADC Aide de Camp AIF Australian Imperial Force BEF British Expeditionary Force BGGS Brigadier-General General Staff BoL Bodleian Library, Oxford BM Brigade Major CCC Churchill College, Cambridge CDS Central Distribution Service CEF Canadian Expeditionary Force CGS Chief of General Staff CIGS Chief of Imperial General Staff CO Commanding Officer CRA Commander Royal Artillery CRE Commander Royal Engineers DSO Distinguished Service Order FSR Field Service Regulations G General Staff branch GHQ General Headquarters GOC General Officer Commanding GOCRA General Officer Commanding Royal Artillery GQG Grand Quartier Général GS General Staff GSO 1 General Staff Officer Grade One GSO 2 General Staff Officer Grade Two GSO 3 General Staff Officer Grade Three HQ Headquarters IWM Imperial War Museum, London JSCSC Joint Services Command and Staff College, Shrivenham LCUL Liddle Collection, University of Leeds LHCMA Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College London 6 MC Military Cross MGGS Major-General General Staff NAM National Army Museum, Chelsea NLS National Library Scotland Psc Passed Staff College Q Quartermaster Staff branch QMG Quartermaster General Qs Qualified Staff QUC Queen’s University, Canada RA Royal Artillery RE Royal Engineers RFA Royal Field Artillery RFC Royal Flying Corps RMA Royal Military Academy SC Staff Captain SS Stationary Service TNA The National Archives, Kew VC Victoria Cross 7 Introduction The Missing Element The work of the staff officers of the British army on the Western Front during the First World War has courted much controversy. Some commentators have held them responsible for the mismanagement of the war effort and the profligate loss of British lives in futile offensives.1 In 1915, a Liberal peer remarked upon criticism levelled at the staff by the Press: our Staff in France is larger than any Staff in the world's history, and that the Staff has been built up very largely not on account of the military records of the men put on it, but from family and other considerations. These newspapers allege that the Staff work has been bad, that over and over again victory has been stopped because of the badness of the Staff work.! The staff have often been characterised as arrogant, remote and out of touch with the realities of the front line. Such views have developed as part of a ‘cultural’ rather than a military assessment of the staff. Their function and role in the war effort has been the target of much opprobrium but little systematic study. This has painted an incomplete picture of the command function. As Brian Bond observed, ‘Our understanding of the quality of generalship and the performance of units and formations will be seriously flawed without systematic studies of the staff and staff work from brigade major to the chief of staff at GHQ’.3 1 Some examples are: A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914-45 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp.93-97; T. Travers, How the War was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917-18 (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 175-182; John Keegan’s quote, ‘that hideously unattractive group, the British generals of the First World War’ in J. Terraine, ‘British Military Leadership in the First World War in P. Liddle, Home Fires and Foreign Fields, British Social and Military Experience in the First World War (London: Brasseys, 1985), pp. 39-51. A good summary of the ‘disillusionment’ that set in after the war can be found in G. Sheffield, Forgotten Victory (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2001), pp. 7-12. 2 Speech by Lord St Davids, House of Lords, Hansard 16 November 1915 v20 p. 360. 3 B. Bond, The Unquiet Western Front (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 96. 8 This research seeks to fill these gaps in current understanding by undertaking a detailed investigation of the characteristics of the staff and their evolution over the course of the war.