British Logistics on the Western Front: 1914-1919

by Ian M. Brown

Overview

This work examines the evolution of the British Expeditionary Force's (BEF's) logistic and administrative infrastructure in France and its impact on operations. In so doing, it challenges the popular notion of British generals as bungling incompetents by analyzing an all too often ignored, but crucial, facet of military campaigns. While the BEF may be found wanting in some areas, administration was not one of them. The British generals proved themselves to be thoroughly modern professional officers in the manner in which they solved the ongoing crises that attended the explosive growth of the BEF and its artillery-intensive style of warfare. This study reinvigorates the debate about World War I by examining the understudied field of logistics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780275958947
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/26/1998
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Ian Malcolm Brown completed undergraduate and Master's degrees in History at the University of Calgary and holds a PhD in War Studies from King's College London. He is employed in the refractory industry as a Database Coordinator and currently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Introduction
Preparation for a Modern War?: The Staff College and Prewar Staff Training
War Plans and Reality: The BEF and the Commitment to a Continental War
Escalation and Reality: The BEF's Move toward Becoming a Continental Army and the Exercise of "Per Diem" as a Control on Battle
Breakdown: The Battle of the Somme and the Near-Collapse of the Transportation System
The End of Ad Hocism: Sir Eric Geddes's Reorganization of the BEF's Transportation System and the Arrival of Forecasting
Geddes's Legacy: Transportation in France and Its Impact on Tactical, Operational, and Strategic Decision Making in 1917
The Challenge of Mobility: Haig's Administration, Operational Success, and the Returban of Movement to the Western Front
Failure?: The System Breaks Down after the Armistice
Conclusion
Selected Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Brown's study will help students at the upper-division undergraduate level and above to better evaluate the work of the administrative staffs of the WWI British army.” —Choice

“This is a ground-breaking book which offers considerable food for though to scholars of military history. The book is well written and copiously illustrated with valuable statistical evidence. Its focus is on transportation and the provision of munitions of war, a focus in part dictated by the availabilty of evidence. This book is an important addition to the growing number of scholarly monographs published in recent years in which the traditional assessment of the British army's military performance on the western front in the First World War is being systematically reevaluted. It draws heavily and effectively on these important studies of the operational level of war, and takes then further in relating the operational to the administrative dimension of war. As such the book is essential reading for all serious scholars of the First World War. Equally important, it makes a significant contribution to the literature on battlefield logistics, the missing dimension of modern war.” —The Jourbanal of Military History

“[A] comprehensive study that is based on the full range of primary documents.” —Canadian Military History

“An important study of a suprisingly neglected apesct of the Great War. . . . The work is suprisingly readable, considering its subject matter, and the text is supplemented by more than two dozen tables and diagrams. . . . Very useful for the serious student of World War II.” —NYMAS Newsletter

“It is rare to be able to open a review by declaring that the work in question fills a gap in existing scholarship and does so very well indeed, but such is the case here. . . . This is an admirable book, and no student of the British army on the Western Front can afford to ignore it.” —Albion

“Dr. Brown gives us what we seldom see, but need to understand: the history of how the greatest army in Great Britain's history was supplied. . . . In all, Brown's book reminds us why it is that amateurs argue tactics while professionals argue logistics.” —The Jourbanal of the Western Front Association-Stand To!

From the Publisher

The first account of how logistics and administration impacted the British Expeditionary Force during World War I since the official report became available in 1937. Traces the evolution of the systems from prewar training through the transformation of the small professional army in 1914 into the large and effective continental army of 1918, to the fuzzy six-month period between the armistice and the June 1919 peace. Draws heavily from official records and personal papers. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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