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

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. KEY WORDS: British Army, Information Management, First World War, Revolution in Military Affairs, Adaptatio

The great European Cup-Tie final, East Surreys v Bavarians, kick off at zero, NO REFEREE!

The image of British troops advancing into battle kicking a football is part of Britain’s First World War collective memory. However, research suggests that this happened only twice, with the better-known event being on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme when ‘B’ Company of the 8 Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment kicked two footballs ahead of them. The East Surreys were one of the few battalions to reach their objective. However on this bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, the football charge is but a footnote to military historians despite becoming a national ‘micro-level’ myth. This paper, researched in an antiquarian spirit, is concerned with the recovery of the empirical detail of the event motivated by a desire to discover the objective reality of the collective memory and explore the underlying rationale of this football charge